There's No Way

Hazel Amari

[Shawn's POV]

"I think my water just broke."

It took me a second to actually process exactly what she had just said, but once I did I immediately jumped up from the bed and ran into the bathroom. She had been sitting on the toilet so luckily there wasn't much to clean up, but her water had definitely broken meaning Hazel was coming and she was coming soon. I quickly tried to push away any pre-parental panic that was threatening to rise to the surface and grabbed the hospital bag while Camila got dressed and slipped her shoes on.

"Ready?" I asked. "Let's go. I'll call our parents on the way to the hospital." Camila looked at me and chuckled.

"I'm ready, but um...were you planning on putting on a shirt or no?" I looked down and realized that I was, in fact, still only wearing my gray sweatpants and nothing else.

"Good idea. You're a beautiful genius." I set the hospital bag down on the floor and threw on a long sleeve t-shirt and we were out the door. Camila started having contractions and while I knew they must've been incredibly painful, she was handling them like a champ. We got in the car and her hand instantly interlocked with mine, squeezing tightly anytime she would feel another contraction. Just as we were pulling out of the driveway, she looked up and smiled at me.

"Hey. Next time we're here...our daughter is going to be here with us." That did it. The emotions that I had temporarily pushed aside immediately came to the surface and my eyes welled up with happy tears.

"Yeah...she is," I choked out through teary eyes and a soft smile as I squeezed Camila's hand in mine. The notion still seemed hard to believe. I grabbed my cell phone to call our parents and let them know that Camila was in labor and that we were headed to the hospital, but by this time it was nearly midnight and they must've already fallen asleep because neither of them answered. I left them both voicemails and Camila sent them texts, and if we still hadn't heard from them in a bit we would try calling them again.

Camila's contractions were still a few minutes apart as we drove to the hospital, but each one seemed more painful for her than the last. As much as I hated to see her in pain, it did make me happy because I knew that meant that we were very close to finally meeting our daughter. The process of getting to the hospital and getting her checked in was a chaotic blur, but once we were admitted and she was able to get settled in things seemed to slow down a bit. The constant sound of our Hazel's heartbeat echoing throughout the room made me even more anxious to finally meet her. I tried calling our parents once again, this time on their hotel room phones instead of their cell phones since I assumed they probably had their cell phones on silent. Luckily for us, they both picked up this time and were getting ready to head to the hospital. Camila and I had already talked about it and decided that I would be the only other person in the room with her during delivery, but we still wanted our parents here for moral support both before and after giving birth.

Camila rested in the hospital bed for a bit before deciding that she'd feel more comfortable if she was up and moving, so the nurse helped her get hooked up to wireless monitors and stand up with her IV pole and we started doing laps walking around the labor & delivery floor of the hospital, pausing periodically when she'd start to feel another contraction. Just as we were headed back to our room so she could relax a bit more we ran into our parents on their way to see us. We all went back to our room and Camila asked me if I could play some music for her through the Bluetooth speaker we had brought with us. I scrolled through her playlists for a bit before finding the "cheer up" playlist she had made me for our two-person tequila party a few years ago. After a few songs played she recognized which playlist it was and smiled at me.

"I like this playlist..."

"It's a classic at this point!" I sat down in one of the chairs next to her bed and took her hand in mine—apparently just in time, because she almost immediately began firmly squeezing it as another contraction started.