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Chapter Ten

In the middle of the night, Kelly found himself trapped in a nightmare, but it felt all too real.

Stella had been separated from the other firefighters with Truck 81, closed off behind a wall of smoldering rubble with the fire burning hot all around her.

He was tearing at the wall before him, desperately trying to put a hole in it. Nothing worked. Saw. Sledgehammer. Everything fell apart in his hands until all he had left were his hands.

Just when he thought he'd found a way to make a hole. There was only enough room for him to fit his hand through the rubble, but not his glove.

Stripping it from his hand he reached through, calling Stella's name, hoping that she was still there on the other end.

'Damnit, Stella… Take my hand!"

He felt something move behind the wall, sensed it in a movement of air, and then he felt something brush up against his hand. Pushing his arm through the rubble he grabbed on and gasped in pain. Her hand, her very skin was on fire.

BEEP BEEP BEEP….

He turned his head away from the screaming alarm in his ear, but he wasn't going to let go of her hand.

BEEP BEEP…

Someone grabbed his shoulder and pulled, slipping her hand from his.

He came awake a moment before his back his the wall of the hospital room.

Nurses swarmed in as Dr. Halstead leaned over the bed. Kelly looked at the screens and his eyes fell onto a readout he understood. One hundred and six point four degrees.

He knew enough to keep his mouth shut and listen. IV. Medicine. Dangerous temperature. More comments about medicine, procedures and in the midst of it. Stella lay perfectly still, as if she was somewhere else instead of inside of her own body. And as a nurse drew a new vial of her blood, he found himself hoping that Stella was somewhere else.

Stella Kidd was a force of nature. She smiled big, laughed big, and when she did something, she was all in.

And when she was with him, he swallowed hard, trying to push out the memories of her wrapped in his arms, her voice in his ear. His knees buckled until the only thing holding him up was the wall at his back.

When the nurses rolled Stella onto her side Will picked up an empty syringe from a tray.

"What… what are you doing?"

Gritting his teeth together, Will walked his fingers over her spine and a few moments later he wiggled the point of his finger over a spot. "Spinal tap. Maybe her spinal fluid can tell us something." With a nod to the nurses to hold her steady, he inserted the needle into Stella's back and drew out a sample.

The temperature gauge made a soft blip and the number on the readout fell to one hundred and six point two.

Will handed the syringe to one of the nurses with instructions to head to the lab.

Kelly stepped up to meet him, wiping at his eyes with the back of his hand. "What's happening."

Blowing out a breath, Will made some kind of helpless gesture in the air. "Fever is one thing. But anything over One-oh-five? That's a danger zone."

Kelly looked over Will's shoulder. "She still over one hundred and six."

Will nodded, his expression frozen in concern. "Anything over five is dangerous. Any higher and we could be looking at brain damage."

The words washed over him and even the breath he managed to drag into his lungs didn't do much to alleviate the ache in his chest. "I have," he took in another breath when the edges of his vision turned gray, "I have her power of attorney, what do I need to sign?"

Will's brow pinched between his eyes. "What do you mean?"

"Whatever you need to do, whatever treatment you need to try. You just give me the paper. I'll sign it."

Wincing a little, Matt's hands lifted up to the middle of his chest. "Kelly, it's not that simple."

"Yes," Kelly moved closer, ducking his head to stare straight into Matt's eyes. "Do something. Do it now. You bring her back. You make this okay."

"Kelly-"

"Hey, what's happening?"

Will couldn't help the relief written plainly on his features, but when Gabby took hold of Kelly's arm and turned him around, Will latched onto the lifeline and explained the situation to Gabby.

She wrapped an arm around Kelly's waist and leaned into him.

Will left the room and left Kelly and Gabby standing in silence.

#

Matt took Kelly back to his apartment. It wasn't a voluntary thing, at least not for Kelly. He wanted to stay, but Gabby pushed them both out of the room with a look on her face that promised bloodshed if they didn't do what she said. And so they went.

The ride there was silent, the walk to the door was even worse with the sounds of two pairs of feet walking down the long hall to Kelly's front door.

It took him a few minutes to shower and throw on some clothes before he went back into his bedroom. Casey was leaning against the wall, ever so patiently standing in the aching silence of the room. Wordlessly, Kelly picked up some clothes and a few items and made a bag to take back with him.

"You want to tell me what's going on?"

Kelly spared him a glance. "I'm doing what needs to be done."

"You're a good friend, Kelly." Narrowing his eyes, Matt tried to find the answer in Kelly's stoic gaze. "I want to be the same to you, but I'm not sure what's going on."

Kelly dropped something into the duffle and turned to look at Matt. "What going on is your wife forced me to come and get a shower and some clothes. Now, I'm going back to be with Stella."

"Look, I know you and Stella are friends-"

"Good friends," Kelly added.

"Yeah, of course," taken aback by the power in his words, Matt decided to tread carefully, "good friends. You two have been through a lot before. But if this is some kind of guilt or you're thinking about what happened between you before… don't. Don't go there. You're with Anna now and Stella knows that."

"You don't know everything that happened. When everything was happening with Grant, I drew a line in the sand. Stella was trying to tell me what was going on but I wasn't ready to hear about it. What we had… what I thought we had? I told her we weren't even together."

Matt leaned his head back against the wall, listening carefully.

"When Gabby moved in with you, Stella offered to let me stay at her place. I told her I didn't do monogamy."

Matt couldn't help but wince at that comment.

"I shut the door in her face so many times and she was always there for me." Kelly picked up his bag and slung it over his shoulder. "Now she needs me, and I'm going to be there for her, because she's done the same for me."

He looked up at Matt as he walked up beside him.

"Can you take me back now?"

Matt reached out a hand and put it on Kelly's shoulder. "I'd take you anywhere you want to go."

Kelly nodded, the hard line of his lips loosening slightly. "I want to be with Stella."