SECURITY guard Steven Short was a seemingly healthy 23-year-old with everything to live for.

But a mystery illness led to multiple organ failure and his death on July 9 before he could marry the fiancee he had met on the Internet.

Now, his stunned family are still waiting to find out what caused his death.

Mr Short fell ill at his parents' home in Tredegar Street, Cross Keys, with a suspected stomach complaint.

But when he began vomiting blood, he was taken to Newport's Royal Gwent Hospital.

His mother Sue, 46, said: "He was in intensive care for 13 days. His liver was damaged and the blood vessels had burst in his stomach. Four times, they thought he wouldn't survive but he kept fighting."

Mrs Short said her son had an operation to staple his veins, remove part of his oesophagus and fit a balloon to keep his intestines in place. But then his liver and kidneys failed and he was put on dialysis.

And as doctors considered a liver transplant, his lungs collapsed.

Mrs Short said: "For two days, he had a temperature, then on the last day, he gave up. They are doing biopsies to try to find out what caused it. They think that he may have had a condition at birth which had gone undetected.

"It just came out of the blue. He hardly drank - to have caused this, we were told he would have had to have drunk a bottle of whisky a day since he was seven."

His fiancee, Marie Barrett, 30, rushed from her home in St Helen's, Merseyside, so she could be with him before he was sedated for the last time.

He died on July 9 and will be cremated at Gwent Crematorium on Tuesday after a funeral service at St Catherine's Church, Cross Keys.

Ms Barrett will put in his coffin a red silk rose she bought for his birthday on July 22, along with pictures of her children Kirsty, six, and 11-year-old Daniel, who had "adopted" Mr Short since he met Ms Barrett in an Internet chat room two and a half years ago.

After three months of e-mails, they had finally met in person and spent every weekend together, until Mr Short decided to split his time between his parents' home and his fiancee's.

Mrs Short said Ms Barrett was devastated, as are Mr Short's sister, Nicky, 20, and his father Jeff, 50.

Mr Short was applying to work for Merseyside Police so he could live with his fiancee. His mother remembered him as a "perfect son, who never put a foot wrong".

"He was full of life,'' she said. "He was so considerate and Marie and her children were his life. Cross Keys is not a big place and everybody is stunned. I always thought he was special, but now I realise everyone else thought he was, too."