NATCHEZ — When Jason Meng saw the pretty blonde leaning over the hood of a car next door to his brother’s house, he couldn’t help himself. He had to get a little mouthy.

“I told her a woman had no business under the hood,” he said. “She turned around and smiled at me, and it was on from then on.”

Turns out, that blonde — her name was Heather Floyd — not only knew cars, but by Jason’s own admission, proved him wrong and even taught him something.

And despite Jason’s smart aleck introduction, they hit it off. Two days later, they were out on a date, and a year-and-a-half later, they were married.

Heather was a tomboy who didn’t mind letting you know what she thought, her cousin Jennifer Cockerham said.

The two grew up more like sisters than cousins, Cockerham said, and Heather loved to spend her time fishing, riding four-wheelers and watching her uncle work on engines or traveling cross-country with her father in his 18-wheeler. On the road, Heather used the CB radio handle “Lil’ Britches.”

“Heather’s father gave her that nickname when she was 3, but she stuck with it as she got older,” her mother, Renee Floyd, said. “She was a free spirit who loved everyone and who would help anyone who needed it.”

For all her country-girl ways, Heather was also the type who wouldn’t even check the mail without making sure her makeup was right.

“Heather was a spitfire,” Cockerham said. “Once she had her mind set on something, that was it.”

The longer she was with Jason, the more Heather wanted a baby. It didn’t work out, at least at first.

“We had been told by doctors it was impossible,” Jason said. “They said to get the idea out of our heads. We prayed every Sunday in church for it.”

May 15, Jason was at work at Upton’s Nursery when Heather showed up, hiding something behind her back and grinning like an opossum. When Jason asked her what it was, she handed him a positive pregnancy test.

“I didn’t know if I should throw up my hands and shout,” he said. “She was ecstatic to be having a baby.”

It was a happy pregnancy, full of the usual fears and joys, and the year moved quickly. Heather bought baby toys, a bassinette and clothes, filling the baby’s room with pink in anticipation of the new sister who would join her other daughters from a previous marriage, Mary Frances and McKayla.

At Thanksgiving, Jason and Heather hosted their family for the first time during the holidays, and afterward they sat together and dreamed of future holidays with their baby, imagining her in a little yellow Easter dress running across the yard.

“We were just walking down memory lane with memories we hadn’t made yet,” Jason said.

The baby was due Feb. 1, but Heather’s eyes were on the future well beyond that single date.

“She recently told me, ‘Jason is my soul mate, I can see us growing old together, sitting in rocking chairs on the porch together,’’’ Cockerham said.

But the happiness of Thanksgiving wouldn’t be replicated for Christmas.

On Friday, Dec. 13, Jason got a call from Heather, asking if he would bring some cough syrup on his way home from work. She wasn’t feeling well.

“She hated that stuff, so I knew it was bad, that something was wrong,” Jason said.

The next day, Heather spiked a high fever, high enough her muscles started cramping. Jason took her to the emergency room and told the doctor there she had flu-like symptoms in addition to the high fever. She was treated for the fever — it dropped — and released, given a prescription for Vicodin she didn’t take because she was pregnant.

Monday, the fever and cramping returned. She returned to the hospital and was treated — Cockerham took her that time — though the results were the same.

“The nurse came in and told her, ‘Baby, you’re screwed because we can’t give you anything else because you’re pregnant,’” Cockerham said. “That just made her cry.”

When she was released, Heather’s discharge papers read, “Discharged with muscle cramps and pregnancy.”

Wednesday, Jason came home to find Heather lying in a heap on a pallet in the middle of the living room floor. She couldn’t even make it to the couch. Jason decided to take her to a Jackson hospital.