After his latest near-death encounter, Christian displays a new adventurous side this week on Australia’s Home and Away… Tori, on the other hand, isn’t thrilled with her boyfriend’s new attitude.
Christian’s (Ditch Davey) heart stopped beating just over three weeks ago when Lewis Hayes (Luke Arnold), still traumatised by the death of his wife Anna, kidnapped him and poisoned him with a lethal drug concoction in an abandoned ward of Northern Districts Hospital.
Tori (Penny McNamee) and Jasmine (Sam Frost) were only able to find the neurosurgeon in time because of their fast thinking. Tori spent minutes urgently performing CPR on her fiancé to help restart his heart after the drugs took effect just seconds before Tori and Jasmine burst into the abandoned ward.
Christian doesn’t want to lose any time now that he’s out of the hospital and on his way to recovery. He follows the Justin Morgan path to rehabilitation, ignoring the same advice he would give his patients, and begins pushing himself too hard.
He’s got a new lease on life this week. He wants to make the most of every moment, putting aside the family-friendly and work-focused life he’s led since settling down with Tori in Summer Bay.
In Jasmine, he discovers a co-conspirator. Since Christian couldn’t understand how he recalled so much of what happened when he was supposedly dead, the two recently reunited over the supernatural.
He remembered her and Jasmine storming into the room, Tori telling Jasmine to get away from him, and the exact medications that the nurses administered to help get his heart started, as he recounted to Tori.
None of that is scientifically sound; as a medical practitioner, he is well aware that when a patient’s heart stops, they are literally dead. They should be completely unaware of what is going on around them. It’s reasonable, it’s what he was taught in medical school, it’s the scientific response… but it contradicts his own personal experience of events.
He’s totally disoriented as a result of the events. How can you justify the fact that I was dead and could hear you?!
Tori almost laughed off his worries, thinking he couldn’t possibly recall what had happened. She assumed he was so familiar with the resuscitation procedure that his brain just filled in the blanks.
When he explained things to Jasmine, however, she became much more receptive to the fact that there is a world beyond science. She told him that his heart had stopped, but added that she’d had several patients who claimed to have had similar experiences, and that there are certain things that science can’t understand.
She also had a tarot card reading as a result of their conversation to find out why she’d had so much bad luck in the last two years. Tori and Christian are certainly not on the same page as these two.
This week, as they both try to make the best of their post-Lewis lives, the unlikely duo ends up bonding even further.
They run into each other on the beach, which is a common occurrence in the seaside area, but in an unexpected twist, the two end up running into the waves together. With Jasmine in her bra and shorts and Christian in a t-shirt, shirt, and shorts, they’re almost fully dressed! Photos from TV Week seem to show them getting close and personal, with Jasmine pushing Christian into the water while he grips her shoulder.
Are they becoming too close after their mutual traumatic encounters – Jasmine having fallen for the killer who almost killed Christian –
Christian is thankful and wants to live in the moment, according to Ditch Davey, who talked to Australian magazine TV Week about his new fun-loving personality. He refuses to take it for granted and is relishing his newfound independence.
This isn’t his first foray into the water this week. He gets up early the next day to watch the sunrise on the beach and be alone with his thoughts while he continues to try to understand how he recalls incidents that occurred when his heart wasn’t pounding. Tori is taken aback when she arrives at the beach for her own morning walk and discovers her fiancé completely nude in the surf!
This isn’t the Christian she’s in love with, or the Christian with whom she wants to start a family. She is concerned that he is behaving out of character and is unsure when it will end.
Though Christian understands why she may think he’s being a little erratic, Ditch explains that his character is just now coming to terms with life. He told the publication that he is simply living life to the fullest in his opinion.
He proposes that Tori and he plan an Arctic free-diving trip to Norway. It’s the polar opposite of what Tori wants them to do, which is to schedule their upcoming wedding peacefully. She eventually tells him that she wants the old Christian back, resulting in a huge battle.
The normally calm neurosurgeon gets into his car and speeds away! Is his anxious behaviour simply a newfound love for life, or did the minutes without oxygen reaching his brain permanently alter him?
