Private Number

Tragedy doesn't happen in a vacuum. It doesn't wait for a rainy day, or a minor key cello soundtrack, or for you to be wearing dignified clothing. It doesn't wait for you to be ready.

In our experience, tragedy has a distinct preference for sunny Sundays, usually while you are deciding between complex carbohydrates.

We were in Mullumbimby. If you know Mullum, you know the vibe. It is a town built on a specific intersection of high-end real estate and hostile relaxation. The air smells of turmeric, despair, and $8 coffee. It was aggressive sunshine. The kind that makes you squint and immediately regret wearing denim.

We were standing outside Bar Henri, locked in that mundane, low-stakes negotiation that defines a long-term relationship: The Menu Standoff.

It was a tactical discussion. I was pretending I wanted the salad. C. was analysing the wind direction to see if the outdoor seating would call for a jacket. I was prepared to die on a hill for the fries.

It was a beautiful, ordinary Sunday. We were two seconds away from exchanging currency for lunch. We were a normal couple, about to do a normal thing.

Then the phone rang.

The screen lit up: Private Number.

There is a specific cortisol spike that happens when you are an IVF patient and you see "Private Number." It is a Pavlovian response. I am the dog; the phone is the bell; the treat is either "a baby" or "absolute devastation."

We hesitated. Do we answer this on the pavement next to a woman wearing a linen caftan? Do we let it go to voicemail and eat the burger in ignorant bliss?

We answered.

The scientist on the line was kind. She used that specific "Fertility Clinic Voice." Soft, professional, practiced. It is the voice of an air hostess telling you the plane is going down, but offering you a warm towel first. She didn't bury the lead.

She told us our embryo had arrested.

This wasn't just an embryo. This was the one that survived the TESA surgery. This was the one that made it through fertilisation against the statistical odds. This was our gladiator.

And just like that, in the time it took a stranger to order an almond latte, the timeline collapsed.

I remember looking at C.’s phone and waiting for the cinematic crash. I expected the traffic to stop. I expected the waiter to drop a tray of glasses. I expected the birds to fall out of the sky out of respect.

But the couple at the table next to us just laughed at a joke. Someone ordered the fries. A dog barked at a ute. The woman in the caftan was humming, completely unaware that a universe had just ended three feet away from her.

I still wanted fries.

That is the violence nobody prepares you for: The absolute indifference of the universe to your personal apocalypse. You are standing in the wreckage of your future, holding a phone that feels like a grenade, and the guy next to you is annoyed about the foam on his cappuccino.

I felt a flash of irrational anger. How dare you? How dare you eat avocado on toast when the blueprint just caught fire?

Then the dissociation set in. I looked at the menu. Food suddenly seemed like the most obscene concept in human history. The idea of chewing and swallowing felt mechanical and absurd.

We walked back to the car. We drove. The air conditioning was blasting, but neither of us turned it down. The cold felt appropriate.

We spent the drive trading the kind of hollow, logical platitudes you say when you’re trying not to scream.

"Well, at least we have an answer."

"At least the limbo is over."

"We can plan the next steps."

We were posturing. But underneath the stoic exterior, the realisation was hitting us like a physical blow: We had just been fired from the job of "Parents." No severance pay. No reference letter. Just a quiet exit from the building.

In the silence of the drive, the mental projector turned on. I saw the supercut of the life we just lost. It played over and over in my mind like a corrupted file.

I saw the version of us that existed in a parallel universe: Teaching a kid to swim. The messy Saturday breakfasts. C. reading a book to a child who looked like her.

Then the movie switched genres. I saw the future we were going to get. The lifetime of "First Day of School" photos that wouldn't be ours. The Christmases that would just be... quieter. The deluge of friends' milestones we would have to "like" on Instagram while dying a little bit inside.

The drive was only two hours. The loss felt like a geological era.

Two years later, I am trying to look at it differently. That Sunday wasn't just a bad day. It was a demarcation line. There was the life Before The Call, and the life After.

That moment outside the bistro—standing between the menu and the street—was the moment the Plan died. The Blueprint caught fire.

And looking back, that was the moment we started the long, slow, painful work of figuring out who we were when we weren't "parents-to-be." We had to learn how to be just two people, standing on a pavement, realising that we had to find a new way to matter.

We survived the call. We survived the drive. We are still here.

But I still owe C. that lunch.

If it helps, and you feel like it, you can Buy Us A Chip. No pressure.