"No one is without troubles, without personal hardships and genuine challenges. That fact may not be obvious because most people don't advertise their woes and heartaches. But nobody, not even the purest heart, escapes life without suffering battle scars." - Richelle E. Goodrich

Coming out of a trauma room Serena pulled off her bloody disposable gown and gloves and tossed them into a medical waste bin. She had spent the better part of forty minutes trying to save the life of a man who had been shot several times in the chest including in the neck. He had lost way too much blood from the time he had been shot to when he had arrived in the ER and if he had survived, most likely he would have been paralyzed from the neck down. Now there was nothing more for Serena to do, not until Chicago PD found out who her victim was and contacted his next of kin. So it was back to the ER to hang out for a while until she was paged for a consult or a trauma came in. Serena had only been on shift for three and a half hours and was no where near to being half way through her shift so as she made her way over to the front desk she figured that she might as well see some patients whilst she was it. And just maybe her on of her interns wouldn't page her in the next half hour because they had potentially screwed up the lab work as they had been doing for the last two days. When Serena reached the front desk she picked up a new chart and began leafing through it and to her luck it was a 40 year old female with suspected appendicitis. She couldn't have picked a better teaching case if she tried.

"Serena?"

Looking up from her chart Serena saw Shay, a friend of hers through Kelly and who just so happened to be his roommate. Shay was a paramedic and worked out of Firehouse 51 with Kelly so her and Serena's paths crossed quite often. "Hey Shay, sorry I didn't quite see you there… So how are things? It's been a while."

"Good. Well as good as things can be when you're a paramedic." Shay replied and Serena smiled.

"Bring anything good in?" Serena asked as she took note of the empty gurney.

"Not for the hot shot surgeon known as Rocket McArthur but I was hoping to run into you Serena. Do you have time to quickly talk? I know you must be busy but I really need to talk to you and I figured the best chance would be if I caught you here at the hospital. It's about Kelly…" Shay explained and Serena nodded her head. "I don't mean to come in and make all these demands but can we talk somewhere private?"

"Sure no problem, we'll head to the lounge…" Serena said as she motioned for Shay to follow her and Serena walked towards the staff lounge and once she got to the door, Serena poked her head in and say that for once it was empty.

"Thanks."

"No problem Shay, so this is about Kelly… Let me guess? His latest girlfriend is a skeezy whore who has no respect for anything? Or Kelly has hooked up with another kleptomaniac?" Serena asked in a joking manner as the only times Shay ever came to her to specifically talk about Kelly was when he was dating a real loser and Shay need her help to persuade Kelly to ditch the girl before things got too far. As much of a good guy Kelly was, he had a tendency to hook up with the wrong type of girls as he tended to go more for looks than actual substance, which often led him into trouble. Such as the whole Renee thing but that was something that Serena really didn't need to get into. And then there was the new Renee that Kelly was currently dating and that was another thing Serena didn't want to get into.

"Serena, it's actually about Kelly…" Shay clarified, making it clear to Serena that Shay wasn't here to talk about some girl but Kelly himself. And based on Shay's tone, Serena needed to be worried about what Shay had come to talk to her about.

"How bad?"

"Pretty bad, it's about his shoulder Serena…" Shay began and Serena frowned and she didn't say anything at first as she wanted to Shay to explain further before she continued. Taking a deep breath Shay went into her jacket pocket and pulled out a small folded piece of paper and handed it over to Serena. "I found this in the apartment when I was doing some tidying up, it's a prescription that you wrote for Kelly. I'm guess it's for the pain in his shoulder…"

Serena knew she shouldn't really be talking about this with Shay given that technically she was Kelly's doctor but Shay knew about his shoulder pain and Serena was well aware that Shay was his emergency contact along with her. "I wrote this for Kelly weeks ago, I wrote this after I had finished operating on Hermann and I came down to tell you all that he was going to be fine. That must have been about eight weeks ago. Yet he hasn't filled this out…"

"Did he tell you about the pain in his shoulder?"

"No. I picked up on it myself and after what happened to Hermann I asked Kelly and I convinced him to let me check it out. Kelly believed that it was a tweaked nerve from something he picked up on job and the exam seemed to suggest that so I prescribed him some anti-inflammatory pills for the pain. What's the big deal Shay? Other than the fact that I prescribed Kelly some harmless pills for a pain in his shoulder?" Serena asked as she was getting the feeling that she was missing something.

"Kelly's been lying to you Serena, that shoulder pain of his? He's been having them for months, he was injured in the fire that Andy died in and his shoulder has been playing up since. It's worse than we all thought but Kelly won't see a doctor and the pain kept getting worse so I was giving him morphine to help him cope with the pain." Shay admitted and Serena couldn't believe what she was hearing.

"Shay!" Serena hissed.

"I know it was a stupid thing for me to do Serena which is why I cut him off and I thought that everything was fine. Kelly said that he saw a doctor and everything was fine and then I found the prescription which he never filled and I'm worried Serena. There is no way advil is going to relieve the pain the way morphine was and there is no way Kelly is getting more morphine. I've cut him off and there is no way that he'd ask you about it…"

"That explains the unfilled prescription as advil is not going to cut it after he's been using morphine all this time…" Serena wearily said and she couldn't believe that Shay had been this stupid, she could lose her job if anyone found that she had been slipping Kelly morphine from her rig. And then there was Kelly, Serena was furious that he had been lying to her all this time and promising her that he was taking this shoulder rehabilitation stuff seriously when really he had been self medicating himself. "I really cannot believe this, I knew something was wrong and Kelly just played it off and made me think everything was fine when it clearly isn't. He needs to go to Chief Boden…"

"He won't, Kelly doesn't want CFD to get involved and deal with all that bureaucratic paperwork and be put on sick leave…" Shay explained.

"Kelly's explained that and I let it go because I thought it was a tweaked nerve at the time but this is much more serious Shay! Can you imagine if his shoulder plays up during a fire…" Serena began until she noticed a look on Shay's face which confirmed her fears. "It has, hasn't it?"

"I think so."

"Shay, he needs to go to the Chief. I know you love him as do I but we need to help him as every time Kelly goes out on a call he is putting every single one of you in danger. That shoulder could go out at any moment and someone could hurt, I've already had one of you on my table already. Next time I don't know whether you guys will be so lucky, maybe someone will die. I don't know and I don't think you want that on your conscious either. We get Kelly to go to Chief Boden and there is hope of salvaging his career, sure he'll have to take time off but at least he'll have a job. The sooner he does that the better because my dad has seen a lot of good men wait until the last minute or not speak up at all and it's too late."