"What did the doctor really say?" Kelly asked Casey during next shift.
The question caught Casey off guard, but he was quick not to let it show. "What do you mean?"
"I know you, Casey, you weren't all freaked out over E. coli, what's up?"
Casey looked around to make sure nobody else was paying attention, he leaned over towards Kelly and said in a low voice, "He said I have arsenic in my blood."
The surprise at this news was obvious on Kelly's face, but it quickly took the backseat to his curiosity about, "Why didn't you tell me that in the first place?"
"I...was going to, but...I didn't think Cathy would take the news well, I didn't want her to overreact."
"What's she got to do with this?" Kelly asked.
Casey shrugged, "Something like this isn't a bombshell you just drop on a new girlfriend, Will doesn't know where it came from, all he knows is that the exposure's just recent, thinks it could've come from a job we worked...has anybody said anything to you about their blood work?"
Kelly shook his head, "Nah, I haven't heard anything yet."
"And you're still okay?" Casey asked.
"Yeah," he answered.
Casey nodded, "That's good."
"So what's Will say to do about it?" Kelly asked.
"Uh...mainly he said if I get sick again, come in and get tested so they can figure out where it's coming from, if it keeps happening they'll have to start treatments for it," Casey said. "But for now he suggested putting cilantro in my food, apparently it pushes metal out of your blood."
Kelly didn't say anything but Casey could see a hint of terror in his eyes at this news. Casey bit the inside of his cheek as he thought about what he was going to say next, and he confessed to Kelly, "I thought I was going to die that night...and I'm more terrified now. What if they can't find out what's causing it?"
He felt Kelly's hand on his back, he looked at the Squad lieutenant who had closed the gap between them without Casey even noticing. Kelly knew it was a situation beyond either of their control, but he did what he always did and tried to assure Casey, "We'll figure it out, it'll be alright."
Present-
"Step behind the screen, remove your clothes, put them in the bags on the floor so marked," the doctor told Casey. He'd been briefly looked over for any obvious injuries and blood samples had been taken from his hands and his skin.
Casey slowly stepped behind the screen but was reluctant to do what the doctor said. He looked over the screen at him and asked, "Like a rape kit?"
The two cops in the room turned their heads at his comment and looked at him. He didn't care. He wanted to make it clear, "That's not what happened, Kelly didn't-"
Then he saw the camera they were going to use to photograph any injuries he had, and he knew his night was about to get even worse.
"Do I really have to do this?" he asked.
"It'll be a lot easier if you just cooperate," the doctor told him.
Casey sunk back behind the screen and slowly started to remove his clothes. The bags on the floor were clearly marked: shirt, pants, socks, underwear. He looked behind the screen, figuring there would be something for him to change into, a set of scrubs, a hospital gown, but there was nothing.
"Uh..." he turned back towards the doctor, "what do I do afterwards?"
"You're going to be examined," the doctor said as if it was the simplest concept in the world.
"And photographed?" Casey asked.
"That's standard procedure."
Something told Casey that there was actually very little that was 'standard' about this, but he was in no position to argue and he knew it. He was finally given a hospital gown to change into, but it did little to preserve any dignity for him as it had to be opened, and lifted at various points through the examination. The doctor dictated into a headset recorder as he looked Casey over, detailing the injuries on his body as the police took photographs of them, and Casey tried to block it all out, he was humiliated and felt degraded but that took backseat to his main priority.
"Has there been any update on Kelly Severide?" he asked during the examination. "He was taken into surgery earlier, does anybody know what's going on?"
If they did, nobody was talking. Casey really felt torn right now. On one hand he thought back to the more than 15 years that he and Kelly knew each other and were friends, close friends, he would've sworn he knew everything about Kelly. Then he thought back to how fast and how far things had gone to hell between them in the last 2 months, and it didn't seem possible that it was even the same person. It was like somehow overnight, Severide had turned into somebody that Casey didn't even know. He never would've thought it possible that someone he'd known for so long could change so much.
Just as the exam was being wrapped up, Casey heard an alarm going off from somewhere in the hospital and he knew that it meant a code was being called. He tried to run out of the room as he saw several members of the medical staff rushing by, but was grabbed back by the two cops, he struggled with them and tried to get loose.
"Is that Kelly?" he needed to know. He had to know what was going on. Was Kelly alive? Was he crashing on the operating table? Could they revive him? Why wouldn't anybody tell him what was happening?
6 weeks ago-
Casey had no repeat incidences that prompted a return to Med, and eventually the word came back that everybody who had gotten sick at the firehouse, had tested positive for bacteria likely contributed to under-cooked food they'd eaten hours or days before they started throwing up. But nobody could remember eating anything that would fit that category, and in time everybody forgot about it and moved on with their daily lives.
And during that time, Cathy Woods was still a frequent guest at Kelly's apartment. Casey avoided going over in the morning if he could, though a couple times he had to to discuss something with Kelly before they went in to work and he couldn't get him on the phone.
This time, Kelly was riding to work with him that morning because his car was in the shop with a broken belt. Cathy answered the door, this time she was dressed in one of Kelly's Blackhawks jerseys, which came perilously close to showing Casey what underwear she had on that morning, and for both their sakes he sincerely hoped she was.
"Hi, Matt," she greeted him, still too cheerily for his liking.
"Hi, Cathy," he said, trying to be civil, "is Kelly up?"
"Oh he's getting ready, why don't you come on in?" she asked, and Casey was not oblivious to the seductive undertone in her voice.
"No thanks," he replied.
"Why don't you get a cup of coffee while you wait?" she asked.
"No thanks," he answered, trying very hard to stay civil with her. "I'm good."
"Oh you are so cuuute," she said.
Casey had to grit his teeth together not to say anything. That was something that she'd started doing about a week after he first met her, and it annoyed the hell out of him, and he suspected that she knew it and that was precisely why she did it.
"Yeah, whatever," he said obliviously.
He'd just opened his mouth to say something else when, quicker than his eye could see it, Cathy put her hand on his chest. Not a single additional muscle in her whole body had moved, she stood there and looked at him with a sly, inviting smile, and just barely moving her hand, he felt her groping him through the fabric of his shirt.
Casey didn't move a muscle, didn't say a word. He was well aware he was putting himself in a bad position by not doing anything but he had a sneaking suspicion it was a lesser damning decision than if he had responded to the touch. The suspicions he'd been harboring since Kelly first started seeing her all came back at full force, either she was hoping Severide would catch them doing something, or she had another man somewhere nearby who she hoped would 'catch' her here with one of them. Either way he didn't know what she hoped to gain from it but-
Another 'faster than the eye' movement occurred and he felt her hand trail down to his stomach, and her smile got notably bigger as she commented, "My, my, you're a lot stronger than you look, aren't you?"
Casey tried not to physically respond but he knew he felt his eyes widening as he realized her hand was slowly trailing down lower than that. It wasn't that he was worried about having an actual physical reaction, but he was worried about how far this was going to go and how damning it was going to look on him if something didn't happen right away to stop whatever the hell she was trying to do.
He heard the bedroom door open in the apartment, and again, quicker than he realized what was happening, Cathy's hand was gone and she was back in her own neutral corner.
"Hey Casey," Kelly said as he came into Matt's view, "You been here long?"
"Uh, no, just got here," he replied. "You ready to go?"
"Yeah, hang on."
Kelly grabbed his bag, then Casey watched as he stopped long enough to kiss Cathy goodbye, and followed him out to the truck.
About halfway to the station house, Casey decided it was better if he was up front about what happened instead of letting Cathy try twisting it her own way later.
"Kelly...there's something I need to tell you," he said, glancing at the Squad lieutenant through the corner of his eye. "And I don't want you getting upset."
"What is it?" Severide asked, clearly oblivious to what it could possibly be.
"While I was waiting for you to get ready...Cathy...she came on to me. Nothing happened, but, I don't want you finding out about it later and getting the wrong idea."
The silence he was met with was unnerving. He turned his head and saw Severide staring at him, and he couldn't figure out if Kelly was about to blow a gasket or double over laughing.
"What?" he asked, a small titter under his voice.
"Cathy came on to me," Casey repeated. "I didn't do anything, you know I would never do that to you."
A small, isolated laugh escaped from Kelly, then another, and another, "What're you talking about?"
"She...never mind," Casey said, already knowing that this had been a mistake.
"No, what did she do?" Kelly asked him.
Casey stopped at the next red light. And without warning, he reached over and put his hand on Kelly's chest and ran it down to his abdomen. It was so sudden and unexpected that Kelly fell back against the seat, wriggling and half-laughing.
"What the hell are you doing?" he asked.
"That's what she did," Casey said. "And I don't know why she did it, but I didn't want you finding out from her later."
Now Kelly was straight up laughing. The light changed and Casey stepped on the gas and continued towards 51.
"What's so funny?" he asked.
"You are," Kelly answered, he reached over and slapped Casey on the shoulder, jolting him. "She wasn't coming onto you."
"If she wasn't she's got one hell of a way of saying 'good morning'."
"It's just the way she is, Casey, she doesn't mean anything by it," he said.
Casey looked at him skeptically, "Are you sure?"
"Yeah, she's harmless."
Casey looked to the road ahead and tried to brush it off. "If you say so. I just didn't want there to be any trouble."
Kelly was laughing so hard it sounded like he was past the ability to even breathe. He leaned over and told Casey, "I love you, buddy," and kissed him on the side of the head.
"Ew! Not while I'm driving!" Casey said.
Kelly leaned against him, a series of high pitched wheezes escaping from his throat as he struggled to find his voice again and said, "We gotta get you a girlfriend, then you can stop imagining Cathy flirting with you."
"I can assure you," Casey said, struggling to keep the disgust out of his tone, "That's the last thing I'd want to imagine."
Kelly just chuckled in response.