Part 2:

My breath caught.

“I know I don’t have much time left,” he continued. “But there is one thing I always dreamed of doing.”

He looked directly into my eyes.

“Will you marry me?”

For several seconds, the room disappeared.

Fifty-six years of questions, regrets, and imagined possibilities seemed to gather between us.

Part of me heard Raymond’s voice warning me that I was being foolish.

But another voice—the voice of the seventeen-year-old girl I had once been—told me not to walk away again.

Thomas had advanced cancer.

He knew he was dying.

This was his final wish.

“Yes,” I whispered.

Tears filled his eyes.

Mine did too.

“Yes, Thomas. I’ll marry you.”

He squeezed my hand.

“You won’t regret it, Nancy. I promise you that.”

There was something unusual in the way he said those words.

It sounded less like reassurance and more like a carefully planned vow.

At the time, I believed he was only talking about our marriage.

I did not yet understand that he meant something far greater.

The wedding took place three days later inside his hospital room.

One of the nurses stood beside us as a witness.

A quiet man wearing a gray suit introduced himself as Walter, Thomas’s attorney.

I thought it was unusual for a lawyer to attend such a small ceremony.

But Thomas held my hand, and I pushed the thought aside.

His eyes shone when he said his vows.

Mine did too.

After the ceremony, Walter opened a leather briefcase and placed a folder on the rolling table beside Thomas’s bed.

“There are a few documents that need your signature,” he explained. “Take as much time as you need.”

I did not take much time.

I trusted Thomas completely.

Whenever Walter pointed to a line, I signed my name.

That evening, I told Raymond what had happened.

His reaction was immediate.

“Have you completely lost your mind?” he shouted through the phone. “You married a dying man you barely know?”

“I have known Thomas longer than I have known you.”

“You’re being manipulated,” Raymond snapped. “Some stranger sees an elderly nurse with a pension and convinces her to marry him. You need to get the marriage annulled immediately.”

“No.”

“Nancy, you don’t understand what you’ve done.”

“I understand perfectly.”

I ended the call.

One month later, Thomas passed away.

He died peacefully in the early morning with my hand wrapped around his.

The grief was far greater than I had expected.