A mini-series from Jessie Stephens, author of the new book Heartsick.
This is The Beginning of the End, a Relationship Doctor mini-series from author and podcaster Jessie Stephens. Jessie's debut book, Heartsick, follows three stories of heartbreak, the kind of heartbreak that upends a life, and puts words around a brand of grief that we, as a culture, do not respect enough.
In this three-part mini-series, Jessie shares three brand new stories, unique to the podcast. In episode two, we hear the story of Laura.
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Read a transcript of this episode on Simplecast.
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INTRO: Hello and welcome to The Beginning Of The End, a Relationship Doctor mini-series. I’m your host, author and podcaster Jessie Stephens. My debut book, Heartsick, follows three stories of heartbreak - the kind of heartbreak that upends a life - and puts words around a brand of grief we, as a culture, do not respect enough.
This is the second episode in a three-part mini-series all about people’s experiences of heartbreak. While my book predominantly follows the stories of Ana, Patrick, and Claire, here I will tell you a new story, about a young woman named Laura. Because, it turns out, it is in those moments when we feel the most alone that we are our most connected.
Every year on their wedding anniversary, Laura sits down with a pen and a half-abandoned notebook, scattered with shopping lists and New Year’s resolutions she never kept, and writes a letter to Erin.
Today is their fifth anniversary. Five years since they stood across from each other in Scotland and exchanged vows - saying things that somehow, after three years together, they’d never said before.
“Your laugh,” Laura writes. ”Your fierceness. Your intelligence. Your calmness. Your gentle voice…” She thinks about the crosswords on a Sunday morning at Joe Black in North Melbourne, frothy coffees and sourdough so hard a bread knife can’t slice through it. Erin is holding the pen - she always holds the pen - and Laura is nearly cross-eyed with concentration, considering the clue and scanning a mind that is entirely blank. She takes her fingers to her forehead, desperate to get just one word right, but by the time she comes up with a guess, Erin is already scribbling.
“Eels,” she says, cocking her head, as though to examine the word from another angle. “Fish whose blood is toxic to humans.”
She looks up at Laura with a smile, the grey light hitting her green eyes. “Eels.”
“I miss your green eyes,” Laura writes, the pen moving faster now. “I miss doing the crossword with you. I miss having cocktails with you. I miss talking to you…”
She writes and writes, her throat growing tight.
“I hope you’re living happily,” she adds, the full stop so definitive it etches into the paper.
It’s a lie, that last line.
It doesn’t matter though, because Erin will never read it. They haven’t spoken in months. Maybe it’s strange to write a letter on your wedding anniversary when you’re divorced. But then, nothing is as it should be.
Erin tricked Laura into their first date. She was looking after a patient who had broken a bone of some sort and required an X-Ray. When she approached Laura, one of the X-ray technicians on duty, she teased her with the X-ray referral.
“I’ll give you this, if you get a beer with me after work.”
They often laughed about that poor patient, who perhaps would never have been wheeled in for an X-Ray if it weren’t for Laura, reluctantly, saying yes. Sometimes when silence fell between them in bed or Erin would needily ask how much she was loved, Laura would shrug her shoulders and announce that she’d only accepted that date in order to fulfil her obligation as a healthcare provider. “She needed that X-ray, Erin,” she’d say and then Erin would roll her eyes.
Their lives were listening to Tegan and Sara in the car. Their cats, Felix and Bobby. Cocktails and dinner reservations at 8pm and buying plane tickets and inspecting houses that were really more like studio apartments and imagining the sound of tiny flat feet running on hardwood floors.
“I want to be a mum,” Erin said one day, standing by their front fence, as the sun set on a quiet Saturday evening. That was what Erin wanted more than anything. To be a mum.
Perhaps if their anatomies had been different, they would have started ‘trying’ that night. Invite fate to play a role in their conception story. It might have been funny and exciting and full of suspense.
But, as a doctor would tell them months down the track, as though they did not already know, they were ‘socially infertile’.
When two women try to have a baby, you cannot simply wave your hand and say ‘if it happens, it happens’. There are no accidents.
You do not approach the possibility half-heartedly. Instead, your romantic lives will descend into a schedule of needles and calendars and appointments, and absurd discussions about what hair colour you’d prefer, and tall or short? Fair or dark? As though a baby can be generated from a questionnaire - as though a baby is ever promised to any of us.
It was Laura who pricked her stomach, assisted by Erin who, as a nurse, spent much of her days administering needles. The process was quicker and more painless than Laura had expected. It felt productive. They were a married couple on the brink of becoming a family. Is there anything more exciting than that?
Eggs became embryos inside an unassuming lab that held a fraction of the future, and then embryos were inserted into Erin.
And then they waited.
And they waited.
Until they heard the word they’d dared to imagine: Positive.
The pregnancy test was positive.
They decided to tell people as though they ever had any chance of keeping it a secret. Friends and family knew they were trying. This wasn’t a matter of discovering a few months down the track that you’ve missed a period. Erin, just 30, was pregnant and she’d have shouted it from the rooftops if being on a rooftop didn’t feel so risky. To celebrate the best news of their lives, they walked into Bonds one day and bought a tiny little onesie, and imagined the tiny hands that would emerge from the soft cotton sleeves.
It was Laura’s birthday when they stopped at a service station for petrol and something to eat. They were on their way home from the coast where they had stayed with Laura’s brother; even he was excited about a little niece or nephew. Laura wouldn’t have noticed how long Erin had been in the bathroom if it weren’t for the look on her face when she emerged - white as a cloud on an otherwise clear day, eyes open and frantic.
“I think I’m bleeding,” she said, her pupils unable to focus.
They called a friend from the hospital. She specialised in this stuff - whatever this ‘stuff’ is. The friend told them to wait. Just wait and see.
By the time they arrived home, the pain had started. The kind of pain where you cannot lie still. It was strange, Laura thought. To watch someone’s pain and truly be able to imagine it. She watched as Erin cramped and whimpered, trying to catch her breath. Maybe it hurt more because they knew. With every cramp, they knew.
It was a grief that will stay with them both until the day they die. Indescribable. Shocking, in that they never imagined it could hurt this much. They did not know where to put it.
Laura could think of only one solution. She saw Erin, standing by that front fence, saying she wants to be a mother. Becoming a mother would fix this. It was the only thing that could fix this.
So, they tried again.
This time, surely, it would work and their sadness would be eclipsed by joy.
Erin fell pregnant. They did not buy a thing. They knew better than to tempt fate.
But again, droplets of blood stained Erin’s underpants. It was another miscarriage.
So they tried again. Another miscarriage. Maybe again. Another miscarriage. At this stage, Laura has stopped counting.
Erin told her she needed to stop. Her body needed a break. But that could not be the solution, Laura thought. The solution had to be to have a baby. They needed to have a baby.
Sunday mornings fell quiet and dinner reservations were never made. There was nothing to toast to. Laura communicated what she couldn’t say with words with shrugs and expressions, and they began a dance where one stepped forward and the other stepped back. They couldn’t find each other. Like they wherein a dark room, unable to find the other’s hand. They’d lost the rhythm that was always there. Laura was sure it would come back though; it had to.
Though she would not admit it at the time, there were things Laura began to notice.
Erin’s pregnancy supplements were pushed to the back of the bathroom cupboard, the lid secured tight.
Then there was her phone background.
The picture changed.
What was once a photograph of them on their wedding day, was now one of their cats. It would be strange to say something, wouldn’t it?
And then finally it was the placement of her iPhone, how she began to leave it face down, as though her notifications were private and interesting, and not at all the business of her wife.
It was a Sunday morning in the middle of winter after a night shift when Laura found herself across from Erin at Joe Black, sipping on a latte that wasn’t warm enough, ignoring the scratching of the pen on the crossword.
“I feel sick,” Erin kept saying. She’d been saying it for days. They both knew it wasn’t that kind of sick. She was nauseous and dizzy. Tired.
They walked home in silence. The cold made the tips of their noses red and their eyes water. Laura fantasised about crawling into bed and sleeping for most of the day, and when they arrived at their apartment, she pulled off her shoes and curled up under the doona. She exhaled.
Erin was above her when she said, “I’m leaving you. I can’t do this anymore.”
Her voice was steady and clear. There was no rage. It was much worse than that. Erin’s voice was calm.
Laura’s mind, delirious from lack of sleep, could not comprehend the eight words that had fallen out of the mouth of the person who was meant to love her more than anyone in the world. This person looked like Erin. But it couldn’t be Erin.
Before she could catch them, words tumbled out of Laura’s mouth. It sounded like a whisper. A plea. “But I don’t know who I am without you.”
Much like the details of a nightmare, Laura cannot remember how exactly Erin packed up her things and left. She cannot even remember exactly where she went. She remembers though, that she did not expect Erin to come back.
Erin lent into a new friendship in the wake of their breakup, with a short, dark-haired paramedic named Chelsea.
Chelsea was Laura’s opposite, and she didn’t know whether she ought to be offended or not. She was intense and loud, her eyes big and brown. Just as Laura will always remember her last day of school and her first day at St George, she will also remember the day Erin changed her profile picture on Facebook to a photo of her with Chelsea. She examined it carefully, as though there was anything to discover. Erin was doing her ‘photo face’ as they’d always called it. Smiling, but no teeth. There were no creases at the edges of her eyes. Was she really happy? Why did they have their faces so close together? Why had they taken this photo? Had it been uncomfortable, when Chelsea (surely it was Chelsea) had pulled her phone out of her back pocket and pulled Erin in close? Did they take dozens of photos? Or only the one? When was the last time Laura and Erin had taken a photo together? Why did they ever stop?
Their relationship unfolded on Facebook and Instagram, snippets from a life that Laura felt had been stolen from her. When they went weeks without posting, Laura felt even worse. They must be too busy. Living.
It was strange to know the sound of someone’s voice before you saw them in the flesh. Laura had watched some video of Chelsea, drunk, her friend had uploaded years ago, and was struck by her deep, gravelly voice. Her laugh was big. A shriek. A lightning strike through any room, a crack so loud she would immediately place her hands over her mouth in horror.
For four months Laura visualised what might happen when she saw Chelsea for the first time, wheeling a patient in from a parked ambulance. Or might she be on a break, walking down Commercial Rd, hand curled around Erin’s, looking for somewhere to eat. Once on a train, she had what she could only describe as a vision, of standing by the nurse's station, and watching as Chelsea walked in through the automatic doors, a patient on a stretcher behind her.
Two days later, her vision came to life. She stood, mouth slack, and watched as Chelsea charged into emergency, her energy taking up more space than her small frame. She said nothing. Just stared.
That night, Erin sent her a message.
“Don’t scowl at Chelsea like that,” it read, as though she’d been there. Laura did not reply.
Just before Christmas, Erin messaged her again. She’d ended it with Chelsea. Things weren’t right. They’d never been right.
While Laura would love to say she was not still in love; that she’d moved on and had met someone else, none of that would be true. It would always be Erin. And so they tried again. Laura said things she’d never been able to, and Erin said things about her relationship with Chelsea she, retrospectively, never should have. They were them again - the women who got married in Scotland and did a stupid crossword over eggs benedict… but they also weren’t. It was like watching a reboot of a show that had once defined you. It was familiar, and close, but it also felt like an approximation, an imitation of what had once been magic. The effortlessness was gone. They were trying now. They were trying too hard. They both knew it. They were over before they’d even begun.
And so things were complicated when Laura went to work that day. She had only recently moved into ultrasound, and checked the tasks for that Monday. She thought she had misread when she saw the name Chelsea Keighery.
Chelsea Keighery. Twenty-seven. Stomach pain. Right side. It’s probably her gallbladder, Laura thought. There’s only so many things it could be. She’s young. Healthy. It’s weird she’s even getting an ultrasound. She turned her head, in search of her colleague. It was fine. Her colleague, Amy, could see this patient. She didn’t need to have anything to do with it.
When Chelsea arrived, she looked sick. She was in a wheelchair, her face grey and her limbs limp. She smiled when she saw Laura - a smile of acknowledgment. Of embarrassment.
“Hey,” she said, her throat dry. Once her attending nurse left, she stood up and put her arms around Laura. “I feel like you’re the only one in the world who knows how I feel right now,” she said. So Erin must have told her that they were done too.
Laura noticed that her eyes were red and puffy.
She asked Chelsea how she was while shuffling through papers, eyeing the corridor, wondering what was taking Amy so long. There was something about how small Chelsea looked, her shoulders rounded, almost like a child.
“You don’t want to do my ultrasound, do you?” Chelsea interrupted with a smile.
Before Laura could answer, she heard Amy’s clomping down the hallway and breathed a sigh of relief.
“Laura, let me take this one,” Amy announced as she entered the room, rubbing her hands together. “I’ve been all over the place today…now, let’s get you up on the bed.”
Laura nodded at Chelsea and walked out into one of the ultrasound rooms. She was doing paperwork when she overheard Amy speaking next door to the reporting physician. Her voice was low, and at first all she could hear was murmurings.
She was not straining to hear when those three words carried through the paper thin walls. At first, she didn’t think she’d heard them correctly. She must be mistaken.
“Riddled with cancer,” Amy had said.
They spoke back and forth but Laura’s mind could not follow. Chelsea was twenty-seven. She had a stomach ache. As she sat, waiting in that ultrasound room, that is still all she had. A stomach ache. Her life was unfolding in another room, beyond her grasp. Laura felt like God, privy to a future no one else could see yet.
Minutes passed and Laura stood, pen still in her hand, unable to move. She heard a tap at the door and saw Chelsea standing there, smiling with only the bottom half of her face.
“I’m going back upstairs,” she said. “Any idea what it is?”
Laura instinctively smiled back.
“No… no I don’t. The doctor will let you know.”
Chelsea nodded and turned back into the corridor.
“Good luck, Chelsea. I hope you feel better,” Laura sung out.
Things happened slowly and then very quickly. As soon as Chelsea learned the news, her relationship with Erin resumed. It was as though they’d never broken up. In stilted texts Erin half explained; Chelsea’s mum died of cancer. I can’t leave her. Not now.
Laura performed a follow up scan for Chelsea. She held her hand, which she wouldn’t ordinarily do. She said yes when Chelsea asked her to speak to her father on the phone, and explain the operation doctors had recommended she have. Her eyes were wide and tear-filled as she watched Laura provide all the information she had. It was an expression Laura recognised. Fear. Chelsea was terrified.
She underwent an operation and treatments, scans and tests, and from whispers and glimpses she saw of Chelsea and Erin around the hospital, their relationship took on an urgency that hadn’t been there before.
She learned through Erin that Chelsea’s bowel cancer was terminal. She had six months. Maybe more. She had just turned twenty-eight.
And so Laura gave them space, compounded by the reality that Erin was pushing to formalise their divorce. She worked and she swiped on apps she hated. She moved out of the place they’d once shared and she traveled.
That’s why she did not immediately know what Amy was referring to when she arrived at work one day to a solemn look and the words, “I’m so sorry Laura”.
“Sorry for what?” she asked, suddenly stopping still.
“Oh,” Amy reached for their list of patients.
“Erin is in today. She’s 36 weeks pregnant?” she said, as though it were a question.
It had been months since she’d last seen Erin or Chelsea; she assumed they’d moved to be closer to Chelsea’s family. But a baby?
As Laura sat on the closed toilet seat, head in her hands, the story came together. Chelsea had embryos too; she’d learned that from Erin. Erin was carrying Chelsea’s baby, a healthy baby, who would likely be born in a month. Everyone must have known. St George was a small place. Glances had been exchanged over the years, like when a patient was wheeled in by Chelsea, only to be met by Erin, an emergency nurse, and Laura, who had been alerted this elderly woman would need an X-Ray. The ward knew what the patient did not - which was the degree of tension flowing between her care team. Three women who loved and hated each other, who had destroyed each other’s lives and built them.
Laura saw Erin that day, from a distance. She did not say anything. She just watched as she walked down the corridor, hands resting on a large, full bump, her gait slow and laboured from the weight of her unborn baby. Chelsea was beside her, her elbows and knees sharp, her skin devoid of colour. Erin was so close to becoming what she had always wanted; a mother.
She learned over drinks with work mates that Erin had given birth. They both disappeared from the hospital halls, to live with Chelsea’s family interstate. For a while, it was as though neither of them had ever existed.
Laura moved overseas for a while and met someone else. She no longer followed the lives of a couple she once knew. She learned, finally, who she was without Erin, and it was greater than she ever could have imagined.
Weeks turned into seasons turned into a year, and she found herself back at St George, single all over again on apps full of unfamiliar faces. She swiped right on someone named Jessica. They talked about music and books and Laura made a point of not asking what she did for a living. It was a boring, closed question, that meant two adults had run out of things to talk about.
It was the end of summer when Laura sat across from Jessica at a cafe, echoing with clinks and clanks. They ordered and then fell into the conversation they’d both clearly had half a dozen times; the stories of their ex-girlfriends. Laura told an abridged version of what had happened with Erin, how she’d met Chelsea, how Chelsea had been diagnosed with cancer, what a mess it had all been. And then it was Jessica’s turn. As Jessica spoke, it became evident she too was a paramedic. She told a story about being cheated on and moving up the coast, and finally she paused and said, “I’m sorry… I don’t know whether to tell you this. But Chelsea, Chelsea died.”
They’d worked together. Years ago. Knew the same people.
That is how Laura learned that her ex’s love story had ended. That Erin would be raising a baby she so wanted on her own. Chelsea had not been someone she had loved, nor was she someone she hated. That somehow made her death more difficult to contend with.
And so as she walked to her car, following a brunch with a woman she’d never see again, she felt a smorgasbord of emotions that did not belong together.
But she did know that the line she’d written in her anniversary letters to Erin was finally true.
“I hope you’re living happily.”
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of The Beginning of The End, a Relationship Doctor mini-series. If this episode spoke to you, please subscribe and leave us a review. For more stories like Samantha’s, you can buy my book Heartsick, which follows three stories of love and loss, via the link in the description of this episode, or at any good bookstore. Until next week…
Relationship Doctor is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Find out more at QuickAndDirtyTips.com.