Bump in the Night
The door to Matt Casey's apartment was unlocked, and opened up, and Casey more or less hobbled in as Kelly Severide helped him stand upright.
"Easy, easy, we'll get you on the couch and get some ice on it," Severide told him.
Casey grunted. "Ice is exactly how I got into this mess."
Winters in Chicago were generally a little slice of hell. This winter was already off to a particularly bad start and technically it was still fall. Two days ago the city had been awakened early to a raging thunderstorm that sounded like the skies were going to open up and crash down on the entire state of Illinois, within two hours the rain became snow, and in less than four hours it had snowed eight inches. Everybody had to scramble to get their sidewalks and driveways shoveled just to get out of the house, the city's plow trucks went up and down the street repeatedly, then the salt trucks came out and coated the streets. But even all of that hadn't been enough to take care of the icy patch right alongside Casey's pickup by the station house. Just before he reached the driver side door, he felt his foot slide out from under him and the next thing he knew, he'd fallen on the ice and bashed up his knee. Severide had just been about to get in his car when he heard the fall, and ran over to assess the situation of Casey laying in the street with both hands wrapped around his knee, his eyes squeezed shut and a series of pained yelps and moans forcing their way out of his mouth.
"Casey, are you alright?"
Matt opened his eyes and warned Kelly, "Don't come over here, you'll slip."
Severide cautiously made his way over, his feet crunching the ice under him, he got right beside Casey and grabbed him and slowly pulled him to his feet. Casey was breathing hard and leaned against Severide to stand straight.
"What hurts?" Kelly asked him.
His knee was obvious but he'd twisted his ankle on the same leg in the fall and he wasn't able to put full weight on it. Severide helped get Casey leaned against the side of the truck so he could stand up while Kelly put his hands on Casey's knee and felt around it.
"Don't think anything's broken," Kelly told him, "that's something anyway."
Maybe nothing was broken, but Severide knew from the pained grimaces on Casey's face that he would otherwise resist any and all urge to let anyone see, it had to hurt like hell, and he didn't give much for Casey's chances getting up in and down out of the truck.
"Come on, I'll give you a lift home and we'll get your truck later," Kelly told him.
Casey swallowed another moan and shook his head, "You don't have to do that."
"You want me to drive your truck?" Kelly tried again.
Casey managed to straighten his face out long enough to threaten Severide, "You touch my truck and I'll kill you."
"Then we don't have much choice," Kelly told him as he grabbed Casey's arm and draped it over his shoulders to take some weight off of his foot, "come on."
And now here they were back at Casey's apartment. Severide helped Casey walk over towards the couch and sat him down on the end and went to the kitchen to find an icepack.
Casey rolled his head back and groaned as he pulled his boots off one at a time, his ankle was already so swollen he could barely get the boot off. Then he pulled his socks off and saw his ankle was halfway to the size of a grapefruit, he bent down to touch it and when he did, he drew back with a sharp hiss and felt his eyes stinging from the pain. He groaned again as he turned and laid his leg flat against the cushions. He didn't think anything was broken either, but he'd bet money his ankle wasn't merely twisted but full out wrenched, which was worse than broken. At least broken the doctors could do something with it, wrenched, he'd just have to wait it out. He knew all the usual rigmarole, keep pressure off of it, keep it iced, take painkillers, maybe get one of those constriction socks to hold it in place, he definitely did not need the cost of a doctor's visit for some sawbones to tell him what he already knew.
Kelly came back with two ice packs wrapped in dish towels and lifted Casey's foot to slide one under his ankle.
"Ouch!"
"Sorry," Kelly said, then placed the other one on Casey's knee.
Casey felt embarrassed about the whole thing, first of all about falling on the ice and looking like an idiot, secondly for not being able to keep himself in check and screaming and moaning like a wimp, and third for needing Severide to help him get home and haul him in.
"You okay, Casey?" Kelly asked.
Casey blinked and looked up at him, "Yeah, it'll be fine, sorry you had to go to all this trouble."
"Hey, it's no problem," Severide told him. "Do you need anything?"
Casey shook his head, "No."
"You sure?" almost sheepishly, Severide added, "I kind of hate to go off and leave you by yourself."
Casey wasn't looking forward to that very much either. It was a bitch being injured and being alone, not that Matt was one of those people that wanted to be waited on hand and foot, still, just having somebody around who could help…
As if Kelly was reading his thoughts, the Squad lieutenant crouched down beside the couch to look Casey in the eyes and told him, "I could stay here for a while, if you need anything I can help you."
That simple statement just made Casey feel worse. "No thanks, I appreciate it but…"
"Casey, you live alone and we just had a blizzard, if anything happens, how long's it going to take for somebody to get here?" Severide pointed out.
He had to admit Kelly could make a point once in a while. Still he felt ridiculous about the whole idea.
"I don't know…"
Severide seemed to have an idea for that too. "Don't think of it like you needing help. I don't have anything planned for the day, we could just veg out here, order a pizza and watch TV."
Casey had to admit that sounded a lot better than the idea of Severide playing nursemaid.
"Okay," he gave in.
Maybe the pain was making him delusional, but he could've sworn he saw the hint of a smile on Severide's face.
Kelly went back to the kitchen and came back with a bottle of ibuprofen and a glass of water.
"You got one of those ACE bandages?" Kelly asked.
"Maybe, somewhere," Casey couldn't recall right offhand. It had been a long time since he twisted his ankle.
"Well, we'll see if we can get the swelling down some as is, then I'll get it tied up," Kelly told him.
"This really isn't necessary, Severide," Casey replied.
Kelly looked at him inquisitively, "You'd actually rather limp around here for a week? You do remember I'm EMT certified, right?"
"Yeah, just what I always wanted, to be a guinea pig for you to experiment on," Casey sarcastically responded.
"Hey, I know what I'm doing."
"That's what scares me."
Severide looked to the clock and saw it was going on 9 A.M.
"You hungry?" he asked.
Casey leaned back against the cushions and replied, "I suppose so."
"I'll get started on breakfast, then we'll see if anything good's on to watch," Kelly said.
"It's amazing, 200 channels and there's nothing good to watch on any of them," Casey said as he flipped through the channels.
"Of course it doesn't help this weather is making half of them black out," Severide responded from where he sat in the chair next to the couch.
"I hate winter," Casey said as he glanced down at his knee and ankle, both of which the ice packs for were halfway melted already.
"Apparently it hates you too," Kelly remarked.
Casey sighed as he bent down to grab the ice packs and set them on the coffee table, "I have to go to the bathroom."
Severide moved to get up when Casey snapped at him, "That's one thing I can still do by myself, thank you very much." He cautiously got to his feet, put weight on his ankle and made his way over to the bathroom and closed the door behind him.
In the bathroom he took off his jeans that were wet both from falling on the ice and from having the icepacks on for half an hour, and he got a look at his knee. It didn't really look swollen but it was already a dark purple and it hurt to move. He reached a hand down to touch it, and was sorry he did, that was almost as bad as his ankle.
After Casey left the bathroom, he headed into the bedroom long enough to change into a dry pair of jeans before limping back towards the living room.
"How's the knee?" Kelly asked.
"Looks like an eggplant," Casey answered as he sat back down on the couch and picked up an icepack. It was completely melted, as much as he hated to ask for help, he liked even less the idea of hobbling back to the kitchen, so he swallowed his pride, turned to Severide and asked, "Can you get a couple more of these?"
"Sure," Kelly took them back to the kitchen, and returned a minute later with two packs that were frozen solid and wrapped them in the towels and placed one back under Casey's foot and one on his knee.
"And how's your ankle?"
"Same," Casey said as he picked up the remote again and started flipping through the channels again.
"Hey, go back," Kelly said.
Casey turned to him, then looked back at the TV and went back, "What is it?"
"There!" Severide told him.
It was a true crime show that a glimpse in the bottom right hand corner said there was an all day marathon of on that channel.
"You watch this?" Casey asked.
"I caught part of this one a while back, I missed the end," Kelly told him, "I always wanted to see if they got the bastard."
Casey shrugged and leaned back against the couch, it was something to watch anyway.
For missing part of the show, Casey got caught up on the story pretty quickly, it was about a series of stores that were the victims of arson 20-30 years ago and each investigation died quickly without any leads, and by the second half of the show it turned out that a fireman had been responsible for setting them. Arsonist firefighter was a term that everybody at 51 was familiar with, and they'd even had the misfortune of knowing some of them on the job, but the way all these cases were linked together just struck Casey as almost too bizarre to even be believable.
When that episode was over, another one came on, and the two of them decided to watch it a bit and see if it was any good. This one was about a woman whose husband disappeared, and several months later part of his body had been discovered, and it was speculated that the rest of his body had been used by his wife for cannibalistic purposes. The details were graphic and unsettling, but like that oft referenced car wreck, Casey found he couldn't look away, and they sat through another episode that the timeline spanned from the initial 911 call to the jury's verdict at trial.
One episode became another and another. Around noon they ordered in a pizza and when it was delivered they had it with a couple beers and watched another episode. Every one was different from the other, over the course of the afternoon they saw cases of spouses killing each other, grown children killing their parents, parents killing their teenaged children, guys helping their girlfriends kill their husbands, people who killed one family member and set up another relative like a child or a sibling or an elderly mother to take the rap for them.
"Why do we trust people?" Casey thought to ask after they'd sat through roughly six hours of the show.
"Who trusts anyone?" Kelly replied sarcastically.
"After this," Casey pointed to the screen, "I don't feel so bad about living alone."
"Amen to that," Severide agreed.
"I mean some of these people, married for years, never knew they were living with a psychopath...I can understand somebody putting on an act until the wedding, if even that far, maybe a few weeks after that, but how do you live with somebody for years and never know what they're really like? Are people just stupid? Oblivious? Or are these psychos just that good at hiding it?"
Kelly shrugged, "Who can tell?"
Casey finally thought to take the icepacks off and dropped them on the table with a pronounced squishing sound. "Those are definitely way past thawed."
"Let's see how the ankle's doing," Kelly said as he went over to the couch, wrapped his hand over Casey's toes and lifted his foot up for a better look.
"Still pretty swollen," he told Matt, "but I can get a bandage on that. Don't go away."
"Ha-ha," Casey dryly responded, "very funny."
Severide disappeared into the bathroom and tore apart the medicine chest looking for an elastic bandage and came back with one and got Casey's ankle wrapped up tight, despite Casey's involuntary groans and more voluntarily kicks.
"Leave that on overnight and we'll see how it is tomorrow," Severide told him, and reached a hand towards Casey's knee to see how it was doing.
Before he could touch it, Casey smacked Kelly's hand away with both of his own and told him, "Don't touch it!"
"Sorry, you need some more pills?"
Casey grumbled something under his breath, which Severide took as a reluctant agreement. He popped the lid off the bottle and poured out three more for Casey to take.
"So what do you want to do about dinner?" Kelly asked.
"Let's just finish the pizza," Casey said, "no leftovers, no dishes."
"That works for me," Severide nodded.
After dinner, Kelly did up the few dishes in the sink, then got a couple fresh beers, and he settled down in the chair by the couch and he and Casey continued watching the marathon on TV.
"I don't get it," Casey said during a commercial break.
Kelly looked over at him. "Don't get what?"
Casey turned his head to look at him and said, "Why do they put all these shows on a women's network? I thought they were just supposed to be full of those crappy morning talk shows and all those stupid chick flicks."
The puzzled expression on Severide's face that asked the question he didn't drew a defensive answer from Casey as he explained, "I've lived with a few women over the years, sue me."
Maybe Severide wasn't expecting that response, or maybe it was just the way Casey said it, but Severide looked away with a small laugh. Then he thought to ask, "Which chick flicks?"
Casey waved him off in a dismissive gesture and seemed to draw into himself as he returned his attention to the screen.
"No, come on, tell me," Kelly said, "you mean all the ones about women who kill their abusive husbands in the last five minutes, or all those stupid Christmas movies they show 10,000 times each year?"
"Just forget I said anything," Casey said, trying to maintain an annoyed expression but losing the will not to laugh at the whole conversation.
"Oh come on, Casey, I can tell you've got something on your mind, what is it?" Kelly asked.
Casey sighed, then paused, still looking ahead at the screen he explained, "When Gabby and I were dating, we got into an argument one night about movies…she said she didn't like car movies and westerns."
"Well that's un-American," Severide remarked.
Casey shook his head and continued, "I told her that I don't like the romantic comedies where the guy and girl get together, break up, get back together again, break up again and get back together again…and now I really hate them…they all leave out the last part where they break up again and everything goes to hell."
Kelly didn't say anything at first, but if Casey had been looking at him he would've seen a notable difference in the expression on Severide's face.
"Sorry, buddy."
"Eh..." Casey tried to shrug it off.
When the clock struck the next hour, the programming switched over to an all night marathon of Dateline. Once again Casey and Severide found themselves glued to the stories and watched several episodes in a row of disappearances, deceit, and murder. Something about it was just entrancing.
Finally about 11, Severide shut off the TV and asked Casey, "You wanna get some sleep?"
Even though he hadn't done anything all day, Casey was exhausted, but he told Kelly, "I can't stay on this couch another minute…" he pushed himself up on his feet and told his best friend, "I'm going to bed."
"Okay, see you in the morning," Kelly waved him off.
Casey had gotten into bed and turned out the lights almost as soon as he got to his room. He closed his eyes immediately but he didn't actually fall asleep. He tossed and turned and rolled around in his bed for a while trying to find a comfortable spot, hoping that would help him fall asleep. He wasn't sure how long he lay there waiting for sleep, but it finally came for him, but it didn't come easily. Somehow Casey knew that he was not in a deep sleep, and could easily be awoken by any sudden noises. The only things he was hearing were in his mind, instinctively he knew it was all just a dream, but that didn't help him any.
The details and photos from all the TV shows they'd watched that day kept replaying themselves in his mind, and the whole thing made him want to wake up but he couldn't. He kept seeing crime scene photos, body outlines, evidence photos of handguns and rifles and shotguns, blood spatters, saw bottles of pills, saw those pills crushed up into powder and mixed into unsuspecting spouse's food and drinks, saw antifreeze poured into mixed drinks, hypodermic needles and jugs of toxic chemicals and poisons, high dollar life insurance policies doubled in cases of accidental death or murder, a bathtub wired for electrocution, a decomposed body dumped down a well, an assortment of knives laid out in a meticulous row as part of a killing kit. He saw bodies pulled out of fires, people shot in the head, stabbed 30 times, their heads bashed in with a blunt object, bodies strewn out in fields, in wooded areas, in garbage dumpsters, wrapped in plastic for convenient transportation and dumping, saw bodies sealed off in oil drums. At the heart of it all he heard wedding bells and organ music and saw a woman dressed in white with a veil over her face and a bouquet in her hands and a familiar voice saying, "I love you. Till death do us part."
Casey felt somebody grab his arm and he started with a jerk and shot up in bed awake. The room was dark but he could see somebody standing beside the bed and standing over him. He reached over for the bedside lamp and turned it on and saw Kelly standing there.
"Oh it's you," Casey said with a relieved sigh. Then it occurred to him to wonder why Severide was awake and in his room at…Casey turned to look at the clock, 2:30 in the morning.
"What is it?" he asked.
The expression on Severide's face implied that he looked like Casey felt, and even before Kelly said anything, Casey thought he knew what it was.
"Do…you mind if I stay with you tonight?" Severide asked hesitantly.
It took Casey a minute to actually grasp what Kelly was saying. He guessed they'd both had the same luck falling asleep. Without a word, Casey shifted over to the other side of the bed, ignoring the protesting pains in his knee and ankle as he moved, and pulled the covers down behind him, then he told Kelly, "Hop in."
"Thanks," Kelly replied as he slid in under the covers.
"You couldn't sleep either?" Casey asked as he shut off the lamp.
"Not too well," Severide answered.
Casey would've liked if they could just end the conversation there and go to bed, but he had a nagging feeling it wasn't as simple as that. "Nightmares?"
Kelly exhaled and responded, "I guess you could say that."
"Should I guess?"
He turned his head and even though it was dark he saw Kelly looking at him through one eye.
"Same," Casey said as he turned his head back so he stared up at the ceiling.
"You know, I always knew there were psychotics out there, but I never realized they were so common," Kelly told him.
Casey nodded in agreement.
"Even living in Chicago, and seeing the stuff we see every day, you still figure there have to be more normal people, but now..."
"It all makes you wonder, how many people are out there walking around like all those we saw on TV today?"
"Too damn many," Kelly replied.
"Makes you wonder if we're outnumbered," Casey said.
"What do you mean?"
"We were always told there were some dangerous people, but we were always led to believe they were rare, but they're not, so the question is how common are they? Do they actually outnumber the normal people? Especially if you factor in the ones who aren't psychotic killers, but just every day run-of-the-mill sociopaths."
"Or least of all how many haven't actually killed anyone yet," Kelly replied, "just because they haven't so far doesn't mean they won't."
"One was too many," Casey murmured.
Kelly turned towards him. "Huh?"
"One of them was too many. You can say it, I know what you're thinking," Casey said. "Gabby wouldn't kill anybody, but she still fits the category...when she walked out she said 'You know who I am, you knew it when you married me, I haven't changed'."
"Oh she changed alright," Kelly said, "went from a pretty decent woman to straight up crazy psycho bitch."
"Did I?" Casey asked, seemingly lost in his own thoughts.
"Did you what?" Kelly asked.
"Did I ever really know her? Did I ever know who she was?" Casey asked. "I thought I did, then every time I turned around she did something, said something, she was a completely different person...one I didn't know at all. One who for some reason wanted to be in a relationship with me, but would run me down for the shot at something she wanted. She didn't respect me, she didn't care what I thought, all that mattered was I agreed with her."
"Well I'm no psychiatrist, Casey, but after what we saw today I think it's a safe assessment to say she's a sociopath," Kelly said, "it might be a stretch to say she doesn't care about anybody but herself but the only thing she cared about was how something affected her. Hundreds of kids in foster care, no, she had to have Louie, she went on about she was ready to be a mom, not to any of those other kids that need one, they didn't matter because they weren't her idea."
"I know," Casey said.
"And let's face it, if she wasn't one...she would've actually listened when you said it was moving too fast," Kelly told him. "She wouldn't have guilted you into going along with it."
"I know," Casey said in a defeated tone.
"Hey, if what we saw proves anything, they're very good at what they do, they're very charismatic so they can usually get everyone around them to believe everything they say," Kelly pointed out. "Does that not sound like Gabby?"
"I know," Casey groaned as he grabbed his pillow and pressed it against his face.
"You okay, buddy?" Kelly placed a hand on his shoulder.
Casey lowered the pillow and said, "If I really knew what she was like...if I knew going into it how bad it was going to get...I wouldn't have done it."
"Nobody would," Severide said.
"All day I kept thinking 'those poor dumb bastards, they never realized they married their own killers'...I'm no better. I couldn't see what Gabby was doing, I kept thinking she'd get back to normal sooner or later...maybe there never was any normal with her...maybe everything we saw for all those years was just an act..."
"Sounds like a page from those domestic violence chick flicks we were talking about earlier," Kelly noted. "How many times in those did the woman not have any clue because the guy she married was so nice and normal, until after they got married? Then off comes the mask, then it always goes back up out in public, so nobody will believe her, he gaslights her."
Even though it was dark, he could feel the presence of Casey turning over and glaring at him. He said only in a nonchalant tone, "I too have lived with several women over the years, sue me."
That made Casey laugh slightly. He replaced the pillow under his head and flopped against it. "I never trusted anyone to begin with because of my family...how do I trust anyone else now after everything that's gone on?"
He felt Kelly grab his arm and squeeze it assuredly. "You can always trust me, buddy."
That made him smile.
He could swear he heard Severide smiling as he added, "I know that's a poor substitute for a wife or a girlfriend but..."
"It'll do," Casey said.
Casey felt his eyelids growing heavy, he pulled the covers up tighter around himself and turned over on his side to settle down for the night, ignoring the pain in his knee from pressing against the mattress. From the other side of the bed he heard Severide yawn, long and exhausted, and heard the sound of him scooting around against the sheets as he also got comfortable, and felt the mattress under both of them jiggle in accordance with his movements.
"Goodnight, Kelly."
"Goodnight, Casey."
"Thanks for staying," Matt said. He really didn't know what he would've done all day on his own. If it had been the same thing he did anyway, he especially didn't know how he would've gotten through the night thinking about everything that had been racing around in his head tonight.
"No problem, buddy," Kelly said, sounding like he nodded off at the last word.
Not too long after that, Casey was also out like a light and sleeping peacefully.