Epilogue: Part One

Epilogue: Part One

Five Years Later

“Gloria!” the Chief Resident called from down the hall.

Gloria stopped massaging her neck, put the chart she’d been reading down on the counter of the nurses' station, and gave Melody a look of irritation. Melody smiled into her Cup Noodles and kicked back in her chair, shrinking her shoulders slightly as if she were hiding.

“Gloria!” Jamie called again.

“Yep?” Gloria answered, leaning back so she could look down the hall, and Jamie could spot her.

“Ah, there you are,” Jamie said, her eyes scanning a chart for a new patient. “Bed Seven.”

“Jamie, I’m supposed to leave in half an hour. I have a thing? Something I put in for months ago?”

Jamie stopped her pacing and glared up at her. “You had a thing last night, too,” Jamie observed.

“Yes, one I also asked off for. I came in straight after and now, twelve hours later, I have another thing, so could you give it to someone else? Melody, perhaps?” Gloria asked, smirking down at Melody, whose mouth dropped open in shocked betrayal.

“You’ll take it,” Jamie argued. “You still have half an hour.”

Gloria bit her tongue as she took the chart and scanned through it. Dammit. Stab wound. That would mean police, reports, follow-ups, possibly court. She dropped her head forward and pulled her phone out as she walked toward the room.

Gloria: Going to be late. Might want to head over without me.

She pulled back the curtain concealing ‘Bed Seven’ and walked to the table on the side, without looking at the patient. Normally, she had great bedside manner, but after twelve hours on her feet following a six-hour event in heels, she’d met her limit.

“Hello, Mr… Enurvej, my name is Gloria Donati, I’ll be doing your initial assessment.”

“It’s actually pronounced En-yur-vaj,” he corrected helpfully.

Gloria stopped prepping and let her head fall back. She turned around and clicked her tongue as Frankie sat on the edge of the bed, kicking his legs like a toddler waiting for his lollipop.

“Richard Enurvej… Get it?”

“What on earth are you doing here?” she asked, walking up to him.

“No hello kiss?”

“Sorry, Sir, I’m married,” she answered with a look of pity.

“Lucky guy,” he told her, grabbing hold of her waist and pulling her between his legs. She placed her hands on his chest as he reeled her in the rest of the way to kiss her softly. “Long shift?”

She sighed and ran her hands up to his shoulders. “Neverending, it seems.” She patted his shoulders. She placed her hands on her hips and ran her eyes over his body. “Now, come on, are you actually stabbed or…” Gloria gasped as he lifted the right side of his shirt. “Dammit, Frank, you don’t have to stab yourself anymore to get my attention,” she griped.

He scoffed, which made his right eye wince. “It would appear I do. I only got you for a few hours at the Royale last night before dropping you off here. We didn’t even have time for ‘sex,’” he said, though he mouthed the last word.

She leveled him with a look of dubious irritation. “Frankie Donati, do not tell me you stabbed yourself so you had an excuse to come in here,” she said.

He smirked, the deadly sort that told her immediately he hadn’t, but she’d just given him a great idea for the future. “Come on, Vixen, you know I only stab myself on the left side.”

She clicked her tongue again and grabbed some gloves. “So, what happened then?”

Frankie hissed through his teeth as she dabbed the wound with antiseptic. “That guy who lost out on the Esposito daughter got a bit rowdy.”

“Twelve hours after the event?” she asked, with a raised brow as she prepped the sutures.

“Do you have a medical license that allows you to suture a wound in this hospital, Nurse Gloria?” Frankie asked with a smirk.

“You know I don’t until I finish my MD, but luckily for my coworkers, I get a special pass on my idiotic mafioso family members. Now don’t change the subject, or I’ll withhold the good meds. The stuff that keeps you up and buzzing all night.”

“Ohh, you know the way to my heart,” he teased.

“No, I know the way to your brain,” she taunted, her eyes flicking down to his crotch.

“Nurse, don’t make me report you for sexual harassment.”

“Hold still and tell me what happened,” she ordered with a roll of her eyes.

The wound wasn’t deep, so she’d be able to suture it within minutes.

“You know how the losers at the Royale are sometimes invited down to the club?” Frankie asked, not flinching in any way, not that he ever did, as she dug the needle into his flesh.

“Is that why you always go?” she asked with a smile.

He squinted his eyes. “You’re funny.”

“So you got in the ring?” she pressed.

“Nope.”

She tilted her head and stared him down. Frankie raised his hands in self-defense.

“I swear,” he promised, crossing his heart for effect. “Colin got in the ring.”

“The guy who lost the Esposito girl,” she reasoned.

“Yeah, he got in the ring and lost. I guess losing twice was too much to take. Started throwing punches at patrons who won money off him. I had to get involved and, for some reason,” he said with a pointed look. “He was under the impression that my wife was responsible for him losing out on the girl.”

Gloria clipped the last stitch. “Hm.”

“Hm?”

Gloria shrugged. “Hm.” She turned around to put up her supplies.

“Vixen…”

Gloria sighed, braced her hands on the table, and took a breath before she faced him again. She crossed her arms. “He’s a psychopath… The girl had bruises, Frank. All over her. Evidence of broken bones and scars along the back of her legs. He was not a fit choice to be her ‘guardian.’ Gen made me the lead counselor and medical associate to determine the health and mental well-being of the girls, and that’s exactly what I did. You got a problem with that, take it up with her.”

Frankie raised a brow ever higher. “Well, that’s good then.”

“Good?”

Frankie hopped down from the table, caught her by the hem of her scrubs top, and pulled her sharply against his chest. “I feel a bit better about killing him.”

“You killed him?” she asked.

“He stabbed me!” he shouted.

“Shhhh…” she said, covering his mouth as she laughed.

He took her hand away. “And disrespected my wife. So yeah, I killed him. Now, about those drugs.” He raised his eyebrows twice.

“Have you earned them?” she asked, running her hands up his bare chest and over the scarred flesh he’d rebranded with her name two years earlier.

“How much longer you got on your shift?” he asked.

She looked at the watch on her left hand. “Five minutes.”

“So we can’t leave this area. No on-call room this time,” Frankie pondered.

Gloria squeaked as he lifted her up. She instinctively wrapped her legs around his waist while trying to avoid the fresh stab wound in his abdomen. Frankie turned around and lay her back on the bed.

“We can’t do it in here again,” Gloria whispered as Frankie was already pulling her pants down to her ankles.

“Just don’t make as much noise as you did last time,” he said with a chuckle. “I didn’t get you last night. Accardi’s forbidden it in his house after the last time he found us. I am not waiting another four or five hours, Vixen.”

He pulled her thong down to join her pants and unbuttoned his jeans. He lifted her feet to his left shoulder and pressed inside her. Gloria moaned and threw her head back as he let out a long exhale. His fingers dug into her calves as he rocked into her. Gloria gripped the mattress, trying to keep the bed from making too much noise. Anyone could open those curtains at any moment. Jamie, the on-call doctor, another patient. It had certainly happened before. If Accardi didn’t donate enough money each year to have bought the hospital five times over, she would have been fired years ago, but they knew, and more importantly, Frankie knew, there was nothing they could do about it.

Gloria started to gasp with each thrust deep inside her. The combination of her exhaustion, being off her feet, and having pleasure rack up her spine was almost too much to take. Frankie smiled and brought a finger to his lips, reminding her to keep quiet, though the light in his black eyes shone brighter each time a sound would escape her desperate lips. Gloria covered her mouth as she neared her climax. Frankie dropped one hand and ran a finger through her folds to her clit, making her jerk and the bed to squeak. A few practiced circles of his fingers, and she was seeing stars. A large hand covered her mouth before she realized she’d accidentally cried out. Frankie groaned, his hips striking against hers twice more in long fluid strokes as he came inside her while pressing his body and her legs down on top of her.

Frankie’s head jerked to the side, and he pulled back abruptly. Gloria didn’t have to be told what was going on. She hopped up and yanked her pants to her hips.

“Heyo, Doc,” Frankie said, clearly out of breath. Clearly up to no good.

Gloria turned and smoothed her hair as she faced Jamie. Jamie’s eyes moved slowly between the pair.

“Well, if it isn’t the Donatis. How are you today, Mr. Donati?”

“For the last time, call me Frankie.”

“Hm,” her eyes swiveled to Gloria. “Gloria, how is Mr. Enervaj?”

Frankie choked on a laugh at the name, and Gloria refused to roll her eyes at his childish antics. The man was thirty-seven, for Christ’s sakes.

“He was fine, turns out it was nothing but a scratch. Already discharged. Frankie is just here to pick me up for my thing.”

“Okay,” Jamie says. “How about I see you two out?”

Jamie turned to leave, and Frankie gave Gloria a wide-eyed expression as though he were a teenager just caught smoking a joint in the janitor’s closet. Jamie walked them to the employee locker room, then just happened to be leaving at the same time. Gloria hopped on Frankie’s bike behind him and wrapped her arms about his waist.

The speakers crackled in their helmets as Frankie revved the engine and said, “I’m going to get that bitch fired.” Then louder, “Bye!” He waved at Jamie, who gave a tight smile and a curt wave from the sidewalk.

Gloria laughed as the bike went up on one wheel and he peeled out of the lane reserved for emergency vehicles.