Three Years Ago, He Found Her Bloodied and Stabbed 32 Times by Her Ex-Boyfriend. Monday Night, He Changed Her Life for a Second Time.

Three years ago, Melissa Dohme lay on the pavement in front of her Florida home, soaked in blood. She had been stabbed 32 times by her ex-boyfriend.

One of the first responders who arrived on the scene was Cameron Hill, a firefighter and paramedic. "It was so bad," Hill recalled in 2013, "you couldn't tell she was blond."

He helped load Dohme onto a helicopter, and then, he said, he felt a "sixth sense." He knew it wouldn't be the last he saw her.

Monday night, he proposed to her at the pitcher's mound at a Tampa Bay Rays game.

Dohme, now an advocate for survivors of domestic abuse, was preparing to throw out the first pitch when out ran a man to hand her the ball. It said in ink: "Will you marry me?" Hill got down on one knee and opened up a small box.

She said yes, they kissed — and then she threw the pitch to her new fiancé.

Image source: WFTS-TV

Dohme was stabbed in the face, back, arms and shoulders. She spent three weeks in the hospital after that horrific night, the Tampa Bay Times reported. She suffered a stroke and a severed nerve that affected her balance and partly paralyzed her face. But she walked out of rehab on her own, traveled the world, and went back to school to become a nurse.

She and Hill reconnected 10 months after her attack, when she spoke at a Clearwater church. Initial awkwardness gave way to feelings of love. Pretty soon, they were inseparable.

Dohme's ex-boyfriend, Robert Burton Jr., pleaded guilty to attempted murder and is serving life in prison.

Dohme told the Tampa Bay Times in 2013, "When I look back on that night, I can't think of it as all bad anymore because I met Cameron."

"He's the one I've been waiting for. My fairy tale."

(H/T: Washington Post)