A year ago, her engagement ring disappeared in a hospital. She still cherishes the man who gave it to her

CNN
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Faye Bauman was wearing her diamond ring when she fell and broke her hip. It was June last year and she was 85 years old. At North Florida Hospital in Gainesville, she removed several pieces of jewelry, including the ring, and gave them to a nurse.

After the operation, while recovering in a rehabilitation center, she realized she had left the hospital without her jewelry, including the love of her life’s diamond engagement ring.

She still remembered his look when he gave her this ring. Eager and innocent. They had met at a party and, at the end, they were holding hands under the table. He saved up to buy her the ring. A half-carat diamond in white gold. One day he showed up at his office and got down on one knee. He looked stunning in his Navy uniform. She said yes, slipping the ring onto her finger, sliding it so the diamond caught the light.

Fifty-six years later, in a new yellow gold ring, this diamond disappeared from the hospital. Faye Bauman wanted to know why.

For nearly 12 months, she and her daughter tried to find answers. They spoke with at least four hospital officials. Bauman filed a police report, which classified the missing jewelry as grand theft. But they had no satisfaction. The jewelry seemed to have disappeared forever. By May 2024, they say, no one had offered to redress the situation.

Eventually, Bauman spoke to reporters about his plight. In a lengthy message sent from her iPad, in which she apologized for any errors that might have been caused by her macular degeneration, she wrote: “At the moment the CEO is not answering my calls. I did everything they told me to do, but at this point it seems like I don’t exist.

A CNN reporter made inquiries with the hospital and police and waited several days for responses. In the meantime, in several telephone interviews, Bauman told his story.

She said she didn’t expect to see her diamond ring again. But she realized this was an opportunity to talk about something more important: the man who gave her the ring.

“I want to tell you that I was not a princess when I met him,” she said. “Tom made me a princess.”

Before he and Faye were married, Tom took care of his sick mother. This experience reinforced his habit of serving others. Day after day, for much of their marriage, he brought Faye breakfast in bed. He would pick a flower from the garden and place it in a small Waterford vase which he placed on his breakfast tray. He asked her how she wanted her banana sliced. He brought her English tea, toast, jam and a stewed egg. Faye was divorced and had three young daughters when she met Tom, and Tom treated the girls as if they were his own.

Tom and Faye were married for 48 years. She was a mental health counselor and he worked in the Navy Supply Corps. After the Navy, he obtained his contractor’s license. “He renovated every house we lived in,” she said. He did plumbing and electrical work, added a family room, installed French doors and did additional work so he could purchase and install a new hot tub for the woman he loved.

They continued their long romance from Florida to Rhode Island, from London to Istanbul and back to Florida. She admired its beauty and loved its smell. They danced on the beach with their eyes closed.

Tom took care of Faye until he couldn’t take it anymore. In his fifties, something went wrong in his mind. First it was dementia, then Parkinson’s disease. He painted a room the wrong color. He came out in his underwear. In the grocery store, he picked up a piece of gum from the floor and put it in his mouth.

Tom’s body began to fail him, starting with his feet. It was now Faye’s turn to take care of Tom. She pulled him out of the hot tub when he couldn’t get out on his own. She placed him on a mat in the yard, where he could lie down and pull weeds. She got up early to clean the gutters so he couldn’t tell her it was her job.

It continued like this for more than 20 years. He was her husband, but the man she married was just a memory. He asked to move to a nursing home and she let him go. Sometimes she would wake up in the middle of the night, drive to the nursing home, and lie down with him.

“I don’t want to die,” he told her.

As Faye Bauman remembered her husband, the gears were turning in the case of the missing ring. The situation appeared to change a few days after a CNN reporter inquired about the jewelry. A Gainesville police spokesperson said the case has been assigned to a detective.

And a spokesperson for HCA Healthcare’s North Florida division released this statement:

“Compassionate care is the highest goal of the staff at HCA Florida North Florida Hospital. We have reviewed the matter with our contracted security contractor, who is responsible for securing the patient’s personal belongings, and have assisted the Gainesville Police Department in their investigation, which is ongoing. We regret the loss of this personal item and we are committed to reimbursing this person to make things right.

This was an improvement, if not a complete resolution. Faye Bauman still wants to know how the ring disappeared, and she still wants more answers about what hospital officials did in the year that followed.

As for the man who put the ring on her finger, she is sure of his final destination.

Towards the end, he was on morphine, he had stopped talking, they were together and he was moving away.

“Oh,” she said, remembering that moment, “he was so beautiful.”

She held his hand, kissed him and prayed the Our Father. It was as if angels filled the room. She praised God as she heard Tom take his last breath.

Nothing is forever, at least not here on earth. She wore this diamond ring for another seven years. And then, like Tom, it’s gone.

“You know,” Faye said, “we’ve had a wonderful life.”

Her voice cracked as she thought of him. Imagining old Tom, the one who knelt before her that day in 1967. She hoped to see him again. Restored and renewed. His arms open. Welcome her home.