"I wouldn't let this upset you too much," she said, a lovely lilt in her voice. "What just happened may or may not mean anything. When patients first come out of a coma, they can sometimes talk just fine, and yet not make any sense. They ramble on about things they dreamed of like they were real." Then she smiled. "But it's a good first step. She could wake up perfectly fine tomorrow. Just don't pay any attention to what she says for a while. She's dreaming now."

Lou grunted as though he believed her. I nodded in sym­pathy, though no one seemed to notice.

I also thought that although what Sarah had said was bi­zarre, it sounded like something more than a dream. Or had she gone back to her child-state where imaginary worlds were real for her?

Then in the dim glare of her bed light, Lou took a wrinkled blue booklet out of his inner pocket and stared at it. I had to stare at it a moment before I realized it was a passport.

"What—?"

"The American consulate in Merida, Mexico, sent it up to 26 Federal Plaza yesterday, because my name and office address are penciled on the inside cover as an emergency contact. The police down there said somebody, some gringo tourist fly-fishing way down on the Usumacinta River, near where the Rio Tigre comes in from Guatemala, snagged this floating in a plastic bag. He turned it in to the Mexican authorities there, and it ended up with our people." He opened the passport and stared at it. "The photo and ID page is ripped out, but it's definitely Sarah's." He handed it over. "Guy I know downtown dropped it off last night. I'm not sure if it has anything to tell us, but now, I was hoping it might help jog her memory."

I took it, the cover so waterlogged its color was almost gone. However, it must have been kept dry in the plastic bag for at least some of its trip from wherever, since much of the damage seemed recent.

Lou shook his head staring wistfully at me. "I still don't know how she got down there. She was in California. Re­member that postcard? If she'd come back East, she'd have got in touch. Wouldn't she?" His eyes pleaded for my agree­ment.

I didn't know what to say, so I just shrugged. I wanted to be sympathetic, but I refused to lie outright. He took my ambivalence as assent as he pulled out the locket containing her picture, his talisman. He fingered it for a moment, staring into space, and then he looked down and opened it, as if seeing her high school picture, from a time when she was well, would somehow ease his mind.

"This whole thing doesn't sound like her," he went on. "Know what I think? She was being held down there against her will."