Well. Maybe this was good news. Maybe it meant she was real and the room, Tina at the counter, the hospital—and Dr. Lorenzo and Dr. Angela and Bernadette and the tables and chairs and pills and yucky sandwiches and scrubs—might not be.

She could live with that.

But she’d better be careful.

She reached for her slippers—they looked like they were submerged under weak, wavy tea, so she reached just an inch at a time until she actually touched them. They were soft and spongy, but didn’t dissolve her hand or zap her with a lightning bolt. She took hold of one and it blinked on, crisp and clear, as real as she was. The other slipper did the same. She slipped them onto her feet and, looking casual, rose from the bed. The doorframe gave under the pressure of her hand, warping like an image in a fun house mirror. She withdrew her hand, and it wobbled back into shape again. Nurse Tina kept working behind the counter and didn’t look up. Mandy waved at her, smiling.

Tina didn’t seem to notice.

Nurse Baines jostled behind the counter, digging out some charts and looking like she hated it. The nurses’ station was shimmering like a mirage, and so was Nurse Baines.

Well, Nurse Baines was no game player, no sir. If there was one way to find out for sure … She had to hurry, before she woke up and the dream was over.

She didn’t rush but she did stride briskly up to the counter. “Nurse Baines?”

Nurse Baines looked at Tina and asked, “What happened to Forsythe?”

“Who?” Tina asked.

That was a perfect response to make Nurse Baines angry. “For. Sythe. The chart I asked for?”

“I asked Carol to make a copy.”

Mandy jumped in place. She waved a little wave.

Well, Nurse Baines could have been ignoring her.

“Nurse Baines!” Mandy called.

“Well, you see this?” Nurse Baines slapped a red filing folder on the counter. “When you get that copy, it goes in here and the folder goes back on the shelf—under F. We clear?”

“Yes, ma’am!”

The electronic lock whirred and the big double doors swung open. Clive, from billing, came in with some paperwork, tossed it on the counter, then turned and went out the doors while they lingered in a programmed pause—and Mandy stood and stared down that long, open hallway illuminated with sunlight through a row of big windows. Through those windows she could see the tops of trees lining the parking lot and some of the city beyond that, the whole, big, outside world. The doors began to swing shut. Three-quarters open. Half open.

Mandy stood there. Oh, that beautiful hall! That beautiful outside world!

The ranch. Home. Daddy.

She looked at Nurse Baines. At Tina. Were they really ignoring her? She could see Tina’s coat on a hook in an alcove near the doors.

The doors were still closing, closing …

She made a timid movement toward the alcove …

Oh, God help me!She grabbed for the coat. It was wavy like everything else, dim and fuzzy as if Mandy were seeing it through a tea-stained window. She grabbed hold. The coat felt like warm plasticine in her fingers. She pulled it toward her—

The coat broke through the tea-stained window and shimmering heat waves and became clear, crisp, and real in her hands.

Almost closed.

“I’ll bring it back, I promise!” she called, dashing through the narrow opening a millisecond before the doors would have clamped on her foot.

chapter

9

In Hayden, Idaho, Dane signed his name to a good-size check and slid it across the desk to the Realtor along with all the duly signed papers. A handshake, warm wishes, and a welcome, and he was out the door with the papers and the keys in his hand.

He got in his car and made a left turn onto Howard, a four-lane that would take him back to I-95, the corridor that connected Coeur d’Alene and Hayden with the northern reaches of the Idaho panhandle and the Canadian border. His new ranch was maybe twenty minutes away, traffic allowing, which it probably would.

Only two blocks up the avenue, he happened to pass a minivan full of high school kids going the other way. He didn’t notice them, they didn’t notice him, and as he turned onto I-95, they pulled into the parking lot of the Realtor’s office.

“All right, here you go.” Doris, the most talkative of the five teenagers, slid the side door open and pitched her own seat forward so Mandy could climb out.

Mandy stepped down to the parking lot, careful not to lose her slippers. “Thanks, you guys!”

“See ya ’round!” “Good luck!” They all waved and drove off, some of the nicest people Mandy had had the pleasure to meet since the day she suddenly quit knowing anybody. She waved, she smiled, they disappeared around the corner …

And the smile fell from her face. It was just another lie anyway, another act on top of the one that got her here: “Hi, I’m a nursing student and my boyfriend and I just had a terrible fight so he drove off and left me to find my own ride home. Which way are you going—can you give me a lift? Hey, far out!”

It got her a ride clear out to Hayden, even though those kids were only going as far as Coeur d’Alene.

She felt soiled, so much that she couldn’t pray.

Maybe she should have kept trusting the miracle just as the apostle Peter did when an angel sneaked him out of prison right past the guards. It seemed she’d just played out her own version of that story, walking in a weird dream or vision right through those double doors, down a stairway to an outside exit, and safely to a quiet residential street several blocks from the hospital where she “came to herself” just as Peter did. Everything snapped back into realand there she was, standing on a solid sidewalk on a solid street with solid houses, still dressed in her blue scrubs, goofy slippers, and borrowed coat, with no clue what to do next. It was a miracle.

Finding the kids in that van at McDonald’s was a miracle, too, a van with an empty seat going clear to Coeur d’Alene, driven by a bunch of kids who bought her story and drove the extra miles just to take care of her. It had to be the hand of God—but she lied to make it happen.

She slouched, weak with shame.

So what if she’d trusted the miracle and told the truth? “Hi, I just escaped from the mental ward at the hospital and I wonder if you could give me a ride home? It’s out of town—way out of town.” Maybe they would have said yes anyway because they were angels God had sent. Maybe they would have had a complete change of clothes for her, too, just her size, including a decent pair of shoes, and maybe they would have taken her to North Lakeland Road and it would have looked just the way it was supposed to look and not … like this.

She looked up at the real estate office. This was the landmark that caught her eye, that made her tell her friends-for-the-moment they could let her off here. The two-story farmhouse had new siding, new windows, a new roof, perfect planting beds, and a paved parking lot where the front yard used to be, but she knew this house. Her best friend, Joanie Gittel, used to live here. They met when they started first grade and waited together at the bus stop right across the road. Howard Road.

Mandy looked across the four-lane street. There was a city bus stop where her school bus stop used to be, and a sign on the corner: Howard Way. The name of the cross street was North Lakeland Avenue. She could have guessed that from the name of the realty that had moved into Joanie’s house: Lakeland Realty.

Her mind came to a standstill. All she could do was look, and look again, but nothing clicked. There was no figuring it out, and right now God wasn’t helping her.

She went to the curb, looked both ways just as Mommy and Daddy always taught her, and hurried across with the first opening in the traffic. The bus stop was a small shelter with a concrete bench, a trash can, and a posted bus schedule. She sat on the bench and looked back across the street.