Heart on the Run (25 page)

Wait, was that a hiccup or a giggle?

Sprocket narrowed his eye and stared at her, trying to figure out what could possibly be funny in this situation. Images of Thom running to him and the junkie…swinging…

“
A giant candy cane…” Sprocket filled in the blank.

Shawna widened her eyes. “You remember that?”

He tried to smile, wasn’t sure how good it turned out, but the fact he wanted to sort of removed a weight from his shoulders. “That might be the one thing about last night that I won’t ever forget. It was last night, right?”

“
Yeah,” Mason answered from his other side. “It’s Saturday. You’re gonna be okay. The doctors are monitoring you right now, something about swelling in your brain. Other than that you’ve got a banged up nose, swollen black eye, concussion, lots of bumps and bruises, and fourteen stitches. The nurse said you’re lucky his switchblade was so small. Missed all your vital organs.”

Sprocket tried to laugh, but this time even he could hear the noise didn’t sound human. “Didn’t look small to me,” he admitted.

“
Thank you, but we’re talking about the knife, now.” Mason winked.

Sprocket closed his eye and shook his head. He was not lucid enough to deal with his best friend.

Chapter Nineteen

He’d always hated the smell of hospitals. Hospitals, in his experience, meant death. One of his earliest memories was of his grandmother’s death in the hospital when he was a small child. Grannie had always smelt like vanilla and spices, like her kitchen. In the hospital, dying of cancer, she’d smelled different. Like medicine and age and other scary things to a five-year-old.

And then there were the anguished memories of arriving at the hospital as a child, his mother at his side, when his father died. They hadn’t even had time to say good-bye then. The heart attack had been massive and fatal. He’d arrived to see a man on a bed who retained the scent of his father, but whose cold flesh had ceased to convey the feeling of his father. It was like looking at a stranger.

And even though he knew—because first Xander then Shawna and even Thom had told him—that Sprocket was all right, Chaz was scared. So scared that the box of pecan pie tarts and pumpkin spice truffles he carried crackled.

“
Excuse me, sir. May I help you?” The speaker was a nurse, a man in outrageous scrubs with neon green frogs eating blue and pink flies, standing patiently beside Chaz, a concerned smile on his face.

“
I—” Chaz stopped trying to speak when a sharp painful and unexpected lump formed in his throat.

“
Take it easy,” the blond man said, putting a hand on Chaz’s shoulder and squeezing lightly. “Are you visiting someone?”

Chaz nodded, swallowing. “Sprocket.”

“
I might have known.” The nurse shook his head, a sunny smile on his lips.

That was good, right? If Sprocket were dying, despite what his bosses and friend had said, then the nurse wouldn’t be smiling. He didn’t recall any smiling faces from his previous hospital visits. “How could you?” he asked.

“
Sprocket gets all the handsome men, even in high school. Everyone’s a sucker for that smile…” The nurse nodded toward an intersection. “Turn left there. He’s in room sixteen. I’d show you the way, but I’m due in pediatrics ten minutes ago.”

“
Thank you.” Chaz clutched his box a little tighter, suddenly nervous about the reception he’d get in that room. “I’m Chaz, by the way.”

“
The sous chef at
Alimentaire
? I’m Dr. Wiggins, Ari to my friends.”

“
How did you know…”

“
Not a lot of Chaz’s in Parkerburg, and you were mentioned by name in that holiday restaurant guide the Gazette put out last month. I’m sure you don’t remember, but my boyfriend and I actually ate at your restaurant on Black Friday.”

“
Oh…” Chaz’s gaze locked onto the corridor. “I…hope you enjoyed it.”

“
We did. Now I have to get going, and it looks like you have a delivery to make.” Dr. Wiggins patted Chaz’s shoulder again and then started down the hall.

“
Doctor?” Chaz called after him.

“
Yes?”

“
Next time you and your boyfriend come to the restaurant, ask for me. We have a VIP diner program rolling out.” And who would make a better VIP than one of the men who had saved Sprocket’s life? Even if he did give some indication of being a past boyfriend.

“
Well, the boyfriend is a thing of the past, but I’ll do that.”

Was that a hint of interest in the blue eyes? “Uh…I’m sorry to hear that.” Now he was blushing. Great.

The doctor shrugged. “Casualty of the job. I work long hours and have a lot of tuition bills to pay off. He wanted more attention and more money.”

“
Isn’t that always the way?” Chaz tried to joke.

The doctor laughed and continued on his way, leaving Chaz standing fifteen feet from an intersection he needed to take and wasn’t sure he wanted to take. “Sprocket’s not like that. He doesn’t care about money.”

And Mason, just like Dr. Wiggins, is a part of his past.

They’re still friends.

Best friends.

Not lovers.

Not anymore.

His feet started moving, without his heart or his brain reaching a conclusion. All he knew, with every part of him from his gut to his toes, was the he wanted…no
had
to see Sprocket, to see with his own eyes that he wasn’t some cold, alien thing on a bed in a well-lit, ill-ventilated room.

He used to hate hospitals. Now he hated time and every minute of the last month that he’d spent away from Sprocket.

Room sixteen had a green chart in a black file box stuck outside the open door, and inside, he could hear beeps and mechanical noises, but no voices. Maybe Sprocket was asleep. Maybe…

His feet carried him over the threshold and into the room while his heart wasted precious time pounding away in an exaggerated rhythm.

“
Chaz?” Mason sounded surprised to see him.

Chaz didn’t care how Mason felt. He was rocked by a wave of emotion…relief and joy and that underlying deep thing he’d been calling love, washed over him, leaving him breathless. Sprocket was on the bed, and the room was quiet because he was sleeping, not because he was dead, and… “He’s okay,” Chaz mumbled, sagging a little.

“
Yeah.” Mason nodded. “The doc said he’d be okay. Chaz—”

“
I don’t want to wake him up, and I have to go to work,” he invented, suddenly overwhelmed by confusion. “I just brought this by, and I wanted to…say…I should have bought a card.”

“
You want I should tell him that you should have bought a card?”

The little joke lightened the mood, and Chaz was grateful to Mason for that. He laughed, but it was a shallow laugh because that painful lump had moved from his throat to his stomach and needed to be heeded. “Tell him I made pecan tarts and pumpkin spice truffles, and he’d better get well soon, because we need to talk.”

Mason’s eyes widened and he reached for the box. “I might have to taste test those. You know…check to make sure they’re not—”

“
Poisoned? I’m not that kind of ex, Mason. But go ahead. I figured you’d be around, so I packed sharing portions.”

“
You’re a good man, Chef. Or do I mean you’re a good chef, man?” Mason opened the box, and Chaz left, feeling somehow better for the quippy exchange.

***

“
Are you sure you’re okay? Do you need me to do anything for you?” Shawna walked into the restroom before he could answer, not that he was going to.

Sprocket always thought he had one of the better bosses around. She never unduly yelled at anyone, write-ups were saved for serious offenses, and she worked around his school schedule. When he was part-time and either needed more pay or to find another job she upped his hours. He was her first choice for the newly created assistant manager position, and he never shirked his responsibilities or gave her pause for her decision. But right now, he wanted to choke her.

He slowly walked across the hospital room to Xander and whispered, “I’m gonna kill her if you don’t get her out of here. Do you know she actually thinks she’s coming home with me…just until I’m settled in, she claims.”

Xander chuckled. “She can be a bit mother hen-ish, can’t she?”

“
I’m serious, Xander, if you cherish our friendship, you’ll—”

“
They have all these individually wrapped soaps in there.” She held up a handful of tiny rectangular bars of soap. “You should take them home with you, Sprocket, just in case you need them.”

“
Xander,” he growled.

Xander pushed off the wall he was leaning on and walked over to his best friend. “Okay, Shawna, time for us to go. Mason’s on his way here, and Sprocket’s waiting for his discharge papers, nothing more we can do for him right now.”

Shawna let Xander take the soaps out of her hand and put them back in the bathroom. “But Sprocket wants me to stay with him for a while, just a couple days or so, to make sure he’s okay.”

Sprocket glared at Xander, ignoring the guy’s shit-eating smile. “I really don’t think that’s necessary, Shawna. Mason’s a live-in nurse…”

“
Got the skirt and stethoscope to prove it.” Mason smiled in the doorway.

“
Mason, tell Shawna I’ll be fine at home under your care.” Sprocket tried to keep the desperation out of his voice, but Mason’s raised eyebrow told him he hadn’t succeeded.

“
Shawna, love, I’m gonna give Sprocks all the TLC he could possibly want, and a little he doesn’t want too.” It was a stand-off, Mason and Shawna staring at each other but neither one moving—namely, Shawna not leaving. “By the way, I passed Craft Time on the way here, why is the store still closed? I thought you were cleared for reopening it today.”

That broke through Shawna’s stubbornness. “That can’t be right. I opened it with Lydia. She said she could hold the fort down until Xander got back there.”

Xander grabbed Shawna’s elbow and led her to the door. “We should head on over and figure out what’s happening. I know you aren’t worried about the store right now, but you have employees that need to work and you need to be able to pay them.”

She grabbed her purse and looked at Sprocket. “You’ll be okay?”

He smiled. She only meant well for him even if she was driving him crazy. “All things considered, yeah…I’ll be fine.”

“
You have my cell phone number if you need me?”

He glanced at Xander before answering. “As long as it hasn’t changed in the past two years, yeah, I’ve got it.”

At least she had the decency to blush before nodding and exiting the room.

“
I’ll check in on you later.” Xander nodded at Sprocket before turning to Mason. “You don’t pass the store from your house to the hospital.”

Even though it wasn’t phrased as a question, Mason answered anyway, “Nope.”

Xander chuckled as he followed the path Shawna took.

“
My god, and you thought you had a high-maintenance bestie.” Mason laughed as he plopped down on the hospital bed. “So, I know you’ve answered this for Shawna probably about a dozen times, but how ya feeling?”

“
I fucking hurt. I’ve got a prescription for painkillers—though the doc said if I can manage on ibuprofen alone to do it—I look like a Mack Truck ran my ass over, I can’t bend at the waist, and damn it, I want to see out of both eyes again.”