"Alright, Lil' Lassie!" Shawn said, opening the door to the frozen yogurt shop for the birthday girl. "Pick out whatever you want! Gus is putting you to sleep tonight!"
"Oh no I am not," Gus said, matter-of-factly, pushing in front of Shawn through the door.
Lily ran around the brightly lit room, jumping up and down as Shawn gave her a sample cup.
"What are you getting, Spencer?" Lily asked, her hand covered in chocolate ice cream that she had failed to get into the small cup.
"Lil' Lassie!" Shawn grabbed a big cup, not needing to think about it first. "Pineapple, duh! It's the best flavor here!"
"I like chocolate," Lily said, pointing to one of the pink handles for Gus to help her pour ice cream into a cup. Gus was not too keen on leaving the yogurt stations a mess.
"Well, I have to get pineapple today," Shawn said, adding sprinkles to his yellow swirl. "As of today, Jules is officially 32 weeks pregnant which means that our baby is the size of a pineapple."
"You mean according to that tracking app that makes you hungry every time you look at it?"
"Yes, and it's delicious."
"It's weird, is what it is," Gus said, getting a cup of his own.
"I can't do this with you right now," Shawn said as his phone started ringing in his pocket.
"Shake your butt!" Lily exclaimed, singing along with the ringtone and wiggling her bottom in the middle of the store. Gus elbowed Shawn, trying to make him answer the phone quicker.
He glanced at the caller ID before tapping the green button. Unknown Number?
"Hello?"
"Hello," an official sounding voice said on the other side of the line. "Is this Shawn Spencer?"
"Depends on who's asking."
"You are listed as the emergency contact for Juliet Spencer O'Hara."
Shawn put down his cup and put his hand over his opposite ear, trying to hear the conversation better over the loud pop music floating around him. Emergency contact?
His mind started working in overdrive. He had just seen her before he picked up Lily. She had seemed completely fine. Was she in labor? Why wouldn't she have called him herself?
"Mr. Spencer," the voice continued, "we need you to come to the hospital immediately."
Her voice sounded calm, but Shawn could hear the effort in the woman's voice to sound professional as she spoke.
"What happened?" Shawn demanded. Everyone in the ice cream shop stopped talking. He looked up and saw Gus staring at him, waiting for directions.
"Mr. Spencer, Mrs. O'Hara has been brought into the emergency room, and we suggest that you come as quickly as you can."
The walls felt like they were closing in on him. He swung around, flinging the door open and pacing along the parking lot, trying to figure out what she wasn't telling him. The door didn't even close before Gus was at his side, Lily's hand in his.
"What happened to her?" He was yelling now, frustration and fear quickly getting the better of him.
"Mr. Spencer, Mrs. O'Hara has been shot."
Lightening fired through his chest and escaped out of his hand, making his whole body tingle and his head spin. The phone fell to the ground as Shawn ran to the car and began pulling furiously at the locked car door.
"Jules was shot!" Shawn yelled across the parking lot, where Gus had already picked up Shawn's phone and a very confused Lily and was running behind him to unlock the car.
"How?" Gus asked, speeding onto the highway once they had gotten Lily buckled into her seat.
"I don't know, Gus!" Shawn yelled, pounding his fist on the dashboard. His legs bounced aggressively under him, ready to Fred Flintstone the car all the way to the hospital. "She's on bedrest! She shouldn't have even left the house! How did she get shot?"
"Is Auntie Julie gonna die?" Shawn heard a little voice ask from the back seat. "Is the baby gonna die?"
He turned around and saw Lily with her knees pulled up to her chest in her car seat, her face red and tears running down her cheeks.
"No," Gus said, not taking his eyes off the road. "No one is dying today. She is going to be taken care of by the same doctors who saved your daddy and everything is going to be okay. No one is dying today. No way, no how."
Shawn looked over at Gus grateful for his confidence but unable to believe that he was right. The woman he spoke to on the phone seemed to think that someone might be dying today.
Marlowe was already standing in the waiting room of the ER when they ran in.
"Mommy!" Lily cried, running into her mom's arms.
"What are you doing here?" Gus asked as Shawn paced anxiously around the room, waiting for someone to tell him what happened.
"I came as soon as I heard. They called me from the Hershel House."
"Why did they call you?" Gus asked, but Shawn didn't stick around for an answer. A woman in scrubs walked into the waiting room and Shawn was in front of her before she could call the next patient.
"Where is Juliet Spencer O'Hara?" he demanded, his eyes shifting around the woman. She's back there somewhere. I need to get back there. I need to get to her.
Shawn watched the woman's face drop. "Come with me, sir." She led Shawn through the double doors and into a small private room with a table in the center. "Wait right here."
She motioned to the chairs on her way out of the room, but Shawn couldn't bring himself to sit. He paced around the table, the heels of his feet never touching the ground. His mind raced, searching for an answer. How could this be happening?
"Mr. Spencer?" a young doctor walked into the room. He was wearing a white lab coat, but Shawn could still see the blood splattered on his pants and shoes. Juliet's blood.
"Where is Juliet?" he demanded, his arms crossed high on his chest in protective mode.
"Mr. Spencer, we are doing everything that we can to save your wife and the baby."
"Mhm," Shawn brushed off the faux reassurance. Obviously they were doing everything they could. They have to say that. It still didn't make him feel any better. "What happened? How could this have happened?"
"Mrs. O'Hara came in with a hemothorax." The doctor continued, soft explanation trying to ease the stress that creased Shawn's face." This means that blood from the bullet wound was pooling in the space where her lung is supposed to be, and she sustained a collapsed lung."
Shawn stared intensely at the doctor, trying to read his mind. Trying to see what he had seen. Wishing he was really a psychic.
"The baby saved her life," the man continued.
"What do you mean?" He was still on his toes, still trying to understand words he had no hope making sense of.
"Pregnant women have nearly 50% more blood to help support the baby. So even though Mrs. O'Hara lost a lot of blood, she still had enough to make it to the hospital," he continued, calmly nodding as he watched Shawn run his hands through his hair and cross his arms again.
"Unfortunately, she no longer has enough blood to support herself and the baby."
"What does that mean?"
"Mr. Spencer, we have to deliver the baby."
Shawn felt the world pulled out from under him. He collapsed into a chair along the wall, dropping his head into his hands. "Today?"
"Right now, with your consent." The doctor pushed a clipboard across the table. "We feel this is the best chance they both have to survive."
Shawn grabbed the pen off the top of the clipboard and scrawled his name on a few lines without thinking twice. Do whatever you have to do.
He was about to have a child. His child. Two months before her due date.
The doctor handed the clipboard to the nurse standing by who rushed off.
"Let's go get your baby," the doctor said. He led Shawn down a long sterile hallway. He squinted as the lights reflected off the white linoleum tiles into his eyes.
As soon as his feet hit the tiles, time slowed down and Shawn found himself fixated on the smallest details around him. The itchy tag on his t-shirt. The gray tile that lined up between every sixth white tile on the floor, the "I 'heart' tiny humans" t-shirt on the new nurse who was waiting for him when he stepped out of the bathroom. The two miniature footprints that built the heart on her shirt.
"Right this way, Mr. Spencer."
Shawn could feel his heart thumping loudly against his sternum, making his chest sting with each passing second. The nurse let him outside of a room with metal doors. Through a small window he could see at least 15 people moving around the room, all looking at one thing.
But he couldn't see her. He knew she was there. He could feel her close by, but no matter what angle he got on the window, he couldn't find her amidst the bustling room.
Suddenly the door flung open and out came a team of people all surrounding a small cart with a plastic cage on top of it. Shawn watched, unblinking, as the group began walking away quickly.
"Right this way, Dad," one of the masked faces said to him as they left.
Dad? He turned around looking for Frank, or even Lloyd, when he suddenly realized, he was Dad.
His brain still felt like it was swimming upstream. He was about to follow the group when he heard someone from inside the room yell "Initiating MTP."
Shawn looked back and for just a moment, before the heavy door clicked shut, he could see his wife on the operating table. Well, a bump that he assumed was his wife. She was completely covered in sterile blue cloths, a group of people working at a hole in the cloth by her head and a group working at a hole over her stomach. He had never seen so much blood in his life. The cloths were stained and red dripped onto the floor, smeared by surgical booties hustling around the room.
Just before the door sealed into place, he saw a strip of blond hair peeking out from under the drapes.
"What's MTP?" he demanded to the closest person he could reach.
"Massive Transfusion Protocol." They answered casually, walking in the other direction.
His head was spinning. His wife, his everything, was bleeding out on an operating table at this very moment, but he wasn't even allowed to think about that because people kept calling him "Dad" and telling him to follow them.
He couldn't see the tiny human he was assuming was in the little cage. But as he jogged to catch up and through all the tubes, he could suddenly see a flimsy foot sticking out, its little red toes flexed upwards.
It didn't even look real. There was no way that was real.
He stopped in his tracks, the world spinning around him. They were on the bridge that connected the children's hospital to the general hospital, and he became acutely aware of the lack of solid ground underneath them.
"It's okay. We're going to help her." One of the nurses had stopped and stood in front of him, her head tilted with knowing eyes.
Shawn nodded, autopilot carrying his feet forward. He followed the nurse through a labyrinth of halls, each lined with paintings of ducks and flowers. There were no sterile white walls or big metal doors. Each room had a number painted on pastel buttons, and the doors were decorated with cute little signs for each baby. He was in a different world, and it almost looked happy. If it didn't look like it was hiding everything scary that happened there.
Soon the nurse stopped him in front of a corner room and for the first time, he was able to see the tiny little alien that lay in the bed, covered head to toe in stickers and cords. She had a mini eye mask on that was no bigger than Shawn's pointer finger and what appeared to be a scuba mask strapped over her nose and mouth. Her translucent red belly tugged up and down with each breath and he stared, hand over his mouth as we watched someone stick a needle into her little fuzzy scalp.
"Whah... why?" He watched as someone else attached a bag of liquid to the needle.
"Premature babies have especially small veins," the nurse next to him explained, "Sometimes the best place for us to give them medications is through the veins in their scalp."
"That's barbaric," Shawn said, still watching as the commotion died down and most of the people who had brought her out of the OR left.
The nurse handed him a clipboard, motioning for him to sit down in one of the padded rocking chairs. This place was definitely more comfortable than any of the hospital rooms that Jules or Lassie had ever been.
"We just need to get a bit of information from you." The nurse sat down on the couch next to him, handing him a pen. "First things first, what is her name?"
"I..." Shawn looked at the pint-sized alien human in the spaceship bed. He thought about his wife, losing blood faster than they could put it in her. He thought about his baby that he never got to meet because she had died before she had a chance. He thought about the tag on his shirt tickling the back of his neck. And he dropped his head into his hands, trying to shake himself into a different reality. One where none of those images were permanently stained in his head.
"I don't know."