Page 1 of Doc Hollywood

CHAPTER 1

“Idon’t want to,” Doctor Clara Upford said petulantly, glaring at the other anaesthetist standing in front of her. “I’m doing the emergency list today. I don’t have time to pander to an actor playing an anaesthetist in a dumb movie.”

“I do understand what you’re saying,” soothed Doctor Sadie Albright, the head of the Anaesthetic department and Clara’s best friend. “But this isn’t my decision. The hospital CEO told me he has to shadow an anaesthetist today, and you’re my best option. Oh, and we can’t let anyone know who he is. We’ll tell everyone he’s a medical student.”

“What? Why?” Clara refrained from stamping her foot, even though she wanted to.

She had a busy day ahead of her and didn’t have the time or the energy to babysit someone.

“Do you want to start a stampede?” Sadie said tightly. “A lot of people would flock to him if they knew he was here. I’ve been told he needs to experience a normal workday with an anaesthetist, not spend it being gawked at.”

Clara glowered at Sadie and grumbled, “Right, I’m off to look at the allocations. There must be a better option.”

She stomped off down the corridor, Sadie following in her wake, to the main notice board, which had the operating theatre’s activity for the day pinned to it.

They had ten operating theatres, so surely there had to be someone else. Jabbing the top of the allocation list with her finger, Clara grimaced as she ran her eyes down it. She huffed when she got to the bottom, coming to the same conclusion that Sadie had.

The choice on the board was four doctors close to retirement, who, while safe, were hardly dynamic and would never teach, only make the actor stand in the corner as far away from the patient as possible.

Then there was another one who was just a bit, Clara didn’t want to say dangerous, but he would show their profession in a less than ideal light. Actually, maybe he was dangerous and now always had a registrar babysitting him. The crowning moment of his career had been the time a patient had an allergic reaction, and he had come dashing out of the operating theatre demanding that they send for a doctor. A nurse had managed to waylay him before he got very far from his theatre and sent him straight back inside, pointing out that he was the doctor and he needed to go and fix it. The nurse had, however, put an emergency call out, and the calvary did arrive in the form of some very competent other anaesthetists.

“What about Gemma? She’d love to do it,” Clara said, poking her finger at Doctor Gemma Smith, who was doing a list, which, when she looked harder, she realised was totally inappropriate. “Oh, she’s doing gynaecology. I’m sure that would be fine,” her voice sounded a bit doubtful.

Sadie lifted an eyebrow and didn’t say anything.

“Yeah, okay. That’s not fine. The women would need to consent to have him in the room, and he’s a ‘secret’,” Clara said, using her fingers to put commas around the word secret.

Clara opened her mouth to speak, but Sadie cut her off.

“And don’t even think about saying Delores because I am not having a sexual harassment suit on my hands.” Sadie crossed her arms and scowled at her friend.

“She’s not that bad.” Clara cringed even as she said it.

“Really? You do remember that she can’t have any male anaesthetic nurses in theatre with her, as she tends to stand a little bit too close to them. Do you recall the situation with Johnny?” Sadie made grabby hand motions in the air.

Clara squeezed her eyes shut as she did remember the situation with Johnny and it hadn’t been ideal. Actually, it had been terrible, and she knew for a fact that if Delores had been a man rather than a four-foot-nine dainty woman, there was no way she would have a job in the hospital any more, and it was likely she would no longer be practising medicine.

“At least the hospital bought us elasticated waist scrubs to replace the drawstring ones,” Clara mumbled.

The old scrub trousers tied up at the sides with a string, which occasionally came untied, meaning you lost your trousers at very inopportune times. It also left a nice gap in the material where your underwear was on view and a bit of your thigh. It didn’t matter if you wore your scrub tops untucked as it covered the hole, but there was a large proportion of men, especially surgeons, who insisted on tucking in their scrub tops, which meant Clara could tell you with great authority which of them preferred boxers, briefs, or any assortment of underpants.

The hospital executive had made the awful drawstring trousers vanish nearly overnight when it turned out that a very determined and entirely inappropriate doctor could get herhand in through that gap quick as a flash and give the young and very good-looking male nurse’s bottom a quick squeeze.

“How does she still have a job?” Clara had been shocked when nothing much had come of Delores’s bad behaviour.

Sadie sighed. “You know why. Because her family has a lot of money and paid a very, very good lawyer to make it all go away. And you think it would be a good idea to put an A-list actor in her theatre and expect him to come out unscathed?”

“Fine. I’ll look after him,” Clara groaned loudly in resignation. It was going to be a long day.

“Thank you.” Sadie smiled brightly as her best friend huffed.

“Yeah, yeah. Send him my way when he arrives.” Clara flicked a hand in Sadie’s direction and stomped off back to her theatre.

“He’ll be here in an hour. I’ll bring him to you,” Sadie called merrily. She erupted into laughter when Clara lifted her right hand and gave her the finger over her shoulder. “You love me really!” she yelled after her friend, earning her a second bird from Clara’s left hand.

“I do, but you don’t have to be so smug about it,” Clara growled as she reached out to yank the door of her anaesthetic bay open.

“Use the button, don’t break that stupid door again,” Sadie shouted.

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