A woman gave birth in a prison hospital room: a midwife came up to examine her, then screamed in horror
That morning in the prison hospital room began quieter than usual. There were no doors slamming in the hallway, no familiar shouts. Everything was too calm – and that in itself was alarming.
“Who’s on the list today?” asked the nurse on duty, laying out the crumpled cards of the prisoners on the table.
The midwife – an older woman with tired eyes, long accustomed to difficult cases – barely raised her head. Over the years of working in the colony, she had seen a lot: broken mothers, women giving birth in handcuffs, tragedies that no one talked about later. But something about today made her vaguely uneasy.
“Prisoner #1462,” the nurse answered. — The contractions will start any minute. She was transferred a month ago from the Eastern Bloc. No family, no documents, a blank medical history. She barely talks.
— Not talking? — the midwife raised an eyebrow. — At all?
— Just nodding monosyllabically. Not looking anyone in the eye. As if locked from the inside.
The heavy door creaked. In the ward, more like a cell, a pregnant woman lay on a narrow metal bed. She held her hands on her huge belly and looked at the floor. Her face was pale, her hair disheveled. But there was something strange in her stillness: not fear or pain, but as if resignation.
The midwife came closer.
— Hello, — she said quietly. — I will be with you until the baby is born. Let me examine you.
The woman nodded slightly.
The midwife leaned over to examine the pregnant woman and suddenly screamed in horror.
— Call a priest immediately!
Where the confident beating of a small heart should have been heard, there was a frightening emptiness. The doctor changed the angle, pressed harder, held her breath… but nothing.
She turned pale.
— I don’t hear a heartbeat, — she whispered.
The guards exchanged glances, feeling the tension filling the room.
The contractions began abruptly, and there was no time for long reflection. The midwife pressed her lips together and shouted:
— Call a priest immediately! If the child is stillborn, it must go not in silence, but with a prayer.
The woman on the bed did not utter a word. She only clenched the sheet in her fingers.
And suddenly the midwife heard the sound again. At first it was quiet, like a distant whisper, then a little stronger. The heart… it was still beating. Weakly, intermittently, but it was beating.
“Alive,” she breathed out. “He’s alive…”
The fight for every minute began. The contractions grew stronger, the woman screamed, the guards held her by the arms and shoulders, and the midwife did everything she could to save both mother and child. It seemed as if time had stood still in this cell.
Finally, after agonizing hours, a quiet squeak tore through the air. At first barely audible, then louder, stronger. A boy. Weak, tiny, with blue skin, but alive.
They quickly brought him to oxygen, rubbed him until his breathing became deeper. And then the loud, desperate cry of a newborn filled the room.
The midwife closed her eyes, wiping sweat from her forehead.
— Thank you, Lord…
The prisoner looked up for the first time and smiled.
