When I was close to giving birth, my husband yelled at me to “quit acting dramatic” and left for his mother’s birthday celebration.

Two days later, he walked back into the house smiling—until the sight waiting for him made him drop in terror.

When my first contraction struck, I was standing in the kitchen with a glass of water in my hand. It slipped from my fingers and shattered across the floor.

“Cameron,” I whispered, pressing one hand to my stomach. “Something is terribly wrong.”

My husband lifted his eyes from his phone with the annoyance of a man whose attention had been stolen from something important. Except the important thing wasn’t work—it was his mother’s birthday dinner.

He was already wearing a charcoal suit, his hair slicked back, his watch gleaming under the kitchen lights. His mother, Pamela, was turning sixty-five that evening, and in Cameron’s mind, missing her party would be a worse betrayal than leaving his wife in labor.

Another contraction hit, stronger this time, and I bent over the counter, struggling to breathe. “Cameron, please. I really think the baby is coming.”

He rolled his eyes and sighed. “Sienna, stop being dramatic.”

The words reached me colder than fear itself.

I was thirty-eight weeks pregnant, and my doctor had warned us that my blood pressure was unstable. She’d told Cameron directly—while he nodded and pretended to listen—that if I ever felt severe pain, dizziness, or bleeding, I needed to get to the hospital immediately.

Now sweat soaked through my dress, my legs shook beneath me, and every part of my body was screaming that something was wrong.

Cameron snatched his car keys off the island. “You always do this. You turn everything into a crisis the second my family needs me,” he snapped.

I stared at him in disbelief. “Your child needs you right now.”