by Harvey Sagar
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The ward is in chaos when the meals service disrupts a cardiac arrest call, an eavesdropper breaks his hip and most visitors and patients take no notice or offer dubious advice. Tom’s loss of confidence in his skills as a junior hospital doctor is increased and he confides in Jane, his newly acquired staff nurse girlfriend. Meanwhile, Miles, an obsessive hospital consultant, battles with his dissatisfaction with clinical medicine and the separation from Fiona, his barrister wife, who has temporarily left the marital home to help Miles reconstruct himself. She also has doubts about her own professional role and the money-grabbing motives of her clerk of chambers.
A chance encounter in an Italian restaurant results in the four coming together to form a new charity devoted to medical problems resulting from overindulgence in alcohol. After considering a number of alternatives for the charity name, they settle on Drink Ruins You, or DRY for short, and plan a day of fund-raising in the hospital grounds.
Elsie has given up her job in catering at the hospital to design and set up competitions at holiday camps. While setting up her cupcake carrying competition, she is called by Miles, who enlists her help in setting up the events for a charity day. She, in turn, recruits Doreen, a portly fellow hospital domestic, and Gerry, a colleague of dubious moral integrity from the holiday camps. Fiona secures the services of Call-Me-Ted Stevens, an alcoholic sentenced to community service for defrauding the homeless, as Master of Ceremonies.
The preparatory meetings and events of the charity day are fraught with mishap for this band of characters. Despite the problems, the charity’s future seems secure and romance blossoms.
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