Emmerdale spoilers: Will fears for distraught Dawn as she ‘wants to stop the pain’ amid baby Evan’s cancer fight
Life for Dawn and Billy Fletcher (Olivia Bromley and Jay Kontzle) turned upside down in Emmerdale when their baby son Evan was diagnosed with leukaemia. Ever since then he’s been in hospital, undergoing gruelling chemotherapy.
For Dawn especially, her life is now also based at the hospital. Not wanting to leave Evan on his own she’s hardly left his side and has only returned to Home Farm on a couple of occasions to see her other children, Lucas (Noah Ryan Aspinall) and Clemmie (Mabel Addison). Billy has been dividing his time between home and the hospital, and the stress has been huge on both of them and almost tore them apart.
The biggest issue currently is that Evan’s treatment has meant his body can’t fight any germs so everyone has to be ultra careful not to pass on any infections to him. Because Clemmie and Lucas are at school, where children normally pick up colds and other bugs constantly, it’s a huge risk to Evan.
In Monday (June 3)’s episode there was worry after Evan developed a high temperature. Dawn couldn’t help being angry with Billy for not being vigilant enough about Lucas and his friends, one of whom had a cold. Billy said that realistically they could never keep the family germ free.
Will (Dean Andrews) contacted the school to find out about home-schooling Lucas and Clemmie for a while to try to minimise the risks, and soon after that there was better news from the medical staff as Evan’s temperature had started to come down after he was given antibiotics.
Dawn was advised to go home and get some rest but she told Will she was worried about doing that because of the risk of bringing germs back to Evan. He thought a night in her own bed would be worth it but she said her body would be in bed but her mind would still be at the hospital with her little boy.
At the end of her tether, she told her dad, ‘Trust me, if there was anything I could do, anything to actually escape this worry and pain, even for an hour…’
Concerned, Will asked her what she meant and it was clear to see from his worried expression that he thought she was thinking about taking drugs. Dawn is a recovering drug addict and she’s had to battle to stay clean.
She refused any pain relief during Evan’s birth, fearing that taking anything could lead her back down a bad path.
Now, exhausted and stressed to breaking point, could she be thinking about going back to her old methods of coping?
This is going to become a huge issue in coming episodes as Dawn is offered some heavy duty sleeping pills by her mum, Rose (Christine Tremarco), in an effort to help her out.
Although we know Rose is part of a sinister plot with Ruby Fox-Miligan (Beth Cordingly) to bring down Kim Tate (Claire King), would she really jeopardise her daughter’s recovery as part of the plan? Or is it an innocent mistake?
And how will Dawn react to Rose’s offer?
