Kelly heard his phone buzzing the next night. He picked it up from the coffee table and saw Casey's number, he hadn't heard from Matt since he went home yesterday.
"Hey Casey, what's up?"
There was a brief pause, then a delayed response, "Can you come over?"
It sounded like Casey had been drinking. Severide's eyebrows knotted together as he tried to figure out what was going on.
"Yeah, sure, is everything alright?"
He heard the call disconnect. Kelly didn't get it, but he decided to head on over and see what was up.
"Matt?" Kelly tried the door and found it unlocked, he wasn't sure whether to take that as a good sign or not. The lights were on, the TV was off though. "Matt?"
"In here," a voice called from the kitchen.
"Casey, what's go-" Kelly's question died on his lips when he entered the room and saw Casey on the floor with a few empty bottles around him. "Casey, are you alright?"
Matt looked up at him, his eyes squinting in the bright light shining down from the ceiling. "Yeah...just had a few drinks."
"How many's a few?" Kelly wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer.
"Dunno."
"Are you okay?" Kelly crouched down beside him.
Casey absently grabbed the empty bottles and stacked them together, like a little kid playing with blocks. He had a strange look on his face as he slowly shook his head from side to side and answered, "I don't know."
Kelly was officially scared, and he didn't know what to do, but as on the job, he never let on to that fact.
"Okay..." he said calmly, "we're gonna get you up and..." he bent his knees and hooked an arm through Casey's and slowly pulled him to his feet, then went over to the stove and started a pot of coffee.
"I'm not drunk," Casey offered, then added in a quieter tone, "not really...not yet...I don't think."
"Matt, what happened?"
"Nothing," Casey shook his head, "I just...needed to take my mind off things."
"What things?" Kelly asked. "What happened yesterday?"
"That's one of them," Matt answered slowly.
Kelly took him by the arm and led him out to the living room, "Come on, buddy...let's get you settled down here," he helped ease Casey down onto the couch and sat down beside him, "now talk to me, what's going on?"
Casey ran his hand over his face and pulled his bottom eyelids down one by one and then let them snap back into place as he tried to figure out how to explain it.
"I've just had...a lot on my mind lately...and no one to tell it to," he said.
"What do you mean?" Kelly asked.
"Four days ago...I nearly died that day in the diner, and I needed to talk to someone about it. I called Christie, she was busy, I called my mom, she was busy...I tried calling Gabby."
"You what?"
Casey shook his head, "Her number doesn't work anymore...I nearly died, and I had no one to talk to, Kelly."
"Why didn't you call me?"
"You were there, you saw what happened," Casey pointed out, "You didn't talk to me about it then, why would you want to after?"
"Matt..."
"And then yesterday," Casey cut him off, "I nearly died again...that nozzle could've hit me," Casey raised his hand and pointed a finger towards the side of his head, where he'd fractured his skull when the beam fell on him several years ago, "here...or here," he moved his hand towards the front and pointed to his face, "or anywhere else...and killed me. I could be dead by now, again...and again, I got nobody to talk to, Kelly."
"Why didn't you call me when you got home?"
"Again...you were there...what's to tell?" Casey asked. "Two times in a week, I nearly die...maybe it's not just coincidence."
Kelly looked at him concernedly, "What do you mean?"
Casey was silent for a minute, Kelly could almost see the wheels turning in his head as he tried to think how to explain this. Finally he told Kelly, "I'm the same age now...that my dad was when he died...I've actually outlived him by a few months...and I have nothing to show for it."
"What do you mean nothing to show for it?" Severide wasn't getting it.
Casey shook his head and counted on his fingers, "I'm not married, I don't have a girlfriend, I don't have any kids...and...for the first time in a long time...I'm wondering if I've wasted my life."
"What?" Kelly wasn't sure if he'd heard right, because if he had, he didn't have any idea what to make of it.
"I know," Casey slowly told him, "that when I'm at 51, I make a difference, to people, a lot of people...but if I wasn't there, someone else would be, doing the same stuff."
"That's not true and you know it," Kelly started to say.
"We all get the same training, Kelly," Matt told him, "I'm not special."
"How can you say that? Do you think somebody like Gorsch or Pridgen could ever-"
"Or someone like you," Casey replied, "Or Darden, or Herrmann, or Cruz...doesn't really matter, does it? One dies, another takes their place, just one continuous system of being replaced, and soon it's like you were never even there."
"Matt," Kelly was terrified by what he was hearing, "Where's all this coming from?"
Casey was staring straight ahead and said in a small voice that Kelly almost missed entirely, "What if I don't really outlive him?"
"What?"
Casey turned to Kelly and explained, "My birthday's only a couple months away...and the last few days, even before that holdup, I've had this strange feeling that I'm not going to live long enough to see it, what if I'm right?"
"Hold up," Kelly said, "When did this start? How?"
"I don't know," Casey shook his head, "it's just been on my mind a lot...at night I listen to my heart beating, and I don't know if it sounds normal or not, and it scares me."
Kelly thought back and said, "we all had our physicals not too long ago, what'd the doctor say?"
"He said everything's fine," Casey answered.
"What'd he really say?" Kelly asked, figuring Casey would sugar coat it to make sure he stayed on at 51, just as he had after his skull fracture, officially he'd been cleared, but he hadn't told Boden, or anybody else about his memory and time lapses, about the full extent of the doctor's report, possibility of permanent brain damage. That had all felt like so long ago, now it felt like it was just yesterday again. Kelly knew he was no better, he'd hidden his broken neck, hidden his addiction to the pain killers, for the same reason, he couldn't stomach the thought of not working at 51, of no longer being part of that family, so he had no room to talk, but he hoped Casey wouldn't hold that against him and would be honest with him.
Casey looked him dead in the eyes and slowly repeated in a tone that let Severide know he wasn't holding anything back, "He said everything's fine...he said my cholesterol and my blood pressure were a little high but not enough to actually worry about, and everything else looks good." He sounded a bit more rational as he added, "Kelly, I know how dumb this sounds, but I can't shake this feeling that I'm going to die soon, and I'm scared."
Kelly was at a loss for words, all he could manage was a small, "Buddy..." as he draped an arm over Casey's shoulders.
"It's not dying so much that scares me," Casey told him, "Just that I've gone my whole life and there are so many things I always wanted to do, and never got done, and now it might be too late."
"Like what?" Kelly asked.
"I wanted to get married...again, I wanted to have kids...I wanted to travel, see the world, or at least parts of it...all I've done for 20 years and all I know how to do is be a firefighter...and it's just not enough, Kelly. I've screwed up every major relationship I ever had-"
"You did not," Kelly interjected.
"Yes I did...Hallie broke up with me, she didn't want to have kids with me," Casey said.
"Hallie didn't want to get pregnant, period, because of her work, it was a bad time," Kelly reminded him. "It had nothing to do with you."
"She left me because of me," Casey responded. "And Gabby-"
"That's not your fault either," Kelly told him. "It just didn't work out."
"No woman ever stays with me," Casey said, "not for the long haul...something always goes wrong somewhere, so it must be me. And now..."
"Don't start about 'now'," Kelly said. "Casey, you had two brushes with death in less than a week, that's going to rattle anybody, but if the doctor said you're fine..." he stopped and he thought, and he asked Casey, "Would you feel better if we went to a different doctor and had him do another physical?"
Casey shrugged uncertainly, "I don't know...maybe...does it really matter?"
"What do you mean?"
"Perfectly healthy people drop dead from unknown causes all the time, no obvious reason why, nothing found during the autopsy, what if that's how I die?" Casey asked him.
"Buddy, trust me, you are not dying anytime soon," Kelly told him.
"You don't know that," Casey said. "I feel like my heart's a ticking time bomb."
"Matt, when was the last time you slept?" Kelly asked suspiciously.
Casey shrugged, "I don't know...I try, I start to...then I just hear it ticking, and it keeps me up wondering 'Is this it?' 'Is it supposed to sound like that?' 'Is it fast?' 'Is it slow?' 'How much longer?'"
Kelly felt like he was starting to get a few answers anyway to what was going on.
"Okay...I'm going to stay here tonight, and I'm going to make sure you sleep," he told Matt.
Casey looked at him with wide, questioning eyes and asked, "Who has time to sleep? I'm on borrowed time, Kelly, I've got less than two months left, I can't waste it sleeping."
"Buddy, you have to sleep, or I'm going to have to have you committed to the hospital," Kelly told him. "Matt, look at me...listen to me, you're fine, you are not going to die."
"I don't want to," Casey shook his head, and asked him with no humor whatsoever, "It's funny how time just creeps up on you, isn't it? One day you're 20 and you have all the time in the world...then you blink, and 20 years have gone by, and you don't even know where they went...and all the stuff you thought you had plenty of time to do, it's just gone, and then you find yourself wondering how much time is left."
Kelly was at a true loss for words, he pulled Casey towards him and hugged his best friend.