Michelle Rukovicin, believed to be the most severely wounded Israeli to have survived the October 7 attacks, married her boyfriend of five years on Tuesday, having woken from a medically-induced coma last year.
Critically injured defending Kissufim base from Hamas, she was shot seven times, hit by grenade fragments, and left bleeding for 14 hours inside a bomb shelter. After the attack, she was placed in a coma for three months by doctors, who told her family that she might never wake up, let alone walk again.
But Rukovicin did wake up and, during a long and gruelling rehabilitation process, promised herself that she would make it down the aisle under her own steam, saying: “I will walk to the chupah on my own two feet.”
And, on Tuesday night, almost two years after the deadly attack, Rukovicin dressed in a brilliant white wedding gown and defied the odds to walk down the aisle to marry her longtime partner, Rinat Kasimov.
