Margaret explained that several weeks earlier, she and Thomas had been driving along a country road when they spotted a barefoot woman wandering dangerously close to passing traffic. They stopped immediately. The woman appeared frightened and confused, unable to remember her name or explain how she had gotten there. They called an ambulance, but when the paramedics arrived, she clung to Margaret’s hand and panicked whenever Margaret moved away. Margaret eventually rode with her to the hospital, unwilling to leave her alone. Afterward, the couple returned almost every day because their unfamiliar friend seemed calmer whenever she recognized their faces.

Doctors suspected my mother had experienced an injury or medical emergency that damaged her memory. Without identification, she had been registered as an unidentified patient. My missing-person report had been filed in another town, and the hospital’s records had never connected the two cases. The systems that should have helped us had somehow failed to bring us together. When I asked about the ring, Thomas explained that hospital staff had removed it because it kept slipping off my mother’s thin finger. She became distressed whenever it was taken away, so Margaret offered to keep it safe. They had protected it for weeks, hoping someone would eventually come looking for the woman they had refused to abandon.