It was an unlikely friendship. Until his death in June 2020, Nirmaldas ran a tiny sundry shop near the Sewa Sadan Eye Hospital in Bhopal, India, surrounded by chip bags and candy jars. Abigail Hayo met Nirmaldas in 2014 and their relationship soon followed a pattern. On her annual trips to Bhopal, she would walk down the narrow, bustling street, past zigzagging mopeds and the occasional cow, to buy mango candies from Nirmaldas.

Then, in 2018, their relationship began to change. Unbeknownst to Abigail, Nirmaldas’s family was struggling. His oldest son had died, devastating his parents and hurting the family financially. Nirmaldas’s wife, Aturi, was suffering from a painful hernia. She needed surgery, but she also had an obstructed bowel. They couldn’t afford both procedures—Nirmaldas’s shop earned about $50 a month—so the family chose the bowel surgery. But the hernia left her bedridden, immobilized by the pain.

Because of their proximity to the hospital (the family lives above Nirmaldas’s shop), they knew that U.S. medical volunteers would be performing surgeries there in February 2018. Aturi was approved for surgery, and when Abby, the mission coordinator, learned of the candy connection, she took an immediate interest in the case.

Until then, Abby and Nirmaldas had never spoken. They had shared only smiles and nods at his counter. But the day of Aturi’s surgery, she visited his home, where Nirmaldas and Aturi live with 10 family members. The couple’s daughter-in-law served coffee and home-cooked potato chips and other still-warm snacks. Afternoon sunlight softly lit the room as two of her small, beautiful children peered from blankets, awakening from naps. “We hope our home will be a happier place,” she told Abby through a translator. It was painful, she said, to see Aturi struggle. The family prayed for her health.

Before the surgery, Abby visited Aturi in the hospital. The two women had never met, but they hugged like old friends. In the operating room, urologist Brandon Pomeroy discovered that Aturi had not one hernia, but two. The next morning, she smiled in the recovery room when Abby arrived. Aturi was sore, tired, and hungry, but optimistic. As for Nirmaldas, his bond with Abby was now deeper than mango candies. When she passed his shop the next morning, they smiled, nodded, and fleetingly clutched hands. And on her visits in 2019 and 2020, they spent more time together.

“I’d go hang with him at the shop a couple times a day,” Abby says. “I went back for lunches. They loved hosting and always told me to bring whoever could come.”

They only saw each other once a year and they didn’t speak the same language. But they were friends. And she will miss him deeply.

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