Jesse had become accustomed to resting her head on her mother's stomach whenever they sat together. That afternoon they were stretched out on the bed, watching Moana for what had to be the tenth time. Amanda was scrolling through what was now three weeks of work e-mails, living vicariously through her colleagues, while Jesse wriggled around, poking and prodding at her belly.
"What's he doing in there?" she asked her daughter distractedly.
Jesse pressed her cheek against Amanda's abdomen. "Nothing."
"He must be resting."
"Why?"
"Because he's tired."
"Why?"
Smiling, Amanda sighed. "Growing is a lot of work."
"Was I in there?"
"You were, but now you're a big girl."
Jesse lifted her head and sat up. She pouted, lower lip quivering. "I don't wanna be a big girl."
"What? Of course you do," Amanda exclaimed, setting her phone down.
"I wanna be the baby!" Jesse wailed, her little face scrunched with emotion, eyes welling up.
Sensing an impending tantrum, Amanda frowned. She had anticipated some jealousy, but not so soon.
"None of that," she told her daughter gently. "Everybody's gotta grow up. Mama did, too. Even Frannie was a baby once, and now she's not."
Jesse sniffled, tears clinging to her dark eyelashes. "No," she responded defiantly.
She maneuvered her daughter's small body to tuck her close into her side. "You'll always be my baby," she assured Jesse. "Who loves you best?"
"You," Jesse mumbled the answer to the question Amanda asked her every day.
"For how long?"
"Forever and ever."
"That's right." She squeezed her daughter closer. "And don't you forget it."
The sound of Amanda's phone ringing jolted her awake. Groaning, she had only just fallen asleep after tossing, turning and readjusting endlessly. Her back was abnormally sore and no position felt comfortable for very long.
Keeping her cheek on the pillow and her body under blankets, she reached for her phone and put it on speaker before setting it on the mattress.
"Hi," she said sleepily.
"Hey. Did I wake you up?" replied Sonny's familiar voice.
"Kinda. I can't get comfortable. What's up?"
"Liv and I are still in Poughkeepsie, their CSU moves like molasses here."
"Okay," Amanda yawned, eyes fluttering closed.
"It's a mess, definitely our guy. We'll start drivin' back after we're finished lookin' at this evidence and talkin' to a couple more witnesses."
"Mhm."
"The trip back will probably take us two hours."
"It'd only be an hour and a half, if I was driving."
"Because you've got a lead foot. But hey, I gotta go, okay? I'll text ya later."
"Mm."
"Get some sleep."
"Stop talking. Love you."
"Love ya."
When she woke up suddenly feeling like her entire abdomen was in a vice, she tried to ignore it. No longer able to sleep, Amanda wandered around the apartment for hours, moving from bed to couch to chair in an attempt to stave off the increasingly intense cramping. It was when her water broke onto the kitchen floor at one in the morning, however, that she finally accepted the fact that she was in labor.
Her first few calls were to Sonny, but he didn't answer. Then she texted Audrey, who thankfully responded right away. Amanda's next dial was to somebody who had always been there when she needed him most, even at the most inopportune times.
"Fin?"
"This better be good, Rollins. I'm not on duty tonight." Her partner's gruff voice came over the speaker.
"I need you to drive me to Bellevue."
"Huh?"
"The hospital. I need you to take me," she clarified as she began to dispatch more text messages.
"What? Alright, I'm comin'. Where's Carisi?"
"In Poughkeepsie with Liv, on that serial push-in rapist case. I called him four times, but he probably has his phone on silent. I texted Liv, too, but I don't think I can wait."
"Doesn't his watch get phone calls?"
"Fin, I really don't feel like discussing the details of Carisi's technology right now." She winced in pain, bracing herself against the kitchen counter.
"What are you gonna do with little J?"
"Audrey will be here soon."
"Copy that. I'm on my way."
"Looks like it hurts," Fin observed casually from his seat by Amanda's hospital bed.
They had been together for two hours, and as much as Amanda loved her partner, he wasn't exactly the most reassuring in this situation. Even so, he did finally get in touch with Sonny and contacted her mother and Kim. She would be appreciative of all of his efforts afterward, when she wasn't writhing in pain.
"It does, Fin, thank you so much for pointin' that out," she responded bitterly through gritted teeth.
Knowing it could take awhile, Amanda had requested an epidural immediately upon her arrival - she didn't see the appeal of doing things naturally - and it served as the light at the end of her tunnel. Giving birth to Jesse had been such a blur; having an emergency c-section meant she hadn't had to experience labor in its entirety. When the doctor reappeared, she had never been so excited to see a needle - except that he didn't appear to be carrying one.
"You had a placental abruption with your first child, so we really shouldn't give you an epidural," the physician explained. "It's one of the big risk factors with spinal anesthesia."
Amanda looked as if somebody had just run over her dog, blue eyes wide with devastation and disappointment. "You can't be serious..."
"You're progressing pretty quickly; your contractions are almost four minutes apart. It'll be over before you know it," the doctor told her gently. "I'll be back to check in on you shortly."
"You don't need that stuff anyway," Fin assured her when they were alone again.
"Easy for you to say!" she yelped weakly.
She was hot and she was cold; she could feel her bangs plastered to her sweaty forehead as her hand gripped the railing of her bed with each wave of searing pressure. As the intensity grew over time, Amanda became more and more anxious about Sonny making it before the baby was born - and worried about how badly the actual act of giving birth was going to hurt. She had tried her best to remain as stoic as possible through out the beginning stages of labor - for both her pride and Fin's sake - but her facade was rapidly deteriorating.
The door suddenly burst open, Sonny and Liv making their hurried entrance into the hospital room.
"What took you guys so long?" Fin asked, standing up.
Sonny immediately rushed to Amanda's side, explaining, "there was an accident, a tractor trailer flipped over and there was all this traffic-"
"Didn't you put the lights on? What good is being a cop if y'all can't get through traffic!" Amanda shrieked, although it was really the back-to-back contractions that had her yelling, not anybody in the room.
Out of the corner of her eye, she watched them all exchange nervous glances.
"I'm gonna go get you some more ice chips," Fin offered, although at this point it was clearly unnecessary.
"I'll help," Liv said eagerly before they both disappeared back out the door.
"How ya doin'?" Sonny asked her anxiously, as if it wasn't obvious. He hovered over her at the top of the bed.
"It hurts like hell and they won't give me an epidural. This is worse than being shot," Amanda told him breathlessly, gulping air as she shifted against the mattress in vain. She was nauseated and dizzy but trying to steady herself. "I actually wish someone would shoot me right now so maybe this would feel a little less awful in comparison. You have your gun?"
"That bad, huh?"
"I don't think I can do this," Amanda blurted frantically, spontaneously beginning to cry from both the pain and her mounting fear. It wasn't as if there was an alternative option, but any semblance of a filter was gone by now. "It hurts too much."
Sonny leaned in, quickly taking her nearest hand in his, which she gripped with a fierceness she didn't know she possessed. "Amanda, hey, look at me."
She blinked him into focus through strands of damp blonde hair, chest rising and falling rapidly during a brief reprieve from the pain. She was shivering despite how warm she was. Why didn't she pay more attention in that birthing class?
"You can do this. You already are, and you're doin' a great job," he told her with a special kind of calmness that she appreciated.
"Don't leave," she squeaked, continuing to cling to his fingers.
He shook his head. "I'm right here."
"I just want him to be okay," Amanda admitted helplessly, irrationally worried that nothing good could come from feeling this bad, that she wouldn't be able to do this right.
"You're both gonna be fine. You got this," Sonny promised her.
Scared, she needed to believe him. Amanda nodded quickly, trying to bolster her own confidence with Sonny's. "Okay."
At 6:02 in the morning, a healthy, screaming Luca Dominick Carisi was born.
Cord cut and his little body roughly cleaned off, he was quickly handed to Amanda. She was crying because she was happy - happy that the hell that had been labor was over, happy that the tiny person she had been carrying around for almost nine months was finally in her arms. Tremulous hands pressed him into the partially bare skin of her heaving chest, only tearing her gaze away from her son to peer up at Sonny, who was hovering close at her shoulder. There was a look of adoration on his face that made the activity surrounding them go quiet, everyone else totally irrelevant in comparison to what Amanda could proudly call hers. His hand lovingly curved around the baby's head with awe in his eyes, and even though Amanda was sticky with sweat, he enthusiastically kissed her hair, face and mouth anyway.
Almost two weeks early, Luca still weighed almost eight pounds. Swaddled in a blanket and a little blue hat after being measured and assessed, one nurse placed him in Sonny's arms while others tended to Amanda. In the throes of childbirth she had sworn that she would never forget how terrible the experience was, but it all seemed hazily distant now. Much like with Jesse, it was only the end result that mattered.
When the flurry of medical staff finally dissipated, the three of them were alone. The railings along the bed lowered, Sonny sat on the edge facing Amanda, as close to her as possible. Luca was quiet now, calmed by the warmth of the blanket he was tightly wrapped up in. Even though she was exhausted, Amanda didn't want to shut her eyes, not when the best thing she had ever seen was happening right in front of her. Head leaned back against the pillow, she admired the two Carisis.
Looking up from Luca, Sonny told her, "I'm so proud of you."
"Of what? That? That was nothing," she joked quietly, fully aware of her varying degrees of hysteria in the hours prior. She was mildly horrified by some of the words that had left her mouth at the very height of it all, but until the day a man had to deliver a baby, she wasn't going to apologize.
Sonny grinned at her; she had never seen him so happy.
"He looks like you," Amanda murmured approvingly, reaching out to run fingers over the baby's blanket and then Sonny's forearm.
"Y'think so?"
"Mhm," she replied before asking him sheepishly, "how's your hand?"
He held it up between them. "Fine. I think you only broke a couple bones," Sonny teased.
"Sorry," she mumbled.
Sonny shook his head dismissively before he leaned in to kiss her.
"I love you," Amanda whispered, forehead resting against his. She was struck by how good it felt to have him, to know that he was her partner in all of this. The moment Jesse had been born, she had been very much alone. This was so much better. "A lot."
"I love you a lot," he echoed. "You're an amazing woman."
Leaning back, she exhaled shakily. "Don't make me cry," she pleaded. "Again."
"I'm gonna go call my parents and sisters before they all have heart attacks from waitin'," he sighed, carefully passing Luca back to her. He settled a hand on Amanda's knee and squeezed. "You need anything?"
She smiled. "I've got everything I need," she answered honestly.
"He's beautiful," Liv cooed, holding Luca in her arms and wandering slowly around the hospital room.
"Hey, Carisi, I brought you something," Fin said excitedly. He reached into the pocket inside the breast of his jacket and revealed a silver flask.
"Did you sneak a flask into the hospital?" Amanda stage-whispered from bed, eyes wide in surprise and amusement.
"Yeah, I did. What are they gonna do, call the police?" her partner replied dismissively. "How else are you supposed to celebrate havin' a kid?"
"I think maybe a handshake would suffice," Liv quipped. "It's seven thirty in the morning."
"Nah, this is better." Fin clapped Sonny on the back and handed over the flask with a wide grin. "Congratulations, man. Let's hope your weirdness isn't genetic."
Sonny rolled his eyes good-naturedly before taking a swig.