‘9-1-1: Nashville’ Reveals How Cammie’s Husband Died

9-1-1: Nashville just revealed that tragic backstory for Cammie in the midseason finale.

The 9-1-1 call operator (Kimberly Williams-Paisley) was put to the test in Thursday’s episode, as she had to walk a choking victim through performing the Heimlich maneuver on herself via video chat.

It was an incident that hit home for Cammie, who revealed after saving the woman’s life that her husband had died by choking in front of her. While Cammie had tried to call 9-1-1 for help at the time, the call had gone to voicemail.

The death of her husband inspired Cammie to give up her life as a music producer to become a 9-1-1 dispatch operator.

Following Thursday’s midseason finale, showrunner Rashad Raisani revealed to TVLine that Cammie’s backstory was actually inspired by a tragic true story.

“The inspiration behind that came when I was location scouting in Nashville with Brad Buecker, who directed the pilot and is an executive producer on the show,” Raisani recalled. “We were at this sort of nightclub restaurant where they had live music. It was dark, and people were enjoying a great dinner. While we were there, someone suddenly started screaming to stop the music, and when they turned on the lights, we saw that a woman had died at her table.”

“She just choked out, right in front of her friends and her husband,” Raisani went on. “They were all stunned, and the craziest thing to me was that none of us realized it was happening. They were having the drama of their life behind us, and nobody knew it.”

“So when we were thinking about what would make Cammie go from one life — because we always wanted her to be in the music world — to working as a dispatcher, Brad and I were both like, that’s got to be what it was,” he explained. “She felt helpless, and when she called 9-1-1, she got a busy signal. That feeling is what led to her conversion.”

Williams-Paisley told Variety that the real-life story behind her character “definitely adds weight to what I’m doing in the performance,” teasing that more of Cammie’s backstory will be explored further in future episodes this season.

“That was a big part of Cammie’s life before everything changed and she lost her husband,” Williams-Paisley said of Cammie’s music career. “But it’s still a big part of her, and it’s something that she spent years doing before she switched careers. There’s some very fun stuff coming up with that as well.”

9-1-1: Nashville returns to ABC on Jan. 8 at 9 p.m. ET.