Quinn had her own place now, a one bedroom apartment in the good part of town, six minutes away from the hospital. Paul lived in a house he had bought a couple of years before, and liked to fix up. He was 30 years old last year, and thought it was the responsible thing to do to buy a house.
He asked her what she thought of it whenever he was going to do something; so far she had watched the progress of : the deck, the change of plumbing in the kitchen, and the construction of a powder room in the basement.
They cuddled on the couch and watched real life detective shows. Quinn liked these shows about how the cops used forensic evidence to solve cases.
They went to the track as many evenings as they could when the weather got better. Quinn's younger brothers, Tim and Brad, really liked Paul. Tim was a junior at Mercy High School, and Brad was in the 8th grade at St. Michael's. They had been raised on the racetrack too, and were actually able to teach Paul some things. Paul was friendly with them and kidded them.
They had all gone out to dinner one evening. "Your family is nuts," he said. "I mean I like them. They're nuts in a likable way. Here they sit at dinner and argue about the Kennedy assassination. How did they get onto that?"
"I don't know," Quinn laughed. " I like stuff like that. It must have been when I brought up that show on Forensic Detectives where the doctors were arguing whether the patient had been shot in the back or in the front."
"Give you a mystery, and you love to try to solve it. You might have been a detective if you had wanted."
"No, I want to be a nurse."
"I know, but there are forensic doctors, maybe they need nurses, too, you know?"
"I guess, but it is more of a hobby. I mean, you wouldn't be taking care of the patients, you'd be studying files. I'm done with studying."
Kathleen was the only one in the family who appeared to be at all doubtful about Paul. She seemed to believe Paul didn't listen to Quinn much, but Quinn hadn't noticed that herself. Kathleen was mostly positive, though, and invited Paul over for dinner or whenever there was a birthday party or anniversary party for someone.
She saw him here and there at work. He was a psychiatrist, but on occasion he had reason to come into intensive care. They could have lunch together in the cafeteria every once in awhile. But being a nurse in her first year, Quinn spent two-thirds of the time on odd shifts.
The intensive care unit has the advantage that the monitoring equipment transmits data on each patient's condition directly to the nurses' station. But it could be stressful, because the patients there by definition had life threatening illnesses or injuries. There was a special one for pediatrics, so they were all adults in this unit. Heart attacks, pneumonia, poisoning, complex surgeries, prolonged surgeries, surgical complications, strokes, and serious accident injuries.
She sat down at the station one day and looked at her newest cases. One was a gunshot wound. "Hmmm, interesting. Never had a gunshot wound before," she said to Joanna, who was standing behind her.
"You get those every once in awhile," Joanna was peering onto the screen Quinn was reading. "I had one last year and there were security guards posted, and sometimes even the cops, because the patient has been arrested."
"Well, are there any cops around here now?"
"None that I see yet."
"What do you need the cops for?" Paul's voice came from up at the other side of the station desk.
Joanna and Quinn looked up at him. He smiled. "Looking for someone?"
"Paul! Hi! What are you doing here?" Quinn greeted him.
"Looking for you, babe. Hi, Joanna." He turned back to Quinn. "How about a drive this evening? If the cops are after you, I'll make sure you stay ahead of them."
It was a beautiful spring night, and Paul drove Quinn up to the cliff overlooking the lake, and they had just been talking of this and that, and suddenly, he asked her to marry him.
She froze. He was standing next to her, leaning on a stone wall like she was.
"You look startled," he said. "You aren't surprised, are you?"
She felt like somebody had just poured a bucket of hot water over her.
"Yes," was all she could say.
He put his arm around her shoulders and hugged her a little bit.
"You don't have to answer now, then. Take as long as you need."
The rest of the evening he was kind and considerate, and she felt terrible that he was so sweet. Several times she thought how handsome he was; he had thick, shiny brown hair and big blue eyes and a strong chin and he was built in the most perfect possible way. And he liked her brothers, and he liked her Dad, and he liked her godfather, and he got along with almost anyone. She had a million things in common with him. It would work out perfectly. As well as it would have with Sean Monroe, in fact. No better; Paul and his family lived in Port Charles, too.
"What is wrong with me?" she asked Joanna Shields as they prepared to go round to the patients the next day.
"He's just not the one."
"I really love him."
"You love him. You just don't love him."
They both thought about that for a moment. Then they both burst into laughter.
"How did you know, Joanna? I mean, when you married Charlie."
"Since we just got divorced, . . ."
"I know, but still, you decided to marry him at one point."
"O.K. This can be a lesson in what to avoid. The reason I knew he was the one was that he was the one who asked. And a girl doesn't get a dozen proposals. I know, that sounds old fashioned. A girl does not get or make and have accepted a dozen proposals. Now I know that sounds unromantic, but then again, it was romantic. Him asking me up at the top of the ski lift, which was where we met. Not that ski lift, but another one. It had to be, because nobody else had ever even come close to doing that. I had never dated anybody that long, not even close. I know that isn't much help."
"Yes it is."
"You've got a different history. It sounds to me like this, Quinn. Some guy falls for you, and you get into this relationship and it's nice, and o.k., and you think that is what they call being in love. I think you drift into these things, taking one day at a time, until then one day he decides it is time to commit, then you realize you were just passing time. Do you think that could be?"
"I don't know. I really thought Scott was going to be with me forever. So when I realized it wasn't so, I thought Sean would be with me forever, and the reason I had mistaken it before was that I was just in high school, and with Sean I was away from home and knew more what I was doing. Then when I realized college is just school, and now I was out in the world with a job like I'm a real adult, and I went out with this guy and that guy and then Paul and I'd really rather be with him than anyone else I know. Oh no, do you think I'm just immature? This is it. I'm grown up. I have a job."
"And it is time to get married!" Joanna laughed. "Right on schedule! Well, I say, no way. It would be immature to get married. You've got to want to. You've got to be sure of it."
"I wanted Sean to give it more time. And he wouldn't. But Paul, I think he will. He doesn't sound like he's going to just break it off. Not either and or as the only options."
"What if he did?"
"I don't know."
"Of course you know. You're not going to marry him because he said either marry me or get lost. You'll be on your way! You and your problems! Wouldn't we all like to have them! Guys wanting to marry you while you are the queen of non-commitment! Let's go to Jake's. It's about time you beat a couple of guys at pool."
They played pool for awhile with two older-looking guys who were friendly and didn't make any moves on either of them, which, for the mood Quinn was in, was a relief. Then they had a couple of glasses of wine. They discussed Charlie's attempts to get out of paying child support. They giggled about how cute Charlie's lawyer was, and lamented that Joanna's was a woman.
