Disclaimer: Doc Martin is the property of Buffalo Pictures. I own nothing except my overactive imagination.

Beauty and the Beast – Happy Ever After?

Chapter 1

Louisa was right. I am a difficult man. And I have been an idiot. For years and years.

Ever since my blood phobia kicked in, my goal, my ambition, my driving force has been to become a surgeon again. I've always believed that that was who I was, that was who I was meant to be. Anything else was second best, was being a failure, was pathetic and laughable. My father made no secret of his disdain at my lowly village GP role when he and my mother visited. And of course Edith had barely been able to hide her contempt when we had crossed paths, and it had reinforced my drive to get myself sorted out for once and for all.

And I had. I'd finally got a grip on things, got my blasted phobia under control at long last. London beckoned, and I couldn't wait to get back to my old life again, and let Louisa get on with her life, telling myself that she would be so much better off without me, however much I loved her.

And then our baby was born, a fine healthy boy. I very nearly missed the birth, but through some sort of divine intervention I was present. And at that moment everything changed. Louisa needed me. My son needed me. How could I ever have imagined that I could just walk away? Now I understood why my Auntie Joan had been so horrified by my seeming disinterest and reluctance to make any arrangements to see my child. Truth of the matter was that I simply hadn't been able to imagine how it would feel to be a father. It was not a role I had ever pictured myself in or believed that I would be any good at, but now I found that I had to be part of my son's and Louisa's life in some way. But I felt torn because my goal, my dream of being a surgeon back in London was now within my grasp.

The answer seemed obvious to me.

"I wonder if you should come to London, now that there's a baby," I tentatively suggested to Louisa, as I helped to strap her and the baby in my car. I'd offered to take them home from the hospital rather than head off to continue my journey to London. It was still very early days in our reconciliation, and I didn't dare to make any assumptions as to where our relationship was heading.

Louisa looked at me strangely.

"There was always going to be a baby, wasn't there Martin? I mean, I was pregnant," she pointed out.

"Yes, but it's different now that he's here," I tried to explain. I had managed to shut out the reality all the time that he'd been just a bump, but now…

"Is it Martin?" she asked me doubtfully, certainly not jumping at my suggestion that she come to London with me. I realised that it was going to be a slow road working things out between us, if indeed it was possible. But at least we both seemed to want to, and that was at least a start.

xXx

Once we got back to Louisa's cottage, it became very clear to me that she was woefully unprepared for the baby's arrival. He'd only been two weeks early after all. That's what came of her working full time right up until the last minute, I inwardly ranted. I'd always hated the idea of her working so many hours, but of course my views had counted for nothing, and I knew that I had to tread very carefully if we weren't going to immediately lock horns again. I had tried to broach the subject in the car on the way back, tried to say that no one is irreplaceable and that the school could manage perfectly well without her, but she had replied by giving me one of her infamous black looks.

So, for now I decided to simply give as much practical help as I could, and went upstairs to assemble the baby's cot while Louisa started breast feeding the baby, something that I was clearly not equipped to help or deal with.

Once we had managed to get rid of all the stupid nosy neighbours that inevitably turned up on her doorstep, I broached the subject that was playing on my mind.

"Can I stay? Just for tonight? It's a long journey and it's getting late," I asked.

Somehow, I just couldn't bear to leave Louisa, and I couldn't bear to leave the baby either. Then I remembered that her cottage only had one bedroom, so I hastily added, "If there's room that is, of course."

Louisa looked at me for a moment, as if weighing things up.

Then she handed me the baby as she said,

"I'm sure we can manage."

That night I offered to sleep on the settee downstairs.

"Don't be silly Martin. We've shared a bed before, so I'm sure we can manage again. And I think a man your size would find my sofa rather small and uncomfy," she insisted.

In all honesty, I hadn't relished the thought of sleeping on that tiny sofa, so I didn't argue any further. And although it was rather awkward as we both settled down in her double bed, I was glad to be close to both her and the baby, even if he did keep us awake by crying for most of the night.

Of course I ended up staying in Portwenn for much longer than I originally intended due to circumstances beyond my control. It did actually help that I was with Louisa and the baby when Joe Penhale broke the news about dear Auntie Joan. I looked down at the baby and thought of his life just beginning as hers had ended, and it made me very sad to think that she never got to see the baby that she had been so thrilled about.

xXx

Louisa and I ended up living together at the surgery for a few weeks.

Why on earth Chris Parsons and the rest of the interview panel had hired that totally incompetent Doctor Dibbs was beyond me. He tried to justify the board's decision, wittering on about how they'd felt that a sympathetic female doctor was just what a small village like Portwenn needed, but when I considered what a hard time I'd had at my initial interview, I failed to comprehend how they could possible have deemed her to be a suitable replacement.

It was only because Louisa declined my offer to examine her, after I discovered that she was in pain, that I insisted on taking her for an immediate consultation with Doctor Diane Dibbs. Of course I understood that female patients often preferred a lady doctor to carry out intimate examinations, but I felt extremely frustrated at being excluded, and found my self pacing outside the door, while I had to listen to that twerp of a husband of the new doctor. After a few minutes of waiting, I decided that I had given them enough time, so I knocked, as was normal protocol, then entered the room. I wanted to be sure that this Doctor Dibbs had carried out a thorough and competent examination, but Louisa immediately told me to leave again, which I reluctantly did. I was concerned that apart from the immediate discomfort that Louisa was experiencing, she could suffer long term consequences if anything was missed. It was imperative that any tears or problems were treated without delay. I was very cross that I had only found out that Louisa was in some discomfort when I overheard her talking to the woman in the village store. Why on earth hadn't she seen fit to confide in me, I was a doctor for heaven's sake? And why had she looked daggers at me in the shop when I had clarified for her that the perineum was the area between the anus and the vagina? I heard someone mutter something about 'preserve the romance', but this was purely a medical matter as far as I was concerned.

I was relieved when Doctor Dibbs declared that she had found no problems at all. As we left, Louisa apologised to her for making a fuss, which I felt was completely unnecessary as it had only taken a few minutes of her time, even if the surgery wasn't officially open until the next day.

When the full extent of Doctor Dibbs incompetence came to light, I just hoped that she had not missed anything with Louisa, but as she still refused to let me examine her, I had no option but to take her word that the problem had resolved itself.

With my replacement now also needing to be replaced, I agreed to stay on as acting GP until a proper doctor could be found. It suited me as I had all the funeral arrangements to organise. Imperial were bloody good about it all, so when they said that my stand in would only agree to come back from South Africa for a minimum of two months, meaning that I would have to stay on in Cornwall for that time, I felt I had no option but to agree. Trouble was, it meant delaying my plans to return to London. But it did give me more time with Louisa and the baby, to persuade her to come with me.

Eventually, after I'd asked her several more times, Louisa woke me early one morning to tell me that she had finally made up her mind. She had decided that she and the baby would come to London with me. Once I'd woken up enough to take in what she was saying, I was very pleased indeed, because as far as I was concerned, it meant that I was getting the best of all worlds. Louisa, my son, and the job that I'd coveted for so long.

But I was ignoring something very important. Something that Aunt Ruth pointed out to me in her own inimitable way when I joined her for breakfast one morning. I'd taken the baby with me to allow Louisa to have a lie in, because clearly she was exhausted, and needed to rest. Luckily, when she'd brought up the subject of colour schemes for the flat in London, I'd been able to reassure her that it was all taken care of, I'd already arranged for all the decorating to be completed, so that was one less thing for her to worry about.

What Ruth pointed out to me was that whilst I might relish the idea of living and working in London, Louisa most likely didn't. I'd conveniently pushed to the back of my mind the fact that she had told me before that she didn't like London.

Well, we were both going to have to adapt, I told myself. Living with Louisa and the baby was taking some getting used to for me. I was used to having a place for everything, and everything in its place. Now, the house looked like a bomb had hit it most of the time. How one small baby could cause so much chaos was beyond me. And Louisa seemed to have a knack of leaving things all over the place, and I was constantly having to tidy up after her. She also seemed rather clumsy and absent minded, and several of my things had got damaged or broken. But I realised that this was not really her fault as it was no doubt caused by her fluctuating hormone levels, so I didn't complain or make a fuss.

In any case, none of that really mattered to me, because I found that I really liked just having her around. I loved watching her with our son, seeing her showering him with love and affection. Against my advice, she refused to leave him to cry, and part of me was secretly glad. At least our son would never feel unloved or neglected. She really did make a lovely mother, just as I had always thought she would.

I did my best to look after them both. I cooked nutritious meals, gave helpful medical advice, and tried to take care of as many of the practicalities as I could, because it seemed to me that Louisa was disorganised and not coping all that well. She didn't seem to have given any real consideration as to how she was going to cope when she went back to work full time. She had not made any provisional child care arrangements, which seemed to me to be leaving things very much to chance, and to the last moment.

Initially, she insisted on standing in as my receptionist at the surgery, when really she should have been concentrating on just looking after the baby and resting and recuperating after the birth, but of course she stubbornly refused to listen, even when she actually fell asleep on the job. However, in the end she bowed out and temporarily plonked Morwenna, an inexperienced young village girl, in the job before I'd had a chance to explain that I would be staying on for a bit longer than the initially agreed two weeks. Luckily, by chance, Morwenna seemed reasonably adequate once she settled in.

As time went by, as far as I was concerned, Louisa and I seemed to be jogging along together well enough, even if she did have some rather annoying habits, such as squeezing the toothpaste from the middle rather than the end. Looking after a baby was incredibly hard work, very demanding, but surprisingly satisfying, I discovered. I worked out the most hygienic and efficient way to change his nappy. I learnt how to 'jiggle him up and down' adequately, but I really couldn't get to grips with dancing with him, as Louisa ordered me to one time in desperation when he wouldn't settle. But I didn't mind taking him out for an early morning drive to get him to sleep, even if some stupid farmer soon put paid to those plans when they sounded their ridiculously loud car horn as they drove past us while we were quietly parked up in a lay by up on the moor.

I was very surprised when Louisa's mother turned up out of the blue, and even Louisa seemed somewhat taken aback. But it turned out that she had written to her when she had first discovered that she was pregnant. I had to admit that I was rather hurt that she had chosen to write to her estranged mother, whom she had not seen for years, but not to me, the father of her child.

I soon discovered that I could not stand Eleanor. Cigarette smoking, alcohol imbibing, thoughtless, selfish, arrogant, interfering, and irresponsible were just a few of her apparent qualities. I was horrified that Louisa seemed to consider her a suitable person to mind the baby, but I supposed that as she didn't have anyone else, she maybe hoped that being a grandmother would bring out her mother's more responsible side. It didn't.

But as Eleanor always seemed to be able to bring Louisa around to her point of view, all I could do was try to closely monitor her and make sure that she was not acting too irresponsibly as far as the care of our son was concerned. It was no easy task, especially when I discovered just how she had managed to get him to sleep for her when we had had no luck with him. Putting alcoholic drops in his feed, effectively drugging him, was not my idea of responsible nurturing, and I was furious with her, as was Louisa initially. But as usual, somehow Eleanor managed to convince her daughter that it was all a fuss over nothing, that she had meant no harm, and so Louisa still used her as the primary child minder, an arrangement that I was not comfortable with at all. So I continued to keep as close an eye on her as I could.

We struggled for weeks to agree on a name for our baby, and in the end, to save any more arguments, I decided that I could live with Louisa's choice of James Henry, so I went ahead and filled in the forms to save Louisa the bother. At first she didn't like that one bit – until she realised that I had acquiesced to her name choice. Then her face softened, and she glowed with happiness as she cooed at our son.

And I found that it gave me great pleasure when I managed to make her happy like that, and I really wanted to try to do that more often. The difficulty for me was trying to work out just what it was that would make her happy, because so many times I just couldn't make sense of her behaviour.

Such as asking me about her appearance, asking if she looked alright, when clearly if she just looked in the mirror it would be very apparent that she looked perfectly acceptable, as she always did. Or taking offence when I pointed out that chocolate digestive biscuits contained little nutritious value, and would not help her to shift the last few pounds of her baby weight. I'd tried to help her resist temptation by putting them out of sight, but she did not seem to appreciate this help at all.

I thought that I was doing the right thing when I arranged the date for our child to be christened. Clearly it had to be before we left for London, and there was only one date that the vicar had that worked, so after checking Louisa's diary and finding that she had nothing planned for that date, I went ahead booked it. Shortly afterwards, I bumped into Aunt Ruth, and so had told her to keep the date free, thinking that maybe she could be a Godparent.

Unfortunately, Louisa found out about it before I had a chance to tell her myself, and instead of being grateful that I had taken responsibility for arranging things, she hit the roof, told me I should have asked her first, made a huge fuss over it, and then childishly refused to eat the meal that I had prepared for us because she said that I hadn't asked her if it was what she wanted.

And then she dropped her bombshell. She said that she couldn't carry on any more, and so she upped and left, went to stay with her mother back at the cottage, taking James with her, and leaving me to an empty house once more.

I didn't argue with her, or try and stop her, because at the back of my mind, I knew that it was selfish of me to want her to come to London with me. Expecting her to give up her job, give up her home, to come and live with me in London, knowing that she really didn't care for the place. No doubt she was worried that if things didn't work out between us, she'd be back to square one, having to start over yet again. And Louisa was so fiercely independent, that she simply hated and rejected out of hand the idea of me supporting her while she stayed at home looking after the baby, which I would have been more than happy to do and could easily afford.

All I wanted was for our son to have the best possible care, and as far as I was concerned, that was him being looked after by his mother, by Louisa. I wanted her to look after him, no one else. Certainly not her unreliable, scheming, conniving mother, who had had no compunction about dumping her grandson with one of the dreadful teenage girls who hung around the village and made trouble, when looking after a baby became a bit of an inconvenience to her business plans.

And when I had suggested Prep. school, it was only because I wanted James Henry to have the best possible education, and I wasn't convinced that the local under funded state schools would give him the same opportunities in life, enable him to have the pick of the best universities as I had had, thanks to my education.

But of course Louisa took umbrage. She seemed to think that I was casting aspersions on her school, and on her personally, and that I was heartless for wanting to send our son away to boarding school. I had to admit that when I allowed myself to recollect how I'd truly felt, recalled the memories that had been invoked when I'd looked at the school boy photos that Aunt Ruth had found, it had made me feel distinctly uncomfortable about putting James through the same experience.

But in the end, it was Eleanor who unwittingly made me come to my senses, in a round about kind of way.

One day, a worried Louisa brought her mother in to see me because she was experiencing bad abdominal pain. It soon became apparent that her condition was very serious indeed, as I diagnosed a strangulated hernia that required urgent intervention. However, when the ambulance that had been summoned went to the wrong village, it left me with no option but to perform emergency surgery to save her life, right there in my consulting room.

And despite the surroundings, I performed the operation satisfactorily, with no problems whatsoever with regard to the blood.

So I had proved to myself, to everyone, that I really was able to be a surgeon again. I should have been thrilled, elated. But all I could think of was how I was going to feel alone in London, hundreds of miles away from Louisa and James, which is where my heart was telling me I wanted to be, however much my head was trying to convince me otherwise. What did being a London surgeon again really matter, compared to being with them? What was more important? Louisa had accused me of putting my career before our son, and although I had protested, I had to concede that maybe she had a point. I had had it all within my grasp – a partner, a family, but somehow I had managed to let it slip through my fingers.

Did I really want to spend the rest of my days just cooking for one? Lonely nights having the bed all to myself? Not having someone to wake up next to? Not having someone to talk to? Louisa was so good at chattering away, and even if I didn't say much, I found I rather liked just listening to her.

And to my surprise, it turned out that maybe I wasn't so bad at this parenting business after all. I found that I actually enjoyed looking after baby James, and would happily do so at any opportunity – as long as it didn't clash with my job. It simply wasn't professionally responsible to have the baby with me at work. But as long as I had enough notice, I would happily reschedule my plans in order to spend time looking after him. He seemed content in my company for the most part, and I loved seeing him smile and gurgle at me, even if I was unable to indulge in any kind of baby talk with him – he never seemed to mind what I said to him, as long as he had my attention.

So was I really going to be happy only seeing James Henry every few weeks or so? At least Louisa seemed to want me to be involved with him, quizzing me about whether I was going to visit regularly, that I wasn't going to mess him around – as I suspected she had been messed around as a child by her unreliable parents. But realistically, I knew that the distance between Cornwall and London, combined with the heavy demands of a top surgeon's position, would make it difficult for me to see James Henry as often as I would choose.

To be continued