The night a student doctor cut the cord.

I roared onto North Avenue, inches behind my mentor in her Volkswa-gen. We ran through the hospital, saying hellos up to the fifth floor. Urgent. The room was dark. Two nurses in pale blue scrubs greeted us; the patient barely noticed, softly pleading for the pain to cease. At once the room flooded with a calm tension. There were no family members decorating the starkly empty plastic chairs. Her mother and aunt returned a few minutes later. Her aunt was short of breath from the brief walk down the hall. The father brought fast food, and the smell of grease quickly permeated the room. The patient urinated just after we walked in, pleaded an apology as I stared decidedly at the floor. The nurses calmly wiped it up. The father held her hand, eyes shielded from the end of the bed, squeamish of her pain, red trickling onto the sheets. The women teased him for his hesitation, but they stayed glued to their plastic cushions. I stood plastered to the wall. I told myself I didn't want to intrude, but in truth I didn't know what to do. I imagined she looked lonely. When my sister had her son, we all fed her ice and doted on her, we played music and rubbed her feet and told her how beautiful she was through the pain. This woman seemed alone, her mother making a phone call, her aunt telling jokes, her partner looking pointedly at the floor. I suppose everyone is alone in childbirth. The doctor slid her hand inside the patient, checking the cervix to measure dilation. This sacred space no longer belongs to her but to the child on his way. " Nine centimeters , almost there. " When she removed her hand it was bloody and dripping. She wiped it clean with starkly white gauze. They rolled a rectangular table over to the bed and removed the pale blue paper covering the instruments. I put on a sterile gown, awkward and unsure what to do with my hands. The size 7 gloves felt soft, like a second skin. My mentor forgot about covering our feet; I was startled at the realization we would need to. The nurse slid the sterile paper over my shoes. I was acutely aware of the vast difference between her experience and mine. I thanked her twice. She said no problem, but her eyes …