That night, Casey was in bed when he heard Severide stomping around the hall, then he heard his door slowly creaking open. The light from the hall shone in and cast a shadow as Severide stepped in and asked, "You asleep?"
"No," Casey sat up.
"Been asleep?"
"No."
He could see the shadow nodding.
"You wanna watch TV?"
Not the weirdest thing he'd ever been asked at 2 o' clock in the morning, but somewhere up there. Still, all the strange events from the previous day hadn't left Casey too eager to be on his own, though he couldn't explain it.
"Sure," he said as he got up.
The two of them headed down to the living room, parked themselves on the couch and flipped through the channels. Halloween might've been over but some of the networks were still running all night long horror movie marathons.
"Hear anything out of Antonio today?" Kelly asked.
"Mm-hmm," Casey tiredly grunted. "He doesn't think Charlene Peterson is connected to the graveyard fires or his 3 dead dealers, but he thinks there might be a connection between her and that guy that slashed his face open."
"What?"
"I don't know, he's not saying," Casey answered. "He said there were three similar calls today with 3rd Watch. Ambo 61 responded to a woman who drank bleach, she had it poured in a coffee cup and some of it was still in it, then there was a guy who said he'd been taking a bath...he'd filled the tub with turpentine."
"Oof!"
"And then...there was a woman who cut her face open with an old straight razor...she said that she was putting on lipstick."
"I don't get it," Severide said, "what is going on with these people?"
"I don't know," Casey shook his head, "but it's getting harder not to worry."
"About what?" Kelly asked.
"Yesterday Brett said none of the people they took to the hospital were any repeat customers...so until now these people have somehow gotten through life without maiming or mutilating themselves...then one day they just seem to wake up and try to kill themselves in the most gruesome ways imaginable, why? How do they arrive at this conclusion? And they seem to have no memory of it, how could you do any of this stuff and not know it? Whatever's causing it...is there any way to determine who they are, or who'll be next? Is there an actual connection or is it all random? And if it is..."
Casey didn't finish that thought but Severide seemed to pick up on what he was hinting at anyway. "Don't worry about it, whatever it is, Antonio and the others will figure it out. There's got to be some logical explanation for everything."
"Like what?" Casey asked.
"I don't know...maybe somebody's putting bath salts in the street drugs."
Even though Casey didn't put much faith in that suggestion, it did remind him of something Antonio had said the other day, something he might have to look into.
Casey slowly became aware of several things, one, he was sitting on the couch, and sore as hell from apparently sleeping there all night, secondly, somebody was with him, because three, he could feel an arm draped over his shoulder, and the side of somebody's head pressed against the side of his own. Before he actually got his eyes opened he tried to remember what had happened last night, but then he realized he didn't even know what day it was. He opened his eyes and turned to see who was with him, and saw it was Severide, who was also just waking up, neither of whom responded well to the fact each was a fraction of an inch from the other's face, and both of them let out a startled yell and moved away from one another as quickly as they could.
"What happened?" Severide asked in an equally startled tone.
Casey grunted as he tried to form an answer. He looked at his watch and saw it was 6 A.M. "It's morning," he said.
"What?" Severide blinked and rubbed his eyes and realized, "We fell asleep watching TV."
The two men yawned and stretched and heard several things pop, then got up from the couch.
"So what's on the agenda for today?" Kelly asked.
"I've got something I need to do later," Casey said, and he hoped Severide didn't ask him what, because he didn't want to have to explain where he was going.
Casey walked through the sliding doors at Chicago Med and spotted Maggie by the front desk.
"Maggie."
"Hi, Matt, what're you doing here?"
"Hoping you can help me. There was a teenage girl brought in yesterday, she was hypothermic and had..." he reached behind his shoulder, "these large cuts on her back."
"Oh yeah," Maggie nodded, "Lena Bryant."
"Was she discharged?"
"No, she's still here. The doctors wanted to err on the side of caution and Dr. Charles was able to talk her parents into keeping her here so they could run some more tests."
"How's she doing?"
"Physically she seems to be alright."
"Can I see her?"
"Sure."
Matt got the room number and went to see the girl who for whatever reason, all of this seemed to have started with.
As he approached the hospital room, he poked his head in and saw the teen girl sitting up in the bed looking at something. He wasn't sure what, the TV wasn't on, but she was staring at something in that general direction. There hadn't been much to actually 'clean up' when she was brought in, but she looked a lot better now than when they saw her the other day. Her hair had been combed and her color had improved a lot. Almost like a totally different person.
He cleared his throat and saw her turn towards him.
"Lena, my name's Matt Casey, I'm one of the firefighters from 51, do you mind if I talk to you?"
She didn't answer, she turned her head back and continued staring at the wall. Casey decided her not objecting was as good as an invitation so he showed himself in and walked over to the bed.
"Lena, do you remember walking to our firehouse yesterday morning?" he watched her face for any signs of recognition.
If she did or not he couldn't be sure, she just sharply turned her head to look in the other direction.
"Can you tell me what happened to you?"
Still nothing.
"Do you remember Halloween night?" Nothing. He pressed further, "We found your jacket in the cemetery. Do you know what you were doing there? Was there anyone else with you?"
He turned to meet her eyes and she turned her head back and looked the other way.
"There was a fire in the cemetery. Do you know anything about it?" Nothing. "There was another fire in another cemetery the same day, only there were about a dozen teenagers there, all of them dead. Do you know anything about that?"
Her eyes focused on the wall again.
"Who attacked you, Lena?"
Casey heard footsteps behind him and he turned and saw Dr. Charles entering the room.
"Oh, Lieutenant Casey, I didn't know you and Miss Bryant were acquainted," he said. "Can I see you for a minute?"
Casey left the room and followed Dr. Charles down the hall out of earshot.
"I admire your efforts, Casey, but I'm afraid she won't open up to you, I've tried speaking to her five times, all with the same results."
"How's she doing?" Casey asked.
"Physically or mentally?"
"Both."
"Well, we've finished running all the tests that can and have ruled out any biological cause for her muteness," Dr. Charles explained, "so that just leaves the psychological."
"Can you tell me anything?" Casey asked.
"This is not an official diagnosis, don't quote me," Daniel told him, "Something or someone scared her into silence."
"Do you have any idea what?" Casey asked.
"Well first thing that comes to mind is whoever attacked her threatened her unless she kept quiet," Dr. Charles answered. "I can't say for certain either way but I'm not convinced that's it."
"What about something like watching 12 friends get murdered?" Casey asked.
"Oh yeah, I'd heard about that," the psychiatrist responded, "it's possible but unfortunately we won't be able to find out anything until she's willing to talk to us."
"How long can you keep her here?" Matt wanted to know.
"I managed to convince the higher ups that she has a legitimate medical need to stay here until further notice, the cuts on her back are in a place she cannot possibly treat them herself and since both parents work all day, there wouldn't be anyone at home to tend to them and make sure infection doesn't set in. So to avoid her becoming a repeat patient in the course of a week, we're keeping her here for the time being. I'm hoping before the scabs set in that something will break the ice and she'll tell us what happened."
"But you don't have any ideas?"
"You tried talking to her," Dr. Charles said. "Maybe you noticed her eyes tend to roam about the room in between that blank stare like you're not even there."
"Yeah, I saw that."
"This isn't typical teenage rebellion tuning out the adults, I believe she does it so she can't give off any visual cues when making eye contact, we tend to pick up on people's faces what they won't put into words, and from what I've seen, she's not willing to reveal anything right now," Daniel told him.
"You think she'll come out of it?" Casey asked.
"Sooner or later, I'm not staking my career on it, but I don't think she has it in her to hold out long-term."
"If she does...will you call me? There're some things I need to ask her. I need to find out if all this stuff that's been happening lately is connected or not."
"Sure," Dr. Charles agreed.
"Two more," Otis grimly told Severide and Casey when they showed up for the next shift. He'd been standing at the edge of the apparatus floor waiting for them.
"Two more what?" Severide asked.
"Two more ambo calls yesterday," Otis answered, and looked from one lieutenant to the other, "woman who said she was soaking her feet in Epsom salts, put a dozen razor blades in the foot tub. Then another woman who drank half a bottle of dish detergent."
"Good God," Casey said in a sickened tone.
"Does anybody have any idea what the hell's going on?" Severide asked.
Brian just shook his head.
"Still think it's aliens, Otis?" Casey asked.
"Right now that would actually be a comforting thought, lieutenant," Brian responded, "because the alternative is everybody's just going nutso trying to kill themselves for no reason."
The two lieutenants turned and looked at each other and considered what that could mean.
"Should be an interesting shift," Severide murmured.
Everybody sat around the common room and nobody said anything. It was past noon but nobody was hungry, nobody could possibly eat. They'd just returned from a house fire where a 2 story home had just about been completely engulfed in flames, before the place started falling apart they'd gone in on an rescue attempt, only to find everybody in the house was dead. The thing that nobody could figure out was how the five bodies of the family living there, didn't seem to be anywhere near the fire before it spread to the whole second floor, but they were all laid out on the floor of the master bedroom in a semi-circle, burnt to charred, gnarled remains. All of them, the natural order of the fire mangling their bodies into varied positions aside, for the most part just seemed to have laid straight down on the floor and allowed themselves to be burnt to a crisp.
Upon returning to 51, everybody split up in little groups; Mouch and Herrmann sat on the couch by the TV, but didn't have it on, Cruz and Otis sat at one table with a chess game set up but neither of them actually played, they just tapped their pawns on the board, the guys from Squad sat at another table in silence, Casey sat by himself away from the others.
Boden entered the room, looked around at his men and told them, "I just got off the phone with Med. I know we had Chaplain Orlovsky in on last shift to help counsel anyone that might need it, but after this last call, I'm expanding that department, and Dr. Daniel Charles of Med's psychiatric wing has offered to come over and provide his services to anyone who needs them...it is not optional, whatever is going through your heads, get it out in the open when he comes."
There was a low, somber round of murmurs of agreement from the others.
After Boden returned to his office, the others started to slowly come around and talk again.
"So uh..." Otis cleared his throat, "This is probably the last thing anyone wants to talk about...are we decided yet if the mutilation calls we've been responding to lately, are connected to or separate from the fires?"
"Why?" Casey asked.
"Well, I've been going over the calls from the last few days, and it reminds me of a movie I saw called 'The Hypnotic Eye'."
"Ah geez, here we go again," Herrmann murmured.
"Just hear me out," Brian said, "it was an old horror movie from the 60s about beautiful women who maim themselves in the most horrible ways imaginable, with no apparent motive, or even any recollection of what they did."
"So what?" Cruz asked.
"Well so, the movie opens up with a woman washing her hair, then sticking her head over a lit burner and catching on fire, sound familiar?" Otis asked.
That got everyone's attention and they all started looking around the room at each other as they considered this.
Brian continued, "Others included a woman who stuck her face in the blades of a fan, a woman who cut her face open with a straight razor, another who drank lye and thought it was coffee, another washed her face with sulfuric acid."
Mouch cleared his throat and asked, "So why did they do it?"
"They were all hypnotized by a guy that had a light-up eye he hid in the palm of his hand," Otis said.
"Yeah? Well I doubt that's the case here," Herrmann said, then added under his breath, "still, is a strange parallel."
"So what do you think is behind all of them?" Otis asked.
"I don't know," Casey said, "but I'm starting to worry about going to sleep at night." He looked around at the others and elaborated, "if things keep up like this, within a month the whole city's gonna burn to the ground."
