There's No Way

Scar Tissue

[Camila's POV]

There was so much I wanted to say but I couldn't get any of it out. Instead, we drove back home in silence with our hands still intertwined. I felt like a total loser for sadly staring out the window and crying as he drove—it must've looked like a scene from some sad, dramatic movie. He never once tried to break the silence or pry into my thoughts which I appreciated. He knew me well enough to know that sometimes the silence felt more comfortable for me.

We pulled into the driveway and only seconds after Shawn had put the car in park he had hopped out and come around to the passenger door to help me into the house. The pain meds they had given me had already kicked in, so I felt good enough to walk by myself—but the gesture was sweet, so I didn't stop him. We stepped into the house and without hesitation Shawn wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close to him. I nuzzled my face into his chest, knowing full well I was covering his shirt in tear stains but I don't think either of us cared.

"Please just tell me what I can do to make you feel better. What can I do to help?" he whispered against the top of my head.

"Just hold me," I replied. "I'm exhausted...both physically and emotionally. I just need to lay down. I need you to hold me."

So that's exactly what we did. He held me impossibly close as we laid in bed—the constant metronome of his heartbeat slowly lulling me to sleep.

——

[Shawn's POV]

Shortly after Camila had fallen asleep, I let myself fall asleep as well. Just my luck, I had a dream that Camila was pregnant. The sweet dream made the simple task of waking up even more challenging than normal—especially since the thing that woke me up was the sound of Camila's muffled cries against my chest. I slowly began running my fingers through her hair, hoping the comforting touches would soothe her.

"I'm sorry," she murmured.

"It's okay. I can sleep later. If you need me to be awake, I can be awake."

"I'm not talking about that," she said as she lifted her face to mine. "I'm sorry I..." Her voice broke before she finished her sentence. She took a shaky breath and tried again. "I'm sorry I can't give you a family. I know how much you were looking forward to being a dad. I feel horrible..." She dropped her face back down to sadly nuzzle against me after saying the words, but I stopped her and brought her eyes back up to mine.

"Don't apologize, Camila. You have nothing to be sorry for, we can still have a family. There are so many options available for us. Sure, it might not be happening the way we had imagined it—but we're going to be parents. That's not going to change." She let out a sad sniffle before sighing deeply.

"I know. You're right. I still just...I don't know. I wish I could experience it firsthand." I nodded in understanding and kissed her forehead. I felt her breathing steady and her heart rate slow down as she began drifting off to sleep again. I reached over to the bed side table and grabbed my phone, setting a reminder for the next morning to make an appointment for her surgery.

- 1 Month Later -

Camila was scared, and honestly I didn't blame her. I was scared too. It was just before 7am and we were getting ready to head to the hospital for her myomectomy. Luckily, the medications they had prescribed her the month before had kept the physical pain under control—but the emotional pain was still very much there. She was definitely starting to come to terms with our new reality, though. She began doing some pretty heavy research on both surrogacy and adoption. As far as we knew, her eggs were unaffected by the fibroids so surrogacy could be a good option. Of course, it was also the most expensive option. We had also agreed that unless things got bad enough that we would have to resort to the hysterectomy, we weren't giving up on having a child the old-fashioned way. We both knew it wouldn't be likely - but it wasn't impossible and that was good enough for us.

Once we had gotten to the hospital they quickly took Camila back to be prepped for surgery. As I anxiously stayed in the waiting room, the doctor that was going to be performing the surgery came out to talk to me. Honestly, I really appreciated that he came out to talk to me. He did a pretty decent job of putting my mind at ease, letting me know that he had done countless surgeries like this - the majority of which were extremely successful. He explained that he had looked over Camila's MRI and ultrasound results and that he felt good about being able to remove the tumors. They were large, but they were in places that would be fairly easy for him to access for removal. 

He left to go get ready to begin the operation and surprisingly I suddenly felt extremely calm about the whole situation. As far as surgeries go, this was hopefully going to be a fairly quick one. They said it could take a maximum of 2 hours to complete the surgery, but they expected it to be closer to 1 hour. After that, her at-home recovery period would last for about 5 weeks. I was grateful that I had brought my airpods as it seemed the only way to keep my mind off of what Camila was going through at the moment was to watch a movie on Netflix as I waited for her to come out of surgery. Every time someone stepped out into the waiting room I would sit up and wait for them to call me back - but it had yet to be my name that they beckoned. Finally - about an hour and 45 minutes after they had begun her operation - the doctor came out to talk to me.

"Mr. Mendes! I just wanted to come out and tell you myself that your wife's surgery went well. She's being taken into recovery now. Someone will come out and get you when they're ready for you to go back to see her. I was able to remove all of the tumors. Now, with that being said, there is always a possibility that they could come back - but now that we know to monitor them they shouldn't ever come back as large and severe as they were this time."

"Are you saying that...?" I asked, my words trailing off as I tried to process what he was saying.

"I'm saying that I highly doubt we would have to perform a full hysterectomy. Now, to be completely transparent with you, this does still mean that her chances of conceiving are pretty low. This kind of operation does weaken the walls of the uterus, so even if she were to conceive it would be a fairly high-risk pregnancy."

I nodded slowly as I took in all of this new information. Just then, a nurse opened the door and told me that I could go back and see Camila. I quickly thanked the doctor for talking to me and for taking such good care of my wife before promptly following the nurse back to the room that they had Camila in. The woman opened the door and motioned for me to go in.

"I'll let you two have some privacy. If you need anything, just press this button and one of us nurses will come in to help," she said as she pointed to a button on the arm of the hospital bed. She then turned back around and stepped out of the room, closing the door so it was just Camila and I. 

"Hi," Camila whispered softly as she reached over to intertwine our hands.

"Hi cutie. How are you feeling?" She took a deep breath and thought about her answer for a bit before responding. 

"It hurts, but it's manageable. The doctor said he was able to remove them all. Knowing that kind of makes the pain worth it, honestly." She smiled softly at me.

"Yeah, your doctor came out to talk to me. He sounded pretty hopeful about all of this. I told you...we're going to be okay." I squeezed her hand and noticed her eyes welling up with tears. "Does the incision hurt a lot?" I asked.

"It's still pretty numb, so it doesn't hurt right now. I'm sure it will soon enough though." She lifted her hospital gown just high enough so I could see where the incision was. It was only a few inches long, located on her lower abdomen just above her pubic bone. I chuckled and lifted my shirt to display the scar from my appendix removal.

"Look, now we're twins!"

Camila laughed, and although the laughter caused her to wince in pain I still enjoyed seeing her beautiful smile again - even if just for a brief moment.

A/N: Very popular opinion: Shawn's appendix scar is hot AF.