"You want the truth?" I sighed as I gave up the ghost and decided that maybe, just maybe, Alex Pierce was the woman I could tell this story to and not have her look at me with pity.
"No, just lie to me. It's so much healthier," she deadpanned. For a moment, I was confused, and then I saw the smile on her face and a chuckled.
"Fine, but just remember that you asked for it," I said, shaking a finger at her.
"I'll do that," she said, wagging her finger back at me with a smile.
"Ten years ago, my fiancée died in a fire," I said, quickly ripping the Band-Aid off the conversation. "I was new to the fire squad, and I wasn't there."
"I'm so sorry, Cam," Alex said quietly as she reached out and laid her hand on top of mine. There was kindness in the gesture, so I didn't pull away. "It must have been awful for you."
"It was pretty terrible," I nodded as I debated whether or not to tell her the whole story.
"How did it happen? The fire, I mean?" she asked, sparing me the decision. "I mean, if you want to talk about it. I don't mean to pry."
"No, no, it's just..." I began as I looked across the table into her soft blue eyes.
"Just what?"
"It's just that you're the first woman who's asked that question and not made me feel like an object of pity," I admitted. "It's just weird."
"I don't see how anyone could pity you," she replied as the server set down our food and asked if we needed anything else. Alex smiled at him and said, "No, I think we're fine for now, thank you," before turning back to me.
"You'd be surprised at how much pity a dead fiancée can garner," I said grimly as I cut into my steak.
"Well, I'm not going to pity you," she said as she picked up her fork and dug into the smoked trout on her plate. "So, you can either tell me what happened or we can change the subject and talk about something else. Either way, I'm fine with it."
In that moment, I made the decision to open up, and once I started spilling the story, I couldn't stop. I told Alex how Quinn and I had bought the house three months before the fire. It was a foreclosure that had been on the market for three years and was in desperate need of an overhaul, and that was the only reason we'd been able to afford it. We lived in the bottom half of the house while I spent my days off from my training with the CFD renovating the upper half. Over the weekend, I'd finished the master bedroom and what would eventually be the nursery while Quinn studied for her nursing exam downstairs in the kitchen.
Every so often, she'd bring me a sandwich or a cold drink and comment favorably on the progress. Her parents had been furious about us moving in together before we were married and it had been hard for her to reject her South Side Catholic roots to follow her heart. We had decided that we'd finish the house before she graduated from nursing school and that we'd plan our wedding for the August after she got her license. I picked up extra shifts to make sure that she could focus on school and not have to work full time, but she somehow managed to take a full load of classes and work nearly full time in the blood lab over in the basement of the hospital. When I objected, she said that it was the perfect job because when things were quiet she could study.
"She was a nursing student, too," Alex observed as she continued eating. "Is that weird for you?"
"No, actually there's something kind of comforting in being around the hospital all the time," I admitted. "Is that weird for you?"
"No, actually it's pretty understandable." She smiled.
"I mean it's not like you're trying to replace her or something."
"No, not at all," I said, shaking my head.
"What happened?" Alex asked. I hesitated because the memory was so overwhelming that I tended to keep it bottle up tightly, but the look in Alex's soft blue eyes made me feel like letting go.
"She was volunteering at a South Side women's clinic," I said. "And someone with a grudge against things they knew nothing about threw a Molotov cocktail through the front window, and then three more right after it. The same people had blocked the back exits, so there was no escape once the front area was on fire. Quinn and the staff tried to get the patients into rooms where they could block off the smoke and wait for the fire department, but the records room and lab both caught fire and it brought the roof down before firefighters could get to them."
"Were you there?" she asked quietly.
"No, I was in training then," I said, looking at my plate. "But we heard the call go out on the radio and I knew it was Quinn's clinic. One of the Battalion Chief's came and got me out of class and drove me to the hospital. They wouldn't let me go to the site. Quinn was still breathing, but they had her on a ventilator because she'd inhaled so much smoke. I sat with her for two days before they told her family that there was no hope and let them make the choice to disconnect the machines."
"That must have been horrible," Alex said. "How did you survive that decision?"
"I knew it was the right thing to do," I said sadly. "I knew that letting her go was better than keeping her in a state of limbo forever, but I didn't want to let her go. I think that was the worst day of my life."
"I can only imagine," Alex said. "I'm so sorry you and Quinn had to go through that."
I looked up at Alex as she spoke. It was the first time anyone had ever included Quinn's name in that statement. Everyone had always said they were sorry for me, for Quinn's family, for her patients, but no one had ever sad how sorry they were that she had to go through it, too.
"Thank you, Alex," I said, holding her gaze for a few seconds before looking away and saying, "Sorry, I'm dominating the conversation with my sad tale, aren't I?"