Here Be Dragons
At the extent of the charts of old, Martin and Louisa would find these words to mark the unknown territory beyond which explorers who fail to change course will discover only their greatest peril– or together discover their greatest opportunity. Although their voyage seemed lost after series six, this story begins thereafter as they navigate through unexplored territory that prays to discover a togetherness that means more than being together.
Disclaimer: The story and characters of Doc Martin belong to Buffalo Pictures. This work of fanfiction is for personal amusement only and no infringement of any kind is intended.
Chapter One: Armamentarium
THIS is no bloody faery-tale!, is the one lucid thought that penetrates the thickening fog. Hot breath gathers inside the great helm. My head grows fuzzy straining for a sensation beyond the laboured breathing.
Damn this mask! I struggle in vain against the heavy bascinet wedged tightly overhead. I relent to pivot my eyes about trying to peer through the slits of the equally implacable visor. What little I can make out is shrouded in mist and deepening shadows that reveal only faint outlines of the wood beyond. There lies a too familiar darkness concealing everything but the constant lurking dread.
There will be nowhere to flee once the devouring blackness comes for me. My heart slows to a hardening thump against the tight cuirass. I know its approach will be stealthy and cloaked in menacing silence. It always is.
It's already too late. Even now it stirs. Hungrily, it's stalking has begun. I hold my body determinedly rigid; my arms and legs immobilised– irrelevant of the plate and mail. From somewhere far away music begins, tinny at first; repeating and faltering, repeating and faltering. Order spins and sways and with it the orderliness of sense and self. I feel flesh flashing cold and moist against hard steel– diaphoresis. Drops of sweat collect beneath the thick gorget. Interoceptors take notice of an increasingly thready pulse; bradycardia too.
Vasovagal presyncope– I recognise the signs. I tense my muscles against the blackness. Mental sharpness is, as always, my only ally. If I'm not to be devoured whole, I must keep myself upright and steadfast. My hands are stiff within the bulky gauntlets. Deliberate extension and adduction of the phalanges will stave off fasciculation. They are empty. They are always empty, save for times a lancet. They bear no claymore, no spatha, no falchion, no baselard, no blade at all. 'Primum non nocere'… there can be no fighting back; that heraldic standard must stand. What there can't be, what there can never be, is a show of weakness. It feeds ravenously on weakness. Dyspnoea… must keep control. Hypocapnia soon…
It preys– like this, by watching from out there; curarizing from a distance by infusing a great without within. It makes no show of tooth or claw; no tearing or slashing, no gnawing or gnashing before it strikes. It engulfs one's whole. Now an acrid hollowness rises from the back of my throat anticipating my mortification by self-evisceration. My insides are roiling; readied for when it comes.
Fugue-like [1] now, I hear the music growing more emphatic. I strain hard listening for even a small voice that would call to me, beckoning me in answer so to blot out the vituperating silence. A burst of heat and I feel it burn; searing. Oh, gawd– the smell! The stench of cauterised flesh. The alarum sounds of retching. It's coming!
If but this once I could see it! To face it! I'd face anything but that dark emptiness drawing near. A last look through the thin visor reveals only blurs. Dim shapes. Occipital lobe ischemia. Focus! Kalnienk vision. It's here! Hypoxemia. If only this once… One. Last. Effort. I grasp the unyielding helms with all my might for the final futile attempt to glimpse the mortal foe. With all my strength I pull with a primal cry:
"Arghhh!"
Fresh air– fresh air rushes in soothingly against my skin. The light is brilliant. And warm. The sunlight is like nothing I've ever seen before. I stand still; unopposed and with every shroud lifted. There is nothing more menacing before me than some verdant dew-sodden trees, twittering birds, and a lively butterfly that alights amongst the shafts of light. I am safe. I am free. Suffused in light, I release the grip on the helm and bascinet and its burden falls to my side with a resounding thud.
I startle awake to an unknown calm: peaceful and comforting. My eyes strain against this new brightness, opening and closing, squinting and watering in adjustment from its profound opposite in the tulgey wood. A sweet sound floats on the air that ever so slowly conveys the realisation that I am waking to the intonations of James Henry's melodic cooing. Upstairs Louisa– my wife, sleeps, fitfully perhaps; convalescing– but home. And James– my son, has awakened and I– his father, can proffer Louisa– his mother, time for a lie in and a chance to heal.
I rise from the hard obstinate couch and slip softly upstairs to find James lying contentedly in his cot swimming his arms and legs in rhythmic strokes of delight and babbling with his tiny face alight towards mine. I whisper into his growing expression as I lift him eagerly into mine, "Come to my arms, my beamish boy,"[2] followed by a small chortle that is shared covertly between just the two of us. [3]
to be continued… Next: A visit to sage Aunt Ruth
[1] fugue[-like]- the word is derived from both the Latin fuga, meaning to flee or escape, and fugare, meaning to chase, or run away to or run from. A fugue is a sophisticated musical form popularised in the Baroque period and composed of two or more alternating or competing contrapuntal voices (i.e. voices chasing one another) that attained their archetypal perfection in the works of Johann Sebastian Bach.
A fugue proceeds in three sections: the exposition, development, and recapitulation and is connected by passages known as episodes. The exposition begins with the first voice by itself that establishes the subject of the composition in anticipation of being joined by a second voice in a different pitch that provides the answer. This pattern is repeated throughout the composition with the subject and, upon the introduction of new material, the countersubject in varying combinations of answers occurring in contrapuntal, or counterpoint. The intertwined contrapuntal voices in alternating pitch is what endows the fugue with its power and attraction as the voices join in melodic lines developing a harmonic relationship whilst retaining their own individuality. A musical fugue should not be confused with the medical condition (i.e. a fugue-like state) which is a rare short-lived reversible dissociative state of self-identity brought on by severe stress or trauma where the episode itself and the original stressor are subject to amnesia.
[2] Come to my arms, my beamish boy- from the children's story by Jack Bower (an amalgamation comprised of stories, rhymes, and songs) written in Cornish, "Dres an Gweder-Mires", 1871, that reflects the tale of a once bold, fearless, and even garrulous young boy who all alone and armed with nothing but his vorpal incisiveness, must vanquish the most frightening of monsters that dwell deep within the most dreaded recesses of the 'tewolgow'.
[3] Haemophobia, or the fear of blood, known more fully as blood and Blood-Injection-Injury (BII) phobia, is very different from other phobias. Common to all phobias are feelings of a persistent irrational fear combined with an overwhelming anxiety to an object or situation often described as "the fear of fear". The physiological response to these feelings is an accelerated heart rate and an increase in blood pressure as well as others consistent with the fight-or-flight response. However in blood and BII phobias, that initial pathophysiology abruptly shifts to a response consisting of a sudden drop in heart rate (bradycardia), a widening of blood vessels (vasodilation), and a drastic decrease in blood pressure (hypotension). This paradoxical response is unique amongst phobias and is characteristic of the vasovagal response with symptoms of lightheadedness, sweating with hot or cold sensations, ringing in the ears, an uncomfortable feeling of the heart, fuzzy thoughts, confusion, a growing inability to speak, nausea, and ultimately syncope (fainting)– the transient loss of consciousness. This means that the experience of individuals with haemophobia is very different, if not essentially the antithesis, to the experience of sufferers of other phobias.
What distinguishes the physiological response of haemophobia from that of other phobias is blood flow. The fight-or-flight response is activated by a perceived threat that directs blood flow toward major muscle groups (i.e. the arms and legs) and away from less critical systems and organs (i.e. the skin, kidneys, and digestive system) to prepare the individual to either fight or to flee. The vasovagal response is activated by a perceived threat by essentially shutting down blood flow and letting blood pool in the legs (whilst standing or sitting) by the force of gravity and draining it away from the brain. The vasovagal response with syncope attempts to restore flow by forcing the brain level with the heart at the expense of consciousness. In other words, the brain intervenes to a perceived threat to save itself and the individual by demonstrating it is not in turn a threat by fleeing consciousness (i.e. the brain's self awareness) in an imitation of death (a defensive mechanism known as tonic immobility, or thanatosis).
Neurologically, the processing and conditioning of fear that principally occurs within the brain structure the amygdala, is not activated for BII phobias as it is for other phobias. Neurological studies indicate that the distress of sufferers with haemophobia corresponds to a response that is more consistent with the emotion of disgust rather than with the emotion of fear. Vasovagal syncope experienced in haemophobia is known as neurally mediated syncope, a classification it shares with the clichéd "fainting episodes" triggered by acute emotional distress. This shared neurological response suggests that the experience of haemophobia may also relate to a sense of overwhelming emotions.
Many sufferers of haemophobia can learn to avert fainting from exposure to their phobic blood trigger by heeding the onset of prodromal symptoms. Deliberately tensing the large muscle groups of the legs, torso, and arms with isometric pressure or squeezing them together at the earliest onset prevents syncope by forcibly maintaining normal blood pressure and sufficient blood flow to the brain in a technique known as applied tension. This technique contradicts the usual treatment advice for other phobias which emphasise relaxation and loosening muscle tension when their trigger is encountered. Mastering applied tension allows for prolonging exposure of the phobic stimuli to provide sufferers with greater control over their phobia, and improving the prognosis for the psychotherapeutic treatment of the underlying phobia.
Like most phobias, haemophobia usually has a familial predisposition (a diathesis that relates it to running in families, although it is likely not genetic) wherein the vicarious anxiety of a family member produces and conditions the anxiety in another member until it develops into a phobic response. The experience of BII phobias also differs from that of other phobias in that their irrational fear is not perceived as involving any actual danger to themselves or a threat to their own physical injury, harm, or survival. As Aunt Ruth accurately relates in S6E8, blood and blood-related phobias, usually originate in early childhood, a characteristic is shares with animal phobias, both of which also evoke strong emotional responses of disgust and neither of which necessarily have any convincing original event of traumatic origin or physical pain.