The Burning Daughter [One Chicago]

Prologue

Prologue

My mom and my dad had only dated for a couple of months before they got pregnant with me by accident. Neither of them wanted for my mom to have an abortion, so instead they decided they would give me up for adoption once I was born. Luckily for me, that didn't happen. I guess spending nine months taking care of each other made them think they could stay together and take care of a baby as well.

Boy were they wrong.

I'm honestly surprised my parents stayed together as long as they did considering the fact that they were both just starting up their careers, mom as a police officer and dad as a financial advisor, so they had very limited time to work on their relationship. I think it lasted until I was about three and a half before they finally split up. After that there wasn't anything special about my life except the fact that both my parents worked a lot and weren't around much. Especially my mom.

It only lasted until I was twelve though. Because that was when my dad got a job offer in New York that was too good to turn down and instead of leaving me with my mom, he decided to sue for full custody. I don't know exactly what happened as it was all going so fast, but somehow my dad managed to get full custody and the next thing I knew I was on my way to New York.

I really tried to stay in contact with my mom, and at first it seemed like it was working, as we talked on the phone almost every day. However, after a while she got more and more busy at work and she almost never had time to talk anymore. I tried to text her whenever something important happened, but she barely responded.

I can not describe how excited I was when I turned 13 years old, cause that meant I was gonna get to see my mom again for the first time in almost 7 months. The plan was that she was gonna stay in New York for the whole week of my birthday. I don't know exactly what happened, but after only three days in New York, the day right after my birthday, she left again. She told me some vague story about something happening at work and at first I believed it. How could I not believe it after she'd already made it clear that work was her first priority.

The weird thing was that after that she became even more distant and not even six months after my 13th birthday we stopped talking altogether. Our last form of communication was a text from me telling her that I wanted to come see her in Chicago. She never replied. After that, I just kept on living my life thinking that my mother simply didn't want me. Maybe she never did.

There wasn't really anything special about my life between the ages 14 and 18, unless you count the fact that I came out as gay at 16, so let's just skip ahead to when I finished high school at 19 and the first thing I did was sign myself up for the fire academy. It was a three months long course that covered both the theoretical and the practical part of being a firefighter. After that I just had to take the physical test and pass the theoretical exam. Luckily for me, I'm an incredibly fast learner, passed both parts with flying colors and by the time it was October of 2007 I had set several new records within the New York fire academy as well as having become the new candidate at firehouse 158.

I became a lieutenant at 22 years old after my captain at the 158 helped push me to take the lieutenants exam. After working my ass off for another two years I finally became the youngest ever fire captain in the US at only 24 years old. I know I sound a little crazy, but somehow that still wasn't enough. Now don't get me wrong, I didn't want to get promoted any higher in the fire department as that would put me in a desk job, so I did the only other thing I could think of. I got all my squad certifications at 25 and started studying to become a licensed paramedic at 26. The more knowledge I possessed the more people I could help, so it made sense in my brain that I should keep evolving. One would think that after a while I would get burned out from all the extra work I was doing, but the weird thing is that I never did.

At a party in 2016, a friend of mine introduced me to the woman who would later become my girlfriend and after about two and a half years of dating, we decided to get married. For a while, everything seemed like it had fallen into place and I was happy. Unfortunately, that must have been the calm before the storm, because it didn't take long for all hell to break loose.

At the very beginning of 2020 my dad passed away from stage 4 brain cancer and after he died, it became my job, as his only living relative, to sort through his stuff. While going through everything in his house, I found a box filled with a bunch of old notebooks. After skimming over a few pages of what seemed to be the most recent notebook, I concluded that they were diaries. All the notebooks were labeled by year and there was at least one entry for every week since I was born.

Starting to think of times when I had wanted to know what my dad was thinking, I finally settled on the time when I graduated from the fire academy. It wasn't hard to find it as the notebooks were all labeled with the year and dates they were from. After reading for about ten minutes it got pretty boring. Don't get me wrong, it was a nice way to feel closer to my dad, but his thoughts were so predictable.

Deciding to not give up quite yet, my mind took a different turn and I started to wonder what his thoughts were during the time we moved to New York and mom decided to abandon me. Maybe there was an explanation I hadn't thought of yet. This time it took me a few tries before finding the right entries, as I couldn't remember any exact dates. I felt my stomach dropping as I read that my dad had threatened my mom into breaking contact with me. This whole time I'd thought that she just didn't want me, when in reality it was my dad that just didn't wanna have to share me.

Horrified at finding out that my dad had lied to me, I decided to go home even though it was hours earlier than planned. After getting to the apartment I headed straight for the bedroom with the intent of taking a nap. Instead I was met with the sight of my wife in bed with her ex boyfriend, who she'd told me not to worry about. She, of course, started panicking and trying to apologize saying that it didn't mean anything. I might have believed her, if it wasn't for the fact that the ex boyfriend got offended and yelled out that it had been going on for almost six months.

In the end I kicked both of them out of the room while I packed three big suitcases and a duffle bag of clothes and whatever else I thought was important. After that I left to go stay with my best friend Tara. I cried on her couch for two days straight before I made the decision to move back to Chicago. Tara helped me look for an apartment and after some convincing I even got my captain to call in a favor with the commissioner in Chicago and he got me a spot at a firehouse. I won't be working as a captain or even a lieutenant, but it's a job and when there's a spot open I get first priority.

You might be wondering why I would want to move back to Chicago after all these years. It's because of my mom. Since she always valued her career in the Chicago police department more than anything else, it seemed highly unlikely that she would have moved away. I wanted to talk to her, to make things right and let her know that I don't blame her for what happened.

Tara managed to find an apartment that was already furnished and up for renting. So, in less than a week of time I went from living with my wife to sitting alone on a plane to Chicago, with no intention of turning back. 

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1496 words