Questions

Louisa lies next to me in the darkness on her left side. My left hand is on the nape of her neck, my right on her bare hip. She's warm and for the first time in a very long time, I feel safe. Her hair is soft and glossy and she's snoring very softly; I'll have to tell her about that; there are a number of devices for opening the airways of the nose to prevent such from happening. The sound seems reassuring though.

Somehow my left elbow has become trapped under my side and the blood flow to my hand is impaired, the fingers partly pins-and-needles. The brachial artery is compressed, impeding proper flow to my hand. I'll have to do something eventually, before there are even temporary nerve deficits.

I turn my head and look up at the ceiling. Louisa's cottage on Rose Hill is quite nice, although it could do with a lick of paint in the lav. The cottage is filled with Louisa. Her furniture, her pictures, her smell. I turn to stare at the back of Louisa's head and in the dimness I can see upturned ends of hair stir from my exhalations. I do not snore; at least I don't believe that I do so. Been sleeping alone for so long, it's hard to say. I don't remember ever hearing anyone complain, and certainly in boarding school if I had, it would have been beaten out of me by upperclassmen.

Louisa exhales greatly and clears her throat. She sounds a bit phlegmy; expected from the snoring. I review the anatomy of the nasopharynx and wonder if Louisa has had her tonsils removed. Fairly straight-forward procedure – even did a few myself in the old days – just a few minutes with an electrocautery and they would be gone. I'll inquire if she's had them out. Could refer her to an ENT over in Wadebridge if not.

With a will I pull my mind away from surgery, larynology, and other realms of medical science and focus on the young woman lying next to me. The moment when I blurted out the question that was torturing me - absolutely torturing - for ages came out. Marry me. Please Louisa? I can't bear to live without you!

And she said YES! Oh my God she said yes. Not perhaps, not let me consider it, but she said … yes, Martin I will. Just a few short hours past. A wonder!

Her breathing changes again as I lie here in her bed; holding her and thinking. Perhaps it was the shock of her friend Polly suffering cardiac arrest as the morphine hit her. That was a panic. But the reflexes kicked in, though the gorge was rising in my throat, amid the puddles of that silly woman's blood. But she pulled through and the ambulance took her to hospital. Then as I felt sweat trickle down my back, the bile burning my esophagus and mouth, then and only then the words came out. Almost as a shout – maybe more of a prayer.

I know that at some level my attraction for Louisa is chemical – pheromones, hormones, all that. But it's also cerebral. If I wish to have children someday then I should at least, by my morals, find a wife. Perhaps if I was a father, I could set right the wrongs done to me by my horrid parents; my super competitive father and my icy mother. I sincerely wish that mum, now living in Portugal full time with her boyfriend, and father in his snooty club in London would stay in their respective holes and I never see them again.

And Auntie Joan – I must call her – then I glance at the clock – this morning and tell her that Louisa and I are to be married. It wouldn't do to have someone else tell her, but in Portwenn, where half the residents are related somehow, news of all kinds travels quickly. More likely the fishmonger or grocer will pop the news or even Dave that stupid postman.

And what of Portwenn? Will the opinionated but sweet teacher Louisa Glasson really marry Martin Ellingham – the stick in the mud, rude, boring, but oh so stuck up doctor? That's what they will think. I imagine Pauline will be all giggles, which is what she is half the time, silly girl, Bert and his son Al will be poking about, and PC Penhale is likely to have a few smart comments as well. All the rest will be coming along to Surgery with minor complaints or just to drop in. Lord I hate all that rubbish.

Yet when they leave at the end of the day, Pauline says the usual, and expected, "Bye Doc!" the cottage grows quiet. I clean the surgery, finish my notes, fix a meal – I can cook quite well – perhaps pull out the clock for a bit of work on the innards, read, then the light fades. And the silence continues. Is that what I wish to fill? The silence? Fill it with this bright, cheerful, oh so intelligent woman? Who just by her mere presence can make me tighten my jaw and freeze any words in my throat? The woman that so recently I made love to? And she made love to me? This one woman forever and ever?

Edith left me and all the others too. But this woman, in spite of me, has stayed. My hands stay touching, no holding Louisa, my left now completely numb and prickly, but my right is firm on Louisa's hip. Why do I want her? Is it chemical, biological, cerebral – or a combination? No it can't be only that. The Vicar would laugh to hear me say this, but is it spiritual? Is there some part of the human psyche that wants, no needs, someone to have and hold in the night; in the dark?

I looked it up last week, the root word of cleave is Latin – cohaerere – meaning to cling together. I was operating on Mrs. Watts for a sebaceous cyst, a quite large one, on her back, and she commented that isn't it odd that the word cleave can mean both to cut apart and to stick to. After I closed surgery for the day I looked it up. The old lady was right. So man and wife as the Testament says, cleave together, but cleave also means to be cut apart.

Dawn begins to break, the room lightens, and as I hold gently snoring Louisa, I ask the dark ceiling if I will be able to cleave to Louisa and not be cleaved apart?

She stirs a bit and I move my left arm, feeling the blood return with a rush. Time to get up. I clamber out of her warm bed carefully and dress, pulling on my suit, which I had carefully draped over a chair - in spite of the apparent urgency to remove it at the time.

I look down at the sleeping Louisa. Good God I love her so. The surgery will have patients waiting. She stirs. I take a deep breath on this, the first day of the rest of my life.