An elderly woman asked me to marry her as her dying wish.

After she passed away, her lawyer placed the old hospital bag she had guarded for years into my hands and said, “She picked you for a reason.”

PART 1

Two years ago, I was thirty-four and working as an orderly at a small nursing home when I first met Hazel.

She was eighty-two, sharp-tongued, stubborn, and somehow had a way of making every room feel warmer. Most of the residents had children, grandchildren, relatives who came to visit.

Hazel had no one.

Little by little, I became the person she waited for each day. I brought her tea, sat with her after my shifts, and listened while she told stories about her past.

Somewhere along the way she stopped feeling like a resident under my care and started feeling like family.

But there was one thing about her I never understood.

Wherever Hazel went, she carried the same faded hospital bag. She never let anyone touch it. If a nurse tried to move it, Hazel would reach out and take it back, gently but immediately.

Then one afternoon, during one of her hospital stays, she asked me to sit beside her bed. She took my hand, looked straight into my eyes, and whispered, “I have one last wish.”

A sad smile touched her face.

“I know how this will sound, but I don’t have much time. I’ve spent so many years alone, and I don’t want to leave this world without ever having someone I could call my husband.

Will you marry me, Julian?”