Chapter Text
Chapter Nineteen
What the hell is wrong with me? Casey thinks as he reaches for the folder again, hands shaking. He spreads his right hand and lets it rest on the warm plastic but can't make himself open it. He sucks in a deep breath and forces himself past the fear, just like he'd do if he was stepping into a rolling fire. Fear only holds you back if you let it and he has tricks to get around it. The threat might be immaterial but the fear isn’t and they work just the same.
His own report is the first thing he sees, the few scant details that he can remember scribbled down in black and white. It gives him a chance to pause, to catch his breath, and he's grateful for it. Grateful that he can’t remember more, because what little he can recall is more than enough. Maybe he’s missing pieces that would give those bits more context but here in his quarters, his safe space, he’s not ashamed to admit to himself that he’s afraid to know more. He’s already struggling under the burden that he's carrying and he’s not sure what he’ll do under any more mental load. But maybe knowing the full story will help him make sense of what happened, let him put it behind him. He’s balanced on the knife edge between wanting to know and not wanting and he’s still not sure which way he’s going to fall.
Severide's report is next and he skims over it, thankful for the other lieutenant's economical, succinct writing style that somehow hides the horror of what happened behind the bland words. He pauses again, this time to laugh bitterly when he sees the cause of the structure failure.
Termites. Fucking termites, he thinks and something about that stirs up some dark gallows humour. All of that pain and suffering and angst because someone hadn’t bothered to get their house inspected for fucking termites? It feels like a cosmic joke on him and he can’t help but laugh. He knows it’s probably not all that funny, but it feels it to him. After a few seconds the sensation fades and he flips to the next page.
It’s Brett’s report and it wipes away any trace of humour. Her writing is neat, words nicely spaced and he lets his eyes unfocus, lets the words blur because this is the report he’s been most dreading. His own work experience let him fill in some of the blanks of the rescue but while he has some basic lifesaving training, he’s not a paramedic by any measure and he can’t fill those blanks in with what he already knows.
There’s a knock on his door before he can force himself to look at the page and he turns gratefully, more glad of the distraction that he wants to admit. It’s Brett, looking uncharacteristically unsure of herself and something in his chest twists. She’s become one of his best friends and seeing the worried frown on her face makes him frown in return.
“Hey,” he says, and waves her in. “Everything okay? How’s Sanderson working out?”
She has a temp partner- Gabby is teaching classes at the academy and Sanderson is filling in. He’s a good medic, but quiet, self-contained in a way some people think is standoffish. Casey hopes the two paramedics are getting on well, because it's a long shift if you’re at odds with your workmates.
Brett smiles, waving one hand. “He’s fine. Quiet, but I’m learning a lot from him.” She perches on the foot of the bed. “Actually, I came here to see if you had a moment to talk.” Her gaze flickers to the desk and she bites her lip. “Ah. Did you read that yet?”
He swallows hard, mouth suddenly dry. “Not yet,” he says quietly. “What’s going on, Slyvie?”
She shifts, dropping her gaze and rubs her hands together. “I think I owe you a conversation, if you want to have it.” She looks up, meeting his eyes. “I won’t force you, if you’re not ready, but there are things that happened that you should probably know and it might be better coming from me than a report.”
Her words fill him with tension, He can feel it, creeping over his shoulders and neck in a wave and twists his head, trying to force it away. “I feel like everyone is creeping around this. Gabby point blank won’t talk about it and Severide changes the subject every time I try to bring it up.” He pauses, but he doesn't have to think. “Just tell me,” he says, and hears the weariness behind the words. One way or the other, he just wants it over with now.
She presses her lips together, hands clasped so tightly her knuckles have gone white. “Well, okay.” Now that she’s in the conversation, she’s not sure where to start and has to pause to order her thoughts. “We got you out from under the beam, but your injured leg was caught and the movement made you black out.”
He nods, faintly, because he can remember some of that. Mostly sensations, voices talking to him, but her words bring more details back. Like him screaming his head off because being manhandled had felt like they’d fed him into a wood chipper. The memory fades to black after that and he flinches, coming up hard against something he’s been trying very hard not to recall. He has a feeling he’s not going to like her next words, but makes no move to stop her. Sometimes the only way to get past the fear is to throw yourself at it, to embrace it and make it part of you. “Go on,” he says, hoarsely, because his mouth is suddenly parched.
“You stopped breathing,” she says slowly. “We had a mask on you but it wasn’t doing much and we - I - made the decision to intubate you.” She pauses and rubs her hand over her mouth, glancing at him to see that he’s paled. She wants to rewind, to undo the last ten minutes but they’re beyond the tipping point and for both their sakes, she knows that she needs to keep going. “I should have given you more drugs first, but your sats were tanking and I didn’t think we had time for them to work. I tried a couple of times but...” she has to pause again, to swipe her eyes. She’s not sure when she started crying and the heavy feeling in her chest tells her she’s not likely to stop any time soon. It’s one of the hardest things she’s ever had to say to a friend, and she hopes he won’t hate her for it after the fact. “But you were semi-conscious and kept fighting the procedure. I know it must have been awful and I’m so sorry, Matt,” she finishes miserably.
He’s silent and she can hardly bear to look at him, in case he’s angry, in case he blames her. Worry forces her eyes off the floor and onto his face and the air escapes her in a rush at his expression.
He looks relieved and puzzled in equal measure and she can’t quite make sense of the combination.
“Matt?” she says and he blinks at her, putting away his memories for the moment.
“I can’t really remember that,” he tells her honestly. He remembers waking up in the ambulance with the ET tube in his throat and the absolute horror of that but her words don’t stir up anything. The docs all warned him that he might have some traumatic amnesia and apparently that’s one of the pieces he’s never going to get back. Not that I want to, because from the look on her face it’s even worse than she’s telling me, he thinks. “Thank you, though, for telling me.”
She sniffs, swiping her eyes with her sleeve. “I was worried you’d hate me.”
He stands and takes hold of her hands, meeting her eyes squarely. “You saved my life. I could never hate you for doing what you had to to do that.”
She sniffs again, and he gives into the impulse, drawing her gently into a hug.