Lying in an intensive care bed, surrounded by beeping machines and in a deep coma, Brian Keeley was oblivious to how delicately balanced his once active life had suddenly become.

He was just 50, he had been active, fit and enjoying an island holiday when a massive heart attack had led to multi organ failure. Hovering between life and death, he had no idea that he was in a fight for his life.

But by his side and watching everything unfold was his wife Bibo. And with each breath the ventilator helped her husband take, she was acutely aware that their entire lives had just changed.

“He was in a coma, but I saw the whole thing from the other side,” she says. “In some ways I’m much more traumatised by what happened than he is.”

For over 100 days, machines carried out the heart, lung and kidney functions that kept Brian alive. He mainly slept through but, says Bibo, for her it was “completely disorientating”.

“There were so many machines attached to Brian, he was in a coma and breathing regularly but it was the ventilator that was doing it for him. There were three people looking after him.

“You arrive in intensive care not knowing what to expect, and you’re thrown right in.”

As technology, medics and machines battled to keep him alive, Brian’s chances of survival hinged on whether he might one day become strong enough to cope with having his damaged heart removed and replaced by a donor organ.

With so much to take in and with no-one close to pour out her feelings to, Bibo began to write.

As weeks in hospital turned to months – including an emergency intensive care wedding when Brian’s health seemed unlikely to improve – she frantically wrote 80,000 words of notes and letters.

A tsunami of feelings, her questions, hopes and deepest fears were put down on page after page while Brian lay nearby, either deep in an induced coma or, later, woozy with pain and drifting in and out of sleep.

It was, she says, the only way she could cope.

“When there is bad news, you speak to your partner or husband or the person you are closest to. But when the person you are closest to is very ill, you can’t speak to them.

“I started to write letters; to have an outlet for my emotions and so I could ‘speak’ to Brian.

“In hospital I had to be strong and positive and do everything I could to support him,” she continues. “This was a way to describe the total emotional turmoil that I was in.”

Now those deeply personal reflections and a series of photographs which document Brian’s gradual recovery after heart transplant surgery are to form an evocative artwork that tells of the intense journey faced by patient and loved one as they navigated the tricky path through critical illness, organ transplant and recovery.

It will offer a rare and poignant insight into what patients’ loved ones face as they fight their own desperate battle to remain positive and strong when the odds seem stacked against them.

And as Scots prepare for new presumed consent rules on organ donation next month – which it’s hoped will lead to an increase in transplant surgery – the couple’s experience highlights the rollercoaster of emotions and uncertainties that it brings.

Neither could have dreamed their holiday to Islay in 2013 would lead them to a world of transplant surgery and intensive care.

“We were in a campervan and moving around the island,” recalls Brian. “I remember saying to Bibo ‘I need to get help, I don’t know what’s wrong.”

Within hours, air ambulance had delivered him to intensive care at the Golden Jubilee Hospital in Clydebank. Meanwhile, Bibo was frantically driving to Glasgow, unaware of the seriousness of her husband’s condition.

By the time she arrived, he had undergone an angioplasty to unblock an artery, gone into cardiac arrest and ‘died’ before being revived by a device called AutoPulse, which gives aggressive CPR.

So began 110 days in intensive care which would include a worrying spell when palliative care was introduced and subtle talks began over how he might continue being aided by life support machines.

With concerns mounting, the couple married in an emergency wedding held in the Intensive Care ward, with Brian saying ‘I do’ through a speaking valve attached to his tracheostomy.

“When you are in an intensive care ward, things can change from hour to hour,” says Bibo. “You can leave and think he looks quite good, and come back an hour later and they’re talking about an emergency operation.

“I got into this mindset of living in the moment.

“I wrote to him about how I felt, I noted down things that were happening during the day or if I didn’t understand. It was like having a conversation with someone.”

Remarkably, Brian’s condition began to improve to the point that he was placed on the heart transplant list.

But even that brought new uncertainty.

“Because you’re on the list doesn’t mean you will get a donor heart,” says Bibo. “It doesn’t mean you will survive the operation, or the first 24 hours, or the first year.

“The story doesn’t end with the operation, the body still needs to be monitored twice a year, you’re still immune suppressed.

“You’re still living with the changes that it brings to life.

“There is never an ending point. You can break your finger, it’s fixed and then it’s forgotten. That never happens with a transplant.”

Just before the transplant, Brian had asked Bibo to keep a record of its aftermath. The first of around 500 photographs were taken within moments of him arriving back in intensive care post-operation.

The photograph has since featured in talks which Brian, a former art teacher, gives to medical students to help them better understand the impact surgery has on patients as well as their loved ones.

Their new art project will merge their experiences in photographs, video and words to create a vivid account from both sides of the intensive care bed.

As well as Bibo’s texts, there are plans for Brian to contribute his own memories of surviving more than 100 days without a pulse, and the subsequent experience of receiving a heart transplant. The couple will work on the project with award-winning theatre director Susan Worsfold.

To help with its development, Bibo is among four artists to receive an award from the Tom McGarth Trust, set up to honour the life and legacy of the poet and playwright who died in 2009.

Since 2011, the Trust has supported 80 writers to create work to celebrate his contribution to Scotland’s cultural life. These latest awards, possible partly because of a donation from learning design specialists Original Editions, will be the final ones prior to the Trust’s closure.

Alongside Bibo, awards have also been given to Fife writer Ross Mackay, who plans a large-scale participatory writing project, Edinburgh-based Angus Reid in support of his project “The History of Art in 100 Limericks” and to Katherine Mendelsohn for the translation of a Molière play that has never been staged in the UK.

Bibo and Brian are conscious their project will be an emotional return to a difficult time for both.

But, as a new system of organ donation comes into force, they hope it can spotlight real experiences of organ transplant patients and their families.

“It is very important that people talk about transplant, not just in talking about their wishes so families are informed, but in a realistic way that’s not about horror or strange superstitions,” says Bibo.

“That’s why I think our story is important.”