A/N: Boden makes an appearance in this chapter! The rest of 51 will appear soon, too.
"Hey; how are you feeling?" Kelly asked the next morning as Gabby walked into the kitchen where he was cooking breakfast. He was glad to see that she had more color in her face and seemed to have more energy.
"Better," Gabby assured him, taking a seat on one of the barstools. "Sorry I wasn't the best company yesterday."
"Is it always like that when you get a treatment?" Kelly asked as he scooped some eggs onto a plate and set it in front of Gabby. He grabbed another plate and dished up some eggs for himself before taking a seat next to her.
"It wasn't at first," Gabby informed him. " But with each treatment, the side effects just seem to get worse and last longer."
Kelly nodded, remembering that Anna had told him the same thing when she was going through chemo. "How many more treatments do you have?"
"I have three more left in this round. As long as the chemo did its job and shrank the tumors enough, they'll do surgery and then I'll do some more chemo, just to kill off any cells they might have missed," Gabby informed him. "According to my oncologist, it will be less intense; I'll only have to go every three weeks for six rounds instead of weekly."
"Were you really not going to tell anyone?" Kelly inquired.
Gabby shrugged. "I probably would have had to eventually," she admitted. "These past few months have been hard. Losing Antonio, then finding out I had cancer…I just couldn't bring myself to tell anyone. I thought it would be easier that way."
Kelly shook his head. "You're the most stubborn woman I know, Dawson."
Gabby smiled. "Is that a compliment or an insult?"
"Both," Kelly replied, standing up and grabbing both of their plates, rinsing them off before turning back to Gabby. "I did something thinking last night."
"Oh?" Gabby asked, raising her eyebrows.
Kelly nodded. "I know I promised not to tell anyone," he began, "but I'm gonna have to tell Boden. He'll want to know why I'm taking time off. Plus I plan on switching shifts on your treatment days so that I can be there."
"You don't have to do that," Gabby protested. "You'll just be bored while I get my treatment. It takes several hours."
Kelly held up his hand. "No arguing. My mind is already made up. There's no reason for you to go to your treatments by yourself. Besides, I saw how wiped out you were after your treatment. You shouldn't have to go through that alone." Kelly had spent the night before feeling helpless as he'd tried to figure out the best way to help Gabby. With Anna, he'd been able to give her his bone marrow, but there was nothing like that for Gabby, so he'd decided he'd help her in the only way he could: by being there for her.
"Fine," Gabby sighed. "But only Boden. No one else, at least not right now. Please?"
"Okay," Kelly agreed. He knew there hadn't been much in her life that Gabby had been able to control over the past three months, so he wouldn't push her on this. He hoped she'd eventually come around to the idea of the others knowing, but he knew that it would need to be on her time, not his.
The next morning Kelly got to the firehouse early, wanting to ensure he had time to talk to Boden before shift began so he didn't have to worry about any interruptions. "Hey, Chief?" Kelly called, knocking on Boden's open door.
Boden looked up from his paperwork, surprised to see his squad lieutenant when shift didn't start for another thirty minutes. "Kelly; what can I do for you?" he asked.
"I was hoping I could talk to you about something," Kelly replied, stepping into Boden's office, and closing the door behind him.
Boden sat up straight, giving Kelly his full attention. He knew it must be something serious if Kelly wanted the door closed. "Of course; what is it?"
Kelly sat down in one of the chairs across from Boden's desk and tried to figure out where to start. "I'm going to need some time off in a few weeks," he said finally. "And I was hoping I could switch shifts next week; I'm going to need that Wednesday off."
Boden leaned forward, folding his hands and placing them on his desk. "What's this about, Kelly?" He knew his squad lieutenant hadn't wanted to have a conversation with him with the door closed just to request time off. And it was unusual for Kelly to request to switch shifts, much less take time off considering he was usually having to force Kelly to take his furlough.
Kelly sighed, running his hand over his face, trying to figure out the best way to tell his chief about Gabby. He knew how close the two of them had been when Gabby had been a paramedic at 51, and he knew that this wouldn't be easy news for Boden to hear. "You know a few weeks ago, when I told you that Brett thought she'd seen Dawson at Med?" Boden nodded, so Kelly continued. "A couple of weeks ago, Brett saw her again. And this time she insisted she was certain that it was her. She asked around, thinking that maybe Dawson had come back and gotten a job there, but she was told that Dawson wasn't an employee there."
Boden wasn't sure he wanted to know where this was going. He'd always had a soft spot for Gabby Dawson and had thought of her like a daughter. Given the haggard expression on Kelly's face, he knew that whatever Kelly was about to say wasn't going to be good.
"I…uh…I figured I'd try waiting outside of Med last Wednesday, just in case she showed up," Kelly continued. "And I saw her as she was leaving. At first she didn't want to talk to me, but I stopped her and made her talk to me." He paused for a minute, trying to think of an easy way to break the news to Boden, but he came up empty. "Chief, Gabby has cancer," he said finally.
Boden sat there in silence for a few minutes, too stunned to say anything. Gabby Dawson had cancer. The spunky, stubborn paramedic who had always pushed the limits and was constantly getting herself into trouble, but who had still been beloved by the whole house, had cancer. And based off of the expression on his squad lieutenant's face and the fact that he was here in his office, asking for time off, he was guessing that it was bad. "How bad is it, Kelly?" he asked finally.
"It's not good, Chief," Kelly admitted. "She has stage three ovarian cancer. She's doing chemo now, but she'll need to have surgery in a few weeks, followed by more chemo."
Boden nodded. "I'm assuming that's what the time off is for?"
"Yes," Kelly confirmed. "I-, she-" he stopped for a moment, trying to gather his thoughts. "After I talked to her outside of Med, I drove her back to where she was staying. She was staying in some cheap motel, Chief. It wasn't safe for her to keep staying there, and after she has surgery, she'll need someone with her, so I made her move in with me."
Boden wasn't surprised by that. Kelly and Gabby had always been close; their mutual friendship with Shay and the fact that Gabby dated and then married Kelly's best friend had given them a tight bond. "Take whatever time you need, Kelly," he informed the younger man. He knew this couldn't be easy on him, especially given his past experience of losing Anna to cancer.
"Thanks, Chief," Kelly told him. "There's one more thing: Gabby doesn't want anyone to know. She claims that she doesn't want to be a burden on anyone. It was hard enough for me to convince her to let me help her, and convincing her to let me tell you wasn't much easier."
Boden shook his head. "Gabby Dawson is family," he said firmly. "She could never be a burden."
"I know, Chief," Kelly assured him. "I tried telling her that, but she wouldn't listen. So I promised her that I wouldn't tell anyone else until she was ready for them to know."
Boden nodded understandingly. He knew from experience how hard it was to change Gabby's mind once she had it set on something. "I know this goes without saying, but if either of you needs anything, anything at all, I'm here for you," Boden informed Kelly, his voice rough with emotion.
Kelly nodded. "I know, Chief. Thank you."
"You don't have to stay, Kelly," Gabby protested as Kelly pulled a chair over to sit across from her as the nurse hooked an IV up to her port.
"I know," Kelly replied simply. "I want to."
Gabby sighed, knowing she wasn't going to win this argument. Aside from the days he'd had shift, Kelly had barely left her side since she'd moved in with him. She had to admit that it was a nice change after having dealt with everything alone, but she couldn't help but feel guilty. She didn't want him to feel obligated to take care of her; she wanted him to go about his life as normal.
"How did you know where to look for me?" Gabby questioned once the nurse had walked away. For all of the time she and Kelly had spent together in the past week, this was one thing she'd never asked him, but today's visit to the hospital had made her wonder how he'd known she would be there.
"A few weeks ago, Brett told me that she thought she'd seen you here at Med." Kelly explained. "I think we all thought she was crazy and had imagined things, but then two weeks ago she saw you again, and she insisted that this time she was sure that it was you. Both times she saw you it was a Wednesday, and you weren't returning any of my phone calls, so I figured my best chance of getting you to talk to me and finding out why you were back in Chicago was to wait outside of Med on a Wednesday." He shrugged. "I knew it was a long shot, but I didn't know what else to do."
"Brett knows I'm in Chicago?" Gabby asked, frowning. She thought she'd been careful, but obviously not careful enough.
Kelly nodded. "I haven't told her anything," he assured her. "The only one who knows is Boden."
"She's eventually going to start asking questions," Gabby sighed. "It's Brett; I know her. She won't give up that easily."
"Gabby…" Kelly began, but stopped, unsure of whether or not he should continue.
"I know what you're going to say, Kelly," Gabby told him. "You're going to say that I should tell everyone; that I'm going to have to tell them eventually."
Kelly nodded. "You know it's true," he told her. "You're not going to be able to keep it a secret forever. Eventually, someone's going to see you, and whether that's someone here at Med or someone from the firehouse, they're going to ask questions, and you know how quickly news spreads around here."
Gabby remembered quite well just how fast news got around. The rumor mill had always been strong, and given how interconnected Med, 51, and the Intelligence team were, Gabby knew that all it would take was for one person to see her for her secret to be revealed to everyone. "I know," she admitted. "But, Kelly, I'm not ready yet. Maybe after the surgery, but not now. I don't want everyone to look at me with pity and worry. I can't handle that right now."
"If they look at you that way, it would only be because they care," Kelly insisted.
Gabby shook her head. "Kelly…I can't. Not right now."
"Okay," Kelly replied softly, knowing that now wasn't the time to push it. It would have to be her decision. As much as he hated keeping this secret from everyone that cared about Gabby, he knew that it wasn't his secret to share. He also knew there was more to the story than she was telling him; it wasn't just because she was afraid of being pitied or being a burden. He wasn't sure exactly what her reason was, but he knew it wasn't the reason she'd told him.