Free Betting on Hope by Debra Clopton Page B

was glad to have someone to take her mind off her hand. And the pain in her side that was Tru Monahan.
    He reappeared within five minutes followed by an older man with wild, thick white hair and busy eyebrows above penetrating pale blue eyes.
    “Well, don’t just sit there, get her into my office,” the man barked the moment he saw her.
    Even if she’d wanted to run—which she was thinking more and more about doing—she couldn’t with the twins at her side. Each one took an elbow and helped her stand—as if she’d walked in with broken legs, not an injured hand.
    “How’s the pain?” Tru asked, moving aside as she was escorted past him.
    She didn’t answer him.
    The doc waved her to a chair in the examining room while digging for supplies with the other hand. The place looked clean, at least. Dogs barked from behind a door down the hall and there was a whole lot of mooing going on back there as well. If that wasn’t enough, about the time she sat down, she heard the distinct pitter-patter of something trotting down the hall. A potbellied pig burst into the room. Trotted right in and looked about as if it had business there.
    Knee-high with a white body and big brown spots covering its shoulders, the pig’s skin beneath its short hair was a bright rosy pink. It studied her with big brown eyes then pranced over and stuck its pink snout into her face.
    “Don’t mind Clover,” Tru said, grinning. “She thinks she’s Doc’s nurse.”
    The doc turned toward her, pushed his glasses up his nose, and took hold of Maggie’s hand. He didn’t even acknowledge the presence of a pig that had Maggie leaned back against the wall to avoid contact.
    The doc unwrapped her hand. “So what happened? How’d you get this?”
    She looked to Tru and he answered for her. “Solomon bit her when she crawled under the bed to try and get him unstuck.”
    “What’d you do to Solomon?” Doc asked, looking incredulously at her.
    Clover stuck her snout into Maggie’s armpit. “I didn’t do anything to him.” She pushed the pig away, thankful she didn’t get her other hand bitten by a pig this time. She couldn’t believe he wanted to know what she’d done to the dog.
    “I tried to help it. Pops”—she didn’t know Tru’s grandfather’s name, so she used what she knew—“h-he asked me to.” She decided that was easier than telling them that the poor man had been near hysterics.
    “That dog is about as gentle as a lamb,” Doobie said—or Doonie—she’d forgotten which one was wearing the blue shirt.
    “He was upset.”
    The doc pressed an antiseptic-soaked pad to the punctures and she winced.
    “What was he so riled up for?” Doobie asked. She decided she’d had it wrong and Doobie had on the green shirt, not the blue shirt.
    “Because he was stuck.” Again she didn’t know what to say. She glanced at Tru looking for direction on how much to say about his Pops.
    “He’s claustrophobic, maybe. Who knows,” Tru offered with a shrug for the men.
    She almost smiled at his explanation and added, “You’d have been upset, too, if you were stuck” Doobie? Oh, fiddle, she gave up on which one was speaking.
    “I wouldn’t have bitten a pretty lady’s hand for helping me. I can tell you that much,” twin-number-two said, then shot her a wide grin.
    Having decided she didn’t need stitches, the doc had her hand cleaned and wrapped in no time. A good thing, too, because Maggie’s head was spinning from the questions. The twins switched from asking her about her bite to asking her about the interview and the bet.
    Tru leaned against the door frame, arms crossed, watching silently. She was left hanging out on a limb all by herself except for Clover who had decided that Maggie’s lap was the perfect headrest.
    She found out that the twins were friends of the doc and often hung out in his office drinking coffee in the afternoon.
    “They’re a sneaky couple,” Doc told her as he finished wrapping her hand.