A homeless man held up a sign that read, “Marry me. I have only one month left to live

I teased him.

“You’re acting like this is a real wedding.”

He went quiet for a second. Just a second. Then he smiled at me, and there was something underneath the smile I didn’t read at the time.

“First marriage,” he said. “Let me have my nerves.”

I laughed again.

Eleven minutes after we walked in, I was Larry’s wife.

Outside, on the courthouse steps, I bought us celebratory hot dogs from a cart because it felt like we should do something. Larry ate his slowly. He folded up his copy of the marriage certificate and tucked it into his shirt pocket, and he pressed his hand flat over it for a second, like he was making sure it was still there.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Never better,” he said.

And I believed him, because believing him was easier than asking what else might be true.

The three weeks we had after that went fast and slow at the same time, the way the last part of anything always does.

Larry moved into the state hospice facility. I’d arranged it, of course. I’d made the calls and filled out the forms and argued with an intake coordinator until she found him a bed. It was clean and quiet and smelled like disinfectant and something floral underneath, and Larry had a bed by a window that looked out at a parking lot.

“Room with a view,” he said the first day.

I visited every evening after work.

And every single visit started the same way.

I’d walk in carrying something. Better socks, because his old ones had holes. A phone charger, so he could reach me. A new blanket, because I decided the hospital one was too thin. A whole bag of toiletries once, enough for six months, which was a strange thing to buy a man who had three weeks.

I’d come through the door already talking, already unpacking, already looking for a nurse to flag down about something.

And Larry would say, from the bed: “Sit down, Sarah.”

And I’d say, “In a minute.”

There was always another minute of something to do. Another form at the front desk. Another nurse to ask about his pain medication. Another problem I could put my hands on. I’d fluff his pillow and organize his side table and refill his water cup and check the schedule and do everything except the one thing he actually asked me to do.