They were thousands of miles from home in a hospital in India. Here’s how they met and fell in love

By Francesca Street, CNN

(CNN) — It was possibly the last place on earth Charlotte Phillips expected to find love.

In a small hospital in Delhi, India, her mother, Janet, was undergoing a last-resort treatment for her debilitating neurodegenerative disease. She was confined to a hospital bed and the two were thousands of miles away from their home in the south of England.

“I’d been single for a long time, and my mom was really sick, so I wasn’t really in a headspace to meet anyone at all,” Charlotte tells CNN Travel today.

The year was 2009, and Charlotte was in her late 20s. She juggled caring for her mother with a job she loved — editing movie previews.

Charlotte’s trailer work spanned genres, but she particularly enjoyed editing together the ad for “The Holiday.” The 2006 Nancy Meyers movie stars Cameron Diaz as an American movie trailer editor who swaps lives with an English journalist played by Kate Winslet and ends up falling in love with Jude Law’s character.

For Charlotte, it was surreal and exciting to see her profession on the big screen.

“It was definitely very meta,” says Charlotte. “Not a lot of people know the trailer industry even exists, so it was very fun to see a trailer editor as a lead character in a movie and it felt so special and serendipitous that I got to cut the trailer for it.”

But Charlotte’s life was about to take an even more meta — and serendipitous — turn.

‘Like in the movies’

Charlotte’s mother spent three months in the hospital in Delhi. When Charlotte arrived at her mother’s side, she learned that Janet had met and taken a shine to a young American patient named Amy, who was there undergoing treatment for an ongoing bacterial infection. Charlotte and Amy’s paths hadn’t crossed, but Charlotte’s mom kept hinting they should meet.

At this, Charlotte raised her eyebrows. She knew a matchmaking play when she saw it.

“I was, like, super gay,” says Charlotte. “Out. Very comfortable being gay. Aware of my sexuality.”

Janet wholeheartedly supported her daughter, and was invested in her quest to find love. Charlotte knew that being confined to her hospital bed would not stop her mother’s matchmaking mission. But she didn’t take the talk of Amy too seriously — she definitely wasn’t visiting her mother in a hospital in an attempt to find a girlfriend.

But then, one day near the end of Charlotte’s visit, it happened. She was walking down the hospital corridor into the physiotherapy room in the basement of the clinic. As she entered, she saw a young woman who turned toward her, smiling.

“I remember this really strong light on her, and just all I could really see was curly blonde hair and a huge smile,” Charlotte recalls. “I have a really strong memory of that.”

The woman stood up, still smiling, and introduced herself as Amy. “Of course,” Charlotte thought to herself.

Her mom was right.

“Instantly, it was like we’d known each other a long time,” says Charlotte. “We just clicked instantly.”

Even in that first conversation, Charlotte found herself thinking about the romantic films she spent her day editing into 90-second trailers — the glances, the lightning bolt moment, the chemistry.

“It was like in the movies, where you just feel a ‘click,’” says Charlotte. “You don’t think that really exists, but I guess it does. It was just a very instant connection.”

But even as Charlotte felt drawn to Amy, she was struck by how surreal the moment was.

“The circumstances of it, of meeting in this tiny hospital in India — I wasn’t in the head space for it at all. I didn’t think I had the head space for it. But then, I guess, you make space for things when they come to you, when they open up to you.”

‘You have to meet my daughter’

Amy B. Scher was also thousands of miles from home when she crossed paths with Charlotte in Delhi.

First, of course, she met Charlotte’s mother. They were both patients in the hospital. Amy had traveled to India to get a specialist treatment for her ongoing infection. Amy was alone and Charlotte’s mom Janet was warm and friendly.

“Her mom kept saying, ‘You have to meet my daughter. You have to meet my daughter. My daughter is coming,’” Amy tells CNN Travel today. “She was so excited.”

While Amy thought this enthusiasm was sweet, she didn’t take any of it especially seriously.

“I was just thinking as a 20-something-year-old, ‘Oh, I don’t want another friend.’ Every mom thinks you should be friends with their daughter, right?”

Plus, it seemed unlikely that a friendship with an English woman she briefly crossed paths with in a hospital in India would go anywhere. And Amy had other things on her mind — she was trying to rebuild her life back in the US after years of struggling through health issues and a recent relationship breakdown.

When Charlotte’s mother mentioned they should meet, the idea of romance didn’t remotely cross Amy’s mind. She’d never been in a relationship with a woman before, and figured she was straight. Plus, romance — period — was not top of her agenda at that point in her life.

“I was not looking or expecting to meet anybody, especially at a hospital in India,” she says today.

But when Amy and Charlotte eventually crossed paths that day in the physiotherapy room, Amy immediately heard Charlotte’s mother’s words echo in her mind.

“Oh yeah, I see why I had to meet her daughter,” she thought.

Amy felt instantly connected to Charlotte. In their brief conversation, it felt like they’d known each other for years. Without overthinking it, Amy spontaneously asked Charlotte if she wanted to get dinner together.

“I was getting injections daily,” explains Amy. “Outside of that and the required physio most days, patients were free to go out if they felt well enough.”

So, the two made a plan for the following night. Amy looked forward to it all day, and then they dined, talked and laughed for hours. The day after that, Amy invited Charlotte to go sightseeing with her in Delhi.

For Amy, this was out of character. Sure, she was outgoing and good at chatting to strangers, but it was rare she got close to a friend so quickly.

“I remember thinking, ‘Why do I want to keep asking her to go somewhere? I’ve been here a while. I’m perfectly comfortable going around Delhi by myself. Why do I keep wanting to hang out with her, or see her in the hospital?’”

In 2009, international cell phone data networks were less connected, so Amy and Charlotte couldn’t text each other between face-to-face meetups. Instead, they would email each other in the evenings, after their hangouts and Amy’s treatment.

“I remember I would send her an email, and then just keep refreshing,” recalls Amy. “Those were the days where you had to refresh 100 times to see if your email was coming, waiting for her to reply.”

When she didn’t hear from Charlotte right away, Amy felt crushed. She surprised herself by the intensity of her feelings.

“Why am I so eager to get her reply?” she thought to herself.

There were a few nights of soul searching before Amy had the realization.

“It took me a few days, because I had never had any interest in women before,” she says.

Then, one evening, as she hit refresh on her laptop for the umpteenth time that night, Amy had a moment of sudden clarity.

“I remember looking up and being like, ‘Oh my God, of course. Of course.’”

She liked Charlotte, Amy realized — as more than a friend.

Growing closer

Charlotte also had feelings for Amy. She’d been crushing hard since the day she’d seen her in the hospital, when Amy appeared to be glowing.

But neither woman voiced their feelings aloud.

“I remember we were sitting on the steps of the hospital, and she was showing me something on her phone, and I remember wanting to kiss her. I remember having that feeling, but I wouldn’t have said anything,” says Amy.

At that moment, Amy’s internal monologue was abuzz with questions.

“Maybe she isn’t into me? If I were to do something, what would it be? Maybe she’ll do something? Maybe someone should say something? But no one’s saying anything.”

As for Charlotte, she knew Amy had never dated a woman before. She could sense something between them, but she was wary of misinterpreting their chemistry.

“You’re gay, and you’re flirting with someone who is straight. It’s unclear what’s happening, and if you’re feeling what you’re really feeling and sensing from the other person, or if you’re just a friend and you don’t want to cross the boundary,” she says.

So neither of them spoke their feelings for one another aloud. But they talked about almost everything else. Charlotte confided in Amy about her fears for her mother’s health. Amy talked about her health struggles. She also told Charlotte about her own parents back in the US, including her dad, who’d lived with depression throughout his life.

Amy and Charlotte felt comfortable opening up to each other, and felt comforted, in turn, by each other’s support.

And the conversations weren’t always heavy. Their repartee was characterized by lots of jokes, light ribbing and humor. Everything felt lighter when they were in each other’s company.

“I think it was also like, ‘This is a really fun, light, amazing thing that’s happening in our lives at the time of all this darkness,’” recalls Charlotte.

Amy felt that being so far away from home was helping cement their connection.

“One of the things that’s so incredible about travel and so incredible about being pushed out of your comfort zone — whether it’s emotional, spiritual, physical, environmental — is really crazy, amazing miracles can happen,” she says today.

Still, as Amy’s treatment came to an end and she prepared to head home to the US, she figured this miracle might be a temporary one — a flash in the pan.

“Maybe it’s just going to be this amazing, four- or five-day experience in Delhi,” she recalls thinking.

Amy still hadn’t voiced her feelings to Charlotte. But right before Amy left, she left Charlotte a surprise gift behind the hospital reception. It was unexpected: a Sprite bottle label and cap, packaged into an envelope with Charlotte’s name written on the front.

When Charlotte opened it, she couldn’t stop smiling.

“Amy used to drink Sprite, and I used to drink Diet Coke a lot, and we had a little rivalry, we had a thing about it,” explains Charlotte.

Later, Charlotte gave Amy her Coke bottle label and cap in turn, to take home to the US. The exchange was meaningful to them. Both women knew it had more layers than on first glance.

“So that was how we told each other, I guess, through bottle caps,” says Amy, laughing. “Like we were in the ‘90s.”

Charlotte says she’ll never forget “the feeling of opening the envelope and seeing it and knowing that it meant she felt the same way I did — that we’d made a really deep connection in four days.”

But then Amy left for the US, with Charlotte’s bottle label in her wallet, but no actual feelings spoken aloud.

On her way back to her home in Los Angeles, Amy had a 10-hour layover in Singapore. She didn’t care. It was an excuse to open her laptop and catch up with Charlotte.

“I remember I just sat and emailed with her the entire 10 hours,” says Amy.

“And then we got back and I remember we would be on the phone all day on Skype,” adds Charlotte, recalling how the video platform was the only way to call overseas in that early social media era. “We stayed in touch continuously.”

Charlotte and Amy told each other they missed each other, but they still didn’t voice their feelings. Nevertheless, their actions indicated the depth of their connection.

“There were just these little, incremental hints as we were talking,” says Charlotte. “Awkward silences where we’d be smiling. Or we’d send songs to each other, and the songs would be romantic.”

Charlotte thought it was the right thing for Amy to be the one to decide when — or even if — to voice the feelings aloud, given Amy was ostensibly straight.

“I was excited to meet someone that I felt like I had a genuine connection with, but you don’t want to be an experiment in someone’s life,” Charlotte says.

And then, one day, Amy suggested they should try and meet in person again.

When Charlotte heard the words “meet up” come out of Amy’s mouth on the grainy Skype video call, she couldn’t quite believe it.

“It’s really happening,” she thought.

‘Very rom-com’

When Amy proposed she and Charlotte should reunite, she was in LA and Charlotte was back in the UK. Some 5,000 miles stretched between them.

“We looked on a map, and halfway between London and LA was Boston,” says Amy. “So we decided to meet in Boston, which was completely nerve-wracking. I don’t know how I even ate for the days before, or did anything.”

Charlotte and Amy booked a hotel in Boston, purposely getting two rooms. It was still unclear what the visit was, or what it meant, or what it would be like when they saw one another again.

“But then, as soon as we met at the airport and we got in the cab, we’re holding hands,” recalls Charlotte.

When they reached the hotel, they kissed for the first time. It felt, says Amy, “like everything was just as it was supposed to be.”

She was overcome by joy: “Feeling just so happy that we had finally gotten to that moment, that we were brave enough to see where the idea of us would lead, and that we were right about us, and each other, the whole time.”

“Then I called downstairs, and it was like, ‘Is there any way I could cancel my room, the second room?’” she recalls, laughing. “And they were like, ‘Sure.’ We probably aren’t the only ones who have done that.”

“And then we were meant to stay for five days. We stayed for eight. We extended,” adds Charlotte. “We had the best time.”

The days passed in a blur of long walks, holding hands by the river, evenings out. Then suddenly Amy and Charlotte were saying goodbye at the airport, both in floods of tears.

They both knew they wanted to try and make a relationship work. But the long distance seemed daunting. Charlotte’s mother was getting progressively sicker, so she couldn’t be away from her for long. And Amy was juggling recovering from her own health issues with supporting her father through his depression.

Still, a new pattern emerged: “We just went back and forth as often as we could, for as long as we could. And then we would just talk on the phone and Skype or whatever it was, every day,” says Charlotte.

Charlotte’s job confined her largely to the UK, but it afforded her a decent number of vacation days, so she visited California whenever she could. Meanwhile Amy was working in marketing in a freelance capacity and had a bit more flexibility, so sometimes she would visit London and stay as long as the tourist visa allowed.

They spent time with each other’s loved ones, got to know each other’s friends and family.

Naturally, Janet was delighted that her daughter had fallen for the American girl from the Delhi hospital.

“When I told her, ‘This is officially a thing.’ She was like, ‘Oh no, I knew,’” recalls Charlotte. “She loved it. She called herself a matchmaker.”

As for Amy, she was a little nervous about introducing her parents to Charlotte. While she had no reason to question that they’d be supportive — and she knew they’d love Charlotte — she figured they might also be a bit surprised, given she’d spent all of her 20s dating men.

“I told my dad first,” Amy recalls. “He was like, ‘Yeah, so what’s the big deal?’ It was so nice.”

It’s a moment Amy will never forget. She felt a weight lift off her shoulders, reminded of her parents’ unconditional love.

“They were so welcoming and lovely,” says Charlotte of Amy’s family.

But no matter how much they enjoyed their visits to one another’s home countries, or how long Amy could swing staying in the UK, there was always another airport goodbye on the horizon.

Often, as she traveled home after another goodbye to Amy at the airport, Charlotte found herself thinking again about the rom-com trailers she’d worked on over the years — the airport reunions and farewells, the tearful declarations of love.

“The irony of meeting the love of my life while traveling was not lost on me,” says Charlotte.

Amy was struck by the parallel, too.

“Charlotte’s worked on a lot of Nancy Meyers films, and worked on ‘The Holiday’ in which a film trailer editor ends up going to LA, this whole thing … And we were like ‘That’s what ended up happening to us.’ Because I lived in California and she lived in London. We were living the Nancy Meyers script,” she says.

“Very rom-com,” says Charlotte.

“Very rom-com,” agrees Amy.

But the two hadn’t quite reached the rom-com happy ending yet. They both hoped — maybe even knew — it was waiting. But they weren’t yet sure how they’d get there.

Crushing family losses

While Charlotte and Amy were falling in love on successive trips across the Atlantic, Charlotte’s mother’s illness was worsening.

In 2010, Janet passed away. Charlotte was left heartbroken. Amy was also devastated. She knew how much Charlotte’s mom meant to her, and she credited Janet with getting them together in the first place.

As Amy supported Charlotte through the early throes of grief — “She was everything I needed,” says Charlotte of Amy during this time — the two felt the yearning for a life together, in the same country, even more acutely. From the outset, Charlotte moving to the US had seemed the obvious choice. The hub of the filmmaking world is LA, after all. Her mother had tied her to the UK, and in the wake of her passing there was nothing really stopping Charlotte moving across the Atlantic.

Charlotte and Amy also talked about marriage. They knew it was something they wanted, but it wasn’t a path to ensuring Charlotte could stay in the US. In 2010, same-sex marriage was not yet federally legal in the US.

But Charlotte’s trailer pedigree stood her in good stead in LA, and she was quickly hired at a trailer house there. She got a visa to work in the US and moved into Amy’s home in Los Angeles.

“It was weird, because we’d been together, like, two years, but we hadn’t lived together,” recalls Charlotte. “But we don’t really fight, and I think we’ve always known we have something really special, and not to fall into that trap of getting into stupid fights. There were a few growing pains, but that was short lived, because we knew, big picture, how special this was.”

Delighted to finally be together, living in the same place, Amy and Charlotte started planning a wedding in Massachusetts — partly because this was one of only a handful of US states that had legalized same-sex marriage at the time, and partly because they’d first declared their feelings for each other in Boston. It seemed apt.

Amy’s father was going to officiate the wedding. The couple couldn’t wait. But in the lead up to the wedding, Amy’s father took his own life.

It was crushing, and Amy’s grief was all-consuming. But Charlotte was there for her, wholeheartedly and unreservedly.

“I broke down so many times. I’d often end up on the living room floor, looking at pictures of him, flipping through his old books, or listening to his records — and become hysterical crying. And she’d just sit down and hold me and say “I know, I know,” says Amy.

Amy knew, as Charlotte supported her through the grief, that she wanted to go ahead with the wedding, despite her recent loss. Her brother offered to officiate the ceremony in their father’s place.

“And so we got married,” says Charlotte.

“We were two parents down, but we made it,” says Amy. “And we had the most amazing wedding, even despite all of that.”

Amy says the pervading feeling on the wedding day was, “We did it.” She was emotional throughout the day, but every time she looked at Charlotte she thought: “How did we end up with this fairytale? This is crazy.”

The day was bittersweet, as living with grief always is. But today Amy and Charlotte suggest navigating such loss in the early years of the relationship taught them a lot about love, support and one another.

“Relationships are a make-or-break when times are tough,” says Charlotte. “You see how the other person reacts to stuff they’re going through, or stuff that you’re going through, and it’s a really good indication of how strong their relationship is, or not… We saw early on that we were a really good match for each other in tough times.”

And as they commemorated Amy’s father and Charlotte’s mother, they still reveled in being newlyweds, at the new chapter of their lives in California, together. The levity and fun that defined their relationship from the beginning was still present. They wanted to be happy, too — for their parents’ sake as well as their own.

“We still managed to have this amazing love story, and have so much fun, even though all of this was happening,” says Amy. “There was also a lot of joy at that time.”

‘The best could happen’

Amy and Charlotte got married on October 1, 2011. A few years ago, they renewed their vows on a trip to Paris and Amy’s 80-year-old mother officiated the ceremony. The couple recently celebrated their 14-year-wedding anniversary.

“Not to brag, but all of our friends and family are like, ‘My god, you guys are still just as in love as you were then,’” says Amy, laughing. “We are genuinely happy. We say all the time, we’re the luckiest.”

The couple now live in New York City, where they moved from LA a few years back. Charlotte’s still in the movie trailer world, while Amy is a published author of multiple works of non-fiction.

The two enjoy watching each other succeed in their careers. They still spend a lot of time laughing and joking together. They enjoy watching rom-coms on their couch — including “The Holiday” — and reflecting on the parallels to their own love story.

Still, the couple note that in lots of ways, they’re quite different from one another. They have different interests, enjoy different ways of passing their time.

“I like video games…” begins Charlotte.

“And I do not,” intercuts Amy.

“And there’s a ton of stuff like that,” says Charlotte.

Their differences, the couple suggests, are complementary. And they’ve always been aligned on the importance of their love for each other.

“I think our values are in common,” says Charlotte. “It’s just really stuck with us, how lucky we are to have found each other, and how amazing we know our relationship is, and we don’t take it for granted. We’re very aware of it. We want to just keep it as special. And it’s not like a lot of work, it’s easy.”

When they talk about their love story today, the couple can’t stop beaming, even some 16 years since their paths crossed in the Delhi hospital.

“Our love story is so amazing. I just feel so lucky,” says Charlotte. “I just think it’s unbelievable that it happened. Still unbelievable. Amy is my most favorite person in the world… Just being like, ‘Oh my god, I got to marry like the best person I ever met, this is insane.’ I’m so grateful for that.”

Today, Charlotte and Amy still celebrate Charlotte’s mother Janet as the perfect matchmaker in the most unlikely of places. They still reflect back on the tougher moments of their life that brought them to where they are today. They still carry those Sprite and Coke labels in their wallets.

“If you can be in love in a hospital, this is really real,” says Amy. “She’s still my favorite person to do anything, anywhere in the world with.”

The couple also suggest their story illustrates the importance of embracing the unknown, and embracing happiness when it comes your way, even if it’s unexpected, or seems unlikely.

“It’s so important not to overanalyze or overthink things… I could have stopped myself, you could have stopped yourself,” says Amy to Charlotte today.

“There’s a million points in which we could have talked ourselves out of it. And I think part of discovery in life and ending up where you’re supposed to is to talk yourself into the best could happen. We always leaned into the idea that we don’t know everything and the best could happen.

I think that is really important with love and with travel… trusting your gut and not trusting your fear. Your fear is definitely a liar. It’s just trying to just see what happens. And I’m so glad that we saw what happened.”

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