Chapter Text
‘I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings…may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.’ ~ Hippocratic Oath
Richard closed the last chart with a two-ton sigh.
Bustling around his cluttered office, he patted each pocket on the white lab coat—extra pens and a stethoscope in his right, soft shape in his left—
Soft shape?
Richard tapped his pocket again and the shape depressed a little. Something crinkled.
Richard’s face relaxed into an equally soft expression. “Noah. I’d forgotten.”
He removed the item and sure enough—two mini banana muffins were squished into a piece of cling wrap.
His mind drifted to their impromptu visit a few days ago, the rookie marshal forever shy but more confident with Gerard leaning against a G wagon parked on the curb in front of a freshly built bungalow.
“You baked these just for me?” Richard had asked.
“No one else got you a welcome to the neighbourhood gift or even came to visit. It’s practically a crime. Congrats on the new house.”
“And how do you know what my neighbours do?”
Noah had shifted in his high tops. “Oh, well, uh. We check in sometimes, run background checks. You know. For safety reasons.”
Richard and Sam had shared an indulgent look over Noah’s shoulder.
The look wasn’t all that different from ones they traded at diners around town, a new early morning breakfast tradition since Sam started showing up to case revision hearings.
“Glad they declared you innocent, Doc,” Noah had declared. “Always knew something smelled fishy in your case.”
“Always?”
“Since Boss started to suspect, anyway.”
Another indulgent glance at Sam, but this time the deputy had gazed up at clouds as if they were the most interesting thing in the world.
A breeeeep over the intercom jolted Richard back to his office’s sticky air, allayed by October wind through the window.
He shook himself. Two flourished signatures later and he meandered out into the hall.
Free from this never-ending day. Finally.
“Hey, Tori.” Richard waved at a petite student intern writing on a clipboard by the nursing desk. “Long shift for you too?”
Tori jumped. She hugged the clipboard to her scrubs and avoided eye contact.
“Uh, yeah. Guess so. Excuse me.”
Tori shuffled away—more like jogged away. Another nurse at the desk sent Richard a nasty scowl.
Richard’s face fell along with his shoulders.
Tired muscles punished him for the motion. Below Richard’s left shoulder blade, an old ache coiled. He reached across his white coat and rubbed at the spot with his right hand.
The dam jump. If he closed his eyes just right, he could still feel himself hit the water, his own body’s smack crystal clear.
Richard shuddered.
A doctor rounded the corner, and since Richard was a brute for punishment, he tried another wave.
This time Wendall returned it.
“Clockin’ out, Kimble?” Wendall checked his watch. “Only forty minutes over. That’s a new record for you.”
Richard smiled. At least one co-worker made small talk with him, besides Kath. He fell instep beside his younger colleague. “This coming from the guy who volunteered to be on call last weekend.”
“Shoo. It got me away from Mama’s cookout by the time she started askin’ Shirley and me about grandbabies.”
Richard laughed.
It didn’t hurt that Wendall grew up in Mississippi—warm demeanor and all.
BREEEEPPPP.
“Code white to OR, code white—”
Richard’s brow furrowed. “Busy for a Tuesday night.”
“You’re tellin’ me.” Wendall ran a hand through his ginger hair. “Some big scene downtown, near the river. They’re all coming here.”
Right on cue, a swarm of nurses rushed through the OR doors with a gurney. Richard looked around for more patients, but all the fuss concentrated on just one, a team of four alone working on the person while a fifth pushed the gurney.
They parted Richard, Wendall, and external staff to either side with Moses-level efficiency. Stats barked off the linoleum in dizzy echoes.
Richard’s mind translated falling blood pressure numbers—not good. They’re in trouble.
The thin gurney mattress darkened in real time, blood on the pillow and sheets and nurses’ gloves and a curious maroon blouse patterned with dancer silhouettes—
“Wait.” Richard startled and ran after the melee. His heart raced. The very arches of his feet began to sweat. “I know this shirt. I know…”
“We can’t wait,” panted a lanky nurse. He held a saline bag above his head in place of a rack. “She’s crashing. We need blood bags on standby for a transfusion. She won’t make it through surgery without at least a few.”
Cold terror geysered up Richard’s stomach into his gaping mouth. He gripped the gurney railing, just as icy as his denial.
Those corn rows…the rosy cheeks now void of all colour behind an oxygen mask…the neatly trimmed French manicure, unchipped even when hiking over woodland terrain…
The gold badge clipped to her belt. Crimson flecks stained its grooves.
Richard yelped, socked by an invisible fist. A hand clasped his wrist.
“Richard, you recognize her?”
“She just bought this shirt…”
“Richard?”
Richard straightened, still running beside the team. “I’ll take this one.”
“What?” Wendall spluttered. His hand fell away from Richard. “You just got off a twelve-hour rotation and treated two gall bladder patients—”
“I said I’ll take her!” Richard yanked gloves off a box on the wall and snapped them on. He shoved the lanky nurse out of the way for his turn pressing on a bubbling wound in the woman’s stomach. Red bloomed between his fingers, vibrant under fluorescents. “What are we looking at?”
The nurse pushed up his glasses. It left a bloody thumbprint on the lens. “GSW to her lower abdomen.”
“How many?”
“Just one. Not sure what calibre or at what distance yet. It’s still in there. We’ll have to fish it out first.”
“Damage.”
“Nicked her esophageal artery. Barely. If we can tie it up in time…”
“I’m on it. Wendall?” Richard breathed hard, even when the gurney stopped in OR Three beside an operating bed. “Will you assist on this one?”
“Sure, but…Richard. Are you able right now?”
Richard bent over the woman and brushed a stray hair off the clammy cheek, but her eyes never opened.
“Richard?”
“For her? I’ll do whatever it takes. I couldn’t go home now if I wanted.” Richard consulted a large digital clock on the wall. “Give me ten minutes.”
“It’ll take that long to prep her anyway.”
A burst of adrenaline sent Richard’s feet into motion, despite the ache in his chunky sneakers. He bolted out of the operating suite.
Wendall shouted after him, throwing up his hands. “Now where’re you going?”
Richard’s veins buzzed. All the cranky nurses in the world couldn’t stop him now.
He hollered over his shoulder: “To see the family!”
Amid a maelstrom of fellow white-coated worker bees, the eye of the storm groaned. Soft chatter followed each painful sound, like distant rain.
Richard quickened his sprint. He knew those sounds. He had no idea how ingrained they were in his memory until he heard them again.
His ID badge flopped against its clip on his scrub shirt while he ran, and it matched a beached fish flopping in his chest.
“Gerard?” he ventured, breathless.
Another groan.
Finding people might not be Richard’s job, but he’d gotten pretty good at it last year. He tracked the sounds to a row of chairs along the OR lobby wall.
“Sam!”
Gerard didn’t hear him—
A bowed head popped up, fly-away hair and all.
—But Cosmo did.
Richard panted even when he skidded to a halt in front of them. “Nurses just brought her in. I’m lead for this one.”
“You’re operating?” Cosmo’s voice cracked.
“Yeah.” Richard squinted at the shorter man. “Are you guys okay?”
Cosmo sagged against the wall. A shine in his eyes brightened and he wiped a hand down his face, all the way to the collar of his torn denim shirt. “Oh, thank God. I’m so glad it’s you.”
That pulled Richard up short. No one had been this relieved to see him in literal years.
Richard opened his mouth, but a whoosh suddenly darted between he and Cosmo. It ruffled their already crazy hair.
Sam could only walk so far in a seven-foot-wide hallway and spun right back around once he faced the opposite wall. His pacing reached epic speeds to compete with erratic breaths.
Cosmo tapped the deputy’s arm but he barely noticed. By an indent in the black U.S. Marshal range jacket—this wasn’t the first time. Not by a long shot.
Richard stepped in Sam’s path and the man faltered. “You wanna tell me what hap—”
“I can’t lose one of my kids. I can’t.” It was practically a chant. Sam’s eyes travelled everywhere and nowhere, sweat dripping from his temples, dirt and blood all over his clothes. Pupils blown with stress. “I can’t, Richard.”
“Hey.” A glint in Richard’s eye hardened. He snagged Sam’s elbow and dragged him over to the wall. Muddy boots skittered to keep up. “Hey. We’re not losing anyone today. I peeked at Erin’s chart and her stats look favorable for this kind of procedure.”
Richard shoved Sam into a chair for good measure, a manoeuvre he didn’t possess the strength to pull off if Sam had been in his right mind and less like a limp yarn doll, he knew full well.
The marshal landed in a heap. He exhaled through his teeth. “But there’s still a chance she might…?”
Richard swallowed. “Yes.”
Sam leaned forward, head in his hands. He groaned again. “I can’t lose my kids.”
“I have no intention of letting that happen.”
“Don’t make empty promises.”
“Who says I can’t keep it?”
Sam glanced up at Richard for the first time.
With a half smile, Richard lowered into a squat, hands folded. Their toes touched, rugged leather hiking boots and clunky white medical sneakers scuffed from years on hospital floors. The oddest pair, somehow equally footed.
It placed them at eye level.
“Sam. I’m not God and I’m not perfect, no doctor is, but you’re talking to someone who digs around people’s arteries for a living. I’ll suture this one too.”
“Breathe, Sammy,” Cosmo added softly.
Either this advice proved too difficult or Sam didn’t register the words. His chest continued to piston in uneven stutters, curled over himself.
“Sam?” Richard ducked his head. “You got her here in time. This isn’t your fault.”
Sam closed his eyes while his Adam’s apple rode the elevator up and down his throat. It was hard to fathom Deputy Samual Gerard this fraught, even sitting in plain view. Something about it forced Richard to take a few slow breaths of his own.
He nudged Cosmos’ knee with his shoulder, since Sam wasn’t ready to talk. “You guys working a case?”
“Yeah. We cornered the perp on his yacht, but he got the drop on us.” Cosmo’s nostrils flared, ire across his terse face. The role reversal between him and Sam set Richard’s internal metric off balance. “Poole was the only one truly shot. Do you know what she was doing when that scumbag started firing his .44?”
Mentally filing ballistics, Richard shook his head.
Cosmo leaned sideways against the wall by Sam. “She was escorting people on a nearby tourist boat to safety, a mother and her three kids. Can you believe that?”
Renfro’s accent thickened and trailed off. Richard let them stew for a moment, reaching up to check Sam’s pulse at his wrist. Pinball machine fast. No surprise there.
“Where’s the rest of your team?”
“At the crime scene,” said Cosmo. “They’ll be here soon.”
Richard suddenly realized neither man had answered his question. “Was anyone else hurt?”
“I’m fine.”
Richard eyed Cosmo, then Sam. “…Uh-huh.”
“Other than a nasty tussle in some mud and a few grazed civilians? We’re unharmed.” Dark fury in Cosmo’s eyes faded back to the vulnerable glaze. “Really, Kimble.”
These people.
“How many times have I told you at those ridiculous pub crawls you call team lunches and insist on inviting me to—it’s Richard.”
Cosmo grinned, just as small and strung out as his voice. “Richard.”
“You’re wrong.”
The low, dead tone drew their attention.
Richard recentered on the deputy. “How, Sam?”
Sam’s hands quivered on his knees. It juddered up his wrist and into Richard’s palm. “This is my fault. I didn’t see him sneaking around the other side of the boat in time.”
“Sam.” Cosmo pushed off the wall. “By that logic it’s our fault too.”
“You boys haven’t done a thing wrong.”
Cosmo’s eyes sparked again. “Then neither have you. We’re a team. We either win together or face the slaughter together.”
Sam didn’t argue, probably because there wasn’t much point with a dogged Cosmo Renfro. Even Richard knew that and they were just now on a real first-name basis.
Sam changed tac. “What can we do?”
“Do?” Richard sat back on his heels. “Unfortunately, you get the glamorous job of waiting until her surgery finishes. Maybe contact her medical consent just in case.”
“I am her medical consent.”
Richard filed that away too and tried to censor any surprise. It didn’t work, especially under Sam’s trained eye, but the man was gracious enough not to call him out on it. He just nodded.
“So…” Curiosity won over Richard’s caution. “What happened to your guy on the boat?”
Fire smelted the blank horror in Sam’s eyes. He didn’t hesitate: “I shot him. In the lung.”
Richard’s brows hiked high but he couldn’t find it in himself even as a doctor to be upset. It certainly sounded warranted.
He patted Sam’s arm in readiness to stand. Before he could—
Sam cupped a hand over Richard’s.
Richard stilled. The touch carried a weight that wasn’t purely due to the size difference of their fingers. Sam’s calloused skin steadied something trembling in Richard’s gut.
“Richard?”
He met Sam’s eyes properly for the first time, brown on blue, and it zinged behind Richard’s spine just like that day in the tunnel.
Sam inhaled his first full breath since he stepped foot in this hospital. “I woulda asked for you anyway if you hadn’t shown up. I don’t trust her with anybody else.”
Too professional to let himself cry, Richard settled for a huff. His voice still came out thick. “I’ve got her, Sam. I’ve got her. Erin won’t be alone for a second.”
Sam met Cosmo’s eyes and held one of those silent conversations. They felt easier to read each time Richard witnessed one, a slow learning process.
Sam released a helpless sigh. “Something tells me I won’t either.”
Chaos winding up was one beast.
Chaos winding down sent far worse shivers across Sam’s back.
OR quieted once the main shift left for the night and shrunk to a relative skeleton crew. Other civilian shooting injuries from the perp’s wild firing were sent home with their grazes wrapped.
Three hours flew by, a whole lifetime lived in fast forward. Sam’s arms ached from holding a compress to Erin’s stomach until EMS showed up.
Predictably, Biggs arrived first on his own. He brought with him tall cups of fancy hazelnut coffee and a faux sense of normalcy ruined by a closer look at his appearance.
Even in a fresh collared shirt, blood still ringed his fingernails. He’d washed well, and Cosmo didn’t catch it.
But Sam did.
He eyed the man’s hands for another thirty minutes until the lobby door opened and Henry held it for Noah’s gangly profile. Both still wore their muddy clothes. Tear tracks striped the grime on Noah’s face and he’d lost his beloved green ballcap at some point.
Sam grunted a greeting only for Henry to throw him narrowed, ‘heads up’ eyes. The caffeine perked up Sam but not nearly enough to read what the look meant.
He didn’t have to wait long—
“Boss! Is she—are they—do we have time to—”
Cautious Noah Newman tossed reservations to the wind and zipped towards Sam, devolved rambles a direct inheritance of Cosmo’s influence.
Sam hastily pushed his coffee at Biggs so he could stand to meet the young man.
“Woah, woah. Noah, hey. They’ve got her in surgery and Richard says her chances look good.”
“Oh.” Noah pressed the side of his hand to his mouth, hanging there like a dead possum, and a loose chunk of ponytail caught in sweat’s amber along his forehead. “Oh, I thought…wrapping up the scene took so long…”
Ah. To hell with it.
Sam wrapped an arm around Noah’s shoulders in a side hug. It helped him steer the kid towards a chair beside Biggs, who immediately handed him his own coffee. This one looked uncharacteristically decadent—chocolate shavings and caramel drizzle.
Noah’s favourite. Sam could’ve kissed Biggs for the small courtesy.
Noah pressed his hands around the coffee and stared at the floor, relief and residual adrenaline duking in his eyes.
“If anyone can sew her up,” said Biggs. “It’s him.”
Cosmo settled in a row across from them and swung his legs sideways over the arm rest. He toasted that with a raised coffee cup.
Henry eased down beside Cosmo, their size difference laughable and endearing in a way Sam didn’t let himself get sentimental about too often.
Henry stretched out his long legs. “Life’s weird, man.”
“Weird?” asked Biggs. He slid off his new windbreaker and tucked it across Noah’s front.
“It’s just…a year ago, I would have cuffed this guy, you know? Maybe read him the riot act for running. Now he shows up for barbecues and critiques Robert’s golf swing. Now I trust him with Poole, no questions asked.”
A hush fell over the five men. Hairs prickled on Sam’s arms, a counterpoint to the prickle behind his eyes.
Cosmo, uncharacteristically quiet up to this point, contorted himself so his neck was cradled by the back of the chair. “There’s somethin’ poetic about that.”
“Poetic,” Henry mumbled.
“Yeah. We didn’t find him.” Cosmo closed his eyes. “He found us.”
Another still beat.
The men’s faces gentled at a slew of memories—Richard teaching Noah how to sew a cut flap on his leather jacket using suture stitches and Richard straightening Cosmo’s tie for a press conference and Richard bashfully clinking glasses with them at the pub.
We’re not just a team now. No matter how much I sell it as such to the DA.
Sam leaned against the wall by Noah’s chair. “Wrapped up with CPD okay?”
Henry hummed an affirmation. “Chief thinks we won’t face any repercussions for killin’ him, especially since he shot Poole and civilians. Due force.”
“Good.”
Cosmo popped open one eye. “You gonna sit, Sammy?”
“Been sitting too long.” Sam noted fresh bruises on his kids’ faces. He folded his arms. “I’ll keep watch for a bit.”
Testament to his weariness, Cosmo didn’t investigate that. His eyes drooped, though still pinched. Worry thrummed in the relative calm their huddle generated in this lonely corner.
Waiting. The harshest opponent Sam ever faced.
Some of his worst memories happened after waiting.
He mentally rehearsed how he would console this team if Richard walked out with blood on his gloves and finality in his eyes. Even as Cosmo tipped and fell asleep on Henry’s shoulder…even when the windows darkened…even in the midst of Biggs quietly taking the cup from Noah before his lax fingers could drop it, dozing with chin to his chest…
Sam forced himself to prepare for a funeral.
Only he and Biggs stayed awake in the end, once the clock hit midnight.
Sam stared down at his filthy range jacket. Mud and scarlet mixed together into a cold paste.
Should have made you stop and put on that vest, Erin.
Poole’s bloody blouse was replaced with an image of a bloody Richard, dropping a lead pipe on the hotel floor. All to protect Sam, a man who tried to shoot him just days earlier.
Sam’s eyes burned. He shook his head to dispel it.
As if summoned, low steps pad, pad, padded closer.
“Guys? We just finished surgery.”
The men startled.
Cosmo’s feet whipped to the floor, eyes bloodshot and wild. “Whasat…Doc! Hey.”
Sam tore himself from the mental hornet’s nest to see Richard at the head of their loose circle, scrub shirt indeed patched with blood. He still wore a paper cap but no gloves, scrubbed clean, judging by a sudsy strip he missed at his elbow.
His eyes were just as bloodshot, but they crinkled. “You’re all still here.”
“Of course we are,” said Noah, raspy with sleep. He fumbled to remove the jacket until Biggs helped him. “We can’t go home without her.”
Richard turned to Noah with a fond expression. Anyone who looked at the kid like that earned an immediate golden ticket onto Sam’s nice list, not that Richard didn’t already have a permanent spot.
“Richard.” Sam cleared his throat and it steadied. “Just tell us. Don’t sugarcoat it.”
Richard melted even more. “I don’t need to sugarcoat anything. We dug out the bullet and fixed her damaged artery. She’ll be on a liquid diet for quite a while, but she’ll make a full recovery and we—”
With a cry, Noah launched forward and threw his arms around Kimble. The man’s hands froze out to either side, eyes wide.
Then Noah stepped back, leaving a muddy smear, and Cosmo rushed in for a quick hug. Biggs slapped Richard’s back, thumbing away tears.
Henry came last in the procession, tallest of them all.
“Doc.” He stooped and folded Richard into his arms. “You’re a miracle worker.”
For some reason this embrace thawed Richard from the stunned posture. Ginger, tentative, his arms looped around Henry’s back.
He caught Sam’s eye, especially since he had to lift his chin for it to fit on Henry’s shoulder.
Sam’s brows worked. Thank you didn’t even cut it, not that he could force out the words if he wanted to.
No funerals today.
Once Henry had his fill squeezing the life out of Richard and moved back, the doctor blinked fast. He still wouldn’t look away from Sam. “You asked if there was something you could do.”
Sam’s pulse raced. “Name it.”
“Do any of you have a blood type that’s AB positive or O negative?”
Everyone looked at Sam.
Richard spluttered. “You all know each other’s blood type?”
“Are you kidding? At this job?” Cosmo snorted. “You bet we do. Robert and I are A negative, Henry here’s AB positive, kid’s O positive, and Big Dog is O negative.”
Henry nodded in confirmation. “I’ll donate.”
“We both will,” said Sam. “How much does she need?”
Richard sobered. “I won’t lie to you. She made it through surgery, but her blood pressure isn’t recovering well. She’s anemic.”
Sam stood to his full height. “Take as many bags as you need.”
“That’s not really how blood donation works.”
“You sure?”
“Pretty sure.” Richard shook his head with another fond look, this time for Sam. “But first we need some very important prep.”
‘Prep’ turned out to be fresh towels thrown at each member of the team before they were allowed to step foot in ICU. The hospital donated sweats for dirtier members of their team.
Sam stepped out of the bathroom after changing, clothes bagged for IA, only to see Richard bent over Noah.
His whole body stilled.
A cloth was dunked into a tub of warm water before Richard reached down and gently scrubbed Chicago River soil from the rookie’s face and ponytail. He had to stabilize with a hand on Noah’s chin, and Noah just tilted to grant him better access.
Richard spoke in quiet tones to reassure a skittish horse look in the kid’s eyes. It seemed to work—Noah relaxed the longer Richard touched him.
Then the doctor reached into his pocket and removed a piece of cling wrap. Inside were two mini muffins. Noah’s muffins. Noah chuckled with sheepish thanks when Richard pressed them into his hands.
Sam fought to stay upright, his stomach squirmy in all sorts of ways he didn’t have time to examine.
I almost shot this man last year.
And yet Richard still agreed to help Poole. To answer Sam’s late night calls or go to breakfast with him or let the team vent about their latest case.
Regret frothed up from the emotion soup before Sam could stop it.
Because this man had the best timing in the universe, Richard chose that moment to smile up at him. Oh so trusting in a way Sam wasn’t sure he’d earned yet.
That stung his eyes too.
“Much better.” Richard tore his gaze away from Sam to glance at antsy marshals on either side. They surrounded him in a rough clump, watchful. And strangely Richard didn’t seem unnerved by it, despite the shadows they cast over him. “Let’s go.”
Richard pulled the needle from Sam’s arm and a nurse immediately hooked the bag onto Erin’s IV pole. Henry’s bag hung beside it, half empty where it drained into the female marshal’s arm.
Sam leaned forward and stroked Erin’s hand.
Cosmo frowned from his chair on the other side of the bed. “She’s so still.”
“That’s uh. That’s normal.” Richard fought with a roll of medical tape before he finally tore off a strip and pressed it over the cotton ball in the crook of Sam’s elbow. Sam tugged the sweater cuff back down. “She’ll feel weak for a while until her oxygen levels improve.”
A mask over Poole’s mouth fogged and cleared in a steady rhythm. Her dark complexion appeared three shades duller with blood loss, a mound of bandages over the side of her stomach, hidden under several blankets. Warm saline pumped into the back of her other hand.
Sam wondered if she could sense them all in the room.
“The anaesthetic is wearing off, right?” asked Noah.
Richard wiped his forehead with the back of his wrist. He’d changed into fresh scrubs, but sweat already ringed the collar. “It’s a gradual process, waking from unconsciousness. She should open her eyes soon.”
A scarecrow-figured nurse made a note on Erin’s chart. “The transfusion seems to be working, folks. We’ll know more in a few hours.”
Richard thanked him, absent. He too signed off on the chart and his handwriting veered outside the lines.
Sam did a double take. Now that he looked, Richard scrabbled just as much putting the tape away in a nearby drawer as he did unrolling it. His skin competed with the bedsheets.
“Richard, are you…”
The doctor talked over Sam. “I need to file patient notes before the morning shift change. You can visit as long as you like, just make sure to stay quiet while she rests.”
“Thank you, Doc.” Cosmo hugged him again, a quick one that still smacked a dazed expression on Richard’s face. “You don’t know how scared we were.”
“I think I have some idea,” said Richard under his breath. Only Sam caught it.
He started to speak again, but Richard fled out into the hall. How he moved that fast would remain a cosmic mystery. Something told Sam that he’d always been a master at escaping, even before the prison bus crash.
“That guy shot her point blank,” said Henry. He propped an elbow on the mattress. “And yet she made it.”
“Nobody can keep down the best team in the state,” Cosmo gushed.
“We were lucky, is what I’m saying.”
Sam stood and eyed the door. “Luck had nothing to do with it.”
Henry didn’t hear him.
The soft babble masked Sam creeping away. A quick look at Robert confirmed him on watch duty, his attention alternating from Henry’s exhausted profile to the rest of the team.
Sam snuck past the nurse’s station and craned his neck down various hallways. The wing was blessedly hushed at this dawn hour, medical staff unhurried. Erin seemed to be the only critical patient.
Huff, huff, huff.
Sam’s ears pricked. It felt exactly like that day on the marble staircase, how he sifted through random noise to hear the gasped breaths of someone on the run.
These breaths were stationary. Fast.
Sam’s heart thumped in his neck. He inclined his head and there it was—huff, huff, huff, huff—
“Richard?” Two turns later, towards a row of storage closets, the panting worsened. “Richard, it’s just me.”
The huffs paused. This sudden silence alerted Sam more and he finally glimpsed a green scrub shirt around racks of pillows.
Hidden in the corner, Richard leaned against the wall, hazel eyes electric with pupil dilation.
Sam’s feet halted with a squeak. Richard jumped at the sound and Sam immediately raised both hands. “Hey. It’s okay. I just wanted to…”
“You should be sitting down. It helps regulate blood flow. Oh! And juice boxes.” Richard prattled, frantic. “I forgot to give you sugar after the blood donation. That’s procedure.”
“I’m fine, honest. It’s you I’m worried about.”
Richard wiped his clammy brow again. “I just need…uh…a minute…to…to catch my breath.”
Sam gladly gave him that minute, a stalwart presence to block anyone who might wander down this corridor. The way Richard’s expressive face crumpled and smoothed on repeat was too mesmerizing to even think about moving anyway.
It mesmerized Sam the first time too, in the tunnel.
“She saved…” Richard choked out a breath. “Erin saved for weeks to buy that blouse. She told me about it at the Labor Day potluck you hosted. It…it’s her favourite designer.”
Sam blinked. “Richard.”
“I had to cut it off her.”
“Richard, she wouldn’t—”
Hands a blur, Richard clenched them in his pants. “I felt fine…during her surgery. Don’t know why this is…happening now.”
“You sawbones probably have fancier names for it, but a delayed reaction is natural and I don’t blame you one bit.”
The tips of Richard’s ears reddened. “It’s unprofessional, sorry. I’m sorry.”
Sam gazed at Richard, stomach gnawed clean through. “Richard Davis Kimble, your ears working okay?”
Richard jolted. Surprise exposed the whites of his eyes.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” Sam walked right into Richard’s space. With the doctor’s shoulders hunched, he looked down slightly to make eye contact. “Which is good because I’m only gonna say this once—you don’t got a thing to apologize for.”
A sobbed laugh escaped Richard. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment until the gasps calmed. Both hands jittered against his thighs.
“How long have you been awake, Richard?”
“You first,” Richard shot back.
The snark eased tension in Sam’s back. “Good point. We’re a coupla workaholics. I’ve never been more grateful for that.”
Richard nodded, but his nose coloured a little too. Something in his eyes ached, off on another plane of time and space altogether, somewhere that kept his hands twitching.
Sam inhaled a sharp breath. He ran a hand down his mouth.
“Oh, Richard. I never even…this is your first gunshot patient?”
Richard shook his head. “Had a gang member on my table just last week.”
“But this is the first woman.”
The ache shrivelled in Richard’s eyes. He nodded. “The blood, it just…it didn’t stop for so long. Bullet lodged right in her stomach.”
It was impossible to tell if he meant Erin or Helen, and Sam didn’t ask.
Up close, with no other distractions, tiny details stood out better: a five o’clock shadow rapidly growing into day-old scruff, dried tears on Richard’s cheeks, veins protruding under his eyes and neck, kinks in his hair where the paper cap dug in for hours.
More than anything, Sam fixated on Richard’s fingernails. They scratched at the fourth finger on his left hand. A very empty finger.
Sam’s eyes blurred.
If every single choice in his career, his atrocious personal life, every slip of boring paperwork—if all of it led to this moment, Sam wouldn’t change it. For anything.
He’d live the whole circus again just to look this falsely accused man in the eye and have his breath stolen by their helpless sheen.
The lost and the lonely. A destined pair.
“Look,” said Sam. “I don’t know if we’re there yet, but since I missed out earlier…”
He extended his arms.
Richard stared, uncomprehending.
Sam held his breath and risked it. His hands made it to Richard’s shoulders first, then slid behind his back.
One last sob slipped out, right into Sam’s sweater.
Limp with exhaustion, Richard didn’t fight when Sam pulled him against his chest. Though of a much less muscular build, Richard stood the exact same height, the perfect vantage to plop his chin on Sam’s shoulder.
Bony ribs herded against Sam—he wasn’t the only one holding his breath.
Then thin arms reciprocated and wrapped around Sam, fingers digging into thick cotton. Richard’s ribs deflated. Sam used it as an excuse to cinch him tighter and made a mental note to feed the man more.
A taut muscle fluttered to the side of Richard’s spine. Sam thumbed it in slow circles until it unspooled along with Richard’s jaw, a sharp point melting against the side of Sam’s neck.
The embrace should have been awkward—Sam preferred to fake a bout of typhoid than display emotions, let alone in front of a man he had been asked to arrest not even a year ago—but Sam closed his eyes to better focus on wound tendons in Richard’s back and cup the head he had once tried to shoot.
And his very bones lightened for the first time in hours. Maybe even in months.
Nothing ever felt more right.
“Haven’t had a hug since Kath’s last year,” Richard admitted quietly.
“Try two years. Last time I hugged someone was Henry after he announced he and his wife were expecting.”
“Really?”
“Life is weird.”
Richard laughed, winded, a wondrously bizarre thing to feel and hear at the same time. It sent heat across Sam’s shoulder.
“Thank you, Richard. Thank you. Not sure any other surgeon would have done what you did.”
“Sure they could. We have lots of talented doctors on staff.”
Sam swallowed. This man and his blindness to his own big heart…
He smoothed the back of Richard’s hair, loathe to let go.
Likewise, a hand swiped up and down his back, less hesitant than it had with Henry. Those surgical fingers steadied their weight imbalance with a press to knobs in Sam’s spine. “But you’re welcome. What about you? You need any meds for the bruises or low blood sugar?”
An empty house waited for Sam after all this ended, his kids in the hospital room, a mountain of internal affairs statements to give for the perp he killed…
A new friend in his arms, still scarred in such intricate ways—still willing to let a US marshal hold him in a long, swaying hug.
His strange, privileged life.
Sam closed his eyes again, a child at prayer only to discover it had already been answered. “This is all the prescription I need.”
“Think they even realize?” asked Noah.
“Mmm.” Cosmo shrugged at their boss. “Probably not.”
Biggs flicked a queen of spades card onto the pile by Poole’s foot. “Pick up four.”
“You’re cheating.”
“Am not!”
Henry smirked. “He’s not, Renfro.”
“Ugh.” Cosmo picked up his cards to add to a massive stack in his hand. “Vultures, the lot of you.”
“You…losin’ at…Eights again?”
“Erin!” Biggs rushed to his feet and spilled the whole deck. He rubbed Poole’s arm, brighter with renewed blood flow and morning light through the curtains. “Can’t believe you’re awake already.”
“Am I?” Erin croaked. Her native Louisiana drawl lengthened. Henry leaned across and helped her lower the oxygen mask. “Feel dead.”
Noah paled. “Don’t joke about that.”
“You need anything?” asked Henry.
“Just…just gimme a minute.” Poole’s slit eyes took stock of the four men looming over her left side. “What…”
“You were shot,” said Cosmo, to the point. He clutched her hand. “But the mom and her kids are okay.”
The others nodded, aware from their training that this would likely be the last thing Poole remembered and therefore the first thing she’d ask. Sure enough, Erin’s neck relaxed back into the pillow.
“You’ve been here at Chicago Memorial for the last fifteen hours,” Noah added, “in surgery for six of those.”
Erin mouthed ‘Chicago Memorial’ a few times. “Shooter?”
“Sam…put him down.”
“Where is Big Dog?”
The men exchanged wobbly-lipped looks and tried desperately not to laugh. Erin followed their eyes to the right—a head pressed against the mattress, pillowed on folded arms.
“What in the…”
“They crashed about an hour ago. Hard.”
Erin gawked at Richard Kimble, out cold next to her knee.
Not just him. Sam too slept through it all in a chair pulled close beside the doctor, reclining but his arm resting across Richard’s lower back. Their ankles overlapped.
“My surgery?”
Cosmo understood first. “Yep. Doc insisted on performing your operation, even after a full rotation.”
Erin’s weak fingers wandered and landed in Richard’s hair. “I’ll hafta…buy him some flowers.”
“He said sorry about your new blouse, by the way.”
Erin’s lips twitched right before her eyes drifted shut. “Course he’d…remember.”
“We’re really glad you’re okay, Poole.”
“Me too,” she breathed. Henry replaced the oxygen mask. “You’d all be…lost without me.”
“I can’t even argue that,” said Noah.
Neither could the others, who simply gazed at their teammate with sappy looks well after she fell back asleep.
A new nurse filed in and checked monitors. She didn’t give the pack of marshals a second look, and Cosmo wondered what Richard had said to grant them such special treatment. Not once had protocol been suggested, to kick them out.
Cosmo might just buy the good doc some flowers too.
Biggs put both hands on his hips and took in the entire surreal tableau. “My golf swing really did suck before he came along.”
Sam’s fingers flitted against Richard in his sleep. Richard inhaled a deeper breath, his spine inflating into Sam’s palm.
Cosmo smiled faintly. “A lot of things did.”