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Adam is every patient's dream - a doctor who genuinely cares about them. Nothing is too much trouble, no ailment too insignificant - if it's affecting your quality of life in any way, then it needs Doctor Freeman's healing touch.

Maybe that has a lot to do with his upbringing. Adam's earliest memories are of hiding with his brothers from an abusive father who liked to take out his frustrations on his wife and children. By the age of 14, Adam had had enough. After a particularly nasty night of violence in his home, he took to the streets. He did his best to nurse his injuries until he finally collapsed and was rushed to the local hospital.

And there he was nursed in the Paediatric ward by Von Ryan, who saw something in the kid that other nurses didn't see. She saw the bright spark that had almost, but not quite, been extinguished. She saw Adam's intelligence and good humour. And she saw the potential in a boy who was going to end up dead if someone didn't intervene.

So intervene she did, and to this day, Adam views Von as the one and only person who actually cared about him. Through her faith in him and the work she did to get him into care and back to school, Adam thrived in both body and soul. And on the day he graduated with a medical degree, there was only one person he invited to the ceremony - Von - and she attended with pride.

Adam's a man of boundless energy and he'd argue that his inability to stop and take time out for himself is because that energy has to be channelled into something or he'll explode.

He's a natural communicator with and protector of women. God help the man who feels he can raise a hand to one. Abuse of any description makes Adam lose all perspective. He can behave quite badly under these circumstances, becoming unpredictable and even dangerous at times.

And he quite literally hates himself when he loses it. His temper reminds him a little too much of his father. He knows the statistics of the "abused becoming the abuser" and fights against it at every turn. It's why intimacy is difficult for him and long term relationships scare the hell out of him.

On top of this, Adam's compassion and eagerness to help often leads him into dangerous territory. Not necessarily for those around him but for his own psychological wellbeing.

Quite simply, his greatest asset is often his downfall - Adam cares too much. He's unable to create and maintain the professional barrier that so many Doctors use to keep their sanity intact. And this often leads to dark, sleepless nights or a need to escape for a while and run off the feelings that threaten to overwhelm him. If he could step back occasionally and realise that "intention" and "result" don't always match, he'd be a much healthier soul.