I dreamed I was the silence between contractions

I was in a long, quiet room with no doors, just the low hum of machines and the soft weight of someone breathing. I wasn’t a person—I was the pause between pushes, the space where breath held and the body remembered how to wait. The woman on the bed didn’t know I was there. She only knew the rhythm. And when she finally screamed—just once, raw—the silence broke too. I woke up with my hands clenched, like I’d been holding something that wasn’t mine.