Kelly looked at the clock. They were on shift in an hour, but Stella hadn't come out of the bedroom yet. He picked up the second cup of coffee he'd made for her and called out as he headed to the bedroom, "Yo, Stella!"
As soon as he stepped in the doorway he knew something was wrong. Stella was still in bed, not asleep, and throwing the covers off of her and flopping around like a fish out of water.
"Stella?" Kelly went over to the bed, "What's wrong?"
She moaned and told him, "I'm burning up, is the heat on?"
Kelly turned on the light and saw she was covered in sweat, he felt her forehead and while he couldn't pinpoint a temperature that way, he knew it was well over 100.
"Okay, come on," he slipped one arm under her knees, the other around her back and lifted her up from the bed.
"Where' we gon?" she slurred.
"Gonna try and cool you down," he answered as he went into the bathroom.
Kelly returned to the bathroom with a bottle of Gatorade in one hand and two pills in another. Stella was leaned back against the tub, sighing contentedly in the cold water.
"Take these," he said as he handed her the pills and the bottle, "gotta try and get your fever down."
For that matter, he opened the medicine cabinet, took out the digital thermometer and pressed it against her temple. A few seconds later it beeped as it registered 104.2.
"I'll be fine," Stella weakly insisted, and the water shifted as she tried to pull herself up, "I gotta get to work."
"Whoa," Kelly grabbed her and pushed her back to sit in the tub, "you're not going anywhere, you can't be on shift in this condition."
"Naw, no-no-no, I'm fine, I just gotta..." whatever Stella was about to say, it suddenly escaped her and she looked confused.
"You're staying in bed," Kelly told her.
Stella had just closed her eyes, when she heard that she opened one and it rolled around curiously and asked, "This is the bed?"
"Wait here, don't move," Kelly said. He stepped out of the bathroom and hollered over to Matt, "Casey, turn the air on, get the temperature down to 76."
"What's going on?" Sylvie asked.
"104 fever, she's going to have to take it easy today, I'll tell Boden she's not coming in..." he stopped in mid-step and thought of something else, "For that matter, maybe I should stay with her."
"No, Kelly, you go ahead," Sylvie told him, "I'll stay with Stella, they can call in a replacement for me."
"Probably Chout," Casey commented.
Through the corner of her mouth Sylvie murmured, "Perfect since I won't be there."
Casey walked up on Severide and Cruz who seemed to be discussing something and asked, "What's going on?"
"I'm having Cruz call Brett to see how Kidd's doing," Kelly answered.
It was Casey's understanding that men didn't usually have 'blonde' moments, but he guessed he must've been having one because he asked, "Why don't you just call her yourself?"
"I don't have her number," Kelly said.
Cruz had his phone to his ear and waited, a few seconds later his eyes lit up, "Hey Brett, how's Kidd doing? Uh huh, any change? Okay, I'll let him know, thanks." He disconnected the call and said, "Kidd's sleeping right now, her temperature's the same."
"Any idea what it is?" Casey asked.
Kelly shrugged, "Some flu going around I guess."
"Hope everybody else doesn't get it, or we'll really be in trouble," Casey said.
Stella arched her back and moaned, she felt like she was cooking in her own skin, and every single thing touching her was only making her burn up that much more. The mattress was hot, the sheets were hot, her clothes were stuck to her and felt like she was on fire. She opened her eyes and flung herself up on the bed and started tearing her clothes off, she felt confined, she could hardly breathe. One by one she threw her clothes across the room and moved over to the other side of the bed where it was cooler, but she was still miserable. She was just vaguely aware of the sun setting outside, she didn't know what day it was, what time, all she knew was she was burning alive and she needed something to make it stop.
"It's been two days and she's holding at 103 degrees," Kelly said to Casey as the three of them headed into the apartment, "if she's not better tomorrow I'm taking her in to Med."
"She was asleep when I left to run to the store," Sylvie said as she put two sacks of groceries down on the table, "I'll go see how she's doing."
Casey unloaded the groceries and commented, "All she's lived off of for two days is Gatorade and Tylenol, sooner or later something's gotta give."
A blood curdling scream from Sylvie had both men drop whatever was in their hands and they ran towards the bedroom to see what was wrong.
"Stella?"
Casey and Severide got there at the same time and knocked into each other trying to get in through the door. Once they were past the threshold they both stopped suddenly and both felt their eyes widen to their maximum capacity.
"Oh my God," Casey said in disbelief.
Sylvie and Kidd were both on the floor, Sylvie had just gotten Stella wrapped in a sheet, Stella was awake but slow to respond and didn't seem aware of much. On the floor beside her were a pair of scissors dropped open at their full width, and a few feet away from her on the floor, was her hair, lopped off at the ponytail.
Brett took Stella's temperature again and told Kelly the readout on the thermometer, "102.3, it's starting to go down, that's an improvement."
She wasn't sure what else to say. They'd gotten Stella back in bed and she seemed content to stay there, finally. The air conditioner had been turned down to 74 degrees, everybody else was chilled through, but Kidd finally seemed to be sleeping peacefully, there was just the faintest hint of a smile on her weary face.
Kelly stood by the bed and looked down at Stella for a minute, then leaned over and softly kissed her on the forehead, then backed out of the room to let her rest. As he stepped out the door he saw Casey just standing there in the middle of the room, eyes wide in shock and disbelief, as he held Stella's hair in his hand. Casey looked up at Kelly and just shook his head, there were no words to describe anything about this.
Brett was the only one able to talk. "When her fever breaks and she realizes what she did, she is going to flip out."
Kelly didn't move, but he had to agree. "She's had long hair as long as I've known her."
Casey held the severed hair end to end in a two handed grip. It couldn't be any less than two and a half feet long.
"As thick as it is, there's no way this was done in one clean lop," he finally said, "she would've had to keep cutting at it until it finally all came off."
"She must've been pretty miserable to do that," Sylvie observed, "what happens when she's better?"
Kelly had no idea.
Stella moaned softly as she stirred, then opened her eyes and saw the lights were on, and saw Kelly standing over her.
"Hey," she said weakly, "how long you been there?"
"How're you feeling?" he asked.
"I need a shower," she groaned, "My clothes are stuck to me," she pushed back the covers, and then pulled them up when she realized she didn't have any clothes on. "What the hell?"
"You were a little out of it," Kelly said.
Stella moved, and her eyes widened when she felt a breeze blow across the back of her neck. She raised a hand behind her head and felt, and her eyes bulged to their limit as she realized what was missing. "What, what..." she jumped out of bed and ran over to the mirror over the dresser and turned to the side and saw her hair stopped just short of the nape of her neck. "Oh my God! What happened to my hair?"
"As far as we can tell," Kelly said hesitantly, "you cut it off."
She looked at him, "Me?"
"You had a fever, at one point you seemed delirious, nobody was watching you and when we came in...we found you like this."
Stella turned back to the mirror with a look of utmost horror on her face as this reality started to sink in.
Kelly tensely paced back and forth in front of the bathroom door, waiting for someone to come out.
"You're not doing any good wearing a hole in the floor," Casey said, "why don't you sit down?"
"I can't," was Kelly's only answer.
Casey moved past him and sat on the couch. Rolling his eyes he called to the man behind him, "I don't suppose it'd do any good to point out it's only hair."
"No it wouldn't," Kelly responded simply.
"Thought I'd try," Casey replied, knowing there wasn't any precedent for this situation.
The door opened and Kelly spun on his heel and saw Sylvie come out and close the door behind her.
"How is she?" he asked.
Sylvie walked over to him and said simply but firmly, "You better get in there and talk to her."
"Me?" Kelly asked, "What can I do?"
"Maybe nothing," the blonde woman answered bluntly, "But what Stella needs right now isn't a pep talk from her girl friend. She needs a little reassurance from you."
Reluctantly, Kelly went into the bathroom and closed the door behind him, and saw Stella leaning over the sink to get a better look at herself in the medicine cabinet mirror as she frantically touched the hair on her head and looked at it from every angle. She'd gotten a shower and changed into some clean clothes, and now, her hair looked only slightly longer now that it was wet, but when it dried and the natural curl set in again it'd be just as short as she first saw it earlier. She moaned under her breath as she examined her hair from all sides in the mirror and looked on the verge of tears.
"Oh my God," she groaned, "why did I do this?"
Hoping that he didn't say the wrong thing, Kelly stepped over to her and looked at her reflection, and told her, "Stella, it's not that bad."
"I look like a scalped onion!" she said as she turned to the side again, and grimaced, "I hate my ears, they look huge now."
Kelly offered a small smile and told her, "You have perfect ears, they're the same size they always were."
"Yeah," Stella whined, "but I always had my hair to hide them. Do you know how long it took me to grow my hair that long?" Now she did burst into tears as she told him, "It's going to take ten years to grow it back!"
"Stella," Kelly put his arms around her, "come here, calm down, calm down, it's not that bad, you're beautiful no matter how you look."
But she wasn't buying it. She saw her reflection and shook her head, "It looks awful."
"It'll grow back. What is it they say, hair grows an inch a month? So..."
"That's still two and a half years, Kelly," she told him, "And do you know what a bitch it'll be when it's just a few inches long, still too short to do anything with?"
"Look, when you're feeling better, you can go to the salon and they can smooth it all out, it'll look great, then it'll start growing back," Kelly said. "Come on, Stella, you know you could be covered in mud and I'd still be attracted to you."
Snorting, she turned to him and asked, "Then where were you when I did the mud run? You would've gotten a real kick out of that."
Kelly laughed, and after a few second so did Stella.
"Alright," she said as she turned towards the mirror again, "Alright, maybe it's not all that bad, but I still hate how it looks."
"Trust me, every guy who ever had a bad haircut knows the feeling, and they all have," Kelly said as he leaned over and kissed her over her temple.
"Yeah, but that only takes a month to grow back," she replied.
"It'll look better in a month," Kelly was persistent.