“Her husband’s name is Peanut Butterman? For real?” Cathy asked.

Hope giggled. “Yes. He always says his parents were smoking weed when they named him.”

Cathy grinned, and then winced when Rhonda poured some antiseptic on the palm of her hand.

“I’ll go make a couple of phone calls,” Hope said. “I’ll be back later to check on you. Don’t worry. We’ll get you home.”

Once again, Cathy was struck by how friendly people were here, and as Hope had predicted, a couple of minutes later, a man came in and got her personal information, and as he was leaving, the ER doctor arrived.

Rhonda looked up. “Good morning, Doctor Quick. This is Cathy Terry.”

He smiled. “Morning, Rhonda,” and then he shifted focus to his patient. “Hello, Cathy, I’m Dr. Quick. What have you done to yourself?” he asked, as he began eyeing the bruising and the swollen ankle.

“I turned my ankle and fell while I was jogging.”

Quick was already feeling her ankle. “Can you move it?” he asked.

“Yes, it hurts, but I can move it,” she said, and proceeded to show him. “Fell pretty hard on my right side. My shoulder and hip are beginning to hurt, too.”

“Did you hit your head?” he asked, glancing at her thick red curls.

“No.”

Dr. Quick nodded. “Okay, I’m sending you down for x-rays. We’ll know more after I see them. Just bear with us.”

A couple of minutes later an orderly arrived with a wheelchair, and all the way down the hall, she kept thinking, Nightmare or not, I wish I’d gone back to bed.

Chapter 2

As soon as Hope was between patients, she made a call to Ruby at the Curl Up and Dye. The phone rang a couple of times before the call was picked up.

“Curl Up and Dye. This is Mabel Jean.”

“Hi, Mabel Jean, this is Hope Talbot. I need to speak to Ruby, if she’s free.”

“Sure, hang on a sec while I put you on hold.” Then she called out from the front of the shop. “Ruby, it’s for you.”

Ruby gave Duke a quick pat on the shoulder. “Give me a second,” she said, and picked up the call from her workstation. “This is Ruby.”

“Hi, Ruby, this is Hope. Sorry to bother you at work, but there’s a patient here in ER who’s going to need a ride home in a while, and I wondered if you knew someone I could contact. She asked if there was a taxi service in town, and I told her no, but that I’d try to find her a ride.”

“Oh, my gosh! Of course. I’m certain I can find someone. Who’s the patient?”

“Cathy Terry, the cute redhead who’s renting from Dan Amos.”

“Oh! I know who you’re talking about. I see her jogging past the shop all the time. In fact I just saw her running past this morning. What happened to her?”

“She took a bad fall while she was running. Turned her ankle and skinned herself up a bit. I don’t think anything is broken, but we’re waiting for Dr. Quick to make that determination.”