KS SS02 - Conspiracy by Dana Stabenow Read Free Book Online Page A

responders to every incident involving injury to persons, or “First after Kate Shugak, anyway,” Old Sam said. They subscribed to EMS Magazine and read it devotedly, not scrupling to use what they learned therein on the job, only occasionally to the despair of the M.D. in Ahtna under whose nominal authority they practiced. They fit up a spare room in their house as a two-bed ward, and their happiest days were when those beds were occupied, especially when said occupants required the use of IV drips and defibrillators.
    At first the Park rats viewed this metamorphosis with understandable skepticism. One could hardly blame them, so many of them having in the past been on the receiving end of the kind of attention from the Grosdidier brothers designed to put them in need of exactly the kind of attention the Grosdidiers were now offering. Over the years, however, the brothers had proved themselves more than able, and when they spotted an incipient outbreak of tuberculosis in Red Run and were instrumental in stopping it dead in its tracks, they began to be regarded as medical authorities. The following fall they converted another room in their house to a tiny clinic, which was open one day a week for four hours, with two of the brothers always on duty during that time to diagnose and treat the ailments of anyone who walked in the door. People started calling them “Doc,” indiscriminate of identity, which could be confusing, especially when they all answered to it without hesitation.
    They were, all four of them, raging heterosexuals. They were all still single. This might have had something to do with a fraternal unwillingness to rock the domestic boat by introducing a feminine component into the mix. It probably had more to do with the fact that Park rat males outnumbered Park rat females seven to one, and competition for available females was fierce.
    Which was why, when word reached them via the Bush telegraph that Laurel Meganack had injured herself at the Riverside Café, the brothers’ rush to the front door resembled the action on a bumper car rink. By the time they got to the big yellow Silverado Supercab, Peter’s nose was bleeding, Luke’s jaw was beginning to swell, and Mark was limping. Matt’s hair was a little mussed but he made it into the driver’s seat and was backing out of the garage before the rest of them got their doors open. He’d always had the fastest reflexes of the four of them.
    His three younger brothers watched him reverse out of the driveway, turn left, and spin wheels on the way up Niniltna’s main street. They kept their identical glum expressions in place until he was out of sight.
    “What do you think?” Peter said, mopping at the blood on his face.
    “Could work,” Luke said, working his jaw with care. It was sore, but his didn’t think anything had been fractured.
    Mark stretched out a cautious leg and put all his weight on it. There was a twinge or two, but nothing lasting. “We can only hope.”
    They went back into the house and surveyed the post-tornado like conditions that were the Grosdidiers brothers residential status quo. “You know, guys, even if they start going out, nothing says she’ll cook and clean for us,” Mark said. “It’s not like she’s Snow White or anything.”
    “I got a broken nose here,” Peter said indignantly. “I want Snow White, dammit.”
    “Me, too,” Luke said, still cradling his jaw.
    Mark sighed. He nursed a secret letch for Laurel himself, and it had taken considerable sacrifice to allow Matt to respond alone. “Me, three. I’m just saying we better clean up a little, or the first time he brings her home she’s gonna run like we was actual dwarves.” He added, “Auntie Vi wasn’t all wrong.”
    Peter and Luke saw the sense in this, and they began a slow and unenthusiastic clean up.
    The truth was that with the exception of the clinic and the two-bed ward, the house hadn’t been cleaned since their parents died. The brothers