Free Blood Brothers by Rick Acker

marshmallows every day, even though the amount of sugar was minimal and wouldn’t affect the drug trial. Kim had promised to keep her secret.
    The part of her work that Kim enjoyed most was when she and Dr. Chatterton took a few of their charges to the exercise room, a spare storage room that had been converted into a makeshift monkey gym, complete with balls, tree branches, and a slide and climbing bars donated by a scientist whose children had outgrown them. Visits to the exercise room were treats for both the monkeys and their keepers. The monkeys got to run free and play, and the keepers got to relax and talk while nominally watching the monkeys through a Plexiglas observation window.
    When the daily exercise was done, Dr. Chatterton and Kim put some fruit or marshmallows in the cages to coax the monkeys back and then closed the gates once the animals were inside. After a few weeks, Dr. Chatterton let Kim handle this job on her own. It was a simple and safe task, perfect for an intern.

    A messenger delivered the promised full-court press to Ben’s office the following Wednesday, forty-three minutes after Ben had called Karl Bjornsen’s lawyers to tell them that Gunnar wasn’t interested in their proposal. The documents nearly filled an entire banker’s box. Ben sighed and signed for it. Then he took it into the conference room, where he could spread out the papers and go through them without worrying about accidentally mixing in something from the other piles on his desk.
    An hour later, Noelle walked by and noticed him in the conference room surrounded by court filings. “What’s up?”
    “I got a care package from Bert Siwell. He’s teed up half a dozen motions for hearing on the emergency call tomorrow morning.”
    “What kind of motions?”
    Ben put down the document he had been reading and stretched. “Let’s see. There’s a motion for a temporary restraining order that would require Gunnar to immediately turn over the process for making Neurostim, a motion for a preliminary injunction, a motion for a permanent injunction, a motion for expedited discovery, one hundred and fifty-three pages of discovery requests he wants expedited, a motion to dismiss Gunnar’s counterclaim, and—last but not least—a motion for sanctions against both Gunnar and me personally.”
    “Sanctions? What for?”
    “For daring to bring a counterclaim that is . . . hold on a sec, I can’t do it justice.” He searched the table for the sanctions motion, found it, and flipped through it. “Here we go: ‘for bringing a counterclaim that is so ill considered, so patently frivolous, so clearly lacking any basis in fact or law, and so laughably puerile’—I’m pretty sure Bert had his thesaurus out by that point—‘that it demands sanctions.’”
    Noelle stared at him, her mouth and eyes wide in angry disbelief. “Is he serious?”
    Ben shrugged. “He’s obnoxious. He’s also pretty funny, usually on purpose, and he’s good on his feet, so he gets away with a lot.”
    “What a piece of work. So how come all this is an emergency?”
    “It isn’t. What he’s really doing is punishing Gunnar and me for rejecting his settlement offer. I’ll be working on responses all night.” He grinned. “But then, so will Bert—or at least the people working for him. I just sent them our box half an hour ago. I hope they didn’t have plans for dinner. I also hope you won’t be seeing Gwen Bjornsen again anytime soon.”

    Ben’s dinner that night was leftover Giordano’s pizza from the office fridge, washed down with the flat remains of a two-liter bottle of Diet Coke. He was on his second slice when Gunnar called. “I just read through the court papers you e-mailed to me. Some of the things they say are completely outrageous! Aren’t there ethical standards against this kind of garbage?”
    “Sure. Some of them are cited in the sanctions motion against you and me for daring to countersue Karl. I’m not too