11. Chapter 11
One Month Later
Sam stared dully at the patient board, not reading a single line.
He was exhausted. Beyond exhausted. He’d just done yet another double in the span of two weeks and was slowly becoming a workaholic.
Wyatt had said something to him earlier, but quickly backed off when Sam had nearly taken his head off.
Steph was also surprisingly quiet whenever he was at the nurse station, not saying anything about his overtime and doubles.
And the simple reason was…
He couldn’t go home.
He couldn’t sit in his empty house any longer. All he thought about was Frankie, and then eventually Papi, and how small his miserable little life was, and how empty it was beginning to feel.
The only person who seemed unfazed by his foul mood was Walsh. The Irishman almost seemed giddy every time he saw Sam, smiling like a fucking vampire, all pale skin and reddish-dark brown hair, with those piercing arctic-blue eyes. Normally he’d avoid Walsh, but lately, he didn’t mind the asshole.
“If you stare at it long enough,” Walsh said, fresh cup of coffee in hand, looking mildly amused. “It might actually change with you doing absolutely nothin’ to it. If you’re so lucky.”
Sam snorted. “Careful, Walsh, wouldn’t want anyone on the night crew to think you’re lazy.”
“Lazy…” The Irishman puffed out his chest, hand in his scrubs pocket, looking relaxed, and yet Sam could sense that he was alert and focused. Like a snake, unmoving and calm, watching its prey with those unfeeling eyes.
“I know perfectly well that I am not,” Walsh replied smoothly, taking a sip of coffee. “I suppose anyone next to you would look lazy.”
Sam glanced over his shoulder at him, gritting his teeth. Walsh wasn’t wrong. But it didn’t mean he liked being called out on it.
“How come you suppose ya don’t like me?” Walsh asked, eyes still on the patient board, yet his eyebrows were raised in question.
“Who says I don’t like you?”
Walsh finally looked at him, lips curling into an insidious smirk. “Me.”
“Fair enough,” Sam said, biting back a sigh. “You’re abrasive and blunt with your patients and crew. You tell bad news like you do good news. You could be nicer in the way you go about things. More… I dunno, considerate.”
“That’s not the reason you don’t like me,” Walsh drawled.
Sam glowered, crossing his arms over his chest. “Enlighten me, then.”
“It’s because you and me—we’re just alike. The only difference is that I don’t hide that I’m an asshole.”
“You callin’ me an asshole?”
Walsh shrugged, drawing out the reply by taking a slow sip of his coffee, irritating Sam. “You could be. If you tried a little harder.”
Surprised, he stared at him.
“If you don’t mind, Dr. Samuels, I think it’s time you went home. I don’t need an anchor dragging down my team tonight. So be gone with your tired and haggard self.”
He glowered openly at him, and Walsh merely winked, striding toward the central hub to check in with the night nurse, Nicole.
Frowning and now irritated, Sam headed toward the staff lockers and found Wyatt, backpack already over his shoulder, done for the day.
His handsome face was shadowed by whiskers, and his sandy brown hair was tousled.
He looked surprisingly refreshed and eager to leave work, and Sam knew perfectly well why.
He had someone waiting for him at home. Sam’s best friend here in LA, Dr. John Donnelly.
“Hey,” Wyatt paused, sky-blue eyes searching him. “You okay?”
“Apparently, I’m not enough of an asshole, according to the biggest asshole here.”
Wyatt’s face pinched in a cringe, glancing over at Walsh. “He means well.”
Sam scoffed. “Since when?”
“Since I worked night shift with him for almost six months. He’s actually…” Wyatt frowned, considering his words carefully. “Kinda… great. He comes line dancing with John and me all the time.”
“You’re talking about Walsh, right?”
“I know. I know,” Wyatt shrugged. “I thought the same thing for a while. But he’s a cool guy once you give him a chance.”
“I’m okay. I’m fresh out of fucks to give.”
“Yeah, I can tell.”
Sam shot the younger man a hard look.
Wyatt backed up, hands out in defense. “Sorry, not sorry. But you haven’t been the most pleasant to work with lately, just sayin’.”
He jabbed the pin code into his locker, yanking open the metal door and wanting to punch something.
“You know we’re here, right?” Wyatt said kindly. “Our door is always open if you ever wanna come by for dinner. Just… talk. Eat. Drink. Whatever you need.”
He swallowed, the dull ache in his chest expanding. He missed hanging out with his friends from the hospital. John especially. Hell, he couldn’t remember the last time he had gone to the Hot Dog Palace with everyone.
“John told me about your friend, and Steph mentioned he was here in February. Look, I know this is your business, but we love you, man,” Wyatt said. “We want you to be happy.”
Emotion welled inside him, and he sighed. “Thanks. I’m just… figuring things out.”
Wyatt nodded slowly, “With Frankie?”
Sam suddenly couldn’t breathe. Frankie’s name—the concern in Wyatt’s tone—all of it was just too much. He worked hard to keep his personal life outside of the ED.
“Not anymore,” he said roughly.
Wyatt hesitated. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I knew what I was doing and should’ve known better. Everything tends to blow up in my face when I let my guard down.”
He nodded. “Maybe it’s supposed to hurt.”
Sam’s busy hands stilled over his backpack as he glanced over to the younger man. “What do you mean?”
“You remember this?” Wyatt pointed to the scar on his arm from the knife-wielding dickhead that had come into the ED last year and had unexpectedly attacked Wyatt.
“Yeah,” Sam replied. “Hard to forget that day.”
Because that was the day John crumbled at Wyatt’s bedside. Sam had seen the love between them like a tidal wave, washing over them both and suspending them in a space entirely separate from Sam, even though he was in the room patching the wound.
“I told John how I felt that day. That I loved him,” Wyatt admitted, his smile soft and oddly sad.
“And at the time, he wasn’t ready to hear it and ran.
That hurt more than the fucking knife wound.
It took a while, but I eventually realized that love is the messiest, most vulnerable emotion we have.
Not hate, not fear. Love. And when we find it, we chase it.
We grab it with both fucking hands, and we don’t let go until it's ours.”
“What if I can’t keep holding on anymore?” Sam asked quietly.
“Do you love him?” Wyatt asked. The question was direct but gentle.
Sam, refusing to say the words, nodded. He averted his gaze, wanting to sink into a dark hole, hating how much he loved Frankie, and terrified that he would love him for the rest of his life.
“So maybe,” Wyatt said. “You should do something about it. Love will eat us alive if we sit on it. If I’ve learned anything from the time I spent chasing John, it’s that we have to say yes—to jump—even when it scares the hell outta us.”
Two Months Later
He couldn’t breathe.
Literally couldn’t catch his breath.
Sam just started walking, phone clutched in his hand, nearly running up five flights of stairs before reaching the maternity ward.
The second he opened the door, he was met with relieving fucking silence.
He spotted the nurse he’d made friends with a few months earlier.
She glanced up from her reading glasses and, without a word, pointed down the hall.
“Thanks,” he said, trying not to collapse right there.
She nodded knowingly. “Room 4 is free for the next hour or so.”
Thank fuck.
Sam quickened his pace down the quiet hallway and found the room.
It was spacious and empty, and most importantly, had a private balcony.
He closed the door behind him and opened the balcony door.
The sultry LA air was possibly the best feeling he could have asked for.
Sam braced his hands over the iron railing and looked over the vast, endless city through the haze of heat and smog.
Images of blood, limbs, and faces flashed before his eyes and he stumbled back, letting his back hit the hard wall of the building and sliding down onto his butt, knees drawing up and fingers raking through his hair.
He didn’t want to be in his head right now.
He didn’t want to sit in these goddamned inescapable feelings.
He needed to just breathe, but he couldn’t.
Without thinking, he pulled up his favorites list on his phone and called the first number. It rang twice before he answered.
“Sammy?” Frankie’s voice washed over him and he closed his eyes, savoring it.
“Yeah,” he replied gruffly into the phone.
Frankie paused, “Something’s wrong.”
“I’m okay.”
Something clattered in the background, something metal and loud. He was in his garage, Sam realized, tinkering on another car.
“Bullshit,” Frankie said sternly. “Tell me.”
He closed his eyes, digging his fingers into his temple, unable to catch his breath but trying hard.
“Tell me, Sammy… C’mon, I’m here,” Frankie murmured quietly, almost urgently.
“I think—I’m having a panic attack,” he admitted in a rush.
“Okay,” he replied calmly. “Breathe…”
Sam obeyed, taking in a breath, but it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t reaching the invisible wound hemorrhaging in his chest.
“Keep breathing, Sammy. I’m here. I’m here…”
Frankie chanted those words over and over, his soothing voice washing over him as he continued to breathe in and out.
“That’s it,” Frankie drawled softly. “You’re doin’ good, Sammy… You’re okay…”
“I’m not okay. Two—mother and her teen daughter.
Car accident. T-boned by a drunk fuckin’ driver.
The car crushed them. Firefighters pulled out…
limbs. I couldn’t save them…” Sam gasped, pushing hard into his chest, head swimming.
“I fuckin’ tried everything I could. I was just with the father, the husband.
He’s all alone now. He doesn’t have anyone…
” He broke. A horrible, anguished cry came ripping out of him.
“The sounds he made when he saw them… Fuck, Frankie, I couldn’t stay.
I couldn’t listen to him. I should’ve held it together, I should’ve… ”
“You did everything you could, Sam. You’re a good fuckin’ doctor and a good man.”
“It’s not enough,” he gasped out between sobs. “I’m not fuckin’ enough for anyone.”
The confession broke him.
He couldn’t stop the tears or the collapse, and he wept. He wasn’t enough for his mother, to keep her sober, happy, and stable. He wasn’t enough for Papi, whose quiet grief stayed with him until the very end. He wasn’t enough for Frankie to love…
“You’re enough.” Frankie’s tone was rough and edged with something he couldn’t recognize above his own grief.
“You’re a fighter. You’re braver than any man I know.
Normal people can’t do what you do. Because what you do is extraordinary, because that’s who you fuckin’ are.
If Papi were here, he’d say the same thing. ”
Sam rubbed the tears from his eyes, breath finally catching up with him. Silence stretched between them. He sighed. “I’m sorry…”
“For what?”
“Callin’ like this.”
“Don’t you fuckin’ dare do that. You call me whenever, wherever, for whatever.”
Feeling too vulnerable to protect himself, Sam heard himself admit, “I miss you.”
Frankie made a soft moaning sound on the other end of the phone and then cleared his throat, “Yeah. Yeah, I miss you, too.”
“I should go…”
“No,” Frankie protested, his voice hard. “No—let me see you. I need to make sure you’re all right.”
His phone vibrated in his hand, and he saw that Frankie was video calling him. He swallowed the thick emotion bunched in his throat, wiped his face on his shirt sleeve, and answered.
Frankie was in his garage, sweat dripping from his forehead, his black hair sexily slicked back from running his hands through it. Motor oil stained the side of his whiskered cheek. He wore a green Boston University Medical School T-shirt.
“Is that my shirt?” Sam asked.
Frankie scoffed. “It’s mine.”
“That’s my shirt, Frankie! I bought it freshman year of college.”
“Fuck off,” he shot back. “I bought it at the gift shop the day you graduated.”
“No, you didn’t!”
Frankie grinned beautifully at him through the camera, his dark eyes riveted to his face, his white teeth stark against his naturally tan olive complexion. “You’ll have to come back and pry it off of me, then.”
Damn, he wanted to. He wanted to book a flight right now and be there, feeling the weight of his comforting arms around him, his kiss on his temple, telling him everything would be okay. But he couldn’t do that.
“Do you think about what would’ve happened if I had stayed that night?” Sam whispered.
Frankie released a tight breath, “Yeah.”
“And?”
“And? What?”
“Nothing,” Sam said softly, pinching the brim of his nose.
“Don’t do that,” Frankie commanded sharply. “Don’t go dark on me again, Sammy.”
“I should go. I’m…”
I’m sorry?
I wish things were different?
I wish you loved me the way I love you.
“Thanks,” Frankie said, making him pause.
He glanced back at the screen and saw Frankie shift nervously on his feet, stuffing a hand into his jeans pocket.
“Thanks for callin’ me. I know things have changed, but I—this—you and me—I still care about you.
I wanna be here for you, Sammy. If you’ll let me. ”
He didn’t answer, not sure he could.
“C’mon, baby…” the word slipped out once more, and they both froze just like before. Frankie recovered faster this time. “Shit, I keep fuckin’ sayin’ that to you. I don’t know why… I’m sorry.”
He fisted his hand over the phone. “I should go.”
Frankie nodded, “Yeah. All right.” He hesitated before adding. “Call me—if you need anything.”
Sam wouldn’t, but nodded. He hung up, dropping the phone between his legs, the word ‘baby’ echoing through his ears like a thunderclap.
Fuck, he would’ve given his soul to be Frank Casavani’s baby.