Give Me What You Will
Steph, the day-shift charge nurse and central-hub mom, snorted along with her replacement, night-shift nurse, Nicole. The two older women were reviewing the charts and notes for the night-shift patients in the lobby, ready to hand them over.
“Hey, we all gotta start somewhere,” Steph chided him. “And Tanya likes you so much for your charming personality that you get the new pit cleaning crew instead of Johnny.”
Sam muttered a curse under his breath, clicking the computer screen alive with the wave of the mouse, clocking in to his shift. “When is John coming back? I thought they were supposed to be back by now.”
They—meaning John and the younger, newly licensed Dr. Wyatt Lawson, whom John started seeing a few months ago.
Steph side-eyed him, sipping her coffee out of her pink Stanley steel mug. He’d been complaining all week that John and Wyatt were gone. Probably because he had to deal with the night-shift psycho, Dr. Walsh, who was a certified asshole.
“Another week, Dr. Samuels. Need me to write it down on your forehead?” Steph drawled.
He smirked, preferring the sassy Steph over the parental one. He was a grown ass man that already had a mom. Granted, his biological mom was crazier than shit on toast, but still.
“Maybe. I prefer sticky notes, though,” he retorted with a lazy smirk.
“Great. I’ll tack it onto your forehead, then.”
He chuckled, clocked on, and straightened, tossing his stethoscope around his neck and tucking his golden necklace beneath his dark gray scrubs.
It was his grandfather's military dog tag, and ever since Papi passed away eight months ago, it had never left his neck. Papi had only one tag on his necklace when Sam had found it among his belongings, and he didn’t know where the second tag was.
It had been one of the many mysteries surrounding his grandpa that still bothered him, adding another reason to return to Boston and look through the boxes his mom had kept of Papi’s.
Except that would mean going back to Boston, and he wasn’t doing that if he could help it.
“Wanna see the pictures Wyatt sent me?” Steph asked, already pulling out her phone from her pocket.
Sam glanced down at the screen, inwardly keeping his expression composed as he glimpsed the romantic, dark blue water canals of Venice, and Wyatt pressing a smooch on John’s graying, bearded cheek for a selfie on a gondola.
Christ, they were cheesy.
Sam swallowed the envy bubbling up in his throat like acid and managed to say, “Cool,” and felt like a total jackass.
Ever since John and Wyatt had become an official couple, they had been taking a ton of time off.
This recent vacation was to celebrate Wyatt’s graduation from his last year as a resident, officially becoming Dr. Lawson, the ED Cowboy.
Sam loved them like his own family, and while he wasn’t jealous of them, he was envious of what they had.
A loving relationship that fucking worked.
Sam bit back a sigh, reaching for his Papi’s tag beneath his scrubs and wondering if he was cursed to be alone like him for the rest of his miserable life.
And if so, maybe being a workaholic was a better route than slowly drinking himself into a lonely grave.
The irony was that Sam didn’t drink that much or smoke.
Probably because he spent all of med school working in a bar and his mother smoked like a chimney, so those vices were definitely ruined.
He preferred ignoring all his problems until a cancerous tumor appeared in his body, and then maybe he’d deal with it by getting it surgically removed.
Sam glanced up at the evening patient board that was shifting into the day-shift one. The hustle and bustle of the ED calmed his frayed nerves. He liked the storm of the weekend shift. It was usually busier, messier, and more interesting in his opinion.
His Papi used to say, “It’s in the Samuels blood to be adrenaline junkies. If we aren’t pursuing the thrill of the chase, we’re boring men.”
Grief twisted in his gut.
I miss you, you cranky old bastard.
“Hey!” someone shouted from the lobby.
Mendez, the ED’s security guard, appeared at the doorway, blocking whoever was trying to come back.
“Hey! Sammy! You in there?”
Sam's heart stuttered to an unexpected halt.
He recognized that voice—that stupidly sexy Boston accent.
No. Fucking. Way.
The hospital door was shoved open, and a broad-shouldered, thick Irish-Italian man with jet-black hair and stubbled whiskers on his cheeks strode through the doors and back into Sam’s life. Just like that.
No…
Mendez was hot on his heels, trying to stop him.
Frankie, Sam’s former best friend, with his ridiculously handsome face and very punchable Italian nose, was grinning like a buffoon and striding through the ED like he owned the place. Sam had the inexplicable urge to hit something.
Mendez jumped in front of Frankie now, and Sam sighed, watching Frankie duck and slide past smoothly, maintaining his smile and completely undaunted. Mendez spun, looking thoroughly agitated. Yeah, his former best friend had that effect on people.
“Frankie…” Sam growled irritably under his breath.
Frankie wore a black T-shirt and a collared blue-and-black plaid overshirt, with the sleeves pushed up over his thick forearms, revealing his tattoos.
His dark jeans looked new, and the fancy black-and-white sneakers certainly were, with how bright they were.
His shoulders were rolled back, spine straightened, and he walked without the slightest indication that he had a bum knee.
Sam couldn’t help but sweep his gaze up and down Frankie’s body and inwardly sigh. It had been eight months. Eight months since he’d seen this man, and he still fucking ached at the sight of him.
Damn it.
Frankie was broad where Sam was tall, and he was thicker, too, which Sam knew was all carefully curated muscle that Frankie had developed over years of training as a mixed martial arts fighter, even going pro a few years back, until a fight shattered his knee and his dreams.
And to his utmost irritation, Frankie Casavani looked good.
Too good.
Fuck.
Eight months wasn’t long enough. Maybe a couple of years between them would have been better, Sam thought grimly, scrubbing a weary hand over his face.
When their eyes finally met and held, Frankie’s face split into that slow grin that always sent heat ricocheting down his back like a bullet.
“Sir!” Mendez shouted briskly. “You can’t be back here.”
“Hey, man, I’m just here visitn’ a friend. Isn’t that right, Sammy?” Frankie shouted, forcing Sam to fucking acknowledge him.
Goddammit, son-of-a-bitch.
Sam maneuvered around the workstation and stopped abruptly at the pool of mop water and…
“Frankie—stop!” Sam held out his hand and watched in horror as Frankie’s expensive sneakers slipped out from beneath him, his feet flew into the air, and he crashed backward onto the floor, smacking the back of his head on the wet tile.
“Shit!” Sam muttered, racing over to Frankie’s side, getting down onto his knee and seeing the blood pool beneath his head. “I need a gurney, now!”
Frankie blinked, disoriented, cringing and reaching for the back of his head. Black thick hair mixed with blood on the white tile floor.
“Frankie,” Sam said in his calm, reassuring tone. “You fell and hit the back of your head. We’re gonna lift you onto a gurney and check for a possible concussion and look at the injury.”
“I—what?”
“You slipped like a fuckin’ cartoon character, Frankie.”
Frankie’s eyes opened, seeking him, and when their eyes met, he visibly relaxed, that slow grin of his coming back despite the clear pain he was in. “Eh, there you are…”
Sam’s throat tightened. “You hit your head pretty hard, man.”
Frankie reached for him, grabbing him by the face with his large pawlike hand and patting him affectionately. He was always so damned touchy.
It took everything in Sam not to react to Frankie’s casual, affectionate display, and he grabbed his hand, placing it on his chest as the gurney appeared and he, Mendez, and another nurse lifted Frankie onto it.
“Room 4 is open,” Nicole, the night nurse, said from behind him, and he nodded.
“Can you get this cleaned up? And tell whoever did this that I wanna see them later,” Sam said in a clipped tone as he wheeled Frankie into the open room.
“When’d you grow a stash, man?” Frankie asked, reaching for him again to touch his mustache. “Jesus, when did you get old? You have more gray in that thing than Nona did.”
Sam couldn’t help but smirk. Frankie always liked to wind him up and spin him out. Nona was Frankie’s gray pittie that liked getting into as much trouble as Frankie did.
He pushed the gurney into the room, giving the nurse and student doctors instructions on the tests he wanted to run and then paused, glancing back at Frankie, suddenly distracted. “What do you mean Nona did?”
“Is the room supposed to be spinnin’?” Frankie asked, ignoring his question.
“Yeah,” Sam replied coolly, snapping on his gloves. “This is our carnival room. We also have a room where the walls talk. But it’s padded.”
Frankie snorted a laugh and cringed, “Fuck, Sammy, I missed you.”
Sam hesitated, stomach swooping as he maneuvered to the side of the bed. “Sit up.”
“Oh, doctor-serious now.”
Sam brushed his fingers through Frankie’s hair, finding the wound and checking it. “One of us has to be,” he murmured, “Doesn’t look too deep. Superficial at best. We should check for a concussion, though.”
Frankie sighed, “My favorite word.”
Concussion.
“You’re probably fine, Frank. Nothin’ to worry about.”
Frankie’s silence, however brief, told Sam everything he needed to know. He sighed, placing gauze over the wound. “How’s the pain?”
“I’m fine. Nothin’ I can’t handle.”
“I can get you some Tylenol.”
“Nah.”
“What about your…?” He glanced down at Frankie’s knee and asked without words. Frankie’s lips flattened, nostrils flaring, and he gave a firm shake of his head, indicating that his knee was fine.