Chicago Fire: Burning Bright

A fire on the mountain

Chapter 62 The Fire Next Time 

Seemingly without warning, days turned into weeks and then months, the calendar somehow ending up on the middle of June in the blink on an eye.

Cally had been busy at work, Voight less than pleased being shorthanded. Ruzek with his leg held together by pins and rods, was on a slow road to recovery; while Erin was helping Kelly on his own road to recovery, the man's neck held together by superglue and a miracle or so it seemed.

Even when she came back full-time, Cally knew Erin's mind was frequently wandering to her injured fireman and the brown-eyed boy that kept getting a raw deal when it came to foster homes.

Voight's demeanor didn't get any better when Burgess took a shotgun blast to the shoulder far too close to the anniversary of Cailin and Antonio's shooting. Though Cally had trouble figuring out if he was more ticked off that one of "their" patrol people got hurt or that Kim turned down a potential spot up in IU when Halstead started talking to the same Fed who had been courting Erin to head up the task force.

"Anybody else planning on jumping ship?" Voight roared after Burgess left his office. He glared at each of them, starting with Halstead, moving quickly over Erin, back to Olinsky with a "not retiring on me, right, Al?" Olinky shook his head, even if deep down he thought it might improve relations with his still icy wife.

Atwater already had his hands up, "not going anywhere, boss, doing just fine right where I am."

Voight gnawed on his already mauled toothpick. "Good. Mayberry PD not stealing you out from under me, Antonio?"

"Not a chance."

A curt nod and his eyes went to Cailin, though she barely looked up from her computer screen, sorting through data Otis has just uploaded for her on a case. "You better not come in here telling me your fireman got you knocked up and you're going to play mommy, Callahan!"

She took a deep breath, sliding her eyes over to him as her stomach twisted slightly.

In the two and a half months since her car accident, there had been several slightly awkward conversations with family and friends regarding the state of Cally's uterus, though she and Clarke had held to their decision to not tell anybody the extent of Cally's injuries. She was never sure if the conversations were awkward because they always had been, or if she was still dealing with the what if's that weren't.

She could feel Erin and Nadia's eyes turning her way, though everyone else was moving on, not wanting to get into 'women stuff'.

"While I appreciate the exact opposite desire than my mother's, I would like to point out that the two are not mutually exclusive and not impossible, even up here. And despite violating several HR policies by even asking, no, Hank, I am not knocked up nor do I plan to be in the foreseeable future."

He glared at her, ignoring Erin's snort as Nadia busied herself with a fake phone call, before he angrily dropped his toothpick in the trashcan next to Cally's desk. He didn't respond beyond a guttural noise before retreating to his office and slamming the door.

"I take it you haven't informed him that Javier is staying with you and your hunting down the kid's big sister as well?" Cally remarked, cocking her head toward Erin.

"It may not have come up," Erin replied, a dimpled smirk on her face.

Clarke had also been busy at work, and then some. At first, he was doing double duty between Truck 25 Lieutenant duties and consulting with Connor on the arson case. Though it hadn't amounted to much of anything except for discovering Severide was better at sussing things out from photographs than he was. Then Boden put a non-negotiable call into HQ to have him sub-in for Severide on Squad 3 when it became clear the Squad Lieutenant was not bouncing back from his latest surgery right away.