When they returned to 51, the two lieutenants took a minute for a cigar break on the apparatus floor. Severide tried making conversation but saw Casey's eyes just stared straight ahead as he smoked, and didn't seem to be following anything he said.

"So I think next shift we should run some more drills, Truck's getting kind of sloppy," Kelly said, trying to get a rise out of him.

"Okay," Casey said distantly.

Severide decided to try it again, "You know, if you don't start getting your act in gear, you're gonna kill your men on the next fire we respond to."

"Mm-hmm," Casey's eyes still looked a million miles away.

Severide paced behind Matt with his cigar in his hand as he tried to think of something else that would grab Casey's attention. He brainstormed, raised his eyebrows as something came to him, and casually added, "And then, you know, I thought I'd take off all my clothes and dance around naked out here on the apparatus floor."

"Sure."

Kelly's eyes widened, and stepped around Casey to look him in the eyes.

"Casey, hello, are you in there?"

Casey blinked. "Sorry, just thinking about that last call."

"What about it?" Severide asked.

"You think McWhorter is beating his daughter?" Casey asked.

Severide looked at him and took a minute before answering, "No, I don't."

"Somebody is."

"Yeah, but that doesn't mean it's him."

"You didn't hear her. She said 'before he ruined his life by having a family'. The mom's not there anymore, sounds like she hasn't been for a while, so it's just the two of them, maybe he resents her for it."

"She's old enough he could've kicked her out if that's the case," Kelly said.

"Believe me, abusers prefer to keep their victims close enough to torture at a moment's notice," Matt told him.

"What're you guys talking about?" Herrmann asked as he came around the rescue engine and joined them on the floor.

"So somebody's beating the stuffing out of this kid?" Herrmann asked.

"Sounds that way," Kelly said as he collapsed in his chair at the Squad table.

"Off topic, but who the hell names their daughter Queenie?" Otis asked, "That's just asking for her to get her ass kicked all through school."

"Hence the alias," Mouch said.

"Who do you think roughed her up?" Cruz asked.

"Only two possibilities that come to mind, either a boyfriend, or her dad," Casey said.

"Who by the way works at 27," Severide added.

"Ah geez, one of our own, that's just great," Herrmann said.

"We don't know that's what it is," Kelly said.

"What if it is?" Casey asked as he sat down beside Kelly at the Squad table.

"You can't sit here," Severide said.

"Severide you know as damn well as I do that something was off with those two," Casey said.

"Okay, something's off, that doesn't mean he's beating her."

"And if he is?" Casey asked. "She's 19, DCFS can't do anything about it, and since she bailed on the exam, the cops won't be brought in on it. And it would explain why she didn't want to go to the hospital."

"Whoa whoa whoa, hold it," Herrmann said, "before we actually accuse a fellow firefighter of committing the worst crime on God's green earth of abusing his own child, we're gonna have to find out what actually happened."

"If it's true," Casey said, "it didn't just come out of nowhere, he would've been doing it for years."

Severide finally broke down and admitted, "And if he was, there wouldn't be any better way to keep access to her than by making her stay at home with him."

"So what would you suggest we do?" Otis asked.

"If we take it up at 27, his crew will bury us," Casey said. "We know how it goes, nobody's going to stand by and let somebody from their House be accused of something like this and there's not retaliation."

"So we confront him at his home," Kelly said. "Otis, you remember the address off her license?"

Brian thought back and nodded.

"Oh good thinking, he only knows the entire layout and has God knows what on hand, what could possibly go wrong?" Casey asked.

"You got a better idea?" Severide asked.

"So who all's going?" Herrmann asked.

The two lieutenants looked at him questioningly, Herrmann pointed out, "You confront this guy, he loses it, he could wipe the floor with both of youse guys. And what if he's not alone? I say be safe, we'll all go, that way we outnumber whoever's there."

Casey and Severide turned to each other and wordlessly considered the option. Casey shrugged in reluctant agreement.

"Capp's getting discharged in the morning," Severide said, "we'll bring him in on it."

"Wouldn't hurt," Herrmann said, "a guy his size would be enough to intimidate most people, just so long as he doesn't open his mouth."

The next morning after shift they pulled up to the curb outside the two story house where Roger McWhorter lived. There was no car in the driveway, and it was impossible to tell if anyone was inside, but they decided to check it out. Casey, Severide, Otis, Herrmann, Tony and Capp headed up the sidewalk and up to the porch where the carpeting had been long since worn out. Severide knocked on the door and everybody waited to see what happened next.

They heard the sound of footsteps coming towards the door, then heard the sound of a chain being slid out of place, the door opened and they saw Queenie standing on the other side. She was dressed in blue jeans and a long sleeved black T-shirt, concealing any and all marks she might have on her body. She opened the screen door and looked around at the firefighters and asked, "What the hell do you want?"

"Is your dad home?" Severide asked.

"No."

"Where is he?" Casey asked.

"How the hell should I know?" Queenie replied. "Get off my porch. Get the hell off my property!"

"For a firefighter's kid that's not being very hospitable," Herrmann spoke up.

"Hospitable my ass," Queenie said, "get the hell off my porch!" With that she let the screen door swing shut, threw the storm door shut and they heard the chain being latched back on.

"Well that went well," Kelly said dryly.

Capp pushed his way to the front and said, "Somebody's in there with her, get back."

Before anybody had a chance to even think about what he'd said, Capp pulled the glass door open, turned around and kicked the door open, and everybody showed themselves in.

Queenie turned around at the commotion and met the sight before her with a wide eyed expression and demanded to know, "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"Who's here?" Severide asked as they entered the dining room and looked around.

In the living room there was an old woman, somewhere between her 80s and 90s, with short gray/white hair, dressed in a striped green sweatshirt and black sweatpants, with a distant, unseeing look in her eyes as she sat in a wheelchair at a card table in the middle of the room and looked straight ahead, seemingly at nothing. She made no sign she was aware of any of their presences as they stepped into the room.

"Who's this?" Otis asked as he went over to her.

"You get away from her!" Queenie ran after him and cut him off just before he got to her.

Something in her movement seemed to bring the old woman to life, she turned and scowled at Queenie and yelled at her as she grabbed her by the wrist and dug her sharp nails into the teenager's arm.

"Stop that!" the blonde yelled at the old woman, "Let go!"

Otis pulled her back and out of the old woman's grip just as she raised her other hand to smack Queenie.

Severide watched this in completely disbelief and awe. Queenie looked at him with a glare and asked dryly, "Let me guess, you're gonna call the cops, right?"

Severide rolled up Queenie's sleeve to reveal several gouge marks, scratches and bruises on her arm.

"Your grandmother does this often?"

"Every day, if she didn't she'd probably keel over and die for lack of something to do," Queenie answered bitterly as she rolled her sleeve back down. "I file her nails down every week so she can't claw so hard, they grow back like weeds."

"What's wrong with her?" Otis asked.

The girl shrugged and said, "She's alive...that pesky fact's been bothering her for most of her life."

"What?"

"It's a long and sordid story and nobody ever wants to bother with the full details, so just get out of here and leave us alone," she told them.

"We're not going anywhere," Casey told her. "Now what's going on?"

"What's it to you?" she asked. "You don't know anything about us, you're not 27 so I don't have to tell you a damn thing because you don't work with my dad."

"Just tell us what's going on and we'll go away," Herrmann said simply.

She looked at him through the corner of her eye like she wasn't sure what to make of what he'd just said.

"I don't want you here," she said, "the whole place is a mess."

"We don't care about that," Severide told her.

"Why do you care at all?" she asked. "Nobody else ever did."

"Well we do, sue us," Herrmann said.

Queenie looked in at her grandmother who was still seated at the table, and told them, "You can't ever tell when she's listening, it'd be easier to explain in the kitchen."

As everybody filed out of the living room, Severide stopped Capp and asked him, "How'd you know there was someone else here?"

"Her belt," he answered.

"What?"

Capp pointed to Queenie and Severide realized her black shirt had largely concealed a black Velcro belt strapped around her ribs.

"My mother used to work in a nursing home," Capp explained. "They wear them so they don't throw their back out lifting patients."

"Huh, good work," Kelly said. He took his men aside and told them, "Just to make sure nothing more is going on here than what meets the eye, you and Tony go upstairs and take a look around."

"For what?" Tony asked.

"Anything out of the ordinary, anything that maybe the cops would be interested in, if not, get back down here, if you see something, get pictures. We'll find out what she's got to say."

"Hey Severide, where'd you go?" Herrmann's voice called out from the kitchen.

"Go," Severide told his men.

He went to join the others in the kitchen, Queenie told them, "You'll have to excuse the mess but..."

"We get it," Herrmann said, "that's what I always tell company, 'excuse the mess but we live here'."

"No," she shot back at him, "Nobody lives here." She pointed towards the living room and said, "that thing sucked all the life blood out of us years ago."

Nobody knew how to respond to that.

"If you're actually going to stand around here and waste my time, then I would appreciate it if you could get something through your heads right now," Queenie told them. She shook her head, "My grandmother doesn't have Alzheimer's, she doesn't have dementia, she's not senile or confused, she is an evil bitch with no regard for anybody but herself, and always has been."

"Well I wasn't gonna say anything," Herrmann said half under his breath, trying to lighten the mood.

"Nobody has to put up with her," Queenie told them. "Anybody who ever comes to see her, the relatives or friends that stop by once a year to spend 20 minutes with her, they just love to swear up and down that she can't be as bad as all that, that she's just confused because she's old...none of them would put up with what I've had to for one day. I've been doing it for 7 years."

All the guys looked around at each other trying to make sense of what she'd just said, and wondering if they'd heard right.

"I'm sorry, 7 years?" Otis asked.

Queenie nodded. "That's when we first took her in. After her husband died she just gave up on everything, wouldn't eat, wouldn't wash, didn't pay her bills, got kicked out of the retirement community we moved her to, had to move her in with us. Dad works two jobs, so I'm the one that's always had to be here with her after Mom went to jail."

Casey cleared his throat. "I'm sorry, we were under the impression she died."

Queenie looked at him and explained, "My mom is doing life in Cook County for killing a man...I suppose it's about the same thing."

Once again the firefighters looked around at each other, trying to make sense of what they'd heard.

"Very sorry, we didn't know," Casey said.

"The first couple years Mom did most of the work, my job was just to make sure she ate and keep her entertained. 'Queenie, you don't have anything you have to do, play cards with her for an hour every single day even though she's too stupid to even know what the rules are'. 'Queenie, you can see your friends later, watch TV with your grandmother for a couple hours'. 'Queenie, talk to her, Queenie, read to her, keep her mind active'. Well let me tell you, in the past 7 years I have learned more about old people and lost causes than anybody my age should ever know, and what I've learned is when somebody has no interest in living, there is nothing you can do to change their mind, all you wind up doing is wasting your life chasing a pipe dream. For all the people in the world who are just sick of living, I think they should all be rounded up and locked in a room until they waste away and rot, and quit wasting everybody else's valuable time catering to them. At that time, she could walk by herself, see, hear, eat, she was still largely independent, she just made sure she rapidly became dependent so my mom had to do everything for her."

"Why would she do that?" Otis asked.

"Because she hates my mom, always has ever since she was born," Queenie answered. "It was no secret, not in the family anyway, anytime anybody else was around, she put on a great act of being such a loving mother...her whole life has been an act. She plays helpless and crippled around us and she plays sweet and nice for everyone else. Always knew how to get her way. When my mom was a kid, she always went into these migraines that she had to go to bed for a week, she'd stay in bed for the better part of a year, and everybody blamed my mom for it, saying if she hadn't been such a horrible child, she wouldn't have made her mother sick, but because she did, it was her job to do all the cooking and cleaning, from 6 years old on."

"Are you serious?" Herrmann asked.

"Do I look like I'm laughing?" she asked. "It never stopped, she just switched one scapegoat for another. When Grandma was in her 50s, her 60s, her husband would call up my mom all the time because she'd stay in bed for 3 weeks at a time, he thought my mom could somehow snap her out of it, never could. Finally he took her to a psychiatrist to find out what was wrong with her...she's one crafty bitch. She never said a word, she knew if she didn't talk, he couldn't diagnose her, and with no diagnosis, no medications, no institutionalization, so she just got sent home to continue being everybody else's problem. She just hates being alive and all she's ever done was try to take everyone else down with her."

"And your mom?" Kelly asked.

"She shot her boss one night at work, said that he'd tried to rape her. We believed her at the time but...towards the end of the trial, who knew anymore? The jury convicted...and there have been plenty of nights I've stayed awake wondering...if she didn't actually do it just so she'd never have to take care of her mother again? Believe me, after five years of tending to her myself, it's not so farfetched to believe."

"And when you say you've been taking care of her since then..." Otis said.

"I said in the beginning she could walk, hear, see, eat, all that stuff...since Mom went to jail it's all been downhill. First she needed a cane to get around...then that didn't work, so we got her a walker, then she could only use it if I pulled it along...now I have to deadlift her from the bed to the toilet to her chair because she won't walk at all."

"Won't or can't?" Casey asked.

The girl shrugged her shoulders, "That's the thing about crying wolf for 80 years, if something actually does happen, it's too late for anyone to believe it. All I know is up till a few months ago, if I went out to run errands, and came home early, she'd be in another room, walking erect, no problems whatsoever, even hauling the furniture around. You saw her, what would you guess she weighs?"

"I don't know...90 pounds?"

"80," Otis guessed.

Queenie gestured to one of the antique wooden chairs at the table. "Pick that up, what's it weigh?"

He did, and estimated, "20 pounds give or take."

"One thing she could never stand was having anything where she didn't want it. I came home one afternoon, her cane is knocked down on the floor and she is hauling two of these across the room. Her hearing started to go when I was 13, so I went with her to the doctor and she got hearing aids. We shell out $3,000 for them, she wouldn't wear them, she took them out, finally she broke one of them and threw the other in the trash. She's worn glasses for 70 years, one day she took them off and threw them across the room, they shattered. A new pair would be $600 but the real issue is there was no way to get her down to the eye doctor and even if there was, everybody says the same thing, she's old so it doesn't really matter. So why bother? It's not like she looks at anything anymore anyway. She had dentures, had them since she was in her 20s, always belittled my mom for not having good teeth, big fat hypocrite had hers all pulled before she even knew what they'd turn out like. Six months ago she took the top set out and broke them. Bottom set, she could still chew, but then we started to worry if she messed around with them and choked on them...last month she took the bottom set out and broke them too...she's 92 years old, no dentist is going to bother making a new set and it wouldn't be worth the money anyway since she'd just break them again. So as though I didn't have enough to deal with already, we had to get a food processor and I have to grind up all her food because she's too stupid to learn how to chew with no teeth. Then she stopped feeding herself, so now I have to do that too...if that woman could find a way that I had to do her breathing for her, she'd do that too, I know it."

"Why didn't you get someone to come in and help with her?" Otis asked.

"Like who?" Queenie sneered. "She had long term care insurance years ago, $50,000 worth, it would've kept her in a home for almost a year, but in the middle of my mom's trial we found out she let it lapse, so she knew we'd be stuck taking care of her. Her finances don't qualify her for any kind of assistance. Her social security check each month barely even keeps her in diapers, we shell out $100 a week on detergent, laundry soda, deodorizers and air fresheners alone because otherwise it smells like somebody died in here, the water bill doubled because we're doing laundry up to five times a day. We went broke from paying all my mom's legal fees, my dad takes extra shifts at the firehouse just to break even for the fact he gets paid 16 hour wages for 24 hour shifts and had to take another job on top of that just to make ends meet. She doesn't qualify for hospice care because the doctor said she's not sick, she's not terminal, old age alone is not enough to need it. Her blood pressure is 135 over 75, her oxygen saturation is 95%, her heart rate is 60 beats per minute, her temperature is 98.2, she is in perfect health for any age but especially her own and is not any time in the near future going to be succumbing to anything even remotely resembling natural or unnatural causes. We have no other family that can help us out and even if we did, nobody would because nobody wants the responsibility, I'm stuck here all day and night taking care of her making sure she doesn't do something stupid and kill herself and I have no life!" She pounded the tabletop with her fists and moved around it towards the fridge.

"My life was not supposed to be like this," she said in a defeated tone, "I had friends, plans, I was going to do stuff, my friends all went their ways after graduation and I haven't seen them since, I hardly saw them before either, as soon as school was out I had to rush back here and take care of that thing in there. Everybody else got to go out at night and the weekends and have a life, and I was stuck here babysitting her. My 16th birthday was the day I had to start putting her in diapers, I spent 3 hours cleaning up the bed, her, the floor...Anybody who's never had to do this, will never realize how bad it is, and most people would never do it even if they had to."

Queenie pulled out one of the chairs and collapsed in it.

"Doing this crap seven days a week for years on end definitely changes you, and not for the better. It's definitely helped me decide I'm never getting married, I'm never having kids, I'm never getting involved with anyone that I have to wind up being a caretaker for, I can't do it anymore, I won't...I'd sooner die than do this again, I don't care who it is." She looked up at Casey, then at Severide, and told them, "So now you see, I'm not worried about wiping out in a race, I don't care if I burn to death in a crash, it can't be anywhere as bad as what I've already gone through...and there's certainly something to be said for burning out instead of fading away."

Nobody knew what to say to that. After a moment, Severide finally spoke up and asked, "What were you doing out there?"

"I haven't been out of this house to do anything I wanted for three years," Queenie said. "I got my driver's license, but...Dad always has the car, only time I can use it is to run errands, that's not why I got a license. The nights he's on shift and I know he won't be home until morning, once I get that old bat to bed, I started slipping out of the house, desperate to find something worth living for again. Found a new crew to hang with. It's simple enough, they got guys who go out and get the cars, everybody makes their wages, and everybody tries their luck and hope they win. It's the first time I've felt alive since junior high, and it's better than having a job, thrills and money all in one night and it's more satisfying than selling my body." She met Severide's inquisitive eyes and added, "I'm guessing!"

"Speaking of the money, exactly how much do you race for?" Casey asked.

"It all depends on how many chances you want to take. Payoffs are doubled if you're willing to take a passenger, sounds easy enough but you really gotta be willing to let someone else die with you, and for the most part I'm not willing, if I were, I'd be out of this mess already."

"What do you mean?"

Queenie got to her feet, went over to the counter, opened a drawer under it, and took out a brochure and all but threw it at him.

"There's a nursing home that we could put her in, here in the city, nice staff, costs $5,000 per month, plus a $500 entrance fee, plus first and last months' rent to even get her in the door. I've only got half the money I need saved up from the winnings. At the rate I'm going it'll be another three months before I can get enough to have her put away. I've been taking care of her 7 days a week for years, there's no breaks, there's never a day off, if I'm laying on the floor puking with a 104 degree fever, I still have to take care of her. I can't do this anymore, I can't, I can't, I can't. Everything has fallen apart because of that woman," she said as she fell back in the chair. "It takes an hour and a half to get her up in the morning, get her changed, washed, dressed, fed, another hour and a half at night to get her ready for bed, an hour to get her to eat lunch, every day it's laundry and dishes and garbage and diapers and incontinence pads and turning her all the time so she doesn't get sores, she had a pressure ulcer a few weeks back, you want to talk real torture? And watching her like a hawk so she doesn't do something stupid like scratch herself until she tears the flesh wide open, which she's already done a dozen times over the years, each time takes 1-2 months to heal her up. This house is falling apart because there isn't any time to get away from her and do anything else and when there is any time I'm too tired to get anything done." She ran her hands over her short hair and asked all of them, and at the same time none of them. "Do you have any idea what it's like waiting for someone to die, just so you get to live again? And when it's your own family...and you just hope every single day that they'll finally die...have you ever prayed that a family member will die that night just to put you out of your misery? ...I never had any feelings about her one way or the other, she was distant, detached...she came around a few times a year and that was it...to actually go from total indifference to murderous hatred..." She buried her face against the tabletop and concluded, "I am so damn tired I can't care about anything anymore. I just can't."

Casey looked across the room to Severide and they seemed to be of the same mind. As melancholic as that whole episode had just been, Severide made it a lot more awkward as he broke the silence by asking her, "Do you mind if I use your restroom?"

Kelly went over to the medicine cabinet and opened it up, and was surprised when he saw there were no prescription bottles in it. Toothpaste, toothbrushes, denture tablets, calamine lotion, antibiotic ointment, eyedrops, bandages, but no pill bottles. He checked the cupboard the soap and wash rags were kept in, nothing, the drawers under the sink, nothing. Nothing prescribed to McWhorter, or his mother-in-law, not even any over the counter pills, something was definitely off. He really couldn't imagine a house with this much despair, and nobody was using any substances to get through it, he knew he couldn't if it was him, even the wastebasket was void of any empty bottles. He even took the lid off the toilet tank on the offchance somebody was hiding a bottle of liquor in there, still nothing. Feeling defeated, he flushed the toilet and then headed back to the kitchen where Queenie was emptying the contents of the food processor into a bowl.

"Is your grandmother on any medications?" he asked.

"No," she said with scarcely a look in his direction, "one thing to be said about that old buzzard, she comes from hardy stock. Her own grandfather lived through the Spanish flu that killed his son-in-law, and lived to be 100 with no medication. Nobody on her side of the family ever had to be on pills for anything, I guess there's one thing to be said about being too stubborn to die, you're especially too stubborn to do it by inches."

And yet Severide noticed she had a bottle on the table and was pouring the white powder contents of a tablet into the food.

"What's that?" he asked.

"Anti-virals," Queenie answered, "good genes or not, we can't take a chance on her getting sick with anything. So I take them because I'm around her all day, my dad takes them because he's around hundreds of people a day, and she takes them but just doesn't know it."

Severide picked up the bottle and examined the large white capsules. "Are these prescription?"

"Hell no, they're made from coconuts, you can buy them in any store for $10."

He looked in the bottle and saw it was largely full, he also noticed a second one on the table that still had the seal on it. "You mind if I take a few of these?"

"Knock yourself out, but I warn you, they taste terrible," Queenie said. "Of course if you can actually swallow horse pills, it shouldn't be a problem."

While they talked as Queenie prepared her grandmother's lunch, Casey quickly inspected the contents of the fridge and freezer. For money being tight it seemed pretty well stocked, most of it he noticed, specifically to cater to the grandmother: protein shakes, sports drinks, applesauce, yogurt, baby food, cottage cheese, mashed potatoes, stuff that didn't require any chewing to eat. He also took notice of what was not there, no medications that needed refrigeration, and not even a pack of beer. He closed the fridge door and looked at a photograph hanging on the front, and thinking it might be important later, subtly took out his phone and snapped a picture of it. Then he moved over to the cupboards to see what was there. There were a few pill bottles up on the top shelf, even without reaching them he could tell they were over the counter painkillers and allergy pills, not much to worry about there. On the lower shelves was a stock of canned pasta and soups, most of which he could guess went into the food processor.

"If you don't want this crap thrown at you, I'd advise you to stay out of the way," Queenie told Severide as she picked up a spoon and took the bowl into the living room.

When she was out of earshot, Kelly turned to Casey and asked, "You find anything?"

"Nope, you?"

"No drugs in the bathroom..." Kelly held up the sandwich bag he'd put several of the capsules in.

"What're you gonna do with those, give them to Capp for his cold sores?" Casey asked.

"No, I'm gonna see if Antonio can find out if they actually are what she says they are," Kelly said, "seems a little odd a woman who's never taken any pills in her life suddenly gets this in her food every day."

Casey thought about that and commented, "If this is what the grandma looks liked drugged up..." he groaned and shook his head.

"There's not much more we can do here," Kelly told him. "I say we get the others and get out."

Casey frowned, "I hate to leave her here like this."

"I know, but there's nothing we can do," Severide said.