Frozen

"Kelly!"

"CASEY!"

Kelly Severide watched in horror as Matt Casey fell through the hole in the second story floor, his hand suddenly pulled out of Kelly's death grip, and disappeared in the smoke that had already filled the ground floor of the house they were in. The sickening thud of Casey's body hitting the floor was the last thing he heard before everything just seemed to go blank. He was aware of seeing things, he was aware of people screaming on the radio, but it was all just a garble, it wasn't connected to anything. He'd just killed his best friend.

He'd just entered the doorway when he saw the floor collapsing under Matt, and he'd rushed over to him and threw himself on the floor and slid part of the way and just managed to grab Casey before he went clear through. How the roles had reversed from a similar call they'd been on a few years earlier, shortly after Andy Darden's death.

Severide was well aware of the necessary purposes it served, but in the back of his mind he cursed the turnout gear Casey had on. Without that extra 80 pounds weighing him down, Kelly likely could've pulled him back up, but for some reason despite all his efforts, he couldn't do it, he was doing well just to keep a hold on Casey and not go through the floor with him.

Then what had happened? He didn't know. He'd been holding onto Casey with all his might, and suddenly Casey just slipped through his grasp, and like that, he was gone. Kelly had just killed his best friend.

"Severide!" Cruz had been the first to reach the room by following the sound of Kelly's pass alarm when it started screaming. He had no idea what had happened, through the smoke he found Kelly sprawled on the floor next to the hole, and he couldn't figure out why the Squad lieutenant wasn't moving. There were no obstacles blocking him from getting up, he wasn't pinned under anything, he wasn't trapped, he was just laying there looking at the hole.

"Severide!" Cruz got right up to the man and grabbed him by the arm to try and pull him to his feet, in turning Kelly halfway over, Cruz felt his eyes widen, and he reached for his radio.

"Chief? We need help!"

"37 year old male, found unresponsive in a fire, GCS 8..."

Will Halstead was rushing over to the gurney that had just been wheeled in. "My God, it's Kelly Severide, what happened?"

"We don't know," Otis said as he and Cruz moved beside the paramedics, "We were operating in zero visibility, the whole place was like a damn maze, we lost contact with each other for a while, couldn't find our own way around let alone anyone else."

"He's been like this since we found him," Cruz told Will, "He hasn't moved at all," he gestured to the man on the gurney whose body was twisted at an unnatural angle, his hands were curled at the fingers, and there was an unblinking, wide eyed look of terror fixed to his face. Joe desperately asked the doctor, "What caused that?"

"I don't know, but we'll find out," Halstead assured the firefighters as he leaned over the gurney. "Kelly, do you know where you are?" He shined a pocket light in Severide's eyes, the pupils never changed, never moved. "Kelly, do you know who I am?" He loosely placed his hand under Kelly's bent fingers. "Can you grip my hand? Kelly? Stop," he told the paramedics who were wheeling him to an exam room. Will took a pen out of his pocket and ran it over the bottom of Kelly's foot, "Kelly, can you tell me if you can feel anything? Can you blink your eyes if you feel anything?"

"What's wrong with him?" Cruz wanted to know.

Will shook his head. "I don't know. We'll do everything we can to find out, you two need to stay out here while we work." He turned to the nurses and added, "Somebody page Dr. Charles."

Daniel Charles stood over the bed and looked at the patient. "Kelly Severide...how long's he been like this?"

"Since he was brought in," Will answered. "He has no response to any kind of stimuli, he hasn't moved, can't talk, he has waxy flexibility."

"So you're thinking catatonia," Dr. Charles said.

"Looks that way...I'm hoping you'd know something about it."

"Well, most cases are attributed to underlying mental disorders, bipolar, schizophrenia..."

"None of which he was ever diagnosed with or even saw a doctor for," Will told the psychiatrist, "so what's that leave us?"

"Well," Dr. Charles experimented and moved Kelly's arm from laying at his side to raising it at the elbow, and when he let go, it stayed raised in the air. "I assume you've done the bloodwork for a tox screen."

"We're waiting to hear back from it, he has a history with pain meds but nothing extensive," Will answered.

"Of course we'll have to wait for the report to come back before we can be conclusive about anything," Daniel reminded the younger doctor, "but if it turns up negative...there are actually several conditions associate with catatonia...he didn't have a stroke?"

"CT was negative for damage caused by one," Halstead told him.

"Sounds then like it's largely going to be wait and see," Dr. Charles pointed out. "Do you know what happened?"

Will shrugged and shook his head, "They were at a house fire, apparently Matt Casey went through the floor, and they found Severide near where he fell."

Daniel cocked his head at Will. "So he was there when it happened."

"It's possible but nobody knows for sure since neither of the two people who were there can talk," Will said.

"You know, some psychiatrists, they live for a case like this, a real puzzle to try and solve," Dr. Charles told him, and shook his head, "but it's unlikely it'll end well whatever we find."

"I'm sorry that we don't have more promising news, but I think we finally have a diagnosis," Will told the firefighters in the waiting room.

"What is it?" Boden asked.

"In my opinion, watching Casey fall through the floor and not being able to stop it, and the guilt that would follow such an experience, pushed him over a mental edge and he is in a severe state of shock and made him catatonic," Halstead explained. "If untreated the body's reflexes slow down to the point of death being a very likely outcome."

"What treatment?" Otis asked.

"We're going to get him on benzodiazepine to relax the muscles and put him to sleep. When the drugs wear off and he wakes up, hopefully he'll be responsive. I'm very sorry about what happened to Matt," Will added.

"How is he?" Wallace asked.

"Still on the vent, no change in his condition," Will told them.

Boden grimly nodded. "Thank you, Will."

"I'll let you know when we have something new," the doctor assured the firefighters before he turned and left the waiting room.

"Kelly..."

Everybody from 51 had been in to Severide's room over the last couple of days to see him, see if there was any change in his condition, if he was starting to respond to anyone or anything, any of their voices. There had been nothing through it all. He laid in the hospital bed, his body only adhering to whatever position the nurses and orderlies left him in after tending to him daily. The sedatives had finally taken effect though and he'd closed his eyes, his body lost some of its rigidity and he could actually be seen breathing deeper now.

"Kelly."

Matt Casey padded across the hospital room in the paper gown he'd been wearing since he woke up and was taken off the ventilator the day before. He walked over to the bed and looked at Severide's unconscious body laying in the bed, completely unaware of anything going on around him.

Boden had been there when he'd woken up after the vent was removed, and he'd explained to Casey everything that he could about what had happened at the house fire, though it became apparent to Casey very quickly that the battalion chief didn't know all the details about what took place. And he realized, even in his drug induced mind, that nobody else knew the full extent of it, so anybody else who'd gone to see Severide couldn't give him the full details either. So far Will hadn't been hopeful about Kelly becoming responsive to anybody talking to him, but Casey decided he needed to try it for himself, hoped he could get through.

"Kelly, it's me, it's Casey," Matt sat on the edge of the bed and took the Squad lieutenant's hand in his own and squeezed it, hoping that he could sense it even in part. "I'm fine, Kelly, I'm alive."

He had gone straight through the floor, but he hadn't landed flat on the ground floor in the fall, instead he'd landed on a wooden table that subsequently broke under the sudden weight and pressure. It had been painful no doubt, and scary as hell because he didn't know what had happened, but he'd guessed he fared better than if he'd just straight out fallen one story and hit the floor dead on. He didn't remember much after that before waking up now and again in the hospital, both on and off the ventilator, his head hadn't really cleared until last night.

"It's alright, Kelly, everything's okay, I'm fine, you'll be fine...you just need to wake up, Kelly," Matt tried again.

There was no verbal or physical response. Casey sighed and raised his other hand to brush against Kelly's forehead and over his hair. In the middle of a breath, he thought he heard a sigh. He hoped it was a sign.

Kelly opened his eyes and everything slowly came into focus, including Matt Casey sitting beside him.

"Are we dead?" was the first thing that occurred to him to ask.

"Kelly."

Severide's head started to clear up and he realized where they were, and his eyes widened as his face changed to an expression of horror as he told his best friend, "I'm so sorry, Casey, I don't know what happened."

"It's alright, Kelly, it's not your fault."

But Kelly either didn't hear him or wasn't convinced of what he said. He just kept stammering over and over, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I didn't want this to happen, I'm sorry."

"Kelly, calm down," Casey tried to get through to him. "There wasn't anything you could've done."

"I didn't mean it...I didn't mean to drop you, I'm so sorry..." Kelly's shoulders started rising and falling as his breathing became a series of short sobs as the fear and the guilt that had nearly consumed him entirely over the past few days finally came to surface and bubbled over.

"Hey, hey, take it easy," Matt grabbed Kelly and pulled the Squad lieutenant against him and rubbed his back, "It's alright, it's over, we're fine."

Kelly was openly sobbing as he buried his head against Casey's neck as he confessed, "I thought you were dead, I thought I'd killed you."

"Kelly, it's okay, we survived," Matt assured him. "I'm okay, you're gonna be okay...it's nowhere near as bad as it could've been."

"I'm sorry," Kelly hopelessly repeated, "I'm sorry...we both would've gone through the floor before I'd let go of you..."

"I know that," Casey said calmly, slightly flinching at the hot tears touching his skin. "It's okay."

Severide was having trouble breathing as he told Matt, "I, I-I don't know what went wrong. I'm sorry, I'm sorry..."

Casey wrapped his arms tight around Kelly's back and rested his chin on the top of Severide's head and said comfortingly, "It's alright, everything's going to be fine, just calm down."

Casey hadn't been in his room when Boden went to see how he was doing, and there were only a few places he could picture the Truck lieutenant wandering off to, let alone having the strength to in his still weakened condition from being on the ventilator for 3 days. His first stop was Severide's room, and as he stepped in the doorway, he stopped, and looked on in something related to awe.

Matt was half sitting/half laying on the bed with his head propped against the pillow, and Kelly Severide's head propped against his shoulder as he held the Squad lieutenant close against him while the dark haired man slept soundly, half curled on his side in the bed. Casey looked at Boden knowingly and quietly raised a finger to his lips. Wallace nodded in understanding, but stepped over to the bed long enough to grab the sheet that had been discarded at the foot of the bed and pulled it up over both lieutenants. Casey mouthed a silent 'thank you' and maintained his hold on Severide while the other man slept against him. The battalion chief nodded and quietly exited the room, leaving the two of them alone.

"So do you actually remember any of it? Actually being catatonic?" Casey asked Severide as the two men walked up the sidewalk to a house Casey had been hired to do some construction work on. They'd both been discharged from the hospital a few days ago and life was slowly getting back to normal, and Casey had invited Severide to come with him to check out the place incase an extra set of hands proved necessary.

Kelly shook his head. "I don't remember much about the whole week honestly. You?"

"I kind of blacked out after the table broke...and I don't remember much from being on the vent except the worst sore throat of my life..."

"I'll second that motion."

Casey glanced over at Severide and commented, "You know there wasn't anything you could've done, right? It just happened."

"I know..." but it was obvious that Kelly was still struggling to accept that fact. "I meant what I said, if we both went through the floor, I would've sooner done that than let go of you."

"I know," Casey replied as he headed around to the back.

"So what're you doing here again?" Kelly asked.

"Guy needs me to put up a new wall for his garage."

"What happened to the old one?"

"I'm guessing either his kid drove the car through it...or termites got it."

Casey's hands absently reached towards his pockets and he cursed. "I forgot my tape measurer, I'll be right back."

Kelly went on ahead to the back yard and just got a glimpse at the old garage that had definitely seen better days, and he wondered how only one wall needed replacing, when a loud noise from the front got his attention followed by Casey screaming. Kelly turned and saw half of Casey's body had disappeared through a hole in the ground and he was just barely hanging on.

"Kelly!"

"Casey!"

Severide ran to the front yard and saw Casey trying to pull himself up from the hole and saw three fourths of his body were still above ground, only one leg had fallen clear through but it was enough that the rest of him was perilously close to falling in as well. Kelly dropped on the ground beside Casey and grabbed one arm and grabbed his other side around the shoulder and pulled him up and way from the hole.

"I got you, hang on," Kelly grunted as he inched Casey back until they were both safely on level ground.

Casey let out a panicked scream as it started to dawn on him he was finally out of danger.

"You okay, buddy?" Kelly asked as he put a hand on Casey's shoulder.

Casey got in a couple of wheezing breaths as he tried to calm down, looked around and finally answered, "I think so."

"What happened?" Kelly asked.

"I don't know! I just felt something moving under me, and I just sank."

Kelly looked back to the hole, and got the answer in an old round metal cover that was lying haphazardly two feet away from the hole.

"It's the water meter."

"The lid was in place when we came up...I wasn't even looking..."

"You stepped on it."

"It must've shot out from under me somehow," Casey heaved in ragged breaths around his comment.

Kelly got on his knees and crawled over for a closer look. Whenever the water main had been put in, a concrete ring had been set around the cover, over the years it had worn out and chipped away, whole chunks were broken and missing, no wonder there hadn't been any support when Casey stepped on it. He looked down in the hole and felt himself shiver when he saw how far down Casey would've fallen if he'd actually gone through...and if he hadn't had Kelly come out with him...the owner wasn't home, nobody would've known where he was.

He looked back at Casey and saw the Truck lieutenant was clearly as frazzled as he felt.

"You're okay," Kelly clapped a hand on his arm, "just take a deep breath." As he said this, he could feel his own body shaking at the realization of what could've happened if things had worked out slightly differently.

After a minute, Casey started to calm down and finally stood back up.

"You gonna mention this to the guy?" Kelly asked as he also got to his feet.

"I'm definitely gonna suggest he gets that fixed...if there are kids in this neighborhood, it wouldn't take anything for one of them to fall down here when nobody's looking," Casey told him.

Kelly looked back once more towards the hole, then felt the air being choked out of him as Casey hugged him tight.

"Thank you," he said, his voice an odd combination of shaky but calm.

Kelly hugged him in response and replied, "Thanks for trusting me."

"Like you said," Matt pulled back and looked at him, a small knowing smile on his face, "I knew you wouldn't drop me."