Claire's POV
Heather looked at him. Her smile came slowly, a little worn at the edges, but warm in a way that reached her eyes.
"I'm awake," she said, smiling as her son approached her bed.
Louis crossed the room and took his seat beside her, and I quietly moved back to give him that space, my heart full of things I had nowhere to put just yet.
I sat back and watched him take her hand.
And I kept my promise to her already, silently, right there in that room.
I did not let go.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Three months.
I was three months along now, and some mornings when I pressed my hand to my stomach I marveled at how much had happened inside those months. How much had shifted. The baby was growing quietly and steadily through all of it, through the hospital and the corridors and the long evenings in that room, indifferent to the grief around it in the way that new life always was. Insisting on itself regardless.
I was grateful for that. More than I knew how to say.
