Page 3 of Doc Hollywood

“That sounds amazing. I’ll have to get the name from you. Although, I’m not sure when I’ll next get to go.” Clara swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat at the reminder that she wasn’t part of a couple. A fun camping trip was hard to organise when you were thirty-five, and all your friends were married and having children.

“You’re better off without him,” Betty commented, immediately guessing that Clara would be thinking about her ex, Jack.

“Thanks, Betty. I know. Right, I have to go and do some work. I’ll talk to you later.” Clara looked down again at the list of patients and suppressed a sigh.

“Nip round for a chat if you can,” Betty requested.

“I’ll try, but someone just told me I’ve got no registrar for the day. So I don’t think I’ll make it out of theatre,” Clara grumbled.

Betty chuckled. “Yeah, yeah. Talk later.”

“Probably not,” Clara replied, rolling her eyes.

There was no way she was going to get out of her theatre.

“I’ll do my best to find you a registrar,” Betty promised. “Have a good day.”

“You too,” Clara huffed before they both hung up.

CHAPTER 2

Clara clutched the on call phone and squeezed her eyes closed to get the thought of Jack out of her head.

She tried not to think about him anymore, but despite it being two years since they had broken up, he still popped into her mind far too often.

They had been in medical school together, and it had been love at first sight for her. From his chocolate brown eyes to his sharp cheekbones, artfully tousled blonde hair and six-foot-tall body—which she later found out was actually five foot ten, although he told everyone he was six foot—she had instantly liked everything about him.

It had taken two years from the day she first saw him, and the consumption of more pints of beer one night in the student union than she cared to think about now, for her to get the guts to go and talk to Jack. And by the end of the evening, they had arranged their first date, and everything after that had seemed so natural and progressed so easily.

They had spent their last three years at university as a couple. They studied for exams together, passed medical schooltogether, managed to get jobs at the same hospital after they graduated, and officially moved in together. Even though Jack had spent most of his time at her place for the previous three years, he had kept his own rental accommodation, claiming he couldn’t let his friends down, whom he had promised to live with through university.

Sometimes, she thought about that time and now could see how uneven their relationship had been. She worked hard, and he copied off her, helping himself to notes that had taken her hours and hours to make.

When he stayed at her house, he would claim that, as a guest, it would be rude for him to use the kitchen, so she always cooked and provided the groceries that they both ate.

But Clara had been in love and ignored the things that should have given her a clue to his character.

Everything was wonderful through their intern years and resident years. Then, they both applied together for anaesthetic training.

In hindsight, this is when she could see the fractures in their relationship start to develop.

When she got a position on a training scheme, and he didn’t, Jack couldn’t quite manage to fake being happy for her and began to make snide remarks. The type of comments that individually couldn’t be taken as anything too bad but added together to cut deeply.

She even spoke to a few people about delaying training for a year, maybe taking a gap year to travel with Jack and see the world. But her friends and advisers had pointed out, quite rightly, that if she didn’t take the job, it might not be there next year.

After a lot of soul searching and a few comments from Jack about how it was a shame that they didn’t share the same desire for adventure—as he had leapt on the gap year idea and run withit as if that had been his intention all along—she had accepted the job and started her anaesthetic training.

That year had been tough on their relationship with her long hours and Jack travelling all over the country for locum work, but she had stupidly thought they were the couple that would make it. That their love was strong enough to hold them together through any storm.

When she was stressed about working so many hours each week and studying for exams, she kept it to herself, not wanting to rock the boat as the first time she had mentioned being stressed, Jack had flown off the handle at her and then sulked about how insensitive it was of her to be complaining when she had the job that he wanted, and if he was the one with the job, he wouldn’t be moaning about it. In the end, she had been the one to apologise to him for upsetting him.

It quickly became an established pattern: she would say something, looking for support from him, he would fly into a rage about it, and then she would apologise to him.

Things improved a bit when, the next year, he also got an anaesthetic training job and crowed to her about how much more rounded he was starting training than her with all the locum work he had done over the previous year. How it wasn’t a sprint to get through and be a consultant, how being a more experienced doctor with a better breadth of knowledge would put him in a much stronger position.

Although maybe their relationship didn’t improve? Her memory was so fuzzy about that time. She had been working full-time, studying for hours each day, and ensuring she did her share of the housework and cooking. Or that would lead to another rant from Jack about how special she thought she was, and that they were both doctors and she needed to pull her weight, and if she couldn’t handle the stresses involved intraining, maybe she should give up her spot for someone like him who could.

The first exam she had to sit for training was in two parts: a written exam, which, if you passed, meant you got to sit an oral viva, which was the other fifty percent of the mark.

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