Soulless

A/N: Dark themes, lots of raw emotions, Kleenex may be required. Please read and review.

Kelly Severide heard somebody beating on his door and he went to see what was going on. He undid the bolt and chain and opened the door.

"Casey."

Matt Casey stood in the doorway, looking like death had warmed over. His whole appearance was disheveled and the expression on his face was almost dazed, his mouth hung open as he seemed to be struggling to catch his breath. Maybe it shouldn't be surprising. Both Matt and Gabby Dawson had been absent during the last shift on 51, Boden had told everybody in the briefing room that they had contracted swine flu and might be out of commission for the next couple weeks, understandably everybody had kept their distance from the married couple until further notice, they couldn't afford all of 2nd Watch coming down with it. It especially had to have been a real blow for Gabby since a couple months ago she decided she wanted to return to her previous position as a firefighter. Officially she was still a paramedic but she'd been out of the game as a smoke eater for a while so the guys had been helping her run drills to get back in the swing of things and she'd been training nonstop on shift, at least until this flu attack.

"Are you okay? What happened?" Kelly asked, glancing down and his attention being drawn to the bloody knuckles on both of Casey's hands.

"Can I come in? Please?" Matt asked in a mostly deadpan tone, but underneath that Severide could detect the hint of desperation.

Kelly had no idea what was going on, but he was concerned, but he didn't let it show.

"Yeah, sure...come on in. Are you okay?"

Casey staggered into the room, looking almost like a zombie. He looked around the apartment and instead of answering Kelly's question, he asked, "Can I get a beer?"

Kelly nodded, "Sure, I'll get us both one, sit down."

He traipsed over to the fridge and took out two bottles and headed back to the couch where Casey had already collapsed on it and sat crookedly as his eyes gazed towards the floor.

"You okay, Matt?" Kelly asked.

Casey's reflexes were slow but he finally took the offered beer, his eyes stayed focused on something ahead, and just murmured a half coherent, "Thanks."

"Matt?" Kelly sat down in a chair by the couch and asked him, "What's going on?"

Casey finally moved his eyes to look towards him. First he said nothing, then after several seconds he asked with much difficulty, "Can we...can we just sit here...and not talk, for a while?"

Now Severide was really worried. He wanted nothing more than to find out what was going on and try to help Casey, if he could, but he kept his cool and merely nodded and answered, "Yeah, sure, we can do that."

Matt slowly nodded and replied, "Thank you."

One beer became two, became three, and became the start of another six pack, and the time became an hour later, then an hour and a half, somewhere before the two hour mark, Casey finally spoke, but what he said wasn't anything that Severide was expecting.

"You're my best friend, Kelly...we don't always agree on everything, but you've never lied to me."

Kelly felt his brow furrowing as he tried to make sense of that statement. He didn't have any idea what it meant, or where the conversation was going to go from there.

"Matt, what's wrong?" he tried again.

Casey took another swig of his beer and waited for it to settle before he spoke again.

"I had to take Gabby to the hospital the day we missed shift."

"What? Is she okay?" Kelly asked.

Matt wouldn't directly answer that question. Instead he talked around the question.

"She'd been feeling bad the last few days and she insisted it was nothing, probably just the flu...she couldn't stop throwing up, she had a fever...but she insisted she was fine, and it would pass, and not to worry about it. She's my wife, we all get sick but I hate seeing her like this, I want to know what's wrong. She said it was nothing. Like an idiot, I believed her...or rather, I let her talk me out of taking her to the doctor...she said it'd pass, I waited for it to pass. But she wasn't getting better, if anything she was getting worse, and she still didn't want to go. I didn't get it, but I respected her wishes...then that morning...I heard her in the bathroom...she was throwing up again...then she was screaming..."

He still felt the ice running through his veins at the memory of those horrified screams, that was when he knew something terrible had happened. It was still dark out and their alarm wasn't set to go off for another 40 minutes, Casey had been going in and out of sleep listening to Gabby being sick. She'd gotten very defensive when he went to the bathroom to try and help her when she threw up, so he'd decided to give her her space and if she asked for him, then he'd go in. As soon as he heard that blood curdling scream he threw the covers back, jumped out of bed and hit the ground running.

"Gabby? What's wrong? Gabby?"

The door was open ajar, the lights were on, he threw the door open and skidded in and came to a sudden stop.

Gabby was curled on the floor in a ball, both arms wrapped tight around her stomach. The rim of the toilet, the floor and her clothes were covered in a green liquid vomit, and Gabby's hands had blood on them, so did part of the floor, so did her legs, trailing up her pajamas pants, the crotch of her pajamas were coated in dark red.

"Matt!" she weakly cried, "Matt help me!"

The events that followed were so surreal at the time, and even now looking back, it hadn't seemed real at all, almost like a nightmare. He wasn't even sure if he was frozen stiff or running through the apartment but it seemed as if his feet were glued to the floor. He couldn't even think what the possibilities were, this wasn't some call they were on where he could disassociate from the victim and keep himself in check, this was his wife and something was seriously wrong and he didn't know what and he was terrified what the answer might be. He vaguely remembered grabbing his phone and calling 911 and pleading with the dispatcher to get the paramedics en route as quick as possible. He dropped on his knees beside Gabby and frantically tried to reassure her that everything was going to be alright, to just stay calm and keep her focus on him.

It seemed like forever until he'd heard the sirens approaching, and he couldn't stand the thought of leaving Gabby alone even for a second, but he had to get the door unlocked so they could get in. He forced himself to his feet and promised her he would be right back, he ran to the front door, undid the locks, and ran down the stoop to the ambulance that was pulling up. He was panicked as he spoke to the paramedics though he tried to stay calm enough to give them all the details he could, though the truth was he really didn't know anything. It was easy for them, they could disassociate from what was going on because it wasn't their wife, it wasn't anybody they knew, just another patient, just one of the dozens of patients they had in any given shift. Even though he knew this, he felt slighted by the PIC's detached and almost callus attitude as he told Casey that they would take it from there and to stay out of their way so they could work. He did stay back so they could work but stayed close enough to answer their questions and that Gabby could see him and know she wasn't alone. In Casey's mind it was an eternity before they loaded her on the gurney and wheeled her out to the ambulance, but in reality it had scarcely been five minutes.

"Let's get her to Med," one of the paramedics said as they loaded her in.

Gabby tried to sit up on the gurney and was flailing about trying to protest, the paramedics restrained her. Casey said he was coming with them but the PIC had advised against it and suggested Casey get dressed and get somebody to drive him since based on his current state he was in no condition to do it himself. Casey watched the ambulance speed off with the sirens blaring and the lights flashing and once again he felt like he was stuck in place. He finally had to force himself to take a step, then another, then he ran back up the stairs and into the apartment. He moved haphazardly from room to room, throwing on a change of clothes, getting his phone, his wallet, his keys, he had to call the others, he had to let the know what was going on.

He moved past the bathroom and saw the blood on the floor and he felt paralyzed. His just stood there, staring at his wife's blood on the tiled floor for he didn't know how long. He couldn't let anybody see that, he couldn't bring Gabby home to that. He absently felt for his pocket and took out his phone and called Maggie at Med. He told her that Gabby would be brought in soon and please keep him updated, he would be there as soon as he could. He didn't give her any details and she seemed to know enough not to ask, she promised she would let him know when they knew something. He hung up, and had to force himself to move to the hall closet and get the mop and a bucket and a bottle of disinfectant cleaner. He thoroughly cleaned up the blood and the vomit, scrubbed the floor, cleaned the toilet, he didn't know how much time had passed, everything just seemed at a standstill. By the time he was finished there was no remainder of what had taken place less than an hour ago. Casey rinsed out the mop and bucket one more time and washed his hands, and his phone rang. It was Maggie, before Casey had too long to dwell on the reasons why she would be calling, she told him that the paramedics had hit a traffic jam on the way to Med, had doubled around and taken Gabby to Lakeshore, and she was there now. He thanked her for letting him know, and got ready to head there. Anything could be happening, and he needed to be there for Gabby, he needed to be there when the doctor came out with whatever news he had. He stumbled through the apartment, out the door, got in his truck and very shakily drove himself to the hospital, and then parked himself in a chair and waited, dreading every single second that passed what he might find out when the doctor came to speak to him.

"Gabby was pregnant," Casey said distantly.

Kelly leaned back in his chair and slowly inhaled as he took in what that meant. "She lost the baby."

Casey closed his mouth so suddenly that his teeth clicked together, he firmly held his jaws in place and shook his head.

"No."

"What?"

Casey looked straight ahead at the wall.

"What do you mean, Casey?" Kelly asked.

Finally, Matt answered firmly, "Gabby didn't lose anything."

Kelly looked at him and shook his head. "I don't understand."

Casey spelled it out for him. "Gabby was pregnant, before she got sick."

Kelly's eyes widened.

"You mean-"

"I'm sure the doctors violated some ethics, but since they thought Gabby was dying, and I was the only one who might be able to answer their questions, they asked when she'd had the procedure done. I stood there with a dumb look on my face. 'Procedure? What procedure?' Then they realized I didn't know, but it was too late then."

There was pained pauses between each sentence, but now that Matt had opened Pandora's box and told Severide the truth, he had to push forward, no matter how hard it was.

"I kept thinking...they have to be wrong, it has to be some kind of mistake, they've got her mixed up with another patient. This can't be happening, not to Gabby, not to us."

Kelly watched his best friend struggle to continue, and he suffered in silence alongside him, watching the pain unfold with every word that passed.

"They found..." Casey looked to the floor and helplessly ran his hands over the sides of his head, "Oh God...they found an...arm...that had been left in...they said this was not a hospital job, and whoever it was...might have been licensed, might have a legal clinic...but there was nothing competent about the job that had been done. And they said...they think they know whose work it was...Gabby...and Brett...were bringing women in regularly, with similar results...for the past few weeks...sometimes...most of the baby would still be in them a week after the procedure...they had blood clots in their lungs, their hearts...abscesses the size of lemons...a lot of them were rushed to the hospital mid-procedure because they were bleeding out. I'm hearing all this, and I can't reconcile it with what's going on. Gabby was there and saw firsthand what was happening to these women, she would never put herself in the same position...it had to be a mistake, there had to be a logical answer. I asked the doctors, maybe it was a miscarriage...isn't it possible that...not everything comes out during a miscarriage?"

Kelly shrugged. "It's possible I guess, I don't know."

Casey grimly shook his head. "The doctor said...miscarriages only happen up to 18 weeks...it was his estimation she was further along than that."

"What?" Kelly blinked. "That's not possible."

"I know, that's what I said, that's what I kept trying to explain to everyone, that's why I said it had to be a mistake and they got her mixed up with someone else," Matt told him.

Kelly thought back to the last time he'd seen Gabby. Sure she hadn't been wearing anything form fitting, but there was no way she was pregnant, let alone over four months along.

"You would've known if she was pregnant," he told Casey.

"I know..." Casey remembered how four times in five months, they'd had to put their nightly bedroom activities on hold for the better part of a week, and three of those five times, Gabby had gotten her period early and they'd woken up in the middle of the night to find the sheets needed to be changed, doused in peroxide and scrubbed with soap and hot water before being put in the wash so the blood wouldn't set in.

"The doctor explained..." Casey struggled to keep talking, "it's not uncommon for women to keep getting their periods while they're pregnant...and it's not common but also not rare that some women will be several months along and just barely show...said a lot of them think they're getting an early term abortion and it's actually second trimester or even third...like a woman can look like she's only two months along, and she's already at seven...it was his educated guess that Gabby was at least five months along."

"Oh my God," Kelly barely choked out in a shocked whisper.

"I...'ve seen a lot of people who leave their kid or their spouse at the hospital and storm out on them when they get bad news...I couldn't do that...I told the doctor to do everything he had to to save Gabby's life...and I stayed...just kept thinking when she recovers she can explain this, they're wrong, she'll prove they are...I wanted so desperately to believe that..."

Kelly didn't know what to do. He could visibly see Casey starting to break down and he wanted to put his arms around his friend and hug him, wanted to tell him that he didn't need to say anymore, but it was obvious that he needed somebody to tell all this to, and right now Kelly was the only somebody that Matt had.

"They gave her blood, and fluids, and some high grade antibiotics to knock the infection out...and they started working pretty quickly...by the second day they started to talk about she could go home soon...so I went home to get a change of clothes for her, and I found her phone...and I started wondering."

The silence that followed hung thickly in the air, Kelly was on the edge of his seat dreading to hear what happened next but he didn't dare say so.

"A couple weeks back Gabby said she wanted to get some new furniture. One day last week when we had the day off, she said she took some money out of our checking account and was going to be gone all day shopping...I didn't question it, I told her to have a good time. I was off on a construction job all day, I didn't get home until 6, she was already back, and she said she hadn't found anything she wanted and she'd get the money put back in the account. I said it was no big deal, I trusted her...she never told me how much she took out of the bank. I checked the transactions on her phone...she took out $2,700 the day before she went, and it was never put back." He turned his head and looked at Kelly almost blankly. "$2,700 to kill our child, our child."

"God, Casey, I'm so sorry," Severide wasn't sure what else to say.

"I didn't want to do anything that could jeopardize her recovery, so I just told her everything was going to be alright and she would be fine and we could go home soon...by the third day the doctors said she was recovered enough she could go home if she kept taking antibiotics, so they gave her a prescription for some high dose pills...I got her out of the hospital, we stopped by the pharmacy, we went home...and she acted like she didn't even remember doing it, there was never any question in her mind that I knew anything that had happened."

"So what'd you do?" Kelly asked.

"I waited until we got home, and things settled down...and I asked her what really happened...she didn't get what I meant...then she saw the look on my face, and she knew."

He could still hear their conversation all too well.

"Matt, don't get excited, it's not as bad as you think," Gabby said.

"Not as bad as- you were pregnant, Gabby! And you didn't even tell me?"

"I didn't know myself, not until a couple weeks ago, I had no idea I was pregnant until then."

"And why didn't you tell me then, when you found out?" he demanded to know.

"Because I didn't want you to get upset like you are now," she answered.

"Upset that you were pregnant?"

"I couldn't keep it, Matt," she said.

"What?"

"Look, this just wasn't a good time for us to be starting a family again," she told him.

Casey shook his head. "What-wha-what the hell does that even mean? Any time is a good time for us to start a family."

"No it's not, firefighting is dangerous work and I can't do that while I'm pregnant," she said.

"The last time you were pregnant you transferred to arson."

"But I don't want to do that again, Matt, I belong on Truck and I'm busting my ass to prove that and I'm going to stay there this time, I deserve to be a firefighter, I passed the exam, I proved myself, I showed everybody at 51 when they said a woman couldn't do it!"

"Oh please," Matt rolled his eyes and his neck.

"This is my life, Matt, it was my decision to make, not yours," she told him.

Casey stopped in his tracks, and the room was so quiet he could've heard a pin drop. He felt his eyes bulge at her statement.

"What about our decision as a married couple? Does that mean anything to you?" Casey asked.

"You'll never have to carry or have the baby, you'll never have to know what it's like, no," Gabby shook her head, "you don't get to have a say in this."

Casey felt his blood boiling at her answer and he wasn't sure what he was going to do next but whatever it was he was sure he wouldn't be able to stop himself, he turned and stepped away from her.

"What about all our plans, Gabby?" he asked as he turned around to face her again once he'd put 10 feet between them. "We wanted to have kids, we wanted to start trying again."

"And we still can, later," she told him.

Casey tipped his head back and snapped it down again with an outraged expression on his face. "Oh later, when you decide you're tired of being a firefighter and want to switch to something else? When's that going to be, Gabby? What's it going to be next time?"

"Will you stop trying to control my life?" she snapped at him. "You can't tell me what to do."

"Gabby! If you're a firefighter you don't get to hop around from job to job to job every few months because you get tired of it or you think you deserve it. First you were a paramedic, then you wanted to go to med school and be a doctor, then you wanted to be a fireman, then you transferred to arson, then you became a paramedic again-"

"And you know all the reasons I had for changing every single time, Matt Casey," she said to him. "Don't make this out like I'm some flighty moron who doesn't know what she wants to do with her life."

"Well do you?" Matt all but screamed at her. He wasn't even sure why, but he found himself mocking her, "'I want to be PIC', 'I want to be a doctor', 'I want to own a bar', 'I want to be a fireman', 'I want us to adopt this kid and be a family right now', 'I want to be a single foster mom', 'I want to be an alderman's wife!' Nothing is ever good enough for you, Gabby, in a few months you'll decide you want to do something else and drop everything else until you get it."

The outrage was clear in her eyes as she accused him, "And you think that's why I had the abortion, because I can't make up my mind?"

"You killed our baby for a job!" Casey coldly recounted.

"This is more than a job, Matt, this is my whole career on the line. If you think I want to be stuck as a paramedic for the rest of my life, why don't you do it?" she got in his face. "Huh? You think after a while you might get tired of responding to diabetics 50 times because they won't take their insulin and doing wellness checks on people whose kids live 20 minutes away and don't ever see them, and getting puked on by junkies who overdose every other week and we're supposed to care when they don't even care enough about themselves to get help? All the while everyone else at 51 gets to speed off to car crashes, fires, building collapses and save the day and be the big heroes?"

"Oh my God," Casey ran his hands over his face, "You are unbelievable."

"This is why I didn't tell you," Gabby said. "All you're doing is getting bent out of shape over something that doesn't even matter."

"Doesn't even ma-" Casey's mind went completely blank for a second. Just as mind blowing to him was the fact that Gabby didn't even seem to remember, or care, that she had nearly died because of what she'd done. It was like that whole part of it didn't even register with her. "Gabby! You were pregnant, it was our baby and you killed it! And you didn't even have the guts to tell me you were pregnant before you did it!"

"Because I didn't want you trying to stop me," she stood her ground. "This is not the right time to be starting a family with everything that is going on. We can always have another baby later, when we're ready."

"Oh my God, I don't even know you!" Casey thought he was losing his mind. He paced around in a small circle and looked at her again and said with forced restraint, "You don't get it, do you, Gabby? It doesn't matter...it doesn't matter if we have 10 more kids...if we had 20...nothing can ever bring back the one you killed."

"Matt it's not that bad."

"YES IT IS! It's just like those calls we go on where somebody's child gets hit by a bullet in a gang shooting, if they have four kids, if they have a dozen other kids, the rest of them can't replace the one that dies. That void is always going to be in their lives no matter what." He looked her dead in the eyes and wanted to know, so desperately, "How could you do it, Gabby?"

"Look Matt, it wasn't an easy decision to make, okay? But I had to do what's best for me," she insisted.

"What about what's best for us?" Matt asked her. "I'm your husband, we're supposed to be partners in everything."

Gabby looked at him and shook her head. "Well, not this...your opinion doesn't count in this. It's my body, it's my life, it was my decision."

"It was our child."

"Get off my back, Matt, you're just my husband, you're not my keeper, I don't have to answer to you," she said bluntly. "I don't owe you any explanation for what I do."

"Oh no? Did you forget everything we went through when you lost the first baby? Do you remember how painful that was?"

"This wasn't anything like that," she insisted, "I had the control over what happened."

"You think that makes it better?" Casey was ready to start tearing his hair out, "See to me that's worse than your miscarriage. That just happened and there wasn't anything that we could've done to change it, that was hard as hell I was able to accept it. We see it all the time on the job, people who despite our best efforts still die and in the end there wasn't anything we could do, that's entirely different from the people we're able to save. You intentionally lied to me about it and willingly paid somebody to dismember our baby! And you think that's better?"

Matt thought he was going to fall flat on the floor, the room felt like it was spinning, he felt like the ground was moving underneath him. His head felt like it was going to explode. He turned and took a few steps, hoping to shake off the feeling, but he felt like he was making his way down a wobbly set of stairs. Nothing made sense anymore.

"How long?" he asked. "How far along were you?"

She didn't answer.

He turned and looked at her. "How long, Gabby?"

She tensed at his words, in a smaller tone she answered, "20 weeks."

Casey pulled at his hair and covered his face with his hands as he paced around in small circles again. He suddenly stopped, and looked at her.

"What was it, Gabby?"

She didn't answer. Instead he saw her slowly move her foot and step back. His eyes felt ready to pop out of his head as he crossed over to her in two steps, and got in her face.

"What-was-it?"

"She wouldn't answer me," Casey told Severide. "They can determine the baby's gender at 18 weeks...I just knew there was no way she didn't find out when she went to the doctor."

Kelly stayed in his chair and watched Casey, as he'd been watching as Casey unraveled this whole mess he'd found himself in. He hadn't spoken during that time, it wasn't his place, he just sat there and offered his company, and let Casey confess to everything that had been weighing on him.

"I wanted her to tell me what it was...she owed me that much," Casey said.

He dropped his nearly empty bottle of beer and raised his hands to his face as he finally broke down crying. Kelly saw again the bloody knuckles on both of his hands.

"God help me...I didn't mean to hit her," he tearfully confessed to his best friend. "I just wanted her to tell me what it was...I don't even remember doing it...just the sound it made when I did...and her screaming...and she kept screaming...until she finally told me."

Kelly still wasn't sure it was safe to talk, but he felt he had to say something.

"What was it?"

Casey lowered his hands, and tried to compose himself, and turned and looked at Kelly, eyes wide eyes full of tears.

"A girl."

Kelly closed his eyes and grimaced at the answer.

"A little girl," he said as the sobs started making their way through the back of his throat and exiting through his mouth. "A little girl..." His head dropped to his chest and his whole body shook.

Kelly got up from his chair, moved over to the couch and put his arms around Casey and hugged him tight, his own heart breaking for his best friend after hearing this whole revelation, his eyes burnt with tears he quickly felt rushing down his face.

"I'm sorry, Matt," he said. There was nothing else to say. There was nothing that could ever make this right. "I'm so sorry."

Casey's body wracked with sobs as he weakly latched on to Kelly. After a while, Kelly didn't know how long, Matt pulled back and his voice was just barely strong enough as he tried to explain, "I just, just wanted...to be here...with you, for a while...before..."

"Before?"

Casey raised one of his hands and brushed the back of it over his eyes. "The cops are probably looking for me by now...and they'll probably come here...I wanted you to know my side of it before I go to jail."

Kelly felt like his brain had detached from the conversation, he asked Casey, "What did you do, Matt?"

"When I left," he forced the words out, "she wouldn't stop crying...I hardly even recognized her, she's just...all these bruises...I just left her there...I had to get out before...before..."

Kelly tightened his hold on Casey and patted his back consolingly and told him, "I don't think she's going to call the cops, Matt."

"Why wouldn't she?" he questioned.

"Because...if you go to jail, there's a police report, and everybody at 51 would know that she had her own husband arrested, and everybody is going to want to know why, and I'm pretty sure she knows she won't have a friend at the station house if she tells them what she did that drove you to this."

"I didn't mean to do it," Casey softly cried, "I didn't mean to hurt her."

"I know, I know..."

"I never wanted to hurt her."

"I know, it was just an accident."

"It wasn't an accident," Casey replied, "You don't accidentally beat someone."

"You didn't mean to do it."

"I didn't plan to...but in that moment...I just wanted her to know how bad she'd hurt me...I wanted her to know what it was like."

"That doesn't make you a monster, Casey," Kelly told him, "that makes you human."

"It makes me a batterer."

"Matt, this wasn't because she forgot to cook dinner or went out with another guy..."

"That doesn't make it right," Casey said over his tears.

"Maybe not right, but it's definitely understandable," Kelly replied.

Very understandable. Kelly kept tightening his grip on Casey, luckily Matt either didn't notice or didn't care. Right now he wanted to make sure Casey knew he wasn't alone, but the real reason was Severide was convinced if he didn't keep an iron grip on Casey and not let him out of his sight, there wouldn't be anything stopping him from going over to Casey's apartment and killing Gabby with his bare hands himself. What he'd just listened to over the past hour was the worst thing he'd ever heard and after more than 15 years as a firefighter, that was no small feat.

"Oh...God," Casey groaned as he buried his face against Kelly's shoulder, "I want to die."

"Don't say that," Kelly told him.

"I want to be with her."

That broke Kelly's heart all over again and he felt the tears rapidly running down from his eyes now.