The Retrievals · Serial Productions & The New York Times

S02 Episode 1: The Case

July 10, 2025·48 min·2 clips

Clara says the C-section pain felt like "my vagina was just being shredded" and then begged them to stop.

The hour begins in a bird's-eye view over a shoreline city at dawn. It moves across the grid, over the elevated tracks and wide highways, and settles into a western suburb. A woman in her late 30s moves softly past the bedrooms where her children sleep and steps out to meet the morning. The windchill is 20 below. She hurries to a minivan. The streets are frosted with salt. The moon is still shining. From there the story narrows into the labor room. Heather finds the epidural space by feel. There is a ligament she is looking for, and it does not always feel the same. Sometimes it feels rubbery. Sometimes it feels crackly or poppy. Sometimes it gives only the faintest sense that something has changed. A thin plastic catheter is threaded through the large hollow needle until it sits in the epidural space. The needle comes off, and the tube stays in Clara's back. Anesthetic drugs run through it and bathe the nerves near her spinal cord. Clara is relieved when the procedure ends. It is strange and unnerving, but it is over. Around dinner time, the trouble starts. She feels pain in her vagina rather than contractions. It feels as if she is being shredded. It feels like a steel-toed boot kicking around inside her. Heather tops her up with more drugs, and that helps right away. A couple of hours later, at 11 o'clock, Heather signs out to the anesthesiologist on the overnight shift and fills him in on Clara. She says she did not anticipate any problems when she left, and in hindsight thinks she would have stayed if she had known otherwise. The story keeps the clinical language clear, then translates it for the listener without losing the tension. It stays close to the body and close to the handoff, letting the ordinary mechanics of sign-out carry the weight of what might have been missed.

As heard by us

A cold, careful account of pain, procedure, and the uneasy aftermath of an epidural.

The Retrievals opens on a winter dawn sweep and settles quickly into the body-level reality of an epidural that does not go cleanly. The pacing is measured and purposeful, moving from procedure to testimony to the overnight handoff without leaning on extra drama.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Press play if you want a patient story that turns into a c-section pain reckoning.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from The Retrievals