Apparently a man of his word, Sam actually did call Nick a few times after leaving. Though it wasn't always just to say hi. The phone calls were sporadic and varied wildly from simple 'hellos' with seeming no other purpose other than to hear each other's voices, to needing medical advice, to intoxicated, to worse.

The first one came a week or so after he'd left. Still summer, still fucking early in the morning. It was almost like Sam didn't understand that Nick was not even remotely human until at least 10am.

Half asleep, he answered his phone, worried that it might be work or some kind of real emergency. Nick bleary pressed his phone to his year, clearing his throat in an effort to find his voice.

"Yeah?"

"Hey," Sam had to be smiling on the other side of the phone line. It was impossible to not hear the happy in his tone. "Did I wake you?"

Nick opened an eye, squinting at the bedside clock. "No. It's only five in the morning. Why would I be asleep?"

"Sorry, man."

"If this is just a social call, I swear I will find a way to reach through the phone and slap you."

Sam chuckled and the rolling kind of sound did something funny to Nick, dragging him a bit closer to being awake.

"What should I do if I'm cold?" Sam seemed to be doing a bit of stretching to find a valid reason to be calling at such an ungodly hour.

"Put on a damn jacket. You're going to have to do better than that or I'm hanging up."

"It's snowing. Really snowing. What do I do so I don't catch hypothermia."

"It's snowing in Oregon?"

"No. We're outside of Juno-"

"As in Juno, Alaska?" Nick ran a hand over his face. "You're in Alaska now?"

"Yeah, well. We took care of the windigo in Olympic Park, then caught wind of something further north and just kept going."

Hanging up was still an option.

A very real and pleasant sounding option.

Nick rolled onto his side and just sort of balanced his phone against his cheek so he could tuck his arms comfortably against his stomach, settling back in. "So, it wasn't a bear then? … you mind telling me just what the hell a windigo is?"

"A human turned cannibal who gets stronger each time they feed. We think that one had been holed up in the woods since back in the 1700s."

"Right." Nick yawned. "That's enough crazy for one day. Thanks though. If you still haven't put that jacket on, go for it. Should warm you right up. Goodnight."

"It's ten below outside."

"And are you outside?"

"No… we're in a ranger cabin. Like… cabin, cabin. One room, made of logs."

"Neat. Start a fire if there's a hearth. Put on a damn jacket. Don't drink alcohol like they do in old movies. It just thins your blood and makes you colder." He rambled off some basics, his head feeling muddled with the want to be back asleep. "Bundle up if you can. Wait for daylight and things to warm up, and then get the hell out of Alaska. Go somewhere warmer. May I suggest Mexico"

"Expert doctorly advice there?"

"Look, big boy, you don't need me to tell you how to be warm. I'm going back to sleep."

"Dean's doing better," Sam interjected before Nick could hang up. "We took the stitches out a few days ago."

"How bad is the scar looking?"

"He's got worse."

Which did not tell Nick much. "Can he move his shoulder though?"

"It looks a bit stiff when he moves it around- but he says it's fine."

Apparently the stubborn pain ignoring stupidity was a family trait. "Good… good. If that's all you've got, I really do need to go back to sleep."

"Yeah. Thanks, Nick."

"If you call me again before normal business hours, and someone isn't bleeding or on fire, I will hang up on you. Got it?"

"Yes, sir."

Nick felt an unwilling grin take over and he had to fight to keep it out of his voice. "Don't 'yes sir' me. You ass."

Sam chuckled again- which did nothing at all to help the situation.

Not at all in the mood to get all flustered by those deep, manly sound, Nick simply hung up. His phone got tossed onto the bedside table and he was comfortably back asleep in less than a minute. It was a good sleep. A restful, content sort of sleep, knowing that somewhere on the other side of the united states he hadn't completely botched up someone's shoulder.

.:.

The second phone call Nick missed altogether. It had been over a month, and he had almost completely put those Winchester boys out of his mind- up until he was coming off a shift, exhausted and sliding into his car. He had stopped smoking quite some time back, but the habit of sitting in his car after work, just having a quiet few moments to himself was still very much a needed routeen. Only now instead of smoking he would check his phone. Mindlessly poking at the internet and taking in absolutely no information. Only tonight there were missed calls on his phone. Many, many missed calls and one new message.

Reluctantly, Nick hit play and sort of braced himself for whatever emergency this was.

"Pick up your damn phone." It was definitely not Sam, but Dean's recorded voice on the line. And that was oddly unsettling in its own right. "No one's dying here, but we could sure use your help, doc."

What choice did Nick really have but to call back?

"God. Fucking took you long enough." Despite that it was Sam's phone, it was definitely still Dean talking. "You don't check your phone?"

"Not when I'm at work. No." And instantly Nick shifted from worried to annoyed. "I'm in an Emergency Room, I can't just take social calls."

"This isn't a social call. Sam's hurt."

Hurt bad enough that he wasn't the one calling Nick.

It was enough of a threat to subdue Nick's general spineyness and bring him back around to worry. "What happened this time?"

"There's a hole in his hand."

That stopped Nick and he just took a second to stare blankly at his car's windshield. "... what do you mean 'a hole'?"

"I mean I can see daylight through his hand. A hole. A fucking hole."

Nick did not think that now was the right sort of time to bring up that it was the middle of the night, and thus not possible for there to be daylight shining through anyone. Inconsistencies aside- this was not a good diagnosis. "I'm going to start with saying take him to a hospital."

"We're in the middle of Wyoming. There's not a fucking hospital anywhere around here."

"Is he bleeding?"

"No…" There were some shuffling sounds and muffled talking way out in Wyoming. "It's not bleeding anymore. I wrapped it up as tight as I could."

"Can I talk to him?" He'd prefer to speak to the patient directly. Nick didn't like playing telephone… especially over the telephone.

"You don't want to talk to him right now, man." Dean sighed. "He's high as a fucking kite. Just tell me what I need to do."

Nick frowned a deep frown out at the night sky. He could ask why Sam was high. That seemed like it might be a good question. But it also might not be an important question to the current situation, so he let it go for the moment.

"Well… can he move his fingers?"

"Yeah. We checked that out when he first got stabbed. Everything still moves- there's just still a fucking hole through his hand."

"Ok." Nick had just spent twelve hours dealing with similar (though not quite exciting) drama here at work. His brain power and will to help were wearing thin. "Well, if he can move his fingers still then the bones and tendons are fine. It's got to be a small hole. Clean it. Iodine if you have it. Otherwise rubbing alcohol, peroxide, whatever disinfectant you have if you have. Keep it clean. Keep it dry. And get him to a hospital where they can put some stitches in him."

Dean paused, absorbing the short list of directions. "Can I stitch it up for him instead?"

Nick sighed. Sighed harder than he possibly ever had before. "I don't know. Can you?"

Grumbling came over his phone. "I can. I'm asking how serious this is."

"I can't see it, and apparently I can't talk to him. So use your best judgement. But I'm telling you, as a doctor, I'm pretty much always going to recommend taking stabbing victims to the hospital."

"We're about three hours from the nearest hospital." It was Dean's turn to sigh. "I'll take him in."

Which was good to hear. Honestly, the idea that they might not go to a hospital sort of terrified Nick. It was a nice sort of comfort knowing that someone slightly more professional and qualified than Dean was going to be seeing to the damage of the day.

.:.

Call number three came about twelve hours later. Comfortably around noon, once Nick was well rested and had had coffee.

It was Sam this time. Sounding so very tired, but oddly happy. "Hey," Came his instant greeting as soon as Nick accepted the call.

"Heya, big boy. You didn't die."

Sam laughed softly in that open, easy was of his. "I did not. And they didn't have to cut my hand off or anything."

That feeling of hope from last night came back. "He got you to the hospital then?"

"Yeah. We're still here. Dean went to go find lunch. The nurses have me stuck in bed for the rest of the day."

"... for getting stabbed in the hand?" That seemed a little overly dramatic.

"And the broken ribs, and mild concussion, some internal bleeding." Sam sounded only slightly guilty over his list of injuries.

It was more than Nick needed to know, and it only added to the worry that he'd been feeling since last night's phone conversation. "You boys aren't exactly staying out of trouble, are you?"

"Well, you know how it is. There were some witches, and then some really exciting animated rose bushes with thorns like you wouldn't believe... just normal middle of the week kind of stuff for us. Really boring actually."

"The crazy thing isn't nearly as cute as you think it is."

"You know it is."

Nick had very mixed feelings about that.

.:.

The next call was another late night one. Another call that Nick would have missed if he'd been at work. Only he had a few days off due to it being the Thanksgiving weekend and him having been somehow talked into going to stay a few of those days with his brother, and his brother's off and on again girlfriend, and their small dog.

Nick had the couch all to himself. Comfortably stretched out, comfortably under a blanket, and actually just getting to relax and read a book for probably the first time since last Thanksgiving when he'd summoned up enough brotherly love to come out to his madhouse.

Gabe was in bed, as was the neurotic girlfriend.

It was just Nick and the overweight dog out here on the couch.

So peaceful it was almost too easy to forget that he was actually at his brother's house- which was not a place that he liked to be if he could help it.

He almost didn't answer his phone when it rang.

Seeing as it was Sam… not answering was probably a good idea.

And yet, Nick still set his book aside and sat up, bracing himself before hitting that little green button and saying "hello?"

"Hey, doc."

In his life, Nick had come across more than his fair share of drunk people. He recognised the slight slurring instantly. And honestly had no idea why this call was happening, or just what the hell he was supposed to do about it.

"Everything ok out there?" Take it nice and slow and careful seemed like the best bet.

"Hmm, nothing broken or bleeding this time."

"That's… good." Nick drew his knees to his chest and rest his chin against them. Getting comfortable. "It's been a few months."

"I missed you talking."

Which was enough to get Nick to smile. "You're drunk."

"That too." Sam laughed. "I'm at my uncle's for the holiday. We had a few drinks before bed."

"And you thought you'd drunk dial a doctor in Texas just to sort of level off your night?"

Something that sounded oddly like a stack of books falling to the floor came over the line, followed by Sam's quietly swearing and then whispering into the phone, "I'm not that drunk."

Oh boy

"Not that drunk- but you missed me?" Nick couldn't help himself. It was awkward, but sort of funny in a uniquely horrible kind of way.

"You're a good man."

Nick snorted a little laugh, mindful to keep his voice down because the last thing that he needed now was to accidentally wake his brother and have to explain who he was talking to in the middle of the night. "How much did you have to drink, big boy?"

"...just a little."

"You don't sound just a little drunk."

"I would have needed to have a hell of a lot more to drink to be really drunk." Sam explained in the kind of way that no sober person ever would. "I have a very high constitution."

" 'm sure you do," he eased. Enjoying this stupid conversation in exactly the way that he knew that he shouldn't. It had everything to do with the fact that he also missed hearing this man's voice- but he absolutely refused to entertain such a notion. It would never lead him anywhere good. "How's your hand doing?"

"My hand?"

"The one that apparently had a giant gaping hole in it a few months ago."

"Oh," Sam laughed. "Dean made a big deal about it, but it really wasn't that bad. I'll show you the scar next time I see you."

It shouldn't have made Nick as happy as it did that there was a next time already lined up. Even if the date was not yet set.

"So you're doing ok?"

"Aww, Nick. Are you worried about me?"

Nick grinned into his knees, glad that Sam couldn't see him because it meant that he didn't have to watch himself so much. "Why would I be worried about the man who is constantly getting shot and stabbed?"

"I'm careful."

"If that's you being careful then I'm definitely worried about you."

Unfortunately, worry alone was not enough to keep this half of a friend anywhere close to safe.

.:.

They spoke every midnight that week. Quietly whispered conversations over the phone while their brothers were asleep in other rooms. It was a communal lul in both of their hectic lives and Nick looked forward to each call, watching his phone late at night and just waiting for it to light up with Sam's stupid name. He felt every inch like a teenaged girl waiting for her crush to call- which was far too accurate of an analogy that it hurt. And he did his best to ignore that buoyantly happy feeling, or at least not let it take over too much of his life, because he knew how this would end.

A week in the phone calls stopped.

Nick had gone back to work and Sam had gone back to whatever the hell it was that he was doing with his life that Nick didn't want the details of.

Half a year later and Nick was assuming that the other man was either in jail or dead. Granted there had been a whole year between the first time he saw him and the second. But when Sam came into his life rather violently and left the same way, Nick hadn't really been expecting to ever see him again. This time was supposed to be different. This time whatever unstable grounds of friendship that been laid between them made it all feel like things should be different.

Though Nick sort of hated hoping that Sam, with his easy smile and welcoming laugh, had been incarcerated… it was better than the alternative.

Spring got there before Sam did. Green things blooming and the sun bearing down in ways that promised a hell of a summer in a few weeks. There was honestly too much to do at work to worry about misplaced friends.

Nick was still in the ER, so he wasn't typically the person who got to sign the paperwork when paramedics brought in people who'd past the point of medical help. Those went straight downstairs to the morgue. Nothing out of the ordinary there. On an average day, unless something particularly exciting had happened to the corpse before it came in, Nick had no concept of how many dead people were checked in to the hospital.

And in hospitals you don't want terribly exciting. A good span of boring cases were sort of what you prayed for, if you were the praying sort.

Things had gotten exciting though.

One of the coroners, Jessie, was an old highschool friend of Nick (problems of coming from a remote part of Texas and never really leaving) had been telling stories to him during their smoke break.

"I tell you what, somethin's wrong out here." She was puffing grey clouds up into the dusky colored sky. "We even had a state trooper coming in and talkin' to us today."

Nick was chewing gum, quietly popping it and frowning, because he'd been hearing rumors. They didn't usually get state police into their little town. "Yeah?"

"Last body came in from the state park. You should have seen it, Nick. He was a mess."

"I'm kind of glad that I didn't." Oddly, Nick didn't have much of a stomach for gore.

"Throat torn open." Jessie made a face. "Trooper had the balls to ask me if it could have been a coyote."

"Could it have been?"

She leveled him with a long look. Her grey eyes flat, "wasn't a fucking coyote."

He took her word for it.

Later that night, right about that time that he should have been finishing his paperwork and clocking out, when everything should have been easy and finite, a mess came in the doors.

Paramedics were just barely keeping her together. Young gal, couldn't have been more than thirteen. Mess of dark hair and skin grey from blood loss. Her throat was torn open like you'd see from a wild animal attack and though her eyes were red rimmed and wild with pain and fear she'd obviously slipped into some kind of shock.

Not particularly surprising.

The on call surgeon had made quick work of the nicked artery in her throat and about an hour later she was comfortably sedated, relatively cleaned, under a trauma blanket and half way through a blood transfusion. She had no ID on her, and apparently the paramedics had picked her up because she'd been wandering down the middle of the street a few blocks away, screaming her head off.

Where as Nick really wanted to go home (quite some time ago actually) he found it hard to leave.

One of the relief nurses, who'd shown up around the time of their little Jane Doe, gently took him by the elbow and started to lead him towards the locker room.

"You should have gone home almost two hours ago, Nick. You look dead on your feet."

"No, I was off at midnight," he shook off his kind of stunned, numb feeling, looking up at one of the wall clocks. "Oh…" he'd lost a bit of time it seemed. "Yeah. Can you text me when we find her parents?"

They weren't friends or anything. But everyone here had everyone else's number just in case.

"You were the On Call when she came in. I'm sure the police will be calling you before any of us can."

"The police?" Nick hesitated in the doorway to the back room, turning to frown at her.

"Yeah. They just got in and are waiting to get the ok to go in an talk to her. They think whatever happened to her might have something to do with those bodies that have been turning up all month."

He'd been a little too caught up in the whole happening to really think beyond the what next factor. To him it honestly looked every inch like a horrifying dog bite. The skin all torn. Ragged teeth marks. The only thing that hadn't fit what he'd come to expect from an animal attack were the dark purple bruises around her wrists and the seemingly lack of any other injuries...

If this girl had anything to do with the four other bodies that had come in with open throats over the last few weeks, Nick could fully understand why the police might have a few questions.

"Should I stick around?"

"Nah. Go home. You look dead on your feet. We'll tell 'em where to find you if they have any questions."

It sounded like a good plan to him. The tired from the day had sort of started to take over and it was never a good sign when he'd been standing in one place staring at a wall long enough that the nurses had to remind him to go home.

He slept like the dead the night. Heavy enough that he missed three phone calls, all of which were more baffling than the next when he finally woke up in the early afternoon.

The first one went along the lines of, "Hello, Nick Shurley. This is officer Bennett down at the S.A.P.D. Can you come by the station this morning at your earliest convenience? We have a few questions about a Jane Doe that came through the ER when you were on shift last night."

Which wasn't too unexpected, though there was a bit of odd urgency in the officer's tone.

Call number two started with such a painfully familiar voice that it physically hurt something deep down in his chest.

"Hey, Nick. It's me… I'm in your part of the world again… figured I should actually give you a call before showing up for once." Sam sort of trailed off. And that was it. The call died. Leaving Nick to look shiftily around the room, wondering if the call had been a warning or a question-

but then the third call started playing and overrode his mild concern with something much stronger.

"Nick, it's Jessie. The hell happened here last night? People are saying a kid came in with her throat torn out during your shift. Apparently she broke a cop's arm and ran out of the building. I've been here for a few hours, and the medics just brought her back in, straight to my office, in a body bag. Someone cut her damn head off. Shit's really hit the fan. We've got troopers all over the damn place. Kyle's out for spring break with his kids in Florida or something and I could really… just… Nick, I know it's not your department and it's your day off. But we were lab partners, for Christ's sake. I pulled that frog's stomach out when you got all woozy and you owe me." She audibly swallowed. "The kid's the same age as my little girl and I need a bit of help getting the paperwork together for the troopers."

Even if her assistant Kyle hadn't been out of town, or if they hadn't been lab partners their senior year in high school, and even if Jessie's daughter didn't call him uncle, Nick would have gone in.

The whole thing was too weird to say no to.

Weird enough to put Sam's call on the back burner without much of a second thought.

It made running into the other man later that day… awkward.

Awkward and just confusing.