Tragedy brought Laura Delaney and Peter Sereika together.

An accident in the summer of 2003 brought then-freshmen Delaney and Sereika from friends to dating.

Sereika wrecked his motorcycle that July and was recuperating from “pretty bad road rash” in Delnor Community Hospital in Geneva.

Delaney visited him in the hospital on July 22. Sereika, now a junior accountancy major, remembers the exact date.

“She told me I was going to be all right,” Sereika said. “And she kissed me. That was our first kiss.”

Tragedy struck the couple again Friday, when Delaney, a junior kinesiology major, died from a viral infection of the heart called Myocarditis.

Delaney’s mother, Gayle, said her daughter liked to dance and had been attending recitals since kindergarten.

“As a young child, she just loved music. She would just dance around,” Delaney said. “I even have pictures of her at her last recital [in 2002].”

She was just starting to get into dance again at NIU.

Delaney is survived by her father, George “Butch” and her brother Rich. Rich, 24, is attending Harper Valley Community College and plans to attend NIU next year to continue his special education studies.

“We were best friends,” Sereika said. “We were everything to each other.”

The two met their freshman year and became close friends. They started dating a few days after Sereika’s accident. The couple moved into a Fotis Drive townhome in August and were to celebrate their 18-month anniversary next week.

“It was pretty much perfect,” Sereika said. “We never fought. We did everything together.”

The viral attack came with little warning.

“She had a viral infection that attacked the heart,” Delaney’s mother said. “I had seen her on Sunday. We had gone out to eat. … We were planning for my birthday. She said she wasn’t feeling well. She had thought she had come down with Pete’s [Sereika’s] flu.” Sereika had caught a bug the weekend before Delaney’s death.

On Friday morning, Delaney began seizing and woke Sereika.

“There wasn’t anything leading up to it,” Sereika said. “[She had a] little bit of a tooth ache.”

“Friday morning, she was taking really deep breaths. She was really stiff. Her leg kicked the night stand.”

Delaney was taken by ambulance to Kishwaukee Hospital where doctors performed CPR for 70 minutes. When her heart started again, she was air-lifted to the OSF Saint Anthony Medical Center in Rockford. Her heart stopped again and doctors pronounced her dead shortly after 4 p.m.

Visitation will begin at 11:30 a.m. Wednesday and funeral service will start at 2:30 p.m. at Willow Creek Community Church, 26 E. Algonquin Road in South Barrington.