Voight returned to Chicago Med the next morning, looking like hell, feeling like hell, still doing everything he could to keep himself composed while he did his job. He noticed the parade of firefighters who were standing and sitting around the waiting room.
"Voight."
"Wallace, I'm very sorry about your loss," Hank said as he shook the battalion chief's hand.
"Tell me you got something."
"We're working on it, that's all I can tell you right now, we're waiting on ballistics, forensics..." Voight declined to add they were also waiting on an autopsy report. It was obvious from the looks on everyone's faces that none of them would be able to stand that piece of news.
"How's Matt doing?"
"Severide's the only one that's been in to see him so far," Wallace said. "Since he was there when it happened, we're giving him his time."
Voight nodded. "Understood. I need to talk to one of the nurses, I'll let you know when we have an update."
"Thank you."
Voight felt even more dead on his feet now than when he'd first walked in the door. Maggie was still there and she looked about like he felt.
"What's the news, Maggie?" he asked.
"Follow me," she said.
Voight followed the nurse down the corridor and they stopped just short of the room that Casey had been put in. Through the sliding glass door they saw Casey sitting up in the bed and Severide sitting beside the bed, both of them still with their arms locked around each other, Casey's head rested on Severide's shoulder and both of them looked like they'd finally worn themselves out and fallen asleep.
"How long they been like that?" Voight asked as they backed away so as to not wake up the two lieutenants.
"All night," Maggie answered. "The only time we were able to get Severide away from Casey was when he threw up. He's severely dehydrated, we got him on an IV and are pushing fluids. His blood sugar was just about rock bottom when we got his labs back."
Hank noted that Casey looked horrible. He'd already looked horrible last night in the dark when they got him loaded into the ambulance, if possible, he looked worse today, his skin actually looked gray and ashen, he was covered in perspiration, and he didn't miss the dark rings under Casey's eyes.
"Well guy's been throwing up all week with the flu, that's bound to happen, isn't it?" Voight asked.
Maggie shook her head. "That's not what it is."
He turned to the nurse, "What do you mean?"
"We got the tox report back," Maggie said, and held it out to him.
Voight took the papers and read over them. Halfway through he absently raised his free hand to his mouth, as if he was the one going to be sick next.
"My God," he croaked out.
"I took the liberty of pulling a few of his hairs...hair averages an inch of growth per month and from that we can often determine how long somebody has been using drugs...his is a little longer than usual, so we were able to go further back...this has been going on for a while, Hank."
"How long?"
"We don't know, and I don't think Casey's going to volunteer that information."
Voight looked back at the report, trying to make some sense of it. "Where would he get this stuff anyway?"
"Here," Maggie said simply. "Or from the ambulance. I've been going through the records when the paramedics would restock the inventory...a lot of stuff went missing, more than the paperwork actually showed patients receiving."
"And nobody noticed?" Voight asked in disbelief.
"Presumably some of it got stolen when EMS responded to some of the shadier neighborhoods...not that it doesn't happen, but..."
"Uh huh..." Voight responded. He skimmed over the report again and asked Maggie, "What happens if you take all of these together?"
"Each on their own has a whole laundry list of potential side effects...mixing them is a good way to wind up comatose or dead, especially when mixed with alcohol, which the report shows he's had a steady amount of in his body this whole time."
"The guys in narcotics don't see some of this stuff commonly used on the streets...what effect would somebody be hoping to achieve with a cocktail like this?"
"I've actually never seen anyone with all this stuff in their system at one time," Maggie admitted. "I'm scared to guess."
"So now what?" Voight asked.
"We got him on a glucose IV but we haven't been able to get him to eat or drink anything, we tried earlier but he still can't keep anything down, we're keeping him heavily monitored to make sure there are no complications, the doctor didn't want to try putting him on naloxone yet incase it would also interact with everything he has in him. Right now there aren't high enough levels of anything to assume he's in an overdose range, a lot of these are down to trace amounts right now, if he's been steadily taking all this stuff for months without any incidents yet then we can only guess his body has built up some tolerance for them, so the best option we can see right now is have him wait it out and see what happens," the nurse told him.
Voight grunted. "Guy's got a rough recovery ahead of him."
"Especially on top of Gabby being murdered," Maggie said. "This is a nightmare, Hank."
"I know. How's Antonio doing?"
"Dr. Charles is supposed to speak with him later today, he's still sedated for the time being."
"That's something anyway," Voight said.
Voight entered Casey's hospital room, and he saw that Casey and Severide were awake, but Casey still wouldn't let go of Severide, and Kelly didn't seem in any hurry to let go of him.
"Kelly."
The Squad lieutenant turned his head and looked at the Intelligence sergeant. It was obvious that Kelly wanted to ask him something, but for his friend's sake, he didn't say what he was thinking.
"I need to get a statement from you about what you might've seen last night," Voight said calmly. "And the nurse needs to come in and check Casey's vitals. So if you could step outside while they do that..."
"No!" Casey tightened his grip on Severide and clung to him even harder and started crying again. "No, please..."
Kelly rubbed Matt's back and told him softly, "It's okay, Casey, I'll just be right outside, I'll be back in just a minute."
"No!" Casey tearfully begged him.
Voight could see his assistance might be needed to pry the two of them apart. He went over and held his hands out to give Casey a heads up what he was going to do, and told the blonde man, "Now just take it easy, Matt, the nurse isn't going to hurt you-"
Casey screamed as Voight grabbed him so Kelly could pull away, he tried to fight the sergeant but he was too weak from everything that had happened. Kelly got all but out of Casey's reach as Voight forced him back against the hospital bed, but he reached his hand over the railing and squeezed Casey's consolingly as he told his distraught friend, "I'll just be a minute, I promise." Reluctantly he left the room with Voight as a nurse came in to check on Casey.
The two men headed down the hall where they couldn't hear Casey screaming.
"Long night?" Voight took in Severide's exhausted appearance.
"He's still in shock...we all are," Kelly said as he scrunched his eyes shut as if they were burning from the lack of sleep. "I can't believe that Gabby's dead...how did this happen?"
"We're still waiting for ballistics, so far it looks like she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time...we're trying to find out why, did Matt tell you anything?"
"No, he can't, he's too upset, and too sick..." it was obvious that Severide was half out of his mind with grief and worry as he prattled on, "The nurse took his temperature earlier and said it's normal...but it can't be, he has to have a fever, he can't stop shaking, he's sweating like crazy. He's been home all last week with this flu, he should've gotten better before now."
"Casey doesn't have the flu, he's high," Voight told him simply and bluntly.
Kelly's eyes snapped wide open like he'd been slapped.
"What?"
"Actually by now his body's starting to go into withdrawal, that's why he can't stop shaking or puking."
Kelly did a double take as he tried to make sense of what Voight was saying, but he couldn't.
"You're sick, Voight, how could you say that when you know what he's been put through?"
Voight took out the papers from his jacket and told Severide, "They did a tox screen on him, here's the official report. He's got a cocktail of sleeping pills, muscle relaxants, Ativan, Valium, ketamine, a whole pharmacy of big name high dollar prescription drugs...and to top it all off...insulin."
"What?" Kelly asked. "That...that doesn't make any sense."
"I know it...do you know anything about this?" Voight asked.
"Hell no!" Kelly responded. "You're not saying that Casey's a junkie, he wouldn't do that."
"And he wouldn't jab himself with insulin either, he's not diabetic, right?" Voight asked.
"Of course not."
"He put up a fight when they took his clothes last night?" Hank asked.
"He put up a fight with everything they did," Kelly said.
"Maggie said they found injection marks in both thighs and his ass..."
"That doesn't make sense."
"Especially since the levels of the drugs aren't high enough for him to have been dosed in the last couple days...by which time those marks would already have disappeared..."
Nothing of what Voight was saying made any sense to Severide yet, but almost automatically he recalled, "Needle marks only stay when you repeatedly inject into the same spot instead of rotating."
Voight nodded. "Right...problem is, if Casey was sticking himself, those are still areas where there's a chance somebody at 51 would've seen something...if he was shooting himself up with something, he's been around long enough he'd know places nobody will notice like between the toes. But he didn't."
"This still doesn't make any sense, what are you saying?" Kelly asked.
"He never tried to leave his room last night?" Voight asked. "Not for anything?"
Kelly slowly shook his head. "He was too upset to let go of me."
"He ask the nurse for any drugs?"
"Of course not!"
"The level of all those drugs in his system are low enough he will be feeling the effects of the withdrawal and his body's screaming he needs another fix and that's why he's in as bad of shape as he is right now...I don't think Casey knew he was on all that stuff," Voight said.
"That's impossible!" Kelly replied. "How could he not know-"
"If he did, he'd know what's in store, and he'd be trying to get another fix somewhere, ask the nurse for something, wander off and break into the cabinet they keep the meds in, something," Voight pointed out. "How long has he been sick?"
Severide thought. "Like I said, he'd had the flu for a week..."
"But?" Voight looked at the Squad lieutenant knowingly.
"...He'd been feeling lousy for a few weeks. He looked bad, he said he wasn't getting enough sleep. We suggested he should go to the doctor just to make sure he wasn't coming down with something, he said he didn't need to...I...we all just thought he needed to take a couple shifts off and rest...you mean this whole time he..."
"According to the hairs they pulled for testing, he's been on this stuff for a couple months at least," Voight told the lieutenant.
Kelly couldn't accept it. "That's not possible...Casey would never do anything like that. He's not a junkie, he doesn't abuse pills, God, the guy barely takes aspirin for a migraine."
"You're not hearing me," Voight said calmly but firmly, "I don't think Casey took it himself."
"Then who..."
Kelly's eyes widened and Voight saw the punch coming before Severide even knew what he was going to do, Hank stepped out of the way and Kelly bashed his fist against the wall and stopped to groan in pain.
"Kelly...I'm not saying this to attack Gabby...I know you all were close, you were friends."
"We're...were, family," Severide responded as he turned back around clutching his sore hand in his good one.
"But there're some things you didn't know about her," Voight said.
Kelly grunted in pain and cynically remarked, "Oh yeah right, like what?"
"I can show you," Voight calmly answered, "but you aren't going to want to see it."
"What're you talking about?" Kelly asked. "Show me what?"
Voight gestured back to Casey's room, "Can you leave him for a while?"
Kelly looked like he'd just been punched in the gut. It was obvious he did not want to leave Casey. But he wanted to get to the bottom of everything.
"Okay," he reluctantly agreed, "let's go."
"I don't get it," Kelly said after he'd been shown the camera footage. "Why was Casey trying to get away from Gabby?"
"I have a couple ideas," Voight said as he had Ruzek bring something else up on the computer. "We had Gabby's phone dumped thinking it might explain who was at their apartment. But I'm starting to think nobody was. There was no forcible entry, Casey broke the window to get out and away from her."
"That's insane," Kelly told him.
"So's this," Voight pointed to the screen.
Kelly's eyes widened in disgust at the pictures that came up. Two dozen different shots of Casey's naked body in his bed, all of which he was asleep in. A few also featured Gabby in the picture laying beside Matt and smiling for the camera and definitely not decent while she did it.
"That's sick, what the hell are you doing with that? That's private, get rid of it," Kelly told them, not wanting to see another second of it.
"I told you you didn't want to know," Voight said simply.
"You are sick, Voight, you know that?" Kelly asked. "How can you pry into their personal lives like that?"
Voight kept his cool and calmly pointed out, "Did you notice that Casey wasn't awake in a single picture she took?"
Kelly wasn't getting what Hank was telling him.
"You think Casey knew she took these, had them on her phone?" Voight asked. "We already dumped everything on Matt's phone, and there's definitely nothing like that on his featuring Gabby."
Kelly didn't have any idea what to think. All he knew at that moment was he felt like his head was going to explode.
"I don't...what're you...what? None of this makes any sense."
"Yeah that's the conclusion we drew too," Atwater commented.
"It's possible that Gabby was doing something else that Casey found out about and that's why he ran from her last night," Voight explained.
"Something else-like what?" Kelly asked.
"The bathroom door of their apartment was kicked in, did you know that?" Hank asked the Squad lieutenant.
"No, when? Last night?"
"We don't know," Voight answered. "We couldn't figure out who had locked it, why they did, or who had broken it in...but we found something else on her phone."
Ruzek brought up a video file and Kelly watched as the handheld footage panned into the bathroom where the shower was running, steam rose over the curtain, and suddenly a hand reached out and snatched the curtain back.
"GABBY!" Casey was momentarily blinded by the water pouring down his face but he knew who had exposed him and he was not amused.
A mischievous giggle responded. "Smile, Mr. Alderman."
"Gabby, I'm not kidding, turn that off."
"Oh come on, Matt." The camera got in closer but still maintained a full view of him.
Casey was glaring at it and her. "Will you get back?"
"No."
"Gabby, get out."
"Make me, mister big tough fireman."
"This isn't funny, Gabby."
"It is from where I'm standing."
"Gabby, please, get out."
"No."
"I don't have time for this, Gabby."
Her voice was audible on the camera tauntingly, "You always make time for me, Matt Casey."
"Not this time...I mean it, out."
Ruzek clicked off the video and made an undecided sound as he explained, "My ex-fiancee used to send me naked pictures of her all day while I was working, she thought it was funny...until my phone got stolen that is. Gotta say..." he shook his head, "she never did anything like that...and that don't look like flirting to me. I mean it's pretty obvious he doesn't want her recording him."
"So maybe Casey started locking the door to keep his shutterbug wife out," Voight suggested.
Kelly looked at him with a confused expression. "And she broke the door in?"
"She was a firefighter, wasn't she? She knew how to do that," Voight pointed out.
"That's nuts," Kelly replied. "She wouldn't do that, she's not..."
"Before you finish that answer, would you like to see the apartment?" Voight asked. "Maybe you can pick up on something we missed, you were there regularly, right?"
Kelly shrugged, "Somewhat regularly."
"Okay, let's go."