It was a long and tense week, Casey went in with Kelly on next shift, he kept to himself, he ate like a bird, he took several aspirins around the clock complaining of headaches, then complained because they'd run out of aspirin, he did his job as professionally as he always did, but in the station house waiting for calls to come in, everybody else had noticed something seemed off with the lieutenant and everybody went to the natural place to find out, Severide, who decided it was easier and better for everyone involved, to just play dumb and pretend he didn't know either.
The day of Casey's physical couldn't come fast enough for Kelly's liking. Getting through the day on shift felt like it went on forever and all Casey seemed to do during the lull between calls was find more things wrong with him. At one point Kelly looked at him and saw even through Casey's mouth was closed, his jaws were moving in an almost chewing motion.
"What is it?" he asked.
Casey shook his head and sighed, "Every day it just seems to be something else."
"What do you mean?"
"I swear I can feel my teeth eroding."
"What?" Kelly wasn't sure if he'd heard right or not, it sounded bizarre either way.
"Every day," Casey explained, "I swear I feel some tiny piece of one of my teeth fall off, like a grain of sand, every day, Kelly."
"What's your dentist say?"
"I don't know, I haven't been to him in a while," Matt answered.
"How long's a while?"
Casey tensed. "Two years."
"Seriously?" Kelly asked.
Casey sighed again and hung his head low. Kelly smiled and tried to cheer him up, "I got you beat, I haven't been to mine in five years."
The smile on Matt's face looked pained, but he managed a small laugh in return.
"Why can't I stop thinking about this stuff, Kelly?" he wanted to know, "I've tried not to, and it doesn't work, every day it just comes back, I know I'm obsessing about it but I can't stop...I don't even know when it all started, why is this happening?"
"I'm sure it's nothing," Kelly said. "Probably everybody does past a certain age."
"You don't," Casey pointed out.
"I'm immature for my age," Kelly answered without missing a beat.
"Well no argument there," Casey replied.
Kelly chuckled and playfully slapped at him.
"It's probably a different age for everybody, but I'm sure they do," Kelly said. "That's when everybody starts trying to get new teeth, women gets their faces lifted...among other things, they start freaking out about that wrinkled skin on their chest and arms."
"How many of them have you dated?" Casey asked.
"Very funny...my point is everybody starts obsessing about getting older at some point...maybe that's what they mean by midlife crisis...and then after a couple years it just passes."
"You think so?" Casey asked.
"You never hear of them spanning into late-life crises, do you?" Kelly asked.
"I suppose not...but at this rate, I won't make it two years."
Kelly knew that, they were both having enough trouble just making it to his birthday.
"So have you decided what you're doing about next shift?" Kelly asked.
Casey looked at him, and looked genuinely lost and shook his head, "I don't want to jinx my luck, if I lie about being sick, it might actually happen...besides, I know my performance record hasn't been the best lately, I think I'm just going to hurt things if I take the shift off."
"Alright then," Kelly said, "then after next shift, I've got an idea."
"What's that?" Casey asked.
At 10:30 that night, a call came in for a structure fire. As they rolled up they saw a building with barred windows on every level, with black smoke pouring out through the doorway and front windows on the ground floor. Truck and Squad quickly went to work sawing through the bars to get in and conduct a primary search for any possible victims. Sparks didn't just fly when the circular blades hit the wrought iron, they flew eight feet high and were as blinding white gold as fireworks on the 4th of July. The noise was enough to be deafening even without the roar of the fire threatening to cut loose once an entry point was made. Casey's teeth felt like they were being drilled as he worked relentlessly at one side of a barred up window waiting for the saw to cut through, and with sparks shooting everywhere he was grateful for his mask, otherwise his whole face would've been burnt off already.
Just as he started to feel the bar giving way, he felt something on him and looked down long enough to realize gasoline was spilling out of the saw and onto him. Then he saw the sparks flying off the metal ignite the gasoline and looked down in silent horror as he saw his turnout pants catch on fire. He shut off the saw and dropped it on the ground and for a few seconds just stood there, in awe, in shock, in something, but he didn't move, and his brain just felt like it had shut down. For the first few seconds he was too stunned to actually feel anything, if the fire was hot, and they always were, his body couldn't acknowledge it, and that in itself was frightening. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew that he was in danger if the flames weren't put out right away, he could feel the heat searing on his thighs and around his groin now and knew even turnout gear only lasted so long before it too burnt like everything else. Everybody else around him was so busy trying to gain access to the building and save anyone who was inside, nobody had even noticed it had happened. Somehow, straining his vocal cords enough to draw anybody's attention to what was going on, felt like too monumental a feat to even try to accomplish. Instead, he did the only thing he could think to do, he turned around and walked off.
Some things couldn't give way to panic. One thing you always remembered, fires fed off oxygen, you go flailing around like a moron or running around like a chicken with its head cut off, you just fuel the fire even more. It didn't matter how scared to death you were, you didn't panic, you didn't fan the flames so to speak. He very calmly and determinedly walked over to Engine, and along the way the other firefighters started to realize what had happened. From behind him, he heard Severide's voice, it sounded faint, screaming "Get the silver bullets!" Instead, Casey made it over to Engine just in time for two of the guys to turn their lines on him almost simultaneously. The first one got him right on the point of contact, the second one soaked his whole body, the water distorted his view through his mask, even with his SCBA he felt a familiar sensation of having the wind sucked out of him by the suddenly bombardment of cold water.
In seven seconds, the flames were extinguished and Casey felt very relieved though nobody could've told it by looking at him.
"Casey!"
He wiped the water off his mask and saw Severide heading towards him.
"Are you okay?" Kelly asked.
"I'm fine," Casey answered, and gestured back to the building, "Let's get back to work."
Kelly looked at him in awe and just shook his head.
Kelly took two water bottles and headed over to Casey, who was seated on the back bumper of 81 as they watched Engine continue to douse the flames. The building had been searched and they'd been thankful to find nobody had been inside.
"Are you sure you're okay?" Kelly asked as he handed Casey one of the bottles.
Matt swallowed half of the water in one gulp, and tried to sound nonchalant as he replied, "A little toasty, but otherwise fine."
"What happened?"
Casey gestured to the circular saw in the pile of tools to be overhauled and put back in the rightful compartments and answered, "The gas spilled out on me...next thing I know, foom."
"I can't believe you did that."
"What?"
"Just, calmly walked around while you're on fire...man I would've been losing my damn mind," Kelly told him.
Quietly Casey responded, "I think I already lost mine."
Casey quietly rapped on the door to Kelly's quarters and opened it enough to stick his head in and quietly asked, "Can I come in?"
"Yeah, sure," the man laying on the cot replied. "What's up?"
"Just thinking about that last call tonight," Matt said.
"I'll bet...the guys are saying you ought to buy a lottery ticket since you just keep defying all odds," Kelly said with a small smile.
Matt sat on the edge of Kelly's bed and looked at him questioningly.
"Is it always going to be like this?" Casey asked. "Three shifts and three times I could've been killed...that's too much coincidence for me, Kelly. What if it happens again in three days? Or after that?"
Kelly was quiet for a few seconds before responding, "I'll admit it's very weird...but I'm sure it's just a freak occurrence...probably nothing will happen next shift."
"But you don't know that," Matt said. "Is this going to be how it ends? I keep having close calls on every shift until finally one of them finally takes?"
Unfortunately Kelly couldn't answer, and they both knew he couldn't.
"Maybe this would be a good time to go on furlough," Kelly suggested, "if you really think that's the case-"
"What, Kelly? I run away for two months and come back if I don't get killed before my birthday?" Casey asked.
That wasn't quite how Kelly planned to put it but yeah, that was the general idea, if he truly thought he was going to die every shift, sooner or later he would get himself killed obsessing about it, and as bad as that was in itself, he might wind up taking someone else out with him, either a fellow firefighter, or worse, the people they were supposed to save.
"Your exam's tomorrow," Kelly said.
Matt nodded. "I know. I won't have all the results for at least a week, I'll be going on next shift with no idea what they're going to find."
"Or...you could lie and tell Boden you're sick, then you could stay home and take it easy while you wait for the doctor to call," Kelly suggested.
Casey sighed, "I can't do that."
"That's because you're an annoying stickler for honesty, that's not one of your better traits," Kelly said teasingly.
"Kelly..." Matt looked at him and hopelessly asked, "What am I going to do?"
Kelly tried to smile reassuringly as he told his best friend, "You're going to go home when shift changes, relax, and tomorrow you'll see what the doctor says. Trust me, it's all going to work out."
"Kelly..." Casey sighed as he inhaled. What he'd wanted to ask wasn't coming as easily as he thought it would.
"I'll stay with you," Kelly answered anyway, "you won't be going through this alone."
Casey bit his upper teeth into the skin under his bottom lip for a second, then said with some hesitation, "Thank you."