That morning, in the prison hospital ward, everything was quieter than usual. In the corridor, no doors slammed, no usual shouts were heard. Everything was too calm—and that alone was unsettling.
“Who do we have on the list today?” asked the duty nurse, spreading the crumpled inmate cards across the table.
The midwife—a woman of advanced age, with tired eyes, long accustomed to difficult cases—barely raised her head. Over the years working in the prison, she had seen a lot: broken mothers, women giving birth in handcuffs, tragedies that no one spoke of afterward. But something about today gave her a vague sense of unease.
