Kristen and Aaron were one week away from their wedding when she was in a horrific motorcycle accident.
However, trauma proved no match for determination, love, and the miracle workers at Regional One Health’s Elvis Presley Trauma Center.
As Kristen committed herself to getting stronger, her health care team jumped into action to plan a wedding at the hospital’s chapel – and prove that exceptional health care is about more than just medicine.
For Aaron Benefiel and Kristen Wilkerson, 2025 was going to be the year.
After getting engaged in 2020, they had been waiting for the right time to get married. “We didn’t want to worry about having a wedding until we got into our own house,” Kristen said. “But shortly after we moved into our home, it flooded, and we had to deal with that. It put us back a couple years, but we finally decided this would be the year.”
They planned a wedding five years in the making, writing their own vows and incorporating unique personal touches. “We’re Halloween nuts, so we decided to schedule it for Halloween. I had a black dress, and Aaron was going to wear a black suit with a red tie. We had skulls and ravens for the décor, and about 5 pounds of candy!” Kristen said.
By late October, they were ready. “We finally had everything together, and we were really looking forward to it. The only thing left was dry cleaning a couple of shirts.”
On October 24, Kristen left work on her motorcycle to drive to her home in Olive Branch. As a longtime motorcycle enthusiast and professional coach for Harley Davidson, Kristen is an expert at safe riding – but when another driver pulled into traffic, she didn’t have time to avoid a collision.
“She T-boned me on my right side, and the impact caused pieces of my motor to collapse. That pushed the floorboard up, and my foot was caught between the floorboard and pieces of the engine,” Kristen said. “When I was thrown over the handlebars, it caused a laceration from the middle of my thigh into my calf, severing the knee joint.”
Kristen was conscious the entire time. “I looked down at my foot, and I could see how damaged it was. My first thought was, ‘I’m not walking down the aisle next week.’ That’s when I felt the pain.”
An ambulance rushed her to the Elvis Presley Trauma Center. Kristen’s initial sense that she was hurt badly was confirmed.
Surgeons had to amputate her leg at the ankle but opted to wait to see if her knee would start healing before amputating the whole leg. Fortunately, Kristen’s knee showed signs of healing, so they decided to amputate below the knee.
Aaron and Kristen waited five years to plan the wedding of their dreams. Just a week before they were set to exchange vows, Kristen was in a traumatic motorcycle accident.
Kristen would spend the next 19 days at Regional One Health in the trauma center, intensive care unit, and Inpatient Rehabilitation Hospital.
It would be a grueling experience under any circumstances, but Kristen had to endure it knowing she should have been enjoying one of the most special days of her life.
“Eventually, we had to have the hard conversation about what was to be done,” she said. “We considered trying to hold out and have the wedding rescheduled as soon as possible, but if we did that, we knew it wouldn’t be the wedding we truly hoped for.”
Ultimately, they decided they’d planned for a Halloween wedding, and that was what they were going to have.
“I realized at that moment I’d almost lost my best friend. I told her, ‘If you feel you can manage it, it’s going to happen,’” Aaron said.
“We called our officiant, who is a dear friend, and asked him if he could still marry us on Halloween. He said bedside, outpatient, whatever, he would be there to marry us,” Kristen said.
The news reached Kim Scott-Brown, nursing manager in the trauma ICU, who jumped to action to make the event as special as possible. Scott-Brown’s first call was to D’Arcy Deveaux Sr., Manager of Organizational Development.
“There comes a point where patients just want something else to focus on,” she noted. “After we’ve done everything we can medically, we need to think outside the box and ask, ‘What else can we do to make them better?’ I told D’Arcy, ‘Let’s get this girl married.’”
For Deveaux, “Immediately, hope set in for me. It’s not everyday we have this kind of hope come to life in a situation like this. I called downstairs and said, ‘Chef, we need a wedding cake. When she heard the story, that infectious hope and love transferred to her, and she made it happen.’”
Kristen had to have her leg amputated below the knee, and spent 19 days at Regional One Health. She says the care she received helped her realize she could continue to live her life on her own terms.
While Scott-Brown and Deveaux worked on logistics, Nurse Manager Angela Spragin turned to getting Kristen ready. Kristen would need continued nursing coverage during the ceremony and would need to achieve physical and occupational therapy milestones like sitting up in a chair.
“She blazed through it. She met every goal we gave her,” Spragin said. “Their determination and the love they have for each other was inspiring.”
Within hours, the team had picked up the couple’s wedding decorations and found a dress they could modify so Kristen could get in and out of it easily. Aaron remembers joking there was no way Kristen wanted to wear white instead of the Halloween-black dress she had envisioned, so they died the gown black.
When Halloween arrived, Kristen’s entire care team was ready, even surprising Kristen and Aaron by setting up the hospital’s chapel for the ceremony.
Kristen’s rehabilitation therapists helped her shower, then brought her to the chapel while playing “Going to the Chapel” on repeat. Her brother rolled her down the aisle in a wheelchair, and the couple finally got to say the vows that had more meaning than ever.
“We cried our eyes out,” Kristen said. “We finally got to say the words we’d put together to explain how much we loved each other. It may not have been the wedding we planned for, but it was perfect. We got to do the important part – we got to exchange our vows. It was beautiful.”
It also gave them a chance to find positive meaning in a traumatic experience.
“We got to leave with more history with Regional One Health than just surgeries and amputation,” Aaron said. “We got to leave with an amazing story, and 100 percent I give it to the employees. They took a story that could be tragic, and now we can smile about it.”
At the trauma center, that is the goal for every patient.
“These are the things that truly make us caregivers,” Scott-Brown said. “We don’t just go in and assess the patient – we connect our hearts and give that way as well.”
When Kristen’s medical team learned she was supposed to be getting married, they found yet another way to heal – by helping the couple plan a wedding in Regional One Health’s chapel.
“Nobody signs up to come to the trauma center. Nobody signs up to have their life changed,” Spragin said. “This gave so much hope to all of us – life doesn’t end because you have this tragic thing happen. You can still go on and do great things.”
That is certainly the case for Kristen and Aaron.
Kristen is back at work for the family’s contracting business and is excited to return to coaching for Harley Davidson.
“We’re big outdoor people. When we’re not working, we’re riding motorcycles, hunting, boating, fishing,” she said. “We’re making things work as they are and preparing for a prosthetic as soon as we can. I’m looking forward to getting back on my feet, back in the gym, and back on a Harley.”
She says she couldn’t have done it without the care she received at Regional One Health.
“Absolutely every single person there – I loved them!” she said. “My physical and occupational therapists were fabulous. They weren’t just good about getting me through therapy, they talked with me and laughed with me. That is when I went from feeling like my life was over to realizing I can still do things and I can keep getting stronger.”
And she’ll do it with her husband at her side and memories of a health care team that made it all possible. “In the middle of everything that was going on, when you feel like you want to give up, they put so much light in that tunnel,” Aaron said.
Deveaux said that is precisely what makes Regional One Health a special place. “The public knows us for trauma, but if they stepped into our world, they would understand we’re more than a trauma center,” he said. “We’re a healing center. We can fix you, and we can also heal you.”