Kelly sighed in exasperation at the digital readout on the thermometer, 98.3. He'd taken his temperature three times in the last 10 minutes, the thing couldn't possibly be working right, he had to have a fever, it was the only explanation for why he was chilled clear through his whole body. He turned it off and put it back in the medicine cabinet, left the bathroom and headed back for the warm haven of his bed. He pulled the covers up tight and burrowed deep under them, waiting for this freezing sensation to stop. He curled himself up in a tight ball and waited for his body to stop shaking, his knees to stop knocking together, he could even feel his teeth chattering, like he'd been locked out in a blizzard. He closed his eyes tight and impatiently waited to fall asleep, if he could, then he wouldn't know if he was cold or not.
A particularly cold sensation ran through the back of his neck and down his spine as in those few seconds of not even being asleep yet, just having his eyes closed, he saw himself back at the diner, on the floor in the kitchen, his attacker on top of him, trying not to give in and audibly respond to the torture, and just knowing each passing second that the excruciating pain was going to kill him before anything else did. His eyes were open again and he lay awake in the darkness for an hour or so before his body decided it was too tired to care about the memories, or the dreams. He slowly faded into an uncomfortable sleep, but he stayed there for the rest of the night and didn't wake up until the sun came up the next morning. Despite sleeping most of the night, he felt exhausted like he'd just worked a double shift at 51, and to make matters worse he was still cold. He didn't want to get up, and he decided he didn't care if Casey came in and was a pain in the ass, he wasn't getting up. He turned over on his stomach, propped his pillows up with an arm under them, draped the covers over his shoulders, and closed his eyes.
"Kelly?"
The voice sounded distant, but somehow close at the same time. Kelly opened his eyes and turned his stiff neck and saw Casey standing over the bed. He closed his eyes again and murmured, "Whasit?"
"Are you hungry?"
Kelly rested his head on the pillow again and slowly shook it from side to side. "'Time s'it?"
"9:30," Casey answered.
Kelly grunted something and pressed his face further into the pillow.
"Do you want something to drink?"
Kelly shook his head again, "Lemme sleep, please."
Casey nodded hesitantly, "Okay, sure...rough night?"
"Mm-'mm."
"Okay, yeah," Casey adjusted the covers and lightly patted Kelly on the shoulder through the blankets, "you just take it easy...let me know if you need anything."
"I'will," Kelly mashed the words into one.
Casey pulled the door shut behind him. Kelly's body sagged against the mattress in relief as he closed his eyes and slowly went back to sleep.
He slept but not easily. He had nightmares. Back at the diner. One where he went into the kitchen and got down on the floor without a struggle. Another where he tried to fight, and all it got him was a gunshot wound to the rib cage, even though somewhere in his subconscious he knew it was a dream it felt real, he actually woke up once, shot up in bed gasping for air and feeling his ribs and checking for blood stains. After a while he calmed down and went back to sleep, and dreamt he was in the hospital again looking at Casey in a bed on life support from drinking the bleach. He looked down and by his feet there was a jug of bleach, and somewhere Kelly heard a distant voice telling him 'Do it...do it!'
Severide jolted up in bed again with a half yell escaping his mouth as his eyes opened. The sun had changed and he looked to the clock and saw it was 1:30 in the afternoon. He didn't want to get up, he didn't think he could eat, he didn't even care if he didn't have anything to drink, but he felt like he'd lose his mind if he stayed in the bed another minute. Reluctantly, he got up, headed out to the living room, and then to the kitchen.
He got a drink of water, then slowly made his way over to the fridge and gazed in at the contents, trying to find something to eat that likely wouldn't make him puke, but his stomach felt iffy, along with the rest of him.
"Hey..."
He tensed at the voice, but half turned and saw Casey in the doorway.
"Hey..."
"How're you doing?" Casey asked.
Kelly nodded dismissively, "Okay..."
"Hungry?"
"A little."
"Anything sound good?" Casey asked.
Kelly shook his head.
"You just want to order in?"
"Nah," Kelly replied, sighed, and shut the door.
Casey walked over to Kelly but kept his hands in his pockets, "Kelly, you need to eat."
"I know."
Matt wasn't sure what to do, and he knew he was on eggshells trying to figure out what to say.
"Do you need a pain pill?"
Kelly shook his head. "No thanks."
Casey decided honesty might be a safe approach. "I'm trying to help, Kelly."
"I know."
"But I don't know what to do."
"I know," Kelly said, "I appreciate everything you're trying to do..."
"Do you..." Casey struggled with the words, already dreading what the answer would be, "want to talk about it?"
Kelly shook his head grimly. He looked Matt dead in the eyes and answered flatly, "No."
"Okay," Casey nodded as he took a step back, "that's fine. It's just...if you change your mind..."
"Yeah," Kelly replied dismissively.
Casey felt a tense sensation of pins and needles in his back, not knowing if he should stay or go. He knew if Kelly was going to open up about what happened it wouldn't be anytime soon and might not even be to him, but he felt he had to at least let Kelly know it was an option.
Casey heard his phone buzzing and when he picked it up he saw it was Boden calling.
"Hey, Chief."
"How's Kelly doing, Matt?"
Casey shook his head, "I don't know...he just stays in his room and sleeps most of the day...hardly eats...doesn't want to talk, which I don't blame him, but..." he sighed, "I don't know what to do."
"There's not much you can do except be there for him," Boden told him, "and be patient."
"I'm trying, chief, believe me, I am."
"I know it," Wallace replied. "How're you holding up?"
Matt sighed, "Not too well...I just feel useless here. I called the doctor, he said given everything Kelly's been through, if he's sleeping all the time it means his body's healing...he can't get his stitches wet so he just sponges off at the sink...I'm worried he might be sick, he's cold all the time, he dug some extra blankets out of the closet and spends all day wrapped up in them. I checked his temperature and it's normal, but..."
"Just keep an eye on him and if things get worse, take him back to Med," Boden said.
"I am, I know," Casey replied, "he still doesn't want anyone from 51 to see him."
"Considering what he's been put through, I can understand that," Boden told the lieutenant, "but if either of you need anything, you let us know."
Casey nodded, "I will, chief, thanks."
Casey hung up, and hung his head and tiredly tried to think. He honestly didn't know what to do. He was terrified of all the possibilities of what could happen to Kelly or what he could do to himself. He'd never seen his best friend like this before, and he had no idea what to expect.
A sense of panic forming a knot in his stomach, Casey got to his feet and headed to Kelly's bedroom and quietly peered in. The sun was almost down, there was just a hint of dull reddish/yellow light in the room to see by, but he was able to make out Kelly's form wrapped up tight in the bed, asleep, or at least pretending he was, but based on his breathing patterns, Casey was sure he actually was.
Uncertain if he should, Casey finally decided to leave the room and leave Kelly alone for the night.
Kelly woke up hot, disoriented, soaking wet, his heart racing in his chest, he could hear the blood pounding in his ears. He looked around in the dark and tried to remember where he was, he couldn't exactly remember the details of the dream he'd just woken up from, but he remembered it was frightening. Slowly it all started to come back, he was in his bedroom, he was home, the nightmare was more of the same, the cold linoleum tile of the kitchen floor in the diner under his knees and legs and hands, the cold metal of the gun barrel pressed into his back, waiting, dreading, anticipating the sound of the trigger being pulled and the shot that would follow. But it didn't come. It would've been a welcome relief to what instead had. He'd felt the man's hands forcing his thighs apart which knocked him off balance and about dropped him flat on the floor, the man's weight pressing on him, the hot breath on the back of his neck, the pained grunts that caught in his throat as he vainly willed himself not to scream, not to give the bastard that satisfaction of hearing just how terrified and in pain he was. Several screams worked their way up to his larynx but they died in his throat, no matter what he couldn't let them out, he couldn't let on just how bad it was, and how much he wished he could die just to have it over.
He felt like he was still there. He felt the grime from the floor and his sweat and blood covering his body, he felt repulsive. Kelly tossed back the covers before he remembered his stitches, and he couldn't get any of them wet, that alone made him want to die because all he wanted to do was stand under a scalding hot shower until he didn't feel filthy anymore, but he couldn't. The frustration at this realization made the Squad lieutenant instantly break out sobbing, long before any tears actually developed. His whole body alternated between hot and cold, as much as he wanted to throw the covers clear across the room, he instead found himself curling up in one of the blankets and cocooning himself in it as he cried in frustration.
The nightmares didn't go away, and they didn't get better. If anything they actually got worse. Kelly constantly fell back into the same dreams of being in the diner being raped, ones where he silently complied and let it happen, there were others where he tried to fight it, and it just made the situation worse. Sometimes worse for him, if he wasn't raped, he was shot, or stabbed, or bludgeoned with a heavy object. One that particularly made him wake up screaming was one where because he wouldn't do as he was told and get on the floor, the gunman decided to kill one of the customers out front. The kitchen doors swung open and they brought in a little girl about eight or nine years old who just looked up at him with big eyes silently asking why this was happening, and the men slit her throat while Kelly was forced to watch her bleed out on the floor and was unable to stop it.
The dreams of being in the hospital with Casey were frequent too, and when he was awake, Kelly couldn't figure out what the connection was, why he kept dreaming about that, but those dreams started to take on different and more disturbing twists and turns as well.
One night Kelly dreamt he was still in Casey's hospital room, the blonde man laying in the bed on life support after drinking a bottle of bleach, because he couldn't cope with the rape that he had suffered. This time Kelly turned, and walked towards the door, and actually left the hospital room.
Instead of a corridor, Kelly walked through the door and into an operating room. A few doctors stood over a table with a patient on it they were working on. The whole thing was weird though. He couldn't hear any of the monitors beeping to indicate the patient's stats, and saw it was because there were no monitors, there didn't appear to be any modern hospital technology anywhere in the room. The lights were on in the room, and it didn't look like one of the surgical theaters at Med, it looked like something from an old black and white movie, sterile white walls, tiled floor, bright lights high overhead, he also noticed the doctors seemed in no particular hurry. There was no laparoscopic equipment, the surgeon reached into the patient's chest with his gloved hands. Kelly stood back and silently watched, he knew he shouldn't be there and he felt wrong watching the operation, but he couldn't look away, for some reason he felt that he had to be here, and he had to see what happened.
The surgeon straightened his back and put something on a tray by the operating table, but Kelly couldn't see what it was.
"The operation was a success," he said, even though they hadn't stitched the patient back up yet.
Kelly found himself slowly walking over to the table, walked around behind it and looked down at the patient.
And saw his own face staring back at him.
The Kelly on the table's eyes were open but were unseeing, he didn't look dead, but the eyes looked dead.
He was drawn out of the trance of staring down at his own self by the blood curdling sound of the doctors chuckling about something. He turned to look at them, and looked towards the tray again to see what it was they had removed.
He got closer for a better look, but he still couldn't believe what he was seeing.
On the tray sat a small ball of light, and somehow Kelly knew what it was.
It was his soul.
"Kelly?"
Matt had woken up hearing a muffled sound that after a minute he realized was Kelly either whimpering or crying. He'd gone to see if he was okay, but Kelly wasn't in his bedroom, and he wasn't in the bathroom. So Casey was making his way through the apartment looking for his friend, hoping he was alright.
"Kelly?"
He moved towards the kitchen, and from the fluorescent light over the sink he was able to see a shaded figure of Kelly sitting under the kitchen table, his arms folded tight against his chest and he stared down at the floor.
"Kelly? Are you alright?"
The Squad lieutenant wouldn't answer verbally, just looked towards the floor and shook his head.
"Do you want to come out from there?" Casey asked gently.
Kelly shook his head again, sobbing softly.
"Do you want me to come in there?" Matt tried again.
Kelly wouldn't raise his head to look at Matt, but he slowly nodded. Casey got down on his knees and scooted under the table beside him.
"Did you have a nightmare?" Matt asked.
Kelly held himself even tighter and nodded again.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
Kelly shook his head from side to side.
"That's okay, we don't have to," Casey told him. "Do you...want me to..." he wasn't sure how to ask the question.
Fortunately he didn't have to. Kelly seemed to pick up on what he was trying to say, and nodded. Casey half turned to the side and carefully put his arms around Kelly and hugged him as Severide buried his face in Matt's shoulder and sobbed uncontrollably.
Casey felt like his heart was being wrenched out of his chest, but he guessed he should take this as a sign of improvement. He hadn't dared touch Kelly the whole time since they came home from the hospital, and Kelly sure as hell never asked. So he supposed they were starting to make some leeway, but it sure didn't feel like it to him.