I dreamed I was the last midwife in a city of silent births

I stood in a long corridor of empty birthing rooms, each door sealed with a brass lock. No crying, no alarms—just the hum of old radiators and the smell of antiseptic that never faded. I opened one door after another, finding only swaddled air where babies should be. The silence wasn’t peaceful. It was waiting. When I finally turned to leave, my own hands were cold, and I remembered: I’d forgotten to check the time on my watch. It had stopped at 3:17 a.m., which is when the first real labour I ever missed began.