Dr. Phil Wade

The owner of Yaughton Doctor's Surgery, Dr. Phil Wade is chronologically introduced when John Cole first goes missing at the Lakeside Holiday Camp and Elizabeth "Lizzie" Graves calls Wade in to investigate Cole's disappearance. While at Cole's trailer, Wade notices ash within the trailer, and deduces that the ash is not cigarette ash. Wade is then informed by Barbara Foster that the village has called to inform that Mrs. Baughton has disappeared.

As seen from the first Jeremy arc, Wade returns to Yaughton, and notes that the local Emergency Measurements Committee (EMC) is serious about the blockade to stop people moving out of Shropshire to contain the "Spanish Flu". Wade offers to send Barbara's complain of the draconian measures to the MP, once the blockade is cleared. He decides to stop looking for Mrs. Baughton and tend to opening the clinic first, and complains of an onset of a headache from this point.

Wade then conducts further investigations. In Frank's arc, Wade meets up with Frank at Frank's house to discuss the disappearances of Cole and Baughton, and reveals that the clinic is now full of sick folks from the village, patients with nosebleeds and headaches. Wade confesses that he is not convinced that it is a flu epidemic as he has never seen anything like it in his 35 years of profession. Wade asks Frank to check on his sister, but Frank refuses, so Wade decides to do that himself instead. He reminds Frank to contact the hospital to collect back the equipment that Mary used to use as it has been 8 months since Mary has passed away.

Wade then visits Wendy Boyles with Barbara in the Wendy arc the next day after the village encountered a majestic astrological sight at night, and finds Wendy perfectly healthy. Wade reassures Wendy that the dog that kept Wendy awake the whole night was over-excited due to "the atmospheric conditions". Wade is told by Wendy to inform her son Stephen that Wendy was looking for him. Wade also openly expresses doubt on Barbara's statement and muses that it may not be a flu epidemic.

Thus, in a Town Hall meeting in the Jeremy arc, Barbara reveals to Charlie Tate and Meg Holloway that Wade has told her as well that in his 30 years of experience, the current pandemic was not the flu and was something else.

Wade returns to the clinic at a later point to find a distraught Barbara reporting a long queue of people reporting similar symptoms of nosebleeds and headaches. Wade learns that Mrs Gables (who owns The Stars at Night pub with her husband in Yaughton) mentions that blood was coming out of her husband's ears and nose before he disappeared. It is implied that Barbara was requesting Wade to declare that it was not Spanish flu to the Shropshire inhabitants and to reassure patients that he will find a way to uncover the real cause and to treat them - but their conversation is interrupted as Wade's nose starts to bleed as well.

Wade's last known entry was found in a car near the clinic in the Jeremy arc, where it appears that he experienced massive bleeding. Wade reported, in addition to his headache, increasingly frequent "visual and auditory distortions" and "mild convulsions to the left side"; which he deduces as an un-natural, and soon to be fatal, "substantial and rapidly expanding tumour". He notes increasingly "darker clots" of blood, and within the clots, he sees liquid light.