The next morning, we opened the box together. Inside were a notarized trust, a savings account book, and a small USB drive. Naomi’s late grandmother had left her eighty-six thousand dollars, and Naomi had never touched it. Her estranged father would have claimed it as her next of kin, so she had quietly married the one person she trusted, making me the legal beneficiary. She wanted every dollar to pay for my medical school.

The video on the drive made me cry in the bank’s quiet little room. Naomi sat in her hospital bed in the white scarf, laughing weakly. She said she had watched me sleep in the visitor’s chair with my textbooks, and she knew my parents could not help me. “I did not marry you out of pity,” she said. “I married a very serious man who finally learned to smile, and that was the best gift I ever got.”

Three weeks later, her father arrived with a lawyer and demanded the account. Kayla testified about the marriage, and the nurses who had witnessed the wedding signed statements. The judge reviewed the notarized trust, the certificate, and Naomi’s handwritten letter, and dismissed the claim in under an hour. Her father left the courtroom without looking at either of us, and Kayla squeezed my hand.

I finished medical school debt-free and became a pediatric oncologist. With part of the money, Kayla and I started a small scholarship in Naomi’s name for students who work their way through school. I keep the two bandage rings in my coat pocket. When a frightened child comes in, I sit beside the bed and tell them a joke, and I always smile first.