Free 08 Illusion by Frank Peretti Page A

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
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    9
     
    I n 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 real and 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