The Notus Microbe

By Sabrina Middleson

Emergency room physician Dr. Ridge Porter has a vacation coming up.  Instead of sleeping in, eating steak and going to the Wimbledon as planned; he winds up in Deception Island, Antarctica where people are mysteriously bleeding internally.  

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sabrina Middleson
• Release date: Jun 16, 2016
• ISBN: 9781533738400

Book preview

Chapter 1

Dr. Ridge Porter was exhausted from spending forty eight straight hours at the hospital.  Technically he was not supposed to do that. However, they were short staffed at the emergency room because two doctors had taken vacation that weekend.  Again, not typical of what normally goes on, but someone had a wedding to go to, someone else’s daughter was graduating and someone else got sick all on the same weekend. 

So, the trade was he stay on for forty eight hours straight and he got Mon-Wed off with pay unless something came up only he could handle.  It was slightly annoying to Dr. Porter that he was going to work just Thursday and Friday so that he could have the next two weeks off as vacation, but such as life.

For now, he was going to go home...make himself a steak if he could stay awake to do such a thing.  He was exhausted enough that he almost debated getting a steak on takeout from any number of steakhouses or fish and pub places around...nah, no one knows how to make a steak. 

Or to be more technical...no one knows how to make a steak medium rare, damn it.  But he earned a steak after working for forty eight hours straight...he wanted a steak.  He was just going to have to figure out how to stay awake to make his steak.  Which brought him to his coffee...he was out of the good coffee which he would need if he was going to make his steak after working forty-eight hours.

Not that big a deal...he would need to go to the store to get the steak anyway.  Stuff like this was why his mom was constantly shaking her head and saying that he would never get married.  That was fine...whether he got married or not did not concern him much...except for when he was at some family event or somewhere else where someone would be stupid/nosy and ask him if he would ever get married.  So he went to the store and bought steak, coffee and then Guiness at the store across the street. 

The next morning, Dr. Porter woke up to discover that his best friend, Adrian Bowen, had called three times.  He was now confused...he could have sworn that Adrian was in Antarctica.  But he called back and accepted when informed that there would be international toll rates. 

Again, no big deal...he was not sure exactly how much it had been, but he knew his hours long call to Adrian from England to Israel when he was exploring the Dead Sea over a girlfriend crisis...well more like he caught her red handed with someone else two weeks before his wedding.  He wound up leaving a message with Adrian who called back in an hour and a half. 

Sure enough...he was in Antarctica.  Deception Island, to be exact.  He went with a group of about forty people.  His assignment had been to observe the chinstrap penguins that were exclusive to that area and then negotiate with some rich asshole who was some Duke that Adrian had forgotten his exact name (nor did he care...that was part of why he had forgotten it...) apparently wanted them at Sea Life London Aquarium. 

But even though it was not his exact expertise...he was checking to see how hypothetical interactions would go with them around other animals.  Among other things, that would help determine how much money it was going to cost the unnamed asshole...or the UK government if they were stupid enough to fund this adventure; as Adrian saw it.

No Adrian did not know this guy personally...but he had issues with taking wild animals and putting them in captivity.  Especially if this guy was so called royalty, noble, whatever the hell was correct to refer to them as at this point. 

Even more so, if this guy believed his status entitled him to single handedly fund the whole godforsaken thing; if the government had not stepped in on what he saw to be an unwarranted basis just because this guy is a Duke.  So, until he had a damn good reason to say or do otherwise, he was known to him as the unnamed asshole or the Duke of Whoever.

Anyway, there were apparently, there were six people in the group, four women and two men, that seemed to have a bleeding disorder.  Dr. Porter told him to call back at the end of the week if the on call doctor had not figured it out and