Doc Martin and all of its characters, themes and plotlines are the property of Buffalo Pictures. This work of fiction is written for purely entertainment purposes and no infringement of legal rights is intended.

Chapter 5

Martin

The idea of returning to surgery came to me slowly, like the inexorable marching of the tide. What I needed was a push to get past the wall of uncertainty I had built for myself, and this came in the form of a house call to Mr. Brody, a pensioned miner who had recently undergone an aortic aneurysm repair. He was also a brittle diabetic who fervently adhered to a diet of Cornish pasties and Hobnobs, despite being repeatedly told this would do him no good.

"Don't know why I bother," I muttered, collecting my case before stepping out in the rain. I trudged across the village, past the school and up the hill, still irked by the early morning visit from the injured fisherman and his friend. They had rudely disrupted my routine but for once it had been legitimate – the man had severed a tendon in his hand that had required immediate medical attention. I had patched him up best I could before placing a call to the Royal Cornwall. There was only one hand surgeon on staff, a self-important twit who was in the midst of his third very public and very expensive divorce. It had taken the operator over an hour before she tracked him down at his racket club, and by then the stench of rotten fish and diesel wafting from the patient and his mate had ruined my breakfast. I had managed to gulp down a cup of espresso between cases and as a result was now suffering from a bad case of acid reflux.

Wet, cold and thoroughly put out, I tapped sharply on the front door of the Brody's cottage, one of many lining the narrow streets leading away from the Platt. Mrs. Brody herself answered the door, wrapped in a voluminous house coat patterned in clashing stripes of pink and orange. I cringed, and recalled she had been the primary school's clerk until last year when she had retired, to Louisa's great relief. Aside from her unfortunate choice in clothing, at the last she had been ineffectual, letting the school records slip into disarray. It had taken a fair amount to set them right, and Louisa had spent part of her summer holiday sorting out the mess.

I followed Mrs. Brody into the overheated sitting room, and saw for myself the woman had no organizational skills whatsoever. The room was stuffed with a mishmash of furniture and bric-a-brac; garish porcelain cats rested on every available surface, newspapers littered the sofa, and a tray with the remains of eggs and bacon sat on the coffee table. I took note of the last but kept quiet, knowing nothing I'd say would make a difference. In the middle of all this rubbish sat my patient in a patent vinyl recliner large enough to accommodate his substantial girth. He waved and I looked about for a place to put my bag. "Here you go, Doc," said his wife, pushing aside what at first glance appeared to be a pile of rags but turned out to be a ginger Tom with half his ear gnawed off. I scowled at the retreating flea ridden feline and dropped the case at my feet while Mrs. Brody came to stand next to her husband.

"How you been, Doc? Have you heard anything from Miss Glasson? It was such a shock when she left, but then again we shouldn't have been considering…well you know." She faltered and I snapped at her husband, "Unbutton your shirt."

He quickly did as told while Mrs. Brody disappeared towards the kitchen, mumbling something about tea. "Don't mind her, Doc. She worries about Louisa, all alone in the big city. Reckon she's alright or we would have heard."

"Shush," I hissed, placing the bell of my stethoscope on his chest. Why couldn't these people mind their own business?

I listened for a moment and then moved to examine the surgical incision on the man's abdomen. It was held together with staples, standard after this kind of surgery. I looked at it with a critical eye, noting where the edges puckered and gaped. Under no circumstances would I have let a patient leave the theater looking like this, and truth be told, a first year registrar could have done better. I snapped on a pair of gloves, first palpating the incision then feeling for the steady pulse of the aorta. At least the repair seemed to have held, and that's when it came to me in vivid detail – the pressure of the blade slicing through the abdominal fascia, exposing the diseased artery, clamping and cutting, making it whole again. I've done this repair a hundred times, possibly more. And l missed it, missed it all with an ache that could no longer be ignored.

I must have had a funny look on my face because the patient asked, "You ok, Doc?"

"Yeah," I answered quietly, pulling down the man's shirt. His wife bustled in with a tray of tea things and said brightly, "You'll stay for a cuppa. Made those scones Louisa was so fond of."

I gathered my case and left without a word.

It was lunch-time when I arrived back at the surgery and the reception was empty of both patients and Pauline. I heated some soup and forced myself to eat even though I wasn't hungry. After a few spoonfuls I gave up, rinsed the bowl and decided to make a dent in the lab reports that had come in that morning. My desk was just as I had left it that morning except for a small white envelope lying next to my laptop. I reached for it but stopped when I recognized the cursive script sprawled across the front. This was the first letter she'd sent since leaving Portwenn and I carefully reached for it, slowly turning it in my hand. I cut through the top of the envelope with a letter opener. There was a card inside, a rendition of Westminster Abbey printed on the front, the kind of thing a tourist might send home.

I walked to the window, reading by the stingy light filtering through the panes. I scanned it quickly and then read it again slowly the words sinking like bricks in concrete. I'm doing well, she had written, and getting used to life in London. There was something about the school and students, and then her address at the end, on Belgrave road. If memory served the flat was in a less than desirable neighborhood of Pimlico, near the train station and cheap hotels. Not the most salubrious of locations, but safe enough if one knew how to handle themselves in the city. But Louisa wasn't an urbanite, and the worry that something might happen to her wormed its way to the surface, until I read the letter once again and realised that despite my misgivings she seemed happy, even carefree.

The front door of the surgery shut closed with a bang that rattled the old cottage walls. "You here, Doc?" yelled Pauline. I shoved Louisa's letter under the blotter on my desk as she stuck her head around the door. "Got those supplies from Mrs. T. She wants to know if you can come by later. There's a new journal article thingy she wants to discuss." The last was said with a snigger and she disappeared.

I stared at where my receptionist had stood, and with frightening clarity I saw myself projected in the future, whittled away to nothing by the repetitive tedium of snotty noses and gouty limbs. The village pressed in on me along with the dullness of its inhabitants and the psychosomatic pharmacist who imagined herself my intellectual equal. Through it all my mind kept circling back to the miner's puckered incision, one that I could have closed a hundred times better. Then it boiled over, the neatly lined instruments glinting in the brilliant light, the sharp smell of antiseptic, the gentle swoosh of the respirator. Of late the theater populated my thoughts at the oddest time and always when I switched off the lights at night. At least it served to keep Louisa at bay, until I entered the twilight state between wakefulness and sleep. There she would visit me, and I found myself powerless to chase her away. But she had gone, busy creating a life for herself in London that had nothing to do with me.

I picked up the phone with a decisiveness I thought had deserted me. "Hello, Chris? About that invitation to dinner. Would this Thursday suit? Yes, after the PCT meeting. Good. See you then."

Hanging up the receiver, I and went out to the reception and called in the next patient, a small spring in my step.