This line from the Stephin Merritt episode of the 'She's A Talker' podcast (referring to Stephen Sondheim plot-lines) got my imagination ticking in overdrive
Binge-watched “Bridgerton” last weekend and paid the price for it all day Saturday. The drawing is based on my wife's picture of me on the couch sleeping off my bad decision. HB, 2B Staedtler mechanical pencils on 8.5” x 11” acid-free sketchbook.
“Claire!” Elle woke up with her daughter’s name on her lips. Startled, she sat up and looked around the living room with her heart still beating loudly in her chest. A dream, she realized dazedly.
Slowly, she crossed the way to the back door. With unseeing eyes she gazed out into the garden.
She remembered waking up in the hospital six years ago and seeing her husband sitting next to her. She remembered how he took her hand into his and looked at her with eyes full of despair. He told her that the doctor thought Claire might not survive. That she might die before she was even born, die before she had a chance to look into her mum’s eyes, feel a kiss on her forehead, clench her little fist around her dad’s finger, hear them speaking to her without a belly barrier between them… It was a silent, terrible death. It was the death of someone so precious, so innocent, so tiny…
Elle took a shuddering breath.
