Back to Chaos

C H A P T E R - T W O

"Hey, Torres," a friendly voice greets the woman as she enters the hospital wing the next morning.

"Hey," Alyssa Torres answers, sending the doctor a tight-lipped smile. She had been this way since Christmas which had occurred five days after she had left Chicago - five days after Renee Royce returned to Chicago. She didn't want to talk to anyone, she missed Kelly, and the service at the base was worse than before. She only had service in the dead of night once a week and was always passed out in her cot before she could answer them.

When she had packed her clothes the night before her deployment, she had forgotten about Kelly's gift which was sitting in her nightstand drawer. It had been a key. To a new apartment. Their apartment.

Alyssa had finally decided that the two should move out of Kelly and Leslie Shay's apartment into one of their own. One that they could personalize into their own.

Of course, there was no way that she could tell anyone that there was the key in her nightstand drawer, waiting for the couple to go tour it together and then decide if they wanted to move into that one or find a different spot. So the key was left in her nightstand drawer until she would return which no one really knew where that was.

It was now nearing the middle of January, the weather was somewhat decent but Alyssa still found herself longing for one of Kelly's hoodies or just his embrace - his arms wrapped around her, his chin resting on her head. But she had run away. She had been scared and she had left. And now she wanted to go back but she couldn't, there was still time left in her deployment.

"Cold out there, isn't it?" Dr. Jordan Maxwell asks, standing next to the firefighter who had begun to count inventory to order more supplies.

"Yeah, a bit," she smiles.

"You can go back, Alyssa, talk to Maverick about going back and working at the base there in Chicago," Jordan says, turning to look at the firefighter who seemed to have a frown tattooed on her face.

"I've already tried," Alyssa sighs, leaning against the counter, running her hands down her face. "Since I agreed to be here, I have to stay, that's always been the rule."

The doctor frowns at the woman, knowing how bad she wants to return to her boyfriend. Maxwell was there the first time that Alyssa broke down sobbing. How the woman begged to be allowed back to Chicago even if it was for a day, just to tell the man everything that had happened and that she still loves him.

Of course she did, how could she not? She wanted a house for the two of them. She wanted that to be where she could announce that she was pregnant with their kids whenever that happened and where they could plan their life together, where they could get engaged.

Alyssa walked out of the room, mumbling an excuse as to why she left before she walked out of the tent. She missed Kelly, her heart was breaking the more time she spent away from the man. She wanted to go back to Chicago, to explain what was happening and to just hold the man as tightly as she possibly could and never let go.

Tears began to fall down her cheeks as soon as she entered her sleeping quarters. Her sobs filled her own ears as she knelt on the floor by her bed, her hands covering her mouth to try to dull the noise.

"I want Kelly," she mumbles to herself. His name left her mouth in sobs as she imagined how he would comfort her. He'd wrap his arms around her, settling on the floor behind her and allowing her to put her weight against him and cry. Or he'd sit in front of her, letting her bury her face into his chest. She'd soak his shirt but neither of them would care because his main focus would be comforting the woman and letting her get all of her tears out in a state of comfort.

Alyssa leaned her head against the side of her cot, her forehead on the mattress as her body shook with each sob that she gave.

She wrapped her arms around herself, the warmth of Kelly's hoodie and whatever remaining smell of his cologne filling her senses. The hoody was the closest thing that she had to feel Kelly's comfort.