Read Stork Raving Mad: A Meg Langslow Mystery (A Meg Lanslow Mystery) for Free Online Page A

an attack.” Michael had returned with a chair for me. “His heart fluttered, and it reminded him that he’s not supposed to excite himself and that he had not yet taken his heart pills today.”
    “Probably atrial fibrillation,” I said, as I sank gratefully onto the chair. “Dad should still check him out.”
    “And maybe your father could give him a bottle that doesn’t have a childproof cap,” Michael said. Even the student was having trouble opening the top.
    “Oops!” the student said, as tiny white pills sprayed out like a fountain. About twenty people almost simultaneously dropped to their hands and knees and began scrabbling on the floor, like devotees of a strange religion abasing themselves.
    “No hurry! No hurry!” Mendoza shouted. “See? I caught one!”
    He held up a small white pill. A sublingual nitroglycerin tablet? Digoxin? As a doctor’s daughter, I could hazard a guess what they might be, but I couldn’t see well enough to tell. Whatever it was, he put it into his mouth. Someone put a wineglass into his hand—.
    “Not wine!” I shouted. “Not with heart pills!” But no one appeared to hear me. Señor Mendoza washed the pill down with a healthy slug of red wine, and then leaned back in his chair to watch the pill retrieval. Students were swarming over every inch of the hall floor, looking for and occasionally finding the tiny pills.
    Within seconds, Drs. Blanco and Wright were the only people, apart from Mendoza and me, not on their knees searching for the pills. At least Mendoza and I were interested bystanders—the prunes merely looked on disapprovingly. When one of the students came too close to Dr. Wright, she stepped back, slipped on something—probably a stray pill—and fell. Luckily she fell against one of the coatracks, so her landing was well cushioned.
    “Look what you’ve done!” Blanco snapped, to no one in particular, as he swooped down to help his colleague. A good thing he was so eager because no one else seemed upset at her mishap.
    “I’m fine,” she said. “Stop fussing over me.”
    “Look out!
El perro!
” Mendoza shouted.
    I looked down to see Spike licking the floor.
    “He’s trying to eat Señor Mendoza’s heart pills!” I shouted. “Stop him!”
    For once, I managed to move tolerably fast—or maybe I only beat everyone else because the students had been here long enough to have acquired a healthy fear of the Small Evil One, as we called him. Michael swooped down to grab Spike and held him while I pried open his jaws.
    “Did he eat any of the pills?” Michael asked.
    “There’s nothing in his mouth, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t have swallowed one,” I said. Just then I spotted my father in the doorway with his black doctor’s bag. “Dad! How fast would Señor Mendoza’s heart medicine work?”
    “Don’t worry,” he said. “Where’s the patient?”
    “Check Señor Mendoza out,” I said, pointing. “And find out what those pills are and what to do if Spike ate one!”
    Spike was struggling to get down, but I could see at least one more of the little pills on the floor, and the students all seemed to be watching Dad and Señor Mendoza, who were conversing in a mixture of Spanish and English.
    “Get that one,” I called, pointing to the stray pill. Michael handed Spike to me and stooped to retrieve the pill.
    “Doctor!” Blanco called. “Please see to Dr. Wright. I am concerned that she may have broken something in her fall.”
    “Nonsense,” Dr. Wright snapped. “I’m perfectly fine.”
    “Broken bones aren’t nearly as dangerous as heart attacks,” I said.
    “Or digitalis overdoses,” Dad said, looking stern. “If that’s what those pills are—he doesn’t have them in the original container, so I can’t be sure. See if you can make him throw up. Spike, I mean,” he added. “Señor Mendoza will be fine if he stops overexciting himself.”
    “Sardines,” I said. “Spike loves them, but he chokes them