#mykhail

Aah, yeah, I don’t think anyone’s ever asked about Aleks’s family before! 

Basically Aleks is the middle child of three (older brother Mykhail, younger brother Darius); he was born in Poland, and right before his little brother, Darius, was born, they moved to the UK. Aleks’ dad is a labourer and his mum used to work in administration. They arrived in the UK, Monika went into labour, had Darius, and then went into postpartum eclampsia and died. 

So Łukasz was left, with two young boys and a baby, and he had to work full time to support them (because they weren’t entitled to claim benefits), so they got into a whole lot of shit - social services got involved and took all three boys into temporary foster care. (Bearing in mind, Łukasz was mourning for his wife, and faced with supporting the family and try and look after them at the same time!) Both Mykhail and Aleks didn’t speak great English at this point, so being suddenly shoved into a “English only” family, and a school, was totally overwhelming. 

Łukasz managed to pull it together though, he got a steady job working in a dockyard - and they accepted that he needed to look after his kids (they had a nursery that baby Darius could go to while he worked, and he could adjust his hours to drop off/pick up the boys from school. They used to hate holidays though, cause they ended up stuck in his dad’s works “kids club” which was basically just the three of them and occasionally the odd other kid.. as soon as Mykhail turned 12, they got to roam the streets the three of them - but Mykhail used to run off and hang with the other older kids and leave Aleks to look after Darius. Mykhail wasn’t the best older brother at this point - he lacked his mother’s influence, and he spent his time smoking on street corners with the older boys, and always shirked off school. He didn’t really care. 

Whereas Aleks wasn’t like that at all. He did care about school, he was studious - he wanted to aim high, he wanted to be a doctor - the sort of doctor that could save people like his mum. But his dad thought this was a stupid ambition - he shouldn’t get above his station, Mykhail had the right idea with wanting to leave school and be a labourer too, provide money for his family. Aleks tried his best to guide Darius in the academic way too, but he kept getting more and more flak for this. (Aleks always reckoned this was because he was clever like his mum, so he probably reminded his dad of her - which pained him too).

 It was about this time (14/15 years old), that he experienced his first episodes of CVS. He really freaked out at first, because he didn’t want to miss school - and he was missing school every time he ended up being sick. He tried to hide it, though he was totally scared cause he didn’t know what was happening - and actually it was his chemistry teacher that took an interest (needless to say, he initially though Aleks was bulimic), and eventually helped Aleks get a referral to a neurologist - which then got him his CVS diagnosis. It was this same chemistry teacher (Dr. Barrie), who encouraged Aleks to pursue his dream of studying medicine, even when his dad thought he was being ridiculous to want to do it. He mentored and encouraged, and was the one to celebrate with him when Aleks got the grades he needed and got accepted into do medicine at the University of Edinburgh. 

But because of this Aleks always felt like he was the odd one out of the family. He was the gay one - which his dad seemed to have accepted (more like didn’t say anything so Aleks didn’t really have his dad’s opinion at all and was never sure whether he was accepted or not), and the one who wanted to do better, he didn’t want to be a labourer. And actually in moving away, his biggest worry was Darius. He was scared that Darius (who Aleks recognised was clever and could do so much) would fall into the way of life that his dad seemed to advocate, and leave school and not use the brains that he had.