Warning: If life makes you uncomfortable… this is probably not your story. Otherwise, enjoy!

Chapter 15 Hermos

Serenity was taking a nap on the couch when her phone buzzed to life. Since Seto had been coming home at irregular hours in the morning, she had found it increasingly difficult to get a full night's sleep in their bed. There was something about sleeping in that huge bed all alone that disturbed her. Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad if the bed was a full of even a queen, but it was about the size of four king beds put together. It was more than extravagant for two people. Although Serenity had managed to fall asleep in it without Seto on occasion, it still gave her the creeps.

Serenity groggily reached for her phone on the coffee table and put it to her hear. "Hello?" she answered.

"Serenity, come quick! Mai is screaming her head off at me and I don't know what to do," Joey said in a panicked voice.

Serenity groaned and stretched her free arm, then propped herself up with it. The couch was so soft and luxurious that she had to fight the urge to fall back asleep. "Did her water break yet?"

"Um… I didn't know water could break," Joey replied in a dumbfounded voice.

"Put Mai on the phone," Serenity said, rubbing her temples.

"Sure thing."

A woman's labored breathing came over the phone. "Get this thing out of me," she yelled in agony.

Serenity held the phone a decimeter away from her ear so that she would not be subjected to the intense volume of her screams. "Calm down, Mai. How long ago did this start?"

"Right after Joey left for work."

"What? Why didn't you get to a hospital? You could have called me. I would have driven you."

"My mother and-ah! And her mother and my great grandmother and… and… ah!... none of them ever went to a hospital."

"All right, fine. I'm not letting you go through this without a medical professional, though. I'll be right over." Serenity hung up the phone and dashed outside.

She did not want to wait for the limo driver to come back from Kaiba Corp and picked her up, so she grabbed the keys to a red internal combustion engine sports car Seto kept in the garage and strapped herself into the seat. One feature Serenity liked about the car was how it automatically adjusted the seat and food pedals to accommodate her swollen abdomen. The child inside her seemed to agree as well, kicking contentedly as she fastened her seatbelt. The engine roared to life, and Serenity stepped on the accelerator. It surged forward much faster than she expected and spooked her a little, but she quickly adjusted to the vehicle's abundant power by driving more cautiously than usual.

Serenity navigated her way through Domino easily, arriving at her brother's house in less than ten minutes. She parked the red sports car in front of the house behind Mai's blue convertible and made her way up to the door.

Before she could ring the doorbell, Joey opened the door and flung himself at her. "Save me, sis! My wife has gone insane!" Joey said as the grasped her huge waist awkwardly.

Serenity patted her brother on the head, noticing that his messy blond hair was even more out of place than usual. It stuck out from his head at odd angles and smelled like chocolate ice cream mixed with auto grease. Serenity gripped Joey's shoulders and pulled him up so that she could look him in the eye. She found his face smeared with food as well as gunk from a long day at work. "Joey, you just go shower. I'll take care of Mai."

"Can't. She's in the bathtub." As Joey spoke, Serenity heard a shrill scream emanating from deep within the house. She patted Joey on the back and left him on the porch while she rushed inside to find the source of the noise.

Serenity found Mai naked in a bathtub full of water surrounded by various food items that Joey had tried to bring her as peace offerings. Some dishes were balanced precariously on the back of the toilet while others were shattered on the floor. Serenity carefully picked her way around the sharp pieces of porcelain and crouched beside the bathtub. "Breathe, Mai. Just breathe."

Mai stopped screaming for a moment and did as she was told. Then, she yelled, "I don't need your drugs or your knives. I'm going to push this baby out on my own or die trying."

"Relax, Mai. I'm just here to make sure everything goes OK," Serenity said in a soothing voice. She reached over Mai's stomach and palpated it systematically.

"No needles, no weird tables, no latex gloves, no-Ah!" Mai screamed.

Serenity sighed with relief when she found that the baby's head was already pointed downwards. "I don't think you'll need any of that, Mai. You're doing well. Just keep up the good work."

The blonde screamed again.

"Push Mai, Push!" Serenity yelled over Mai's screams. Serenity pulled back the sleeves of her pink maternity blouse and placed her hands below Mai's pelvis in preparation to catch the baby.

Flecks of blood and tissue drifted out of Mai's cervix and settled to the bottom of the bathtub as the baby's head emerged from her. Mai's face contorted in concentration as she followed Serenity's direction. She pushed with every ounce of strength she had until the baby's head popped free of her womb. Serenity gently but firmly grasped the child and brought it up for air.

The baby took its first breath, and then let out a robust squall. Serenity examined it for a few moments. Assessing its color, muscle tone, respiratory effort, and reflex responsivity. Then, she wrapped it in a towel and handed it to Mai. "Congratulations! It's an 8," Serenity said.

"A what?" came Joey's voice from the doorway.

Serenity turned around to see her brother peering timidly into the room. "It's and 8 on the Apgar scale," she explained.

Joey stared at her in a confused manner.

"It's healthy," Serenity clarified.

"But… is it a boy or a girl?" Joey asked.

A little smile teased over Serenity's lips. "You never got an ultrasound?"

Mai re-adjusted her grip on the infant so that she could peek under the towel at the baby's genitals. "It's a boy!" she declared.

Joey fist-pumped the air. "Yeah! That's my boy Hermos!" He charged past Serenity to get a closer look at his son. "Dang! He sure is big and strong!"

Serenity did a double-take. "Big and strong? Last time I checked, he… nevermind." From what she could see, the boy's Apgar score had definitely risen to 9, perhaps even 10. Serenity shook her head with a smile, and then went to search for something to cut the umbilical cord, leaving Joey and Mai to bond with their newborn son Hermos.

Closing Note: I have never been pregnant, nor do I plan to become pregnant in the future. I learned all this stuff from a human development psychology course. Otherwise, I would have been totally lost and this chapter would have sucked. Special thanks to my textbook:

Cole, M., Cole, S. R., & Litefoot, C. (2005). The Development of Children (5th ed.). New York: Worth Publishers.

And a documentary called "The Business of Being Born"