⚡ tora fenris grew up hearing stories about her viking ancestors from her father, who heard them from his father. he was the type of person who often dreamed of being somewhere, somewhen, someone else. in his mind, he was a viking warrior king who had been cursed, trapped in the body of a skinny mechanic, stuck in shanty town ohio, forced to live out his days knowing he could have been more. although his daughter idolized him like he was already that viking king, that wasn't enough for him. he left her with her grandmother when she was nine to run with a motorcycle gang, hoping that life would be more fulfilling.

⚡ when she hit her rebellious teens, tora started looking for a new man to idolize, constantly changing who she was to fit herself into their world in hopes that it would be better than the one her father left her in. for the rest of her life, she would let men define her. one of those men got her pregnant, promised to marry her, and then got himself blown up while looking for a fight overseas. jo ann fenris would grow up hearing stories about him that got bigger and grander and more dramatic with each telling. from an early age, she knew it was bullshit. her dad was a nobody and her mother was a dangerous dreamer. she promised herself would never be either of those.

⚡ jo ann did iherit her mother's rebellious streak, however. except that hers was less an-centeric and more anarchic in nature. it came shortly after her first stint in foster care. when her mother was arrested for domestic disturbance alongside her winner of a boyfriend, jo ann got stuck in a temporary home with too many kids, run by a lady who forced them to work for their meal tickets. literally. the anger that had been building for her mother for years bubbled over during her stay there. jo ann was sent to juvenile detention for fighting back, punished for trying to right an injustice. after that experience, she was firmly anti-establishment, anti-men, anti-big business, and just plain anti. at first, she just liked to stir shit up to piss off her mother. but the older she got, the more times she got placed with a random family when her mother failed to find her happy ever after, the more jo ann realized that shit needed stirred. society had created many women like her mother and it was a mess. more than half the population was still stuck in the old world puritan way of thinking. the whole system was broken.

⚡ despite her issues with authority, she did surprisingly well in school. jo ann attributed a good portion of that to a few very dedicated teachers, one amazing foster family and a strong desire to get out and as far away from ohio as she could. that meant college on the west coast. uc berkeley offered her a lot of options to make a better future her own way. she found that she really dug medical sciences and had a passion for helping kids like herself out of bad situations. she toyed with psychology and thought, briefly, about becoming a social worker. on the recommendation of a favorite professor, however, she chose to transfer to ucsf to finish out her schooling, where she turned her focus toward general pediatrics. for years, she dedicated herself entirely to her work and it helped her climb the ladder a little faster. while she knew how to have a good time, her social life was never as crazy as most twenty-somethings. she liked the grueling hours more than going out to a bar with friends until 3am. she already did the rebel thing, she was ready to grow up now.

⚡ as a person whose taste was always changing, as someone who liked adventure and trying new things, and as a biological woman who didn't subscribe to societal expectations of her gender, jo ann had plenty of lovers. early on. she knew she felt attracted to people on a different level than most. she didn't have a type. didn't care what job they had or what race or gender, if any, someone was. jo ann liked people for who they were, inside, not how they presented outside. if she felt a connection to someone, she was always ready to explore how deep that went. while she loved many, and often, she was never in love with any of them. she'd never found the type of love disney promised her as a kid, the type of love her mother dedicated her whole life to finding no matter what the cost. maybe that was her fault, for always keeping people at arms length and letting work be her priority, but she didn't care. love wasn't for her. until she met ruby byrd.

⚡ ruby worked in the market as a checkout girl, on the graveyard shift, down the street from the hospital. they spent a lot of time together, in short increments, when the rest of the world was asleep. ruby was always smiling, despite not being very optimistic. she always had whip-smart jokes. and she called jo on her bullshit in a way that didn't make jo feel attacked. they didn't like a lot of the same things, but that was okay. they both liked the challenge the other presented. so they bonded over their dysfunctional families and their wild adventures as teenagers instead. it was such a slow fall for jo ann that she didn't even realize she loved ruby and her annoyingly permanent smile until she was all the way fucked. they moved in together after a short amount of time, but found that jo's small apartment seemed to bring out their worst qualities. after purchasing a cute little two story house HERE, things were good for a while. ruby made them a garden. then started crafting homemade products from the harvests to sell on the side. jo ann started scaling back on hours to spend more time at home. they talked about opening their own businesses, a small apothecary for ruby and a peds practice for jo. eventually, however, their cute little home started to bring out the worst in them too.

⚡ turns out, jo ann and ruby had one thing in common: they liked to fight. ruby had a quick temper and jo had a tendency to let things fester until they exploded out all at once. they loved each other, fiercely, but that only seemed to fuel the fires both ways. they realized they had to both change if they wanted to make things work. so ruby proposed, despite knowing jo ann didn't want to ever be married. and jo ann asked ruby to have a kid, even though ruby didn't want children. they compromised. jo ann would agree to a small ceremony if ruby would agree to in vitro. it seemed like a new beginning. but it was actually the ending chapter. jo ann found out that she couldn't have kids, that her genetics were just as corrupt as her mother's had been. tough choices had to be made that would drive a wedge firmly between them.

⚡ the wedding was put off so jo ann could have mastectomy surgery, in 2017, to greatly decrease her chance of inheriting her mother's breast cancer. ruby felt pressured to carry their first baby and use what few eggs they could harvest from jo ann beforehand, only voicing her frustration after the pregnancy had taken. she blamed jo for instilling in her the bad habit of bottling things up. for those first few months of pregnancy, the two rarely spoke except for airing grievances. in the end, they realized they were both too fucked up to be what the other needed, blaming their biggest faults on their parents. ruby's southern baptist, old-world thinking mother had always struggled to accept her biracial baby, finally cutting ties when ruby told her about her wedding to jo ann. jo's own mother had passed away from cancer, leaving her a future living in fear of disease as her only inheritance. they could be friends, they were good at that, but they couldn't be partners anymore. ruby told jo that she planned to close her shop and move back to louisiana and start over once the baby was born. jo ann didn't fight her this time. she just said, "ok." not wanting to involve their friends in their drama, they agreed to keep faking it until then.

⚡ ruby was seven months pregnant when tragedy struck. jo ann was going to drop ruby off at her apothecary before heading to work herself when they came upon a van on the side of the road, doors wide open, and a child laying unconscious in the grass beside it. against ruby's wishes, jo pulled over and hopped out to help the panicked mother kneeling beside the kid. her dr instincts took over and she did what she did at work: honed in on the child in need and forgot about everything else. she didn't realize she hadn't pulled all the way off the road. didn't notice that ruby stayed in the car. forgot they were on a street with a higher speed limit. in the end, she saved the kid, but at the cost of her own. as jo returned to her car, a semi-truck flew by, nicking it at just the right angle to sent it spinning. it clipped her before crashing head-on into a neighboring house. jo wouldn't know until the next day, when she woke up in the hospital, that both ruby and the baby had died on impact.

⚡ recovery was slow for jo ann. despite knowing that she and ruby were going their separate ways, eventually, she was not prepared to lose her in such a permanent way. it was a different sort of mourning than when her mother died years before. harder to process. even more so with all the physical therapy and counseling she was forced to endure this time. once she was healed, a part of her blamed her dedication to the job for what had happened. she didn't want to go back to her old hospital or her old life, but wasn't sure what to do next. in one of her support groups, she met a woman with whom she became fast friends. after learning that jo ann had worked in the medical field, and that she needed a different way to process her own mortality, the woman offered a job at her small, unique company. they dealt with death in a new-age way, by helping those in need of end-of-life care through the dying process. they even assisted the families, helping them accept beforehand and move on afterward. while jo ann has yet to complete the grieving process for herself, she finds comfort in guiding others as a death doula. for now.