Previously in Emmerdale viewers discovered that Ryan Stocks (James Moore) and Gail Loman (Rachael Gill-Davis) had a baby together 13 years ago. Being young and unable to care for the baby themselves, he was adopted.
Recently Gail was contacted by Sophie (Martha Cope), who is the adoptive mother of Oscar. He is seriously ill and needs stem cell treatment, and Sophie wanted to know if Gail would get tested to see if she was a match.
Gail agreed and has had the test, but when she tried to talk to Ryan about Oscar he shut down the conversation.
In Monday (September 25)’s episode she knew that Oscar would have a better chance of finding a match if his biological father, Ryan, was also tested. But with Ryan avoiding her, she asked Marlon (Mark Charnock) to talk to him.
Ryan told Marlon how deeply he’d been hurt by the events of the past. ‘It wasn’t that we didn’t want him,’ he explained about the baby. ‘Gail said it was for the best, the adoption.’
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Then he revealed that he thought Gail’s decision was partly because of his own disability. ‘ I think one of her reasons was… me.’
Ryan, of course, was adopted himself when his birth mother, Charity Dingle (Emma Atkins), believed he’d died during a difficult birth. He came to the village in 2018 to reconnect with her, but it took a while for him and Charity to establish a close relationship. At one point when she was reluctant to introduce him to the rest of the family Ryan asked her if she was ashamed of his cerebral palsy.
Later, Ryan and Gail sat down to talk things through. She told him that having Oscar adopted had been the right thing to do because at the time she was a ‘potless, clueless space cadet.’
‘And I’m never going to be dad material, right?’ Ryan said, revealing again that he thought his physical disability had been behind Gail’s decision. She agreed that, in part, it had.
‘I wasn’t strong enough to look after him on my own, which I would have been mostly,’ she said, still being practical about the situation they were in at the time.
‘I know what I can’t do,’ he insisted, but it was clear that he had huge regrets about what happened. ‘I can’t help wondering if we fought hard enough,’ he said.
He did agree that he would get tested to see if he’s a match for the stem cells that Oscar needs. When Gail went to the hospital to get tested she was curious about Oscar and wondered about seeing him, something that Sophie seemed reluctant to allow.
Could Ryan or Gail prove to be the match that can help to save Oscar’s life? And will they be able to get to know their son?
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