Twins On The Doorstep

“There was no note?” Debi asked, looking from Cole to Stacy.

Cole shook his head. “Nothing,” he answered.

Stacy merely shrugged. “I wasn’t there.”

“If you ask me, I’d say it’s finders keepers.” Ted Reynolds, an old ranch hand, chuckled.

“The poor darlings,” Amanda Rice, the grandmother of three, cooed as she came over to join the widening circle of people admiring the babies. “Where’s your mama, darlings?” She raised her eyes to look at Stacy. “And when did you come back into town, Stacy?” she asked warmly. “You’ve been missed,” the older woman told her.

“Did you bring the babies in for one of the doctors to examine?” Debi asked, wanting to take control of the situation before things got out of hand.

“Well, yes,” Cole confessed, “but I didn’t think that there’d be this many people here already.” He looked at Debi apologetically. “I’ve got to get back to my family’s ranch—”

“Well, if it helps, you can go ahead of me,” Ted Reynolds volunteered. “I’ve got no real plans for today. Nothing that can’t wait, anyway.”

“And me,” Amanda said. “You can go ahead of me,” she told Cole. “At my age, the best part of coming in to see the doctor is socializing with whoever’s waiting on him, too.”

Several other voices chimed in.

“I can wait,” another patient spoke up.

“So can I.”

“Me, too. This is the first break from work I’ve had in over a month,” Jeremy Jones said to no one in particular.

Debi held up her hand before anyone else gave up their place to the babies. There were a lot of people in the waiting area and if they all spoke up one by one, this could take a while.

She looked around at the seated people. “Can I assume that it’s all right with all of you if I just let Cole go on ahead and bring the babies in to see the doctor?”

A cacophony of voices rose in response to her question. The gist was that the patients in the reception area were all in agreement about letting Cole go in first.

Debi turned toward him. “All right, Cole, you heard them. The people have spoken,” she told him cheerfully. “I guess that’s why I love living in this town. Everyone’s so bighearted.

“Let’s get these little darlings checked out. Boys or girls?” she asked, leading the way into the back where the exam rooms were located.

“One of each,” Cole answered. As he started to follow the nurse, he looked back over his shoulder toward Stacy. “You coming?”

She was about to beg off, saying something to the effect that it seemed as if he and Debi had the situation covered. But that wasn’t strictly true. She knew that Debi had to return to the front desk and even though the other nurse, Holly, was somewhere in the clinic, that still left Cole on his own to cope with two babies. One was probably hard enough for him.