“You honestly believe that Tanya’s parents were called to the jungle, left their church with great hopes and prayers, struck off for Venezuela, lived among the Indians for ten years, and then were murdered for the effect it would have on their daughter? Who, incidentally, is not looking like a great prophet or any such thing these days.”

“Yes, Bill. I do think that was one of the primary purposes in all of this. Yes, that is how God works. A missionary is called to Indonesia perhaps as much for a young boy they talk to in the airport in New York on their way out of the country, than for all the people they preach to in the next twenty years in the foreign land. Perhaps that boy is a Billy Graham or a Bill Bright. God is quite brilliant, don’t you think?”

Her pastor was silent on the phone.

“But Tanya’s time is coming, Bill. You will see. It’s coming soon.”

TANYA VANDERVAN sat flatfooted in the wooden chair, aware that her palms were sweating despite the cool air spilling from the vents mounted above. She shifted her gaze to the room’s single window overlooking Denver’s skyline from ten stories up, thinking that even here, within the whitewashed walls of Denver Memorial, she hadn’t managed to escape the jungle. Eight years earlier she had fled a heavy jumble of green, only to be led into a tangled web of confusion in her own mind. And now she had found another jungle— these concrete structures outside her window, built up around her like a prison.

Thank God for Helen.

She moved her eyes back to the older men sitting like a panel of judges behind the long table. The medical review board of Denver Memorial Hospital consisted of these three dressed in white smocks. They knew her as Sherry. Sherry Blake. Dr. Sherry Blake, six months and counting in the hospital’s intern program.

And by their frowns, six months too long, and counting far too slow. Most in the medical profession had emerged out of the stuffiness that had characterized hospitals in the seventies—these men had somehow missed the boat.

Sherry crossed her legs and nervously ran a hand behind her neck. Her hair fell in soft curls to her shoulders now—no longer blond, but brown. It swept across her forehead, above eyes no longer blue but darkened to a hazel color. The idea had been her own, five or six years ago, based on the notion that if she changed her name and her appearance, maybe then, with a new identity, she could escape her mental turmoil. Maybe then she could escape haunting memories of Shannon. The psychobabble quacks had tried to discourage her, but she’d lost confidence in them long before.

The idea had grown on her, until she’d become obsessed with altering her identity. She legally changed her name, dyed her hair, and wore hazel contact lenses. The change was so dramatic that even Helen had hardly recognized her. Comparing her high-school graduation picture to her new image in the mirror, even Tanya—Sherry—could barely see the similarities.