In 2022, I was going through motions. I was burned out after shepherding two restaurants through Melbourne’s Covid lockdowns and emotionally burned to the ground by a failed marriage. It had been a big few years; I had sworn off love and was taking life slowly.
Despite all this, in late spring I found myself chatting online with a charming gardener-cum-physicist called Scott. A few weeks later, our first phone call lasted until the sun came up. I had been captivated by his boundless capacity for a chat but I didn’t hear from him for a few weeks after that. I wondered if it was because I’d asked him on more than one occasion to pipe down so I could contribute to the conversation, or if my cynical side had made an unflattering appearance in my wine haze.
But no love was lost, Scott reappeared a few weeks later and we recommenced our correspondence with vigour. On New Year’s Day 2023 I invited him over. It was another all-nighter of nonstop chatting and we talked at length about the dire state of my garden. A couple of weeks later he showed up completely unannounced, secateurs in hand, ready to tackle it.
What I’ve learned about Scott since is that his love language is very much “acts of service”. He is so happy to help anyone with their annoying tasks; he just loves being helpful. But of course my first encounter with his knight-in-shining-armour routine made me feel very special indeed.
Unfortunately, in my shame, I’d already paid someone to get my yard in shape (not that I admitted the outsourcing to him).
Impressed by the work I hadn’t done and hellbent on making himself useful, Scott decided he’d clean out the gutters. We got up on the roof and worked together – Scott doing the dirty work and me climbing up and down the ladder with the bucket. Sharing this mundane task was an unexpected bonding experience. We’d later talk about how seen and safe we felt in each other’s company that day. It’s gone down in the annals of our relationship as “Gutter Day”.
He moved in about six months later. I couldn’t believe myself, the dainty goth courting a gruff tradesman. I began working at a bar and we continued to livestream our thoughts via text while he was at home and I flirted with strangers and upsold wanky wines.
Just a few weeks later, in late June, I came home to find Scott sleeping. We’d always chat over a nightcap together before retiring, so this was unusual. But he’d been working hard so I didn’t worry too much until the following day.
When he was still drowsy the next evening, something felt off. I called our neighbour Michelle, an emergency nurse, who suggested we go to hospital. By the time we arrived Scott was struggling to string a sentence together and was whisked away within moments of being triaged.
When they wheeled him back post-MRI, he was soft, tired and looking so vulnerable.
Then the news came that Scott had a 1.1cm subarachnoid aneurysm on his brain that had been haemorrhaging for maybe 24 hours. I went as white as a sheet but it quickly became apparent that I was going to have to save my emotional breakdown for later, step up, contact his family (whom I’d never met) and make some extremely high-stakes decisions about his treatment path.
It was then and there, as I was confronted with the idea that I might lose him, that I knew I could not be without him. As I nervously signed the waiver, I felt pure devotion.
Scott’s surgery went well but he was placed in an induced coma for a few days. When he came to he had zero filter. That rawness could have revealed a darker side but instead I got confirmation that even at his most uncensored, Scott is kind and caring to the core. One of his most vivid hallucinations, which he told me about in detail, involved him spending the entire night helping the nurses catch up on their paperwork.
Scott came home two months later and, while his recovery wasn’t without its frustrations and challenges, the mere thought of being anywhere else didn’t cross my mind. Of course there were days I could have slept in the garden in a tent just to get a break from his incessant chatting but I knew I would never, ever leave him. He was my guy, no matter how many times I had to repeat myself, or listen to him repeat himself!
Two years on, Scott has pretty much fully recovered and is still the same gorgeous dork I fell in love with. We spend our days pottering in the garden, or at the stove, or by the fire on cold nights. The dark days seem like another life but they weren’t – they were just the beginning of ours.
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