I dreamed I was the last midwife in a city of silence

I stood in an empty birthing suite, the walls lined with old ultrasound machines that had stopped blinking. No alarms, no cries—just the hum of a single fluorescent light. A woman came in, her belly swollen but not moving, and said, 'It’s been so long since someone believed in this.' I didn’t know how to deliver her. I just held her hand until she smiled, like she’d remembered something important. When I woke up, my hands were still trembling. Not from fear—just from remembering what it feels like to be needed.