Happy Endings (Chicago Fire FanFic)

Chapter Nine

"Okay, if you can check on her every fifteen minutes. Call me when she wakes up?" Amber asked, looking up from the patient chart she'd been filling in on the iPad. 

"Yes, Doctor." The nurse nodded. "You have a visitor, by the way, he's waiting in your office."

"Thanks." Amber yawned, knowing without having to ask it was going to be Kelly. She'd been meaning to call him back when she'd ended up rushing into a surgery. That was over eight hours ago and he was probably worried. She wondered for a moment if she had time to go and grab a coffee first, but he'd probably been waiting a while already.

"Hey." She greeted him as she walked into her office, stripping out of her lab coat and sitting herself down on the sofa beside him. He was still in his turnout gear, soot covering his face and an unreadable expression. "Everything okay?"She asked warily, although she knew the answer was going to be no.

He nodded, but as he did so his eyes filled with tears. He grabbed her and pulled her into a hug, burying his face in her shoulder. She could feel his breathing turn ragged and he sobbed silently into her shoulder.

"Kelly, what's wrong?" She asked gently, her hands rubbing soothing circles across his back. "Hey, talk to me." She prompted when he didn't say anything.

She pulled back a fraction, using a finger under his chin to tilt his head up so she could look at him. "I'm sorry." He mumbled, wiping roughly at his eyes. The tears had left streaks in the soot that covered his face. "I shouldn't have come here."

"Don't be stupid." She dismissed him quickly. "Tell me what happened."

"I um.. there was... there was a building fire, and this kid." His voice cracked. "I was right there Amber, right there in the room with him and I missed him. He died because of me."

She pulled him tight against her, rubbing his back gently as he cried on her shoulder. "I know it hurts now, but you're going to look back on this at some point and realise there was nothing you could've done differently." She realised her words were going to offer very little comfort to him at this point, she'd been in his position enough times to know that, but it was all she really had to offer him at this point.

"I should've checked under the bed." He mumbled. "I thought I did..."

"You did everything you could, Kelly." She soothed. "I know that, and you do too. Sometimes things don't go our way."

He looked up at her for a moment, eyes filled with tears, as though he was going to say something. The shrill beeping of her pager cut through the silence in the office before she could speak. "Sorry." She mumbled, rummaging in her pocket to see who it was. "Shit... I've got to go. Can you wait here?" She asked, seeing it was a 9-1-1 page about the patient she'd just been in surgery with. She jumped to her feet and ran for the door.

****

He was gone when she got back to her office an hour later, and she wasn't surprised. She'd learned by now that if there was one thing Kelly Severide didn't do well, it was talking about his feelings. She'd tried calling him a couple of times but of course hadn't got any kind of response for him. That was how she'd found herself hammering on the door of his apartment at 2 am.

"Amber?" A very confused and half asleep looking Shay opened the door. "Is everything okay?"

"Is Kelly here?" She asked. "Sorry, I didn't realise how late it was. I was just on my way home from work."

"It's fine." Shay waved a hand dismissively. "I thought he was with you?"

"He turned up in my office this afternoon and he was really upset. My patient crashed and I told him to wait for me and then when I got back he was gone. I've been trying to call him for ages but he won't answer." Amber explained.