She Thought He'd Ghosted Her. Not Quite

Under a Hawaiian sky, Cody Bryant and Haley Woloshen met at a bar, discovered they lived a mile away from each other in California, and ended up spending the evening together, "swimming in the ocean and watching a meteor shower," per People. Over subsequent weeks back home, their epic fling developed into something more, right up until Bryant, 35, took off for a trip to Spain. "I dropped him off at the airport and expected to pick him up again when he got back," Woloshen, 28, tells People. But after a few texts, all communication from Bryant stopped. Woloshen figured she was being ghosted. "In a text that will live in infamy, I wrote, 'Checking in that Ibiza didn't kill you,'" she says.

Ibiza didn't kill Bryant, but nearly. On Sept. 6, 2022, he was struck by a car while riding on a moped and ended up in a coma with a traumatic brain injury. When he woke up, he had no memory of Woloshen at all, reports the New York Post. "Doctors didn't know if I was going to live or, if I did, if I would make it out of a vegetative state," Bryant recalls, per People. With his family focused on his recovery, no one could spare a thought for Woloshen, who eventually learned about Bryant's accident through a GoFundMe campaign. She sent well wishes but assumed their relationship was over. She was very, very wrong.

A month after his accident, Bryant returned to the US and found time to peruse his phone. "I saw all the messages I had sent to Haley and I was like, 'Whoa, I must have liked this girl,'" he says. So he sent a late reply to her text: "Hey, sorry I missed your message." Woloshen couldn't help but laugh. It was then that "I knew this was so much bigger than a three-week fling," she tells People. The couple are still together and working through the challenges that come with Bryant's recovery. As Bryant notes in a TikTok video, Woloshen was kind enough to clip the toenails of her boyfriend, who was then partially paralyzed and missing front teeth. "I joke that she won me over a second time," Bryant writes. For Woloshen, "an insane situation" turned into something "amazing," she tells People. That's the "silver lining." (More love stories stories.)