Author's Note: As always thank you to my reviewers and those who have followed or favorited this story. I'm glad so many people seem to have enjoyed the first three chapters.

When I first started this story, I mentioned that it would take several chapters to really get a feel for what I had planned. I think that even though some of the details still need to be revealed, by the end of this chapter, you should have an idea of what I have in mind. Hopefully, you guys will like it.

Please let me know what you think. Both positive feedback and constructive criticism are always welcome.

Chapter 4

After a few hours in Gabby's room, Matt found himself returning to the waiting room with Antonio. Gabby's parents had asked for some time alone with their daughter, and as hard as it was for Matt to leave her side, he couldn't say no to the request. Besides, he knew they would give him the same courtesy later. The fact that he and their daughter loved each other seemed to be far more important to the Dawson's than the fact that they weren't together anymore. It was something he was grateful for. He would have understood if they'd hated him for hurting her and pushing her away when he should have held her close. Sitting next to her hospital bed earlier, he'd begun to hate himself for it. He knew seeing her like this wouldn't have been any easier simply because they were still together, but at least then he wouldn't be stuck feeling like the past couple of months had just been a waste of precious time.

She hadn't woken up yet, and while Dr. Sanders had basically told them to expect it to take a while, it was still unbearable to know that she was just laying in that bed unconscious. Every second she wasn't awake felt like a lifetime. His sense of time was completely gone; he had no idea if they'd been at her bedside for minutes or days. He would give anything to see her big beautiful brown eyes or to hear the sweet sound of her voice. Not that he would be able to hear her voice even if she was awake. The moment he'd noticed the ventilator had been terrifying. A huge relief washed over him when a nurse, who had come in to check an IV, had explained that Gabby was indeed capable of breathing on her own, but they wanted to leave her on the ventilator for a few days so that her body could focus on healing. Dr. Sanders had just forgotten to mention it. She'd apologized profusely for Dr. Sanders but Matt had just been glad to know that as bad as Gabby's situation was it wasn't any worse.

As he entered the waiting room, Matt noticed several trays of food and various members of fifty-one eating what looked like lasagna. When they'd first gone to see Gabby, it had just been bagels. Cindy had clearly been working her magic. Chief Boden, Donna, and little Terrence had also joined the group.

"How is she?" the Chief asked as the men walked in.

"Still unconscious but now officially stable. One of the nurses has started calling her miracle girl, and it seems to be catching on," Antonio said.

"Miracle girl?" Severide asked.

"Because she's still alive. Apparently, no one thought she'd make it through surgery," Antonio explained.

"They don't know Dawson," Hermann butted in. "She's too stubborn to die."

The majority of the people in the waiting room let out a chuckle at Hermann's words.

"That's the only update we have. It doesn't sound like they're going to be able to tell us much more until she wakes up unless she takes a turn for the worse."

"I'll be praying that doesn't happen," Donna said. "You've all had enough tragedy to deal with recently."

"I've reached out to some of the women from Church and arranged for lunch and dinner to be brought here for the next week," Cindy informed Matt and Antonio as she handed them plates of food.

"I'm not hungry," Matt tried to refuse the meal and take a seat.

"You need to eat something," Cindy insisted.

After a few more protests didn't get him anywhere, Matt gave up and took the plate. He ate a few bites and then put the plate down. He hadn't been lying when he said he wasn't hungry. The stress and worry of the day had completely decimated his appetite.

When Gabby's parents emerged from her room, they thanked Cindy for the food and took their own plates. Antonio looked at his watch and then turned to Matt.

"Hey Casey, do you mind if I go in next? Laura's supposed to be dropping the kids off for the weekend in about two hours, and I want to be home when she does. After today, I just need to see them."

"Go ahead," Matt replied. Not that he really wanted to wait, but he knew he would have to give Antonio time alone with Gabby at some point. This way he would be able to stay by her side once he went in, and besides, there was no way he was leaving tonight.

"Donna and I need to get Terrence to bed," Chief Boden told Matt shortly after Antonio headed into Gabby's room. "I'm going to ask everyone to not stay too late with shift tomorrow."

"Chief I -," Matt began before Boden cut him off.

"Don't worry Casey. I'm not expecting you to come into work tomorrow," Boden told him. He knew that the lieutenant needed to be here, and it probably wouldn't be a good idea for Casey to be on shift anyways. His heart would be at the hospital and his focus on the woman lying unconscious in a hospital bed down the hall. It could be a potentially dangerous distraction on a call. "Take a few shifts off. I've already put in a request for relief for Dawson, and Hermann can fill in as acting lieutenant."

"Thanks," Casey mumbled. His mind had already returned to Gabby now that he knew there was no issue with him staying here.

"I'm not going to be there for a while either so -," Boden started to say.

"What? You're missing shift too?" Casey was caught off guard by the Chief's statement.

"Yeah. I'm going to be taking some furlough to spend time with Terrence and Donna. After everything with my Dad, I want to make sure I don't miss anything with my family, especially with how little Terrence is," Boden explained. "There will be an interim chief starting next shift. Neither he nor anyone else can know that you're here with Dawson. If they were to figure out why, we'd both be in deep trouble."

"There's no rule that says Gabby can't serve under me. We were never married," Casey defended what they had done. While he had understood why he and Gabby had to make sure that none of the brass knew about their relationship, he never felt like they were doing anything wrong. Now the Chief's words made him wonder if they had.

"Not a rule per say, but it's certainly something that's frowned upon. We all knew there were risks when I decided to ignore your relationship, and let Dawson do her candidacy on 81. Now we just need to make sure those risks don't come bite us in the ass."

Matt nodded before Boden continued.

"Do you have any family that lives out of town?"

"An uncle. Why?" Matt asked.

"Could there be an emergency that would make you need to go visit him?" Boden asked.

"Well, he retired to Florida several years back. He doesn't have any kids and never married. His only other family would be Christie and Violet and my mom. Violet has school, and Christie's pretty much her only parent at this point. My mom obviously can't leave the state so I guess if something were to happen to him, I'd have to be the one to deal with it."

"Then we can say he had a fall, and you had to go down there to help him out," Boden said. "Everyone else will need to act surprised that you're not there and act like they believe the story."

"I guess," Matt agreed. He really didn't care what they did as long as he was by Gabby's side.

"Take care of yourself Casey, and give Dawson my best once she wakes up. Keep me updated please," Boden said before standing and addressing the group. "Alright everyone. I'm heading out. You all need to do the same soon. We've got shift tomorrow. And no one mention Casey being with Dawson when you get to the house in the morning. I'll explain everything else at roll call."

Matt walked back towards Gabby's room, bracing himself for the site that he knew awaited him. Not that he'd been able to get the image of Gabby's broken body out of his mind in the few of hours he'd spent sitting in the waiting room, but an image in his mind wasn't the same as an image in front of him. He took a deep breath and then pushed the door open

Antonio had left a few minutes ago to see Diego and Eva. The rest of fifty-one had followed him towards the elevator, leaving Matt and Gabby's parents alone to spend the night at her side. Now the Dawson's sat by themselves in the waiting room so that he could spend some time alone with Gabby.

"Hey baby. It's me," Matt said as he approached her bedside, before leaning in and placing a kiss on her right cheek, one of the spots on her face that wasn't covered in bandages. He then pulled the chair he had been sitting in earlier as close to the bed as he could get it. Once he was seated, he took Gabby's uncasted right hand in his hands, bringing it up to his lips. He then continued to hold it as he spoke again.

"Gabby, I want you to know that I love you more than anything. Nothing could ever change that. You are the strongest, most incredible person I know, and I'm sure you are going to get through this and come out even stronger than you already are. I promise I'm going to be there every step of the way, cheering you on or being a shoulder for you to cry on. You mean too much to me for me to be anywhere else. I need you in this world. You know when you left I knew it wasn't a decision that you made lightly, and I trusted that you did what you thought you needed to do. Your wants and needs are always going to come before mine so instead of trying to stop you or get you to come home, I just kept telling myself that I needed to love you enough to let you go, but not a day has gone by where I haven't missed you or wished that we were still together. I still reach for you every morning when I wake up, expecting you to be lying next to me, and every morning, I'm devastated to feel the empty space on your side of the bed and realize it's not where you sleep anymore. You need to know that as I was sitting in that waiting room, terrified that this was going to be it, that when I watched you walk out to that ambulance was going to be the last time I saw you alive, that your comment about how nothing had changed was going to be the last words you ever spoke to me, I realized something. Nothing matters more than you and me. Nothing. Gabby, I'm sorry I didn't fight for you before and that I made you feel like you had to leave in the first place. I promise no matter how long it takes for you to get there, I'm going to fight for you now, and I'm not going to stop until I have back you."

Needing more intimate contact than holding Gabby's hand provided, Matt leaned against the bed, placing his head in the crook of her neck and caressed the side of her face, careful to avoid disturbing the bandages. While intended to be loving, the action made him realize that she didn't smell like Gabby. In place of the combination of the strawberries and vanilla scent of her body wash and slightly minty scent of her shampoo that he found so incredibly sexy was a sterile hospital smell. That was when the dam broke. The tears that he'd worked so hard to hold back all day started flowing, and he couldn't stop them. He sobbed into her neck and hospital bed until he finally fell asleep. That was how Gabby's parents found him when they returned to her room a couple of hours later.

"Hey girl," Shay called as she and Severide made their way towards where Gabby and Matt were seated. "I hear I have you to thank for finding us."

Instead of responding, Gabby sat frozen, staring at Shay and trying to wrap her head around the fact that the woman was standing in front of her, seemingly fine. She was now even more confused than she was before.

"You feeling okay Dawson?" Shay asked after a minute.

"Gabby?" Matt asked when she still hadn't responded a few moments later, a hint of concern in his voice.

"Shay!" Gabby exclaimed as she finally reacted, ignoring the concern of those around her. Standing up, she wrapped her arms around the woman, pulling her into a hug. She had to force herself to resist the urge to cry and scream 'you're alive.' No one else seemed surprised to see Shay standing there. Even though she still had no idea what was going on, Gabby got the sense that she was the only one who remembered her best friend dying.

"Dawson, it's great to see you too, but I can't breathe," Shay squeaked out.

"Sorry," Gabby said sheepishly. "I'm just really glad to see you."

"Jeez girl. You'd think we'd been missing for days not hours," Shay said.

"How'd everything go at the District?" Matt asked Shay.

"Okay I suppose. Brett and I gave our statements, but the bastards who grabbed us aren't talking so they have no way to get any evidence that someone else was behind it," Shay answered. "Kelly wanted to take me home to rest, but I'm more shaken up than anything so after Kelly told me about delivering the Chief's baby in the Squad rig, I wanted to see how they were all doing so I made him bring me here. I think Cruz took Brett home though. You know, I can't believe she didn't tell me they were dating. I always knew about Dawson's relationships before the rest of the house."

"Well, she's your partner, but its not like you guys are really close. You ride around with her, but at the house, you're glued to Dawson's hip. Sometimes I think Casey should be jealous," Severide teased.

Gabby barely heard him though. Her mind was racing as it started to put some of the pieces together based on Shay's words. The comment about Terrence's birth. To her it had happened a couple of months ago yet somehow he was the baby Matt thought she was referring to earlier, and the reason everyone was gathered in a hospital waiting room. The day he was born was the same day Lullo had kidnapped Mills and Brett. Except Shay had seemingly survived the warehouse explosion since she was clearly alive so she must have been partnered with Brett instead of Mills. Gabby still didn't understand how any of this was happening or how she'd gotten here. Part of her couldn't help wondering if any of this was real. She'd apparently gone back in time but it wasn't completely the past she remembered, and at the moment she really wished she'd paid more attention when Otis would talk about one sci-fi thing or another instead of tuning him out. Still, she was pretty sure she was beginning to understand what was going on around her.

"I'm not trying to leave her out, but I miss my partner. Things aren't the same when I can't hang out with her in the rig too," Shay told him.

"As long as you still consider Dawson your partner, you're never going to get close enough to Brett for her to confide in you," Severide said.

"I can't help it. After five and a half years, she's always going to be my partner," Shay tried to defend herself. "Hey Dawson, you know you did me proud becoming a firefighter and all, but if you ever decide you've had enough of truck and want to come back to ambo, I'll gladly give you back the PIC title if it'll get you on 61."

Those words pulled Gabby out of her thoughts enough to bring a smile to her face. As much as she loved being a firefighter, she would have gladly given it up to be back on 61 with Shay if it meant her best friend was still alive. Wherever she was it seemed she had both.

"You sure you're okay?" she must still be out of it as Matt was clearly worried about her.

"Yeah. I'm fine. What day is it?" Now seemed as good a time as any to confirm her theory.

"December 2nd" Severide said as the three of them gave her an odd look.

Terrence's birthday. Her theory had just been confirmed.

Author's Note: So I don't really feel like I got Boden right, and I'm not thrilled with the way some of the dialogue between Shay and Severide came out. Its just every time I tried to rewrite, I thought it was worse so I went with this. Hope its good enough.

Please review and let me know what you thought.