by Dianne Drake
No, he wasn’t sure where he was going, or who this crazy lady was he was following, but Beaver Dam was apparently in his foreseeable future, and maybe somebody there could draw him a map to Elkhorn. Or fill his gas tank so he could spend another few hours wandering aimlessly in the Alaskan wilderness looking for the boulder in the road, as well as his mother.
“You owe me for this one, Maggie Morse,” he muttered as he spotted the other Jeep ahead and set his speed to follow it at a safe distance—a very safe distance with the way she was driving. “You really owe me in a big way for this one.”
CHAPTER TWO
DR. ALEKSANDRA SOKOLOV took a hasty glance into her rear-view mirror and heaved yet another a deep, irritated sigh when she saw that he was following right along. Of all the people in the world Dimitri could have hired to come and work with them, he had to go and hire him. Dr. Michael Morse! Sure, Dimitri had mentioned a name…Dr. Morris, or Dr. Morrison, or something like that, she’d thought. She hadn’t been paying much attention since she’d been preparing to leave for a conference. But if she had heard Dr. Morse, particularly Dr. Michael Morse…well, she wasn’t sure what she would have done, but it would have started with a list of reasons not to hire the last man she ever wanted to see again, let alone work with!
She drew in a deep, calming breath, trying to put him…put that whole offensive incident out of her head, stunned by how, after all this time, she still had such a strong reaction to him.
He was Chief of Emergency Services at Seattle North, and a professor at the medical school. He wrote books on wilderness medicine and he lectured all around the world on the subject. He also taught certification classes—taught her certification class, actually. He also did television interviews whenever someone was lost in the wilderness and the reporters flocked to him for an expert speculation on how long a person could last under certain conditions, in certain weather, at a certain time of the year.
Michael Morse had his reputation and it was well earned, so why someone like that would come here to practice medicine in a fifty-bed clinic in the middle of nowhere, for practically no money, when he had everything where he was, was beyond her. Researching another book? Big-city burnout? Scorned lover on his tail? Adding a notch of humility and altruism to his curriculum vitae? Whatever the reason, Dimitri would offer him a room, food, a lot more hours of work than he’d ever done in his life, and a barely livable stipend that might keep him in warm clothes if he knew how to budget his stipend wisely. And none of that was Michael Morse’s style medically, socially or otherwise. Why here? Why her? Quite simply, she didn’t want to work with the great Dr. Morse. Not after what he’d done to her.
The only problem was, he was following her right now. Keeping up, probably quite pleased with himself over how easily he was doing it. She smiled, thinking about how easy it would be to veer off onto one of the old fire roads and lose him. Problem was bears. He was a soft, spoiled city boy and she was betting that he didn’t even have enough common sense to come out here with a good bear repellant. She chuckled. City boys in particular were tasty and tender to the bears. “I should do it,” she said, glancing back again. “I really should.” But there was an outbreak of some sort in Beaver Dam, and since he was already halfway there, there was no sense in letting his medical skills go to waste.
Alek thought about the call that had come in. She’d been down in Nome restocking supplies for a few days, just up from Juneau after a nice week at a medical conference, when Dimitri’s relay had got through to her. Up here, the phone service wasn’t always as convenient as it was in the cities. And in some places there was no cell-phone service whatsoever. But the relay never let you down—you’d call someone who would, in turn, get through to someone else who would then call or radio another person until the word finally got through to wherever it needed to go.
Dimitri’s message was that it could be an outbreak of food poisoning, and that half the town was down with it so she should go straight to Beaver Dam once she got back to Elkhorn. So she’d landed her Cessna in Elkhorn’s one landing strip, picked up her Jeep, which had already been stocked with supplies and was waiting for her, courtesy of Dimitri, and had been on the road in a matter of minutes. No time to spare for a quick shower.
Flying into Beaver Dam would have been her preference. She was, after all, a licensed pilot. But Beaver Dam didn’t have a clear landing area anywhere in the vicinity. So going by Jeep had been the alternative, albeit a dreary one right now since she was tired and on top of that the forecast was for snow.
Looking up at the sky again, Alek sighed. “I’d rather be home,” she murmured. All cozy and warm in front of her own fireplace. “Not today, anyway. Which gives you one more night, Dimitri, before I meet your deep, dark secret.” A woman! A quick phone call home from Juneau, a female voice she hadn’t heard long enough to recognize, Dimitri sounding rather flustered when he’d come on the line. No wonder he’d been so keen to get rid of her for two weeks. “You’re full of surprises lately, a mystery woman and a new doctor. All I can say is that I hope your choice in women is better than your choice in medical partners.” It had to be, although she couldn’t figure out who the woman might be. Maybe Irena from over in Gold Rush? Or Katerina Shelikov, who came up from Nome to visit her granddaughter every now and then? She’d noticed both of them having a little flirt with Dimitri from time to time. Although, to be honest, she hadn’t thought he’d noticed. Apparently he had.
Smiling fondly over the man who’d been her father more years than her own father had, Alek was glad he was finally finding some happiness in his life—something outside his work. Widowed for a decade now, it was time for him to move on with someone new and Alek couldn’t wait to meet her. If she made Dimitri happy, she would make Alek happy, too.
“And we’ll discuss the Michael Morse situation as soon as I get back,” she muttered, taking another look at the early October sky. They were still far enough south that the worst of winter hadn’t quite caught up with them yet, but it was well on its way in, with the occasional heavy snow or storm. She always looked forward to that change of season—trading in the Jeep on short hops for her dogsled. Mushing was just about the only thing she did for pleasure, and she wished she had her dogs with her right now. “They would have detoured right around you, Michael,” she said. “Wouldn’t have even slowed down. Of course, having you there to help me won’t be all that bad, will it? Perhaps I’ll take a short nap and let you tend to all the diagnostic preliminaries once we arrive.”
She laughed at the thought of it. The preliminaries of diagnosing food poisoning were not one of the more glamorous aspects of medicine. “Nasty business, but someone has to do it, don’t they, Michael? And around here, big medical names like yours don’t get special privileges.”
Glancing in her rearview mirror to make sure he was keeping up, Alek suddenly hoped he was on her tail. “Don’t know why you chose Elkhorn, Dr. Morse, but, since you did, there’s no reason not to put you to work until I can convince Dimitri to find someone else. Pity, because the bears would have enjoyed you. They’re particularly fond of pompous city boys this time of the year.”
Ten minutes later, Alek slowed down at a fork in the road long enough for Michael to catch up to her, then took the left option, which was little more than a footpath used by the trappers, and proceeded at a much slower speed over the snow. Barely wide enough for one vehicle, it wasn’t the main road into the village, but it would shave off another twenty minutes of driving and would lead straight into Beaver Dam, a Yup’ik village consisting of craftsmen, trappers and a few fishermen who seasonally ventured out to the Chukchi Sea.
It was such a nice little village—quite peaceful and pleasant—and the people here were wonderful. She smiled, thinking about all the many forms of payment she’d received from the villagers of Beaver Dam. Local baskets, beads, dolls, parkas…One of the tourist stores in Nome sold everything paid to her and the proceeds went to the clinic, which turned out to be a nic
e arrangement for everyone, since the villagers would not take charity of any kind. Just like Dimitri, who operated a free clinic. Lucky for everyone that Alaskan craft had a wide appeal, especially in the lower forty-eight states, and it kept the clinic in medicine and other supplies quite nicely.
Five minutes on the little logging trail and Beaver Dam seemed to rise up out of nowhere. A plain town, consisting of one long drive-through, with a few houses scattered about, it was a village of about one hundred people, all living in neat little wooden houses. There was no ornamentation, no real road other than the dirt, which turned to mud, which turned to slush, snow or ice at this time of the year. No sidewalks. No streetlamps, although the villagers did light their front windows at sundown, which always gave the town a nice, cheery, welcoming feel.
She hadn’t been here for a while because most of the time, when there was need of a doctor, the villagers came to the clinic in Elkhorn. It was centrally located in an area between a dozen other villages, none more than a two-hour drive away. Nome, the largest city on the Seward Peninsula, was quite a bit further south from here, a good six-hour drive if the road conditions were right, and it was the next available modern source for medical care—although there were traditional healers in many of the villages. This made Dimitri’s clinic vital to the well-being of the entire area since, in spite of the remote village locations, the majority of people preferred modern medicine to the older traditional ways.
Alek parked her Jeep in front of Dinook Duvak’s cabin, where she would most likely spend the night, hopped out and glanced back to see if he was coming up the road. Which he was. She smiled, thinking about all the trouble the city boy could get himself into out here. He might teach wilderness medicine, might even be the best at it, but practicing what he taught was another thing, and she was going to get to see, firsthand, if his practical skills were as good as his academic verbiage.
Of course, Michael Morse didn’t have to come all the way out here to find trouble. Or be trouble. He was quite handy at that everywhere he went—something Alek wasn’t about to forget. How many nights’ sleep had she lost over him? Too many! First she’d harbored a brief thought that he and she might even…But that was stupid. She’d known better. And he’d proved her right. So maybe the biggest lesson she’d learned in wilderness school was why not to become involved. It always hurt too much, and in the end, you always ended up hurting alone. Certainly, he’d hurt her in ways she’d never thought possible and they hadn’t even been involved. “Nausea, loss of appetite, abdominal cramps, low-grade fever, malaise, diarrhea,” she shouted at him before he was even out of his Jeep.
“What?” he shouted back.
“The symptoms, Doctor. I’ve listed the symptoms. You’re the wilderness medicine expert, so you tell me what they add up to.” Although she knew it was food poisoning of some sort, maybe he had a better perspective on it. As much as she detested the man, she did respect his knowledge.
“I hope they add up to a tank of gasoline,” he muttered, stepping out of the Jeep. “Because that’s the only reason I’m here. Not to tell you that your symptoms add up to a good case of food poisoning, which you already know, since apparently you’re a medic of some sort.”
A medic of some sort? If she had time for another good round of anger, that would have been the start of it, but she didn’t. “You’ll get your gas,” she snapped. “After we get the situation settled down here.”
“And you’re imposing me into that situation why?”
“Because I know all about you, and you’ve never been shy about telling people that you’re the best. I have fifty sick people here who need the best, and since by your own admission that’s you…”
“Like I said, food poisoning. Maybe some kind of small-bowel overgrowth syndrome. Or another, less common enteric parasite such as Strongyloides stercoalis or Trichuris trichiura. Could be something as simple as G. lamblia, E. histolytica or Costridium difficile. It might even be a lactase deficiency induced by a small-bowel pathogen. Or maybe they simply shared contaminated moose meat. So, now that you know everything I know, do I get my gasoline?”
For a second she was amazed by how quickly it all came to him. She’d really forgotten how brillian the was. Taunting him about it and actually hearing it in his diagnosis were two different things, and if it weren’t for the fact that Michael Morse was a despicable man, she might have gushed a bit. But he was, so she wouldn’t. Still, he deserved his due. He’d perfected what she practiced. And just because she’d had so many other impressions of him from the first time they’d met, that didn’t lessen the fact that Michael Morse was the best of the best when it came to this kind of medicine. She probably owed him a thank-you, except she didn’t have the time for it, neither did she have an inclination to be nice, because she didn’t like him.
So the due he was owed wasn’t going to come from her. “Grab your medical bag, Doctor. We’ve got fifty patients to see before the storm hits. Half the village, to be exact. If we’re lucky we’ll be halfway to Elkhorn before it does. And if not?” She shrugged as she grabbed her medical bag out of the back of her Jeep and tossed a rucksack full of medicine over to him. “We might be here for days.” That was a bit of an exaggeration this early in the season, but the panicked look on his face was worth the lie.
“And you’re under the impression I came here to treat diarrhea?” he asked.
“I’m under the impression that you’re able, and that you’re here. I’m also under the impression that if you don’t, and I simply take a notion to stay here for a while, you’ll have to find your own way out.” She dished him a sarcastic smile with that slice of exaggeration. “So grab your medical bag. We have a long evening ahead of us.”
“Didn’t bring it with me.”
Alek blinked her surprise. “And you’re supposed to do what without your medical bag?”
“Nothing. I’m supposed to do nothing except go to Elkhorn.”
So he was arrogant and a slacker. Arrogant she remembered quite vividly. But being a slacker… “You are the Michael Morse who teaches wilderness medicine, aren’t you? The one who holds the certification seminars and stresses being prepared all the time for any emergency?” As if he could be anyone else. His brown hair was a bit shorter now, still with a little curl wanting to pop out, and he had a few wrinkles around his green eyes, but it was him. Like she could ever forget.
A flash of irritation crossed his face. “My credentials have nothing to do with this. I’m only here to find—”
“Fine,” she interrupted, her own impatience level rising above his. “Play this out however you like, but we’re going to make house calls now. You take the north side of the road, I’ll take the south. We’ll see what we’ve got first, then figure out how we’ll deal with it once we know for sure.”
Without another word, Alek marched straight to the first house on her side of the road and knocked on the door to inquire if anyone inside was sick. As the elderly man inside pushed open the screen door to invite her in, she turned back only to find Michael standing in the road, much the way she’d found him the first time. Standing, staring. “Don’t know why you hired him, Dimitri,” she muttered as she stepped into the cozy parlor. More than that, she was beginning to wonder if he was all academic in his medical knowledge and no skill, because right now she sure wasn’t seeing a speck of skill in a man who was touted to be the best. “The best?” she muttered under her breath as she put on her best doctor smile for the room full of villagers all waiting to see her.
“Beaver,” Michael said, meeting Alek in the middle of the road thirty minutes later. He’d been waiting there ten minutes already. She’d seen him as she’d examined Maisye Strong, and had purposely delayed going outside. “Simple case of beaver poisoning. They were having a Founder’s Day celebration, Ben Smiling made his world-famous beaver stew and the rest, as they say, is history. Tainted meat, although in beaver it can be a little tricky because it can come back on them for a while.”
“Besides asking Ben’s wife? I asked his neighbor, who also ate the stew, as well as asking a woman named Dinook Duvak, who’s the local doctor of sorts.”
“I know Dinook,” Alek snapped.
“Well, Dinook confirmed it, too, but she says she’s been feeling a bit poorly herself and hasn’t come up with a proper remedy.” Michael gave her a lazy grin. “So now that I know who they are here, and what’s ailing them, would you mind telling me who you are and why you dragged me out here to cure a case of food poisoning?”
“I’m Dr. Aleksandra Sokolov.” She waited for a response of some sort from him, and blinked her astonishment when none came. Not even a shadow of recognition. “Sokolov.” He was so…so brilliant, as much as she hated admitting that. So in all that brilliance, was he pretending he didn’t remember her? Or did he really not remember the person who was, in his opinion, the worst doctor in the world? “I’m Dr. Aleksandra Sokolov,” she repeated stiffly, still watching for a hint of recognition. There was none. She couldn’t believe it, after what he’d done to her three years ago. Of course, impugning a reputation might have been an everyday thing for him because he’d been so good at it. But that had been the first, and only, time for her, and while his words might have been only in passing, they dug deep. They even made her question her abilities for a time, until she realized just what an ass he was. Nice one minute, then rude. Patient, then jumping out of his skin with restlessness. Petulant, docile…all over the place, unhinged and so composed. And so damned intelligent it made her angry just thinking about someone like him having such a phenomenal gift.