Deceptions

Kelly Severide's apartment was in a shambles, the scene of an obvious struggle. Furniture was turned over or broken, there was blood on the floor. Paramedics had Kelly on a gurney in his living room and were trying to stabilize him enough to move him out to the ambulance. He was barely conscious and had lost a lot of blood from two stab wounds, one in the shoulder and one in the abdomen, he'd already bled through most of the bandage pads the paramedics had taped to him to keep pressure on. He'd already been unresponsive when they arrived and hadn't been able to answer any of their questions as they worked on him.

On the other side of the apartment, Matt Casey's entire appearance and his demeanor were equally disheveled. His hair stuck out in sweat-soaked spikes, his clothes were smeared with blood, his hands were also covered in it, there was one superficial streak trailing from his forehead clear down his cheek. He was largely non-responsive to the two policemen who advised him of his rights and led him out of the apartment and to a waiting squad car parked outside, all the while a third policeman bagged a knife that was coated in blood that was laying on the floor. He called to the others to hold on a minute, and held the bag out towards Casey, his eyes just barely made contact with the item.

"You recognize this knife?"

Casey's eyes stared blankly ahead, and finally he nodded his head once. Just barely audible were the words that came out of his mouth, "Yeah, it's mine."

He'd called 911 half an hour ago and told the dispatcher what had happened. When the police arrived, he made a full confession to what he'd done. After that he just seemed to shut down. This was the first thing he'd said to the officers since he confessed. They kept him away from Kelly while the paramedics tried to save him.

The two patrolmen escorted him out, standing on either side of him so there was no chance he'd make a break for it and try to run. A moment later the paramedics followed, hauling Kelly on the gurney and carefully wheeling it down the steps of the stoop. He was loaded in the ambulance and they just turned on the lights and sirens as they sped out of there. Casey sat in the back of the squad car as a plainclothes cop ordered the patrolmen to take him to Med. They could get all the forensic evidence they needed, but it was obvious the man was in shock and might be in need of medical treatment himself, which could make his confession a murky piece of evidence in the investigation. The street was full of a half dozen marked police vehicles and a couple unmarked black SUVs as well, there were easily two dozen police in all both in the apartment and out in the street assessing the situation now that it was all over. Matt had honestly expected to see some familiar faces from the 21st District, Voight's people in Intelligence or at least some of the patrolmen they knew, but he didn't recognize any of the police who were on the scene, and they didn't know him, which seemed to make the whole thing even worse than it already was, if that was even possible. This was already as bad as things got.

Casey never said a word the whole ride to the hospital. He just sat in the backseat and half looked ahead through the partition and out past the windshield at the street ahead of them. He heard the two police talking to each other though he wasn't really picking up anything specific from the conversation, he heard the crackle and static of the radio and a dispatcher's voice talking about an unrelated event for other available units in the area. He didn't say a word when they arrived at the hospital, or when he was escorted inside by the cops, or when one of them handcuffed him to the metal chair he was sitting on while they waited for a doctor to look at him. Chicago Med was always chaos, at best, tonight it was a regular nuthouse, people coming in with all kinds of injuries, some of them screaming, some of them unconscious, Kelly had to already be there, but Casey hadn't seen him.

Through the corner of his eye he saw somebody walking by, and he sat up and took notice for the first time.

"Maggie!" The first thing he'd said since he'd left the apartment.

The nurse passing by stopped, nearly jumped at her name, and turned and her eyes bulged as she stormed over to him.

"Matt, what's going on?"

"Ma'am, I'm going to have to ask you to stay back," the patrolman told her.

"Where's Kelly? How is he? He's alive, isn't he?" Casey was suddenly anxious to get answers.

Maggie kept a distance between them with the patrolman acting as a barricade but she told him, "He's in surgery right now, the doctors are doing everything they can."

"Is he going to be alright?" Casey wanted to know.

He tried to get up, he tried to get to Maggie, and it took both patrolmen to get him to sit back down and told Maggie to leave. It wasn't that she was blindly obeying them, but she had to check on a patient, though she told Matt she'd come back when she knew something more. A few minutes later another nurse came towards them and told the patrolmen that the doctor could see Casey now; one of them unlocked the handcuffs from the chair and they walked on either side of Matt again and escorted him to the examining room.

Casey was alert and aware, and he felt a gnawing in his stomach, though he was paying no attention to his own condition or the cops hovering around him. His sole focus was on Severide. 'The doctors doing everything they can' wasn't good enough. Kelly had to be alright, he couldn't die now, not now. Not after everything that had happened.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, intellectually he knew how this had all happened, but it still didn't feel real to him and he was still clueless as to how things had gotten this far out of hand.