Doc Hollywood (Two Worlds Collide Romance #1)

1. CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 1

“ I don’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 her hand 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.

Clara froze and muttered to herself, “Stupid bloody doors, load of crap automatic system. That’s why you shouldn’t get the cheapest bidder to build the hospital.”

Then she dutifully pressed the button and waited for the automatic doors to open before she stomped inside.

“I’ve sent for the first patient,” her anaesthetic nurse, Lauren, greeted her cheerfully.

“Thanks. What’s the list looking like?” Clara shook herself out of her bad mood. She didn’t want to take it out on her nurse, as it wasn’t her fault.

“Feral,” Lauren said, pushing the list of patients currently booked in the emergency theatre towards Clara. “Four appendices.”

“Four?!” What the hell have the surgeons been doing? Advertising on the street?” Clara glared down at the list of work that would take at least sixteen hours. Why did this always happen when she was on call? And knowing her luck, a stack more cases would get booked as the day progressed.

She hated days like this. It was bad enough anaesthetising the ever-changing and never-ending emergency list when you knew you were going to leave at six. When you were on call, it meant it was your problem until six, but unfortunately, not six pm; it was your responsibility until six the next morning.

“Yeah, and three lap choles.” Lauren’s finger moved down the list.

“For fuck’s sake. Nope, they can go on the ASU list this arvo. Can you let the nurse in charge know I said to move them.” Clara carried on scanning the list, breaking into laughter when she saw a note by one of the patients. “Surgeon requests a one o’clock start? Really?”

“Yeah. they’re arriving in the hospital at one and would like to get it done before they start their afternoon clinic,” Lauren chuckled.

“I’ll take that under advisement and tell the people with appendicitis that some moron got punched in the nose, so they’ll have to wait with their bursting appendix while the ENT surgeons straighten out the moron’s nose and make them beautiful again,” Clara said sarcastically.

“They claimed they’d be quick, twenty minutes tops,” Lauren offered.

“Of course they did. But is that surgical time or real-time?” Clara quirked an eyebrow.

The surgeons always amused her with their woefully inaccurate estimations of time. Well, if she didn’t choose to find them amusing, she would be tempted to throw some punches herself.

“Always surgical time. What’s the equation again?” Lauren chortled, as it was a conversation they’d had many, many times before.

“Right. It’s the time the surgeon tells you they’ll take to do the operation, multiplied by two, plus a fudge factor of thirty minutes if they let the most junior doctor suture,” Clara supplied.

“That’s the one. Scientifically proven?”

“Yeah. I’m thinking of getting it published.” They both cracked up at Clara’s straight-faced proclamation about publishing it.

So much of medicine was devoted to ‘ trying to get a publication ‘; however pointless it was, so you got some extra points on your CV and were more likely to get your next job. There were so many hoops for the Junior Doctors to jump through that Clara thanked the stars every day that she was a consultant and done with all that crap.

“Speaking of time,” Clara checked her phone. “Have you seen the anaesthetic reg? It’s seven forty-five; they should be here by now.” The on call phone she was clutching rang, an unknown number lighting up the screen. “Yup, that’ll be the sick call now.” She answered the phone. “Hi, this is Clara; I’m the anaesthetic consultant for emergencies.”

“Hi Clara, it’s Betty.”

Clara nodded to Lauren as soon as she heard their department secretary’s voice. She knew what was about to be said. “Hi, Betty. How are you going? What’s up?”

“Yeah, I’ve had about a million sick calls.”

“Yeah. I’m guessing I don’t have a registrar today?” Clara rolled her eyes. The junior doctors were flogged, so she was never surprised they got sick more frequently than she did.

“No. Sorry.”

“What about after hours? I’m on call tonight and don’t fancy working on my own for fifteen hours until the night shift arrives.” Clara shook her head at Lauren, indicating that they were it for the day.

“I’m working on it. Leave it with me, and I’ll get back to you.” Betty was incredibly competent and kept the whole department running. If she couldn’t sort out the staffing problem, it couldn’t be sorted.

“Thanks, Betty. How was your weekend? Did you go away in the caravan?”

They always talked about camping; it was something they both loved.

“Yeah. It was brilliant. The weather was perfect, and the campsite was right next to the beach.”

“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.