Umbilical Cords

I can't get the dream out of my mind: two friends, one who wants a(nother) baby but could risk her life, the other who doesn't want children. Me. Life, death and the axis in-between.

It was a mismashed dream of color and chaos. I delivered a baby for the friend who didn't want a child, while dragging the umbilical cord down the hall, still attached to the baby and mother. I was running. Not away, but toward my other friend, who was losing her life because she was pregnant.

Somehow all this life circled around me. I delivered the baby, whispering quietly in my friend's ear, telling her to breathe. She wasn't breathless for the birth of a baby, but for the fact she was having one at all. Covered in icky gunk that comes with a birth, I raced to my friend who was desperately trying to hold onto her own life and her unborn child's. I whispered to her. I knew I could calm her. I knew she'd be okay.

In the end, everyone lived. My friend who wanted a third baby so badly that she'd risk her own life, delivered a baby girl. My friend who never wanted a child also delivered a girl, but remained childless, as she gave her daughter to me. Somehow I knew she'd give her to me. I didn't name her.

Dreams like this creep me out. They come in technicolor to my imagination and stay that way in my mind forever. I wander around in waketime looking at my friend's bellies, double checking that no one is pregnant, at least yet.