ONE INDIANA SUMMER

Mom and Dad, again, thanks for the money. I love you both! We love you, too, honey.Bye, for now. Bye.Heather ended the call and sighed. She wished she could celebrate her twenty-seventh birthday with them. Instead, she was spending it with her boyfriend. She had high hopes for a marriage proposal and an engagement ring. The evening promised to be the happiest of her life.Her suitor was Doctor Tom Vance, age twenty-nine, one year out of his family practice residency. The young doctor was any woman’s dream: tall with dark eyes and hair, a square jaw, and an athletic build. He was a hunk in every sense of the word, and a very busy doctor in a small northeast Indiana town.The town’s other two general practitioners were long in years. They looked forward to retirement. Together with the town’s civic leaders, they recruited Dr. Vance. He would carry the medical torch into the future, especially if he married a local girl, particularly registered nurse Heather McDonald.It pleased everyone in the community that Dr. Vance was dating Heather. They viewed her as a great catch. She was charming, caring,intelligent, and very attractive. It had astonished Dr. Vance that she was available when he arrived thirteen months ago. Heather hadn’t dated in over a year when he arrived, grieving from a broken relationship. That romance started from the goodness of her heart. She took a stranger into her home, a man suffering from amnesia, and she fell in love with him.Her love for the man grew over the days, and the relationship suddenly ended when he disappeared. It devastated her. He was her first love. If only she could remember that day, maybe her pain wouldn’t be so bad. The day itself was bizarre. At the hospital, there was a gun battle between an FBI SWAT team and two foreign terrorists. They had come to the town to kidnap a hospitalized boy. But why a boy in critical condition from a nondescript small town in middle America?After the dust had settled, the FBI explained the situation. They said the terrorists wanted to make a point that no one in America was safe nor any place unreachable to them. The boy was to be a bargaining chip for the release of one of their own in federal custody.Unfortunately, the boy died. The terrorists had commandeered an ambulance for their escape. During the getaway, it went off a rain-slick road and into a lake. The ambulance driver escaped uninjured. But the two terrorists, the boy, and an out-of-towner, also taken hostage, did not. The FBI claimed they recovered the bodies and moved them to one of their facilities. Citing security measures, they refused to give the location.