Disclaimer: Doc Martin is the property of Buffalo Pictures. I own nothing except my overactive imagination.
A one shot short story of how things might have turned out if Martin and Louisa had never got back together again.
Written against my natural romantic leanings for a happy resolution between them!
Blood Will Out
Louisa
On the last day of the school term that July, Martin drove off out of the village, out of my life and out of the life of our unborn child.
He just couldn't do it. He simply couldn't handle being a father, so he ran away, immersed himself back in the world of surgery in London, somehow managing to overcome his 'blood thing', despite never having been able to do so in any of the preceding years. That's how much he wanted to get away from me
So I raised James on my own. Oh sure, a generous payment came through every month without fail from Martin into my bank account. And I decided that I would accept it, that it was the least he could do, and no doubt he could easily afford it on what he must be earning now as a top consultant. I didn't let my pride stand in the way, I used that money to provide for our son.
At times it broke my heart to watch James growing up, so like his father in so many ways, but I knew that it was better this way, that James wouldn't miss what he'd never had. If Martin and I had tried to make a go of things, if we had tried living together and had subsequently broken up, which would have been inevitable, James would have been aware of, and would have known his father, and that would have been far harder on him. So Martin leaving had been for the best in the long run, however many lonely tears I'd cried over it.
Like the civilised adults we pretended to be, we did keep in touch. Martin let me know when he changed his address or phone number, and a couple of times I even phoned him when we had a health scare or two, and each time he gave me good, sound medical advice. From time to time, and always on James' birthday, and at Christmas, I would email him some photos and an update of what was happening in his son's life. Each time I would get a brief acknowledgement back, thanking me.
Time is a great healer, as they say, and eventually I met another man. He wasn't Martin, in fact he was nothing at all like Martin, and so maybe that made it easier for me to move on and marry him. But because time had moved on so much, it was too late for me to have any more children. James was my only child, making him all the more special and precious to me, and I never regretted for a single second my decision to go ahead and raise him on my own, however hard things had been sometimes.
My husband Jack was a good man, a teacher like me, and he was a very good father to James, good at everything that Martin wasn't - sports, socialising, having fun, making friends.
And yet, James was undoubtedly Martin's son, a chip off the old block. His father was a doctor, his grandfather was a doctor – and from a very early age it was clear that James would be a doctor too. He had his father's intellect and his clear cut sense of purpose. But he was also my son, and so he liked to have fun and had lots of friends, very unlike his father. Maybe it was his upbringing – nature or nurture, who knew?
When it came time for James to apply to medical school, I felt out of my depth. There was no question that James had the academic ability, but he needed to pass an interview board to get into Imperial – the top medical school in London – where his father had studied and where he was Head of Vascular surgery. And James wasn't very good at interviews. He needed some coaching, but I didn't have a clue as to what he would be asked, or how he should approach the whole thing.
So I decided that Martin's turn had come, that I was going to hand our son over to him. I had nurtured James for eighteen years, but now Martin was able to help him in a way that I couldn't. I had long ago accepted that he hadn't felt capable of helping when James was a baby and a child, but now he was by far the best qualified of James' parents to help him on his way to become a doctor. Who better to help him than the leading vascular surgeon in the country?
That was how James came to visit Martin in London.
xXx
Martin
My son was coming to see me. He wanted to be a doctor, just like me, just like my father. Blood will out, Louisa told me. I'd left her to bring him up, certain that that was by far the best thing for the boy. She would make a brilliant mother. I would have been a disastrous father. We would have had a miserable marriage.
But now I was able to help him in a way that Louisa couldn't, so she was handing him over to me. A young man in need of my help to get into medical school. That I could do, that I was capable of.
I looked at my son as he walked into my office. I'd seen pictures of him over the years, Louisa had always kept me informed, and I'd been very grateful that she had. I could observe at a distance the child that I had helped to create, without adversely affecting him in any way by my total incompetence as far as raising children was concerned.
Now I saw a tall, blonde, rather gangly young man standing before me. And it soon became apparent that he had a huge chip on his shoulder. In true Ellingham manner, he abruptly cut to the chase straight away, and I really rather admired him for it.
"I've only come here today because you can be of use to me now. You've never wanted anything to do with me, I've never wanted anything to do with you, but I want to get into med school at Imperial. So I'll take whatever help you can give me," he stated.
Fair enough, we both knew where we stood, and it suited me just fine to keep everything factual and practical.
"Are you up to it? Predicted 'A' level grades, personal statement good enough?" I demanded to know, despite having already been fully prepped by Louisa. "I'm not prepared to waste my time if you aren't up to scratch in every way. There are over 50 applicants for every place, so you can't just be good, you have to be exceptional."
"I am. But I'm crap at interviews. Apparently I've inherited your social skills. Oh, and the ears. Thanks for that, Pop."
"You can call me Father, Dad, Martin or Ellingham, I really don't care which, but if you use that term again for any reason other than to describe a fizzy drink, my offer to help you is rescinded," I stated, looking him straight in the eye. I saw my own grey/blue eyes stare back at me.
"Let's go with 'Martin' then shall we? I really don't want anyone knowing that you're my father, because I am good enough to get in on my own merit, I just need some coaching to get me through the interview panel. I wouldn't want anyone to think I'd only got in because my father pulled strings for me, just because he felt guilty for abandoning me and my mum."
"I'm not in the habit of pulling strings for anyone, no matter who they are. I can assist you in your preparation for the interview panel; the rest will be down to you. Is that what your mother told you, about me feeling guilty?" I quizzed him.
"Oh no, she always said that you two splitting up was a mutual decision, that it was for the best, she's never said a bad word about you actually. But I worked it out all on my own. Fathers who don't hang around for the birth of their child but send generous payments every month do so because they feel guilty."
I decided that nothing would be gained by arguing with the boy. Maybe he had a point anyway.
"So who is on the interview panel then?" I decided that we might as well just get on with things, sort out what he needed from me and take it from there.
xXx
James
So this guy was my father. He looked ancient. Mum had said he was coming up for retirement soon, although she doubted he would ever actually retire. He was a big, tall bloke, with short cropped silver hair, miserable looking, with large bat ears. What the hell had mum ever seen in him?
I was glad that he didn't pretend to be all emotional at seeing me, try to hug me or start blubbing about his long lost son, or anything like that. Instead he studied me dispassionately, as if trying to assess which bits of me had come from his DNA. Well the ears, that was a given. But it had been my choice not to have them pinned back, having decided that people either took me as I was or they didn't, and I really didn't give a stuff which it was.
I'd googled my father of course, and to be fair the man was a legend in the field of vascular surgery, I had to give him that. Dedicated, brilliant, and gifted, was how he was described. Mum had always said that he was an extraordinary man, but that he just didn't have it in him to be a father, and so rather than be a bad one, a failure, he'd trusted her to raise me on her own. Whatever.
I never felt I missed out father-wise, because I couldn't remember a time when my step father wasn't in my life, and he was a really great dad. He officially adopted me when I was about five years old, so my surname was his - Trevellick – a good strong traditional Cornish name. James Martin Trevellick, that was me - but I never used the 'Martin'. And mum was a terrific mother, always supportive, and loving whatever I got up to, and such a great fun person to be around.
I'd always wanted to be a doctor. I could never imagine myself doing anything else. Luckily I found school easy, studying easy, exams easy, it all just came very naturally to me, but interviews – well I was just crap at them, I seemed to go to pieces, lose my nerve, even though I knew it was stupid, it was just one of those random things.
So this old guy had better be able to help, or else it wasn't worth me coming to see him. It was the only possible reason I had for meeting the man who'd done the dirty on my mother as far as I was concerned.
xXx
Louisa
Empty nest syndrome they call it. Empty life more like. I had no doubt now that James would shortly be on his way to becoming a doctor, to study in London with Martin mentoring him, and I felt bereft. Part of me selfishly wished I hadn't had such a clever and gifted son, that he had been content to stay in the village to work in one of the local hotels or bars.
But a larger part of me was incredibly proud of him, and so I got on with things and tried not to wish my life away. I didn't want to spend all my time wishing him back for the holidays, because I knew in my heart of hearts that he was never going to live back in the village with me again.
He would be more Martin's son than mine now, that was the truth of the matter.
xXx
Martin
It very soon became apparent that my son and I had no trouble in communicating with each other, because our minds worked in exactly the same way, and we didn't have to like each other to be able to understand each other. I went through everything he was likely to be asked at his interview, having found out from colleagues who sat in on these boards. And it was soon clear to me that he had a fine mind, but that he really needed to work on his communication skills.
"Don't mumble, for God's sake, it's extremely irritating," I told him. "Hold your head up and at least give the impression that you know what you're talking about, even if it's bullshit."
"But they'll know it's bullshit, they're all professors and such like," he whinged back at me.
"Just pretend you're talking to me. You manage to answer me back well enough all the time, don't you?" James was never short of a pithy retort or cutting remark to aim at me when we studied together.
"That's different. I know you owe me, for walking out on Mum," he threw back at me.
"I did you a favour James. I'm simply not father material. Your mother understood." I stated.
"You couldn't be bothered more like. But you're right. You did me a favour."
xXx
James
And so, with my father mentoring me, I got into Imperial. When it came to all things medical, he was brilliant, I couldn't fault him at all. When he explained something to me, I understood it, I got it straight away. And he schooled me in what type of things the board would be asking me, and what they would be expecting by way of answers, what would piss them off and what would really impress them. Other people might have found the way he dealt with me abrupt and rude, but it was OK, I got it. He didn't see any point in niceties, as far as he was concerned they were just a waste of his very valuable time, and to be fair he did work incredibly long hours I discovered. But as long as I didn't mess him about, he was prepared to make time for me. Without his help I'd have just sat there at the interview, mumbling and shuffling around, and for that I was eternally grateful to him.
And so during my years of study, my father was there for me, in the way that he hadn't been when I was younger. In time I felt at ease with him, living as I did in the same world as him now. I could see that he was married to his work, it was his whole life. I almost felt sorry for him really, he had nothing else at all. How he and my mum had ever got it together enough to conceive me I could barely comprehend, they had nothing in common as far as I could see. But then I hadn't known him when he'd been the GP back in the village, a role that I really struggled to picture him in.
Of course I could see why he would have been attracted to mum. Even now in her fifties, she was still one hot babe, and at school several of my mates had classed her as a MILF, much to my horror. And I suppose compared to most of the locals in the village, my father would probably have seemed like the only relatively sane, intelligent person at times. I knew now I could never go back to live in the village, much as I loved the holidays I spent there with my mother and stepfather. I just found it too claustrophobic, much as my father must have done.
So gradually, over the years, I came to forgive him for leaving us. Finally getting to know him meant that I could understand how totally opposite he and mum were, and actually now I wondered how on earth they could have come so close to getting married – there was no doubt in my mind that it would never have worked out between them.
With my father's help and support, I qualified as a doctor, and then decided to pursue my dream of becoming a heart surgeon. And I couldn't have done it without both of my parents help, even if it had been in two separate halves, not as one whole.
Thanks for reading. If you don't know what a 'MILF' is, just google it!