Patient's Last Wish Granted: a Cigarette and a Glass of Wine

A 75-year-old man received bad news after being admitted to Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark last week, but his nurse did what she could to make his final hours good ones. Carsten Flemming Hansen was suffering from a ruptured aortic aneurysm, and doctors told him he was too sick to have surgery—meaning the internal bleeding would kill him within days, perhaps even hours. Hansen told nurse Rikke Kvist that he wished he could have one last cigarette and glass of wine. The hospital has a no-smoking policy, but Kvist got around it.

Realizing that there was a balcony on Hansen's floor, Kvist got the hospital to grant an exception to the no-smoking rule, and Hansen was able to enjoy his cigarette and a glass of white wine from the balcony. The hospital posted an image of the moment, which took place as the sun was setting, on its Facebook page. "It was a very cozy and relaxed atmosphere," Kvist told a local news outlet, per the Telegraph. "Of course they were relatives also affected by the fact that he was going to die, and they were sad. But it was cozy and there was humor." Hansen died on Friday, Yahoo News reports. (A terminally ill teen got to attend a special prom.)