It's a shame when a grown man can say that the only woman he's ever loved is his mum. It's embarrassing to admit it but it's true. I always was a bit of a 'mummy's boy' and when she died it hit me hard. It hit me so hard that it meant I could never love again; never love someone so much that it would mean my world would fall apart when they left. And it's lucky I didn’t because if I did I would have been hurt so much. I've been in very few long-term relationships and most of them have been in the last few years. First there was Holly, if there was one person I wish I loved it was her. I spent most of my adult life trying to tell myself I didn't love her and then when she went away I realised that maybe I didn’t. Maybe she wasn't the one. You see when someone you love leaves you then you're upset, heart-broken even but I wasn’t. I was upset for a few days, weeks even but then I was ok. I don’t think of her every day and wish she were here like I do with my mum I just accept the fact she's gone and get on with it.
The next person I didn’t love was Rachel. She was a fling that went wrong. She was married and told me that she loved her husband so of course I thought I would be safe going with her. That there was no way she would get all complicated on me because she loved her husband not me, another bad judgement on my side. She loved me and to top it all of when she died she was carrying my child. That's what made me cry. Not the fact that Rachel had died but the fact that part of me had died, my own child had died and there was nothing I could do about it. I'd always wanted children; that's a fact most people don't know about me. I wanted children to prove I could love and that I wouldn’t make the mistakes my own father did. I wanted to prove I wasn’t him but maybe I am. Even after all my efforts not to become him maybe I've been him all along, un-able to love or show feelings. Acting the big man but running away whenever things get tough. I've become the one person I hate most and don’t want to be, Lara proved that.
Lara was the last girl in Holby I didn’t love. She was my girlfriend, my friend. We did all the things that you're supposed to do when you're in love but I wasn’t. Infact I was so not in love with her that I dint even think twice about moving away and maybe never seeing her again and now I've moved away I don’t even think about her. There's the odd occasion I need a friend to talk to and think of phoning her up but then I remember that I can't because of our past. It's impossible to be 'just friends' with a girl after having a relationship with them because they either hate my guts or still fancy me.
I don’t know what's wrong with me; I don’t understand why I can't fall for any of these girls. They're funny, smart, pretty and they all liked me but I just cant let myself get close to them. Maybe it's just a self-defence system gone horribly wrong or maybe it's true what everyone says about me. Maybe I am just the self-centred, arrogant man with a heart of steel that they all believe I am.
Doing it for the kids
As Josh looked out over the play area where he was supposed to be collecting the little boy with the broken arm from he realised there was a big difference between him and Colette which was going to make it very hard to live the rest of his life with her. She didn't want kids. Correction: She had a kid well she had Natalie. She had mad a comment the other day about being Holby' s youngest grandmother. Being a grandparent was something Josh had thought he'd be but now the idea seemed a little less than impossible. He'd always wanted kids and to be a dad and just when he'd had both of these they'd been cruelly snatched away from him just as Natalie had been taken from Colette. Some people might think her heartless or cruel giving a baby away like that but Josh knew better. She hadn’t given he baby away she'd been stolen. They'd both lost children through no fault of their own. He wasn't sure if it was harder or easier for her to be able to see Natalie anytime she wanted, to watch her growing up but not be allowed to be her mum. It would have been simpler and less painful if Natalie had never traced her as then Colette would never have been rejected and wouldn’t have to sit on the sidelines while her daughters life goes on with out her.
Josh watched the kids walk back from school, hand in hand with their parents and he realised that the difference between him and Colette wasn’t that he wanted kids and he didn’t it was that he had confidence in himself that she didn’t. Even though they'd both lost kids he knew he was a good dad to those kids and that what happened to them was out of his control, it wasn’t his fault where as Colette blames herself she thought she was a bad mum and that she didn’t deserve another chance to lose another child. Now all Josh had to do was make her believe the truth: It wasn’t her fault. She's a good mum.
White lies
I've always been taught to tell the truth. My dad didn't teach me much but if there's one thing my dad told me it was that lying never solved anything, that it only made things worse. Up to now I've always believed that and I've never had any reason to even consider not doing it. Up to now. When I was younger I used to own up if I'd done some thing wrong, tell people what I thought of them. It may not have made me the most popular person in the world but it meant that I never had to pretend that I liked someone and it meant that I never got beat up for blaming someone else for what I did. Later in life people thought I was outspoken and had no tact. If I couldn’t tell the truth about some thing I just said nothing. Sometimes I concealed the truth but I never lied. I never needed to. This has always been what I have done and it's worked, sure I may have lost a few friends and upset a few people but nothing really bad has happened because of it. That's what I used to think any way. Now it isn't the truth. 2 people died because of me and because I tell the truth: Rachel and her baby. My baby: our baby. She asked if I loved her and I didn't know. I hadn’t got a clue what I felt for her so I said nothing. Sure it would have been lying but if I'd said that I loved her then she would have been here with me rather than dead. She wouldn't have gone out and got killed. In the end I did it. I said that I loved her, I wasn't sure if I did but I still said it. It was to late. I save people every day by being a doctor but when I had the chance to save my girl friend and my baby by telling one little lie I didn’t. I stood there and said nothing. Not one word.