Ok sooo, remember when I said that everyone would be there when Casey woke up? I lied. I'm sorry. Don't hate me. I did have Severide there when he woke up, so there's that. Right, so Here's more, and Thank you sooo much for the AMAZING reviews. :) I heart you all.

I don't know what woke me up, but I was having the best dream about a girl that I saw who came into the station the other day. I don't know what she was doing there, but damn I hope she has a reason to come back.

Oh…. Right, I don't know what woke me up, but as I pealed my back from the WORLD'S MOST UNCOMFORTABLE CHAIR, I realize that I'm looking straight at the profile of Lieutenant Matthew Casey, sitting up in his hospital bed, and he does not look well.

Matt looked like he just woke up from one Hell of a nightmare. It looked like he was still a little out of it and not to mention, white as a ghost. The nurses have been coming in every hour to wake him up so he doesn't like, slip into a coma or anything; because that would be horrible, and I would feel like shit, not that this is really my fault, but I feel like it kind of is, and Matt hasn't said one coherent thing since before the fire last night, and I'm… a little worried.

His breathing is heavy and that can't be good for his ribs. I realize that the pain meds they have him on must be kick-ass, because he's not writhing around on the bed in pain or anything, so that's good.

He starts to shake his head like he's trying to remove every memory he's ever had, and I'm about two seconds from reaching over and calling for the doctor when Matt turns his head so sharp I thought he'd get whiplash.

Seriously. Good. Meds.

Matt has this thing that he does with his eyes sometimes. They get impossibly wide, and ridiculously blue, and I want to turn away and hide because he's so confused and it actually hurts to look at that 'lost puppy' look, that he doesn't even know that he's doing.

Dammit Casey…

He looks scared. Casey looks scared. I've seen him scared maybe five times, ever. I'm not going to name them because those were pretty much the only times that I was scared too. I don't think anyone realizes the kind of shit that Andy, Matt and I used to get into.

For a second I thought that he was about to just pass out again like he'd done the last fifteen times, but all of the sudden his eyes slide from wide and confused to narrow and what looks like pissed off.

"Matt?" I ask as quietly as humanly possible. I've been on the receiving end of many concussions, and they suck ass. The last thing that anyone who has a concussion wants is someone rushing them and asking a bunch of questions about how they feel. 'My brains been wracked around in my skull, and I can't focus on shit, that's how I feel.' At least that's what my inter-monologue sounds like.

"S-sever-severide?" Matt grounds out. Oh shit.

He winces at the sound of his voice, but then again so do I. He sounds awful. I've pulled people out of burning buildings that sound less like stroke victims then Matt does.

"Hey," What do you say to a person that you've been tormenting for the past month, and the last thing they probably remember was you standing over them, while they clutch their chest in agony and squinted blindly up into the face of their tormentor? "Do you want some water?"

Well, that wasn't rhetorical. What do you say, because this is all I got.

Instead of answering, Matt looks around the room and realizes where he is. I think he's actually starting to come out of his little 'concussed trance'. I've prepared for this moment; when Matt was coherent enough to talk about just what the Hell all of that was in the locker room, before he went all unconscious on me.

I'm about to break my own rule about not questioning concussion victims, but before I can, Matt's face goes into 'Blank Casey' mode. It's this other thing that he does with his face when he's about to show any type of emotion. Casey's the type of person to bottle it up until the problem presents itself as an inoperable tumor. I can't see this conversation going anything but horrible if he checks out now.

"Matt? Do you need me to call the doctor? Are you in any pain?"

He'll say I'm fine in three… two… one-

"I'm fine. What are… what are you doing here Severide?" He's not fine, and I can tell he's lying because I've played poker with this man, and he doesn't know that when he lies his right eye twitches a little and he goes into this defensive thing where he has to touch his arms or his chest or some part of his body. Andy and I perfected a way to cheat Matt out of almost every card game we ever played together.

Right now his eye is twitching up a storm and he's holding his chest in a way that suggests that his body is already fighting the pain meds in his system.

"I'm gonna call the doctor then Shay and Dawson, they should be awake by now anyway." I reach for the call cord again, and almost wrap my fingers around the button when I hear a squeak. I look up and see the idiot, who leads people into fires and is supposed to be the most responsible person under the Chief at a fire house, getting up out of his hospital bed. I don't know how this guy got through life without being strangled due to stupidity, but now he's just downright pushing his luck.

"Matt-"

"What time is it? W-why-"

He's confused. I get that. I would be too. I can't believe I'm about to say this for what seemed like the ten millionth time: "Casey." I wait for him to look over at me. He does but it's not like I have his full attention. He's eye's twitching too much for that to be true.

"Matt. It's-" I actually have to look over at the clock in order to remember the time, like I hadn't done that ever minute for the past few hours. "It's 5:28 in the morning." Maybe Shay and Dawson wouldn't be up. "Do you remember what happened?"

I watch him for any sign of recognition, but he's staying firmly in 'Blank Casey' land. He hasn't fully gotten out of bed, but his covers have slid down past the bandages on his chest and he's propped up on his hands with his legs close to the side of the bed, and his torso twisted; he's got that, 'I'm about to sprint out of here like an Olympic gold medalist' look on his face.

Ignoring my question again, which doesn't mean that he didn't hear it or wasn't coherent enough to answer, he looks down at his chest like he's never seen bandaged ribs before and then he looks up at me.

"W-what are you… why are you here Kelly?" Oh so I guess we're just gonna ignore the fact that he passed out right after going all Sybil on me back at the station. Oh, ok.

"Surprisingly enough, as it turns out, the world does revolve around you, Matthew. I just thought I'd catch up with the craze and make sure your self-destructive ass didn't slip into a coma or anything." Okay, let's face it, no one in there right mind would have left it up to me to have good bedside manner.

The surprise that is evident on his face shows me that I am probably one of the worst people on the planet Earth, but his next question doesn't help at all:

"Why?" His eye twitches again and I'm starting to think the concussion is more of a factor at this point as opposed to him lying to me.

I stand up, slowly, because Matt still looks 'flight or flighty' to me, and walk over to the dimmer lights on the wall. I don't know why I feel the need to hold up my hands in surrender whenever I look at him, but it seems to put him at ease a little and that probably makes us both feel a little better.

"Why don't I want you comatose, or why are you in here in the first place, because you've woken up like six times, and you've never actually asked why you were in the hospital to begin with."

I'll say it. I'm worried. I don't know what's going through his head, and I'm worried that whatever it is will be shockingly close to what he said to me in the station. All of the 'don't deserve to be here' shit, and the 'you were right' stuff. I didn't like it then, and I won't like it if his answer doesn't involve him asking about his health.

Instead of him answering anything that sounds like what a normal person would ask, Matt drops his backward and his head falls back on the brick-like pillow that every hospital bed comes with. I want to slap him upside his damaged brain for that, but I realize that he didn't do that on purpose, and he was actually losing his grip on consciousness.

"Casey?"

He's panting a lot more now, and every breath that he takes is obviously straining his lungs.

"Casey, I'm gonna call the nurse and she'll get you some more meds, okay?" My fingers are two inches away from his call button when I feel a weak pull on my 'not so good' shoulder.

I wince, but I keep my focus on him because he's looking at me now with the most intense stare that I've seen him give me, besides glares, in a long while.

"Wh-what's wrong? Why… why are… what's wrong?" He's again lost all color in his face, but he still looks ridiculously intense and I can't shrug off his grip no matter what, even though he's as week as a kitten right now.

I can't tell what he's asking about, and suddenly it doesn't matter anymore because I'm being pushed away from Casey, his intense glare, and everything that was wrong with that conversation.

There are nurses everywhere and Doctor Sands, who collectively don't look happy with this situation. They start to swarm around Casey's bed and that's when I realize that there are alarms going off, and they were all coming from Casey's monitors.

There med-speak is way too complicated for me to follow right now, or ever for that matter, but then they're doing something with gel and paddles, and from my corner of the room, I can see that nothing is going well. I'm panicked, and then I'm forced to step outside, by one of the nurses and she has the most sympathetic look on her face and I want to ask her what's wrong, but then the door slams in my face. I can see everything that's going on through the window anyway, but I'm kind of glad that I'm not in there at the moment.

There's a second, before I turn away because someone has called my name, that Matt looks over at the window, and he looks… he looks very…. Sorry. I don't know why. I don't know. I want to ask him, but suddenly my arms are full of a very sad and hysterical Hallie.

Wait… Hallie? Where did she-

"Oh my God! Kelly, what are- what's… where is he? You didn't-" Nothing she said made any sense at all, but then the door to Matt's room opens up, and out rushes all the nurses pushing Matt's bed, and Dr. Sands runs out behind them.

She doesn't stop for long, but she turns to me and Hallie and says in the most distractingly sad tone, "He's got a punctured lung, and we think he might actually have a skull fracture. I can't believe we didn't catch that. We're taking him into surgery for the lung, but we can't do anything about his head until we're sure that he won't bleed out from internal injuries." She turns to run off after the rest of the nurses, but before she goes she turns back and says, "If there is anyone else that should be here just in case… call them." She runs off and that's it.

It's quiet again and I don't know what to do with myself…

And that's when I felt a hand slap me in the face.

Now during the next chapter, everyone comes in, and it's basically an awesome part of the story... maybe... thank you so much for reading this far, please review, and Bon voyage... (that was french... yeah, I know) THANK YOU!