{1} A Late Arrival

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Kanza Hadad 

There was once a time where I believed that the beauty of life would not happen near me. That was until Amira's water broke, and I ended up being the unfortunate soul tasked with the job of keeping her sane till her husband arrived. 

Where the hell is that bastard?

"Kanza, call... Damon... please," pleaded Amira, breaths as weak as her ability to correlate sentences. She was in labor for a couple hours now, but her tolerance to the pain kept the discomfort at bay. "Please."

I stared down at my disheveled friend in her hospital gown, round belly swollen, and cheeks flushed with physical stress.

"I'll try again, hold on," I promised, stepping out of the room.

The door shut behind me, nurses frantically running between the halls with more and more pregnant women. All at different points of their labor. Some walked around with their partners while others lacked the strength to when pain encompassed them.

"Pick up, Damon. Come on," I muttered to myself as my fingers shook trying to find his number in her contacts. The phone began to ring, and my prayers grew more urgent.

Allah, let him answer. Don't let Amira go through this pain without the support of her husband by her side.

Amira's groan of throbbing pain echoed into my ear, the sound rumbling in waves through the closed door, a testament to the struggle she was going through in order to give life to a newborn. I almost winced on her behalf. 

"Assalamualaikum, sweetheart. Sorry that I've been-"

"Where the hell have you been?" I seethed, not even bothering to correct him. 

He paused. "Wait a second. You're not my wife."

"No shit, Sherlock. Your wife is in labor!" I exclaimed, which earned me a few amused looks in my direction from the doctors and nurses. My cheeks burned in embarrassment. "Hurry up."

"She's in labor?" he yelled. "Tanwir, we need to go."

Tanwir is there?

There was some shuffling on the phone as Damon panicked. A deeper, more calm voice spoke in a low tone to him. The ballast in my stomach seemed to grow in anticipation, my mind tuned to the voice that haunted my sleep at night, the man whose quiet demeanor knocked on the walls of my mind, shattering the frames with his voice, his cold eyes that grew warm with his friends. 

My best friend's brother. It should be a crime to have a voice like that, a voice that makes a girl weak at the knees, the kind that makes a girl forget everything but the man before her.

"Kanza?" asked Tanwir on the line. "You still there?"

I broke out of my daze. "Yeah. I'm still here."

"Send me the location of the hospital. How long has she been in labor?" 

"About two or three hours. It took us a while to get here," I admitted. "I've been calling, but Damon hasn't picked up until now."

"Tanwir! My wife needs me, hurry up!" yelled Damon from a distance, his voice far from his phone, panic coating his words. "Oh Allah, my wife is going to murder me if I'm not there soon."

"Hang on," said Tanwir. "Kanza, keep her company till we get there."

"It's not like I've been doing that this whole time or anything," I remarked sarcastically. "I'll pray for Damon's survival."

Tanwir didn't even bother to dignify me with a response, which was casual of him. He simply hung up the phone.

Sighing, I walked back into Amira's hospital room, not believing how engrossed in this birth I was. Although her contractions were far apart, pain still lingered every now and then, and when the pain whisked her mind away, her body suffered at its clutching hands. Hearing her slow, labored breaths as she struggled time and time again caused my own chest to constrict. 

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