I got married with my patient knowing she had only 3 days left to live — after her funeral, her sister walked up to me with a box and told me, “She asked me to give you this only after she was gone.”
My name is Lucas. I’m 30 years old, and becoming a doctor was all I ever wanted.
My mother and father couldn’t help much with tuition, so through medical school I studied all week and worked weekends to pay my bills.
After that I met Alicia.
She was eighteen, beautiful, and somehow the funniest person on the floor.
Even after treatments left her exhausted, she joked with nurses, teased me about my serious face, and always had another ridiculous story ready when I entered her room.
“Doctor Lucas, you know smiling is free, right?”
I’d roll my eyes.
She’d laugh.
Then we learned the medication was no longer working.
There was nothing more the doctors could do, and Alicia had very little time left.
Later, she looked at me and said,
“I have one last wish.”
“What is it?”
“I want to marry you.”
I thought she was joking.
She smiled weakly.
“Come on. I don’t want to show up in heaven as an unmarried woman.”
The next day, we had the smallest wedding imaginable right there in the hospital.
I wore a tie instead of my stethoscope.
A nurse braided thin strips of clean bandage into two simple rings.
Alicia wore a soft white scarf over her bald head like a veil.
Her sister brought flowers.
Alicia smiled through the whole ceremony.
Two days later, she was gone.
After the funeral, I stood beside my car, still unable to believe any of it had happened.
Then Alicia’s sister hurried toward me carrying a small box.
“She asked me to give you this only after she was gone.”
I took it.
My name was written across the lid in Alicia’s handwriting.
When I opened the box, the first thing I saw made me forget how to breathe.
