I don’t know how.
I just knew.
Then the receptionist said something that made the situation even more urgent.
“The patient suffered a seizure yesterday. She’s stable now, but she isn’t really supposed to have visitors.”
“I’m her daughter.”
She hesitated.
“She already has two people with her.”
The couple.
My mind filled with every nightmare I had been trying not to imagine.
They had my mother’s ring.
They knew where she was.
And now they were sitting beside her hospital bed.
“You don’t understand,” I said. “Those people may have done something to her.”
The receptionist looked toward security.
I lowered my voice.
“Please. Let me see her. If I’m wrong, I’ll leave immediately. But if that woman is my mother…”
I couldn’t finish.
After a moment, she picked up the phone.
She spoke quietly to someone upstairs.
Then she printed a visitor badge.
“Third floor. Room 318. A nurse will meet you.”
I grabbed it.
“And miss?”
I turned.
“Prepare yourself. She may not recognize you.”
The elevator took forever.
A nurse met me on the third floor and led me down a quiet corridor.
Then we stopped outside room 318.
Through the narrow window, I saw them.
The couple from Bellamy’s.
The woman was still wearing the same green dress, although now it was wrinkled.
Her husband’s silver hair was messy.
They no longer looked polished or wealthy.
They looked exhausted.
I pushed the door open.
The woman turned around.
Her eyes immediately dropped to the plastic bag in my hand.
“That ring,” she whispered.
I stepped closer.
“Where did you get it?”
Her husband raised both hands.
“Please. The patient needs quiet.”
“You had my mother’s ring.”
The woman stared at me.
“Your mother?”
I looked toward the bed.
And the rest of the room disappeared.
There she was.
My mother.
Evelyn.
She looked smaller than I remembered.
Pale.
Thin.
An IV taped to the back of her hand.
For four months, I had pictured finding her a thousand different ways.
But I had never imagined this.
“Mom?”
Her eyelids moved.
She didn’t wake.
My knees almost gave out.
I grabbed the bedrail.
Then I turned toward the couple.
“Who are you?”
Neither answered immediately.
“What did you do to her?”
The woman’s eyes filled with tears.
“Nothing.”
Her voice shook.
“We found her.”
Her name was Margaret.
Her husband was Thomas.
Several weeks earlier, they had been driving outside town when they saw a woman walking beside the road.
It was my mother.
She was barefoot.
Disoriented.
She couldn’t say where she lived.
She couldn’t tell them her name.
She had no purse.
No phone.
No identification.