A woman was giving birth in a prison hospital room: the midwife approached to examine her and suddenly screamed in horror 
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.
“Inmate number 1462,” replied the nurse. “Labor could start any minute. She was transferred from the east block a month ago. No family, no documents, medical history is empty. She barely speaks.”
“Barely speaks?” raised the midwife an eyebrow. “Not at all?”
“She only nods in monosyllables. Doesn’t look anyone in the eye. As if she’s closed off from the inside.”
The heavy door creaked. In the room, which looked more like a cell, a pregnant woman lay on the narrow metal bed. She held her hands on her huge belly and stared at the floor. Her face was pale, her hair messy. But there was something strange in her stillness: not fear or pain, but a kind of resignation.
The midwife approached.
“Hello,” she said softly. “I’ll stay with you until the baby is born. Let me examine you.”
The woman nodded slightly.
The midwife leaned in to examine her—and suddenly screamed in horror.
“Call a priest immediately! ”
Continuation in the first comment 
Where the steady beating of a tiny heart should have been, there was a frightening emptiness. The doctor changed her angle, pressed harder, held her breath… but nothing.
She went pale.
“I can’t hear a heartbeat,” she whispered.
The guards exchanged glances, feeling the tension fill the room.
Labor started suddenly, leaving no time for long thoughts. The midwife pressed her lips together and shouted:
“Call a priest immediately! If the baby is born dead, he must not leave in silence, but with a prayer.”
The woman on the bed didn’t utter a word. She just clenched the sheet in her fingers.
And suddenly, the midwife heard a sound again. First faint, like a distant whisper, then a little stronger. The heart… it was beating after all. Weakly, irregularly, but it was beating.
“Alive,” she exhaled. “It’s alive…”
The struggle for every minute began. The contractions intensified, the woman screamed, the guards held her by the hands and shoulders, and the midwife did everything possible to save both mother and child. Time seemed to have stopped in that cell.
Finally, after agonizing hours, a faint squeak pierced the air. First barely audible, then louder, stronger. A boy. Weak, tiny, with bluish skin, but alive.
He was quickly brought to oxygen, rubbed until his breathing grew deeper. And then the room was filled with the loud, desperate cry of the newborn.
The midwife closed her eyes, wiping sweat from her forehead.
“Thank you, Lord…”
For the first time, the inmate lifted her eyes and smiled.
