Yomo’s face is twisted with agony. He barely breathes. His knuckles are white, clutching his wife’s hands.
She grinds her teeth to keep from screaming. “Rrrrrrrrren.”
“I’m here.” He thinks that’s what he should say. He’s not really sure. Has he ever been sure?
The only words he’s ever been sure of were “I do,” when he married this woman.
She tries to smile at him. “Ha…we had no idea what we were getting into, did we?”
“No,” he admits, tightening his grip as another contraction seizes her small frame.
Yoshimura checks between her legs. He’s only done this once before, with Ukina, but one experience is better than nothing. “I think you are ready to push.”
“Oh thank god,” she breathes, trying to keep her humor, trying to calm Renji down.
“AH!” Another contraction seizes her, one she was not prepared for. “Shit!”
“Push,” Yoshimura commands.
She growls in response. Her face turns purple with effort.
“Push again.”
“Again.”
Finally, with a flash of pain that nearly kills her vision, she feels something slip from her body. She collapses back onto the bed, drenched in sweat.
A whimper catches Yomo’s attention.
“You have a girl.” Yoshimura chuckles and handles Renji a sterilized pair of scissors to cut the cord.
Yomo’s eyes fill with tears. He fights them back to cut his baby free.
And then his wife groans again.
“That should be the placenta.” Yoshimura hands the baby to a trembling Yomo and looks again.
He gulps. “Uh. Yomo?”
“Hmm?” Yomo kneels besides his wife so she can see the baby, covered in blood and mucus, perfect and whole and cackling with new life.
“I see another baby.”
“You’re got to be kidding,” gasps Yomo’s wife.
Yomo’s world spins. Two? Two babies?
The second baby comes easier than the first, and then Yomo finally lets out his breath. She is healthy. His twins – a boy and a girl – seem healthy.
The girl cries much louder, in “true Yomo family fashion,” as his wife reminds him.
He smiles and finally lets himself weep as he and Yoshimura change the bloodstained bedsheets.
Finally they’re done. She holds the boy and he cradles the girl, Kame and Toshi, sitting besides her. Every time he looks at his children or his wife, awe lights up his face.
“I can’t believe we have two.”
“Adventure never ends,” his wife says wearily. But there’s a smile on her tired face.
“Sleep,” he tells her. “I’ll hold them both.”
“You’re gonna be a good father,” she murmurs, handing him Toshi. He plants a kiss on her forehead and watches as this marvelous woman drifts to sleep.
Mercy and Magic 