Lara is exhausted and asleep on the staff room sofa. Simon comes in and teases her implying she wants the registrar’s job enough that she would sleep with him so he’d withdraw. Lara tells him she’s not that desperate. She adds that she needs to sleep so much that she doesn’t mind not knowing who has the job yet, just then Harry walks in and says he’s an SHO down can she stay on and anxious to make a good impression she agrees with alacrity leaving Simon smirking.
Simon’s brother turns up rather the worse for wear to ask him to go out for drinks after the shift as he is getting married tomorrow and he should be there as best man. He is convinced he can make a go of it with Claire and Simon looks very guilty, appears reluctant to go for a drink after the shift and is obviously relieved when he is called away. Later Claire arrives to tell Simon she cannot go through with marrying his brother next day because she wants to be with Simon not his brother. Simon tells her she can’t pull out now his brother would kill both of them. He then brutally tells her she was only a fling to him anyway and he is not planning on staying in Holby so she should go ahead and marry his brother. Claire is both angry and in tears and she storms off leaving Simon looking devastated. His plans are disrupted when to his surprise Harry offers him the registrars job not Lara. She is very upset and disappointed and refuses to listen to Harry’s explanation when he tells her it was a close call. Harry tells her to live with it or get out. Simon then makes the situation worse by telling her he didn’t want the job anyway but he had to accept or he’d have had a big black mark on his CV. Later he invites Roxy, who is trying to organise a celebratory drink for him to go to the wedding with him and she agrees when she hears she can go shopping for a new hat.
A young couple Colin and Sharon Thomas are with their three week old baby Brendan are in a traffic jam. A gunman opens fire spraying the area with bullets injuring a young man Scott Williams, Bessie the dog belonging to an elderly man, Ray and Sharon. Brendan is screaming in fright and covered in blood. Comfort, Nikki and Fin arrive with the police and despite Comforts assurances that the baby appears unhurt Sharon is inconsolable. Ray refuses to let go of his dog because he is afraid she will bleed to death if he lets go, but is obviously very shocked so Fin takes them both in to Casualty.
When they arrive at A & E Harry examines Brendan and is able to assure his traumatised parents that none of the blood is his. Sharon has suffered a gunshot wound to the shoulder and has lost a lot of blood but is unconcerned as she is only worried about Brendan who was premature and only came out of Holby City Hospital the day before. She is anxious to breast feed him but Harry tells her she is not well enough and needs to go to theatre to have the injury repaired and he is concerned that the brachial artery may be damaged. Duffy teaches the bewildered Colin to bottle feed the baby telling him “Remember it’s not four-star and he’s not the family saloon.”
Meanwhile Scott is deteriorating Lara is very concerned about him and thinks he may have internal bleeding Simon agrees and says he thinks he may have a hepatic laceration. She asks Simon why he did not put the case more strongly to the surgeon and that he is too laid back. She says Scott should be in theatre not awaiting a CT scan. Simon tells her when she is a registrar she can decide these things. She is obviously not pleased. DI Collier comes in to question Scott much to Lara’s disgust but he is unable to get much information other than it is about money and Lara tells him to move. It is obvious she is not pleased about the DI being there. Harry checks on Scott and says he should be in theatre but he arrests and they cannot resuscitate him.
Ray is still refusing to part from his dog and Dillon is banished from his cubicle because he doesn’t like dogs. Tony coaxes the elderly man to let him take the dog and it is taken to an animal hospital to be treated. The man now says he thinks he is going to have a heart attack and that he thinks his heart is going to stop so Lara checks him out. Telling him to tell her when he thinks it is stopping and assures him it is still loud and strong. DI Collier tries to interview Ray but he upsets him and Lara tells him to end the interview. He objects and she reminds him that she could tell everyone what he did to his wife; All they have to do is match the bite mark to his teeth. Afterwards his colleague approaches her and asks what the problem is and Lara says she is happy to give her “chapter and verse on or off the record” about what he did to his wife. The WPC goes away obviously uncomfortable.
The gunman’s getaway car drives into a multi-story car park at speed and hits Joely a young mixed race girl who is arranging a meeting on her mobile phone. They leave her lying hidden in a dark corner and make their escape, her parents later arrive at their car and cannot find her but assume she has already gone and go home. Some hours later she is brought into Casualty by Nikki and Comfort. The car had bull bars and Harry is very concerned about her. It is immediately evident that she has broken her left femur and when the team try to move her she complains of pain in her neck and tingling down her right arm and leg. Concerned that she may have a spinal fracture Harry orders more x-rays and insists she doesn’t move. She is so anxious about not being allowed to move that Anna asks her what is wrong and it transpires that she was going to meet her birth mother for the first time that night and she is afraid she will think she stood her up. Anna agrees to meet the woman, Sosefin at the mosque and explain what happened.
Anna persuades Tony to drive her there and when she meets Sosefin she insists she must see Joely. By the time she arrives at the hospital Joely’s adoptive parents are there and she refuses to see her as they do not know she was looking for her birth mother. They guess anyway and are very hurt, but Anna persuades them to allow Sosefin and Joely to meet for a few moments. Anna explained that she is mixed race too, her Dad was Pakistani and she’s never been allowed to meet him as it was all a big secret and she needs to know about the other half. Joely could have the best of both worlds if her adoptive mother will let her. Joely’s mother asks Anna to think very carefully before she goes looking for her father because “a mother’s love is a very jealous thing.”
Tony has also brought the dog back to see Ray so they can go home together and is persuaded to drive the dog and her owner home, finally leaving the hospital about three hours after he should have done.
Scott’s brother Virgil is bought in with serious gunshot wounds and it transpires that he and his brother they’d been running a protection racket. He dies before he can really tell DI Collier anything useful. Lara has to tell his mother Virgil is dead and she quickly realises that the DI has only told her they have Scott in custody not that he is dead in a bid to make her talk. A horrified Lara breaks the news to the woman who promptly stops talking to Collier and asks Lara if she can see her sons. Collier is furious with Lara for ruining his investigation and attacks her beside her car in a dark alley after work. He knocks her to the ground and terrified she starts groping around on the ground looking for something to fight back with and her hand closes on half a brick…
Episode first broadcast Saturday 15th June 2002
Additional Cast
DI Collier
Dorian Healy WPC Newcombe
Ashley Williams Ray
John Bennett Colin Thomas
Milo Twomey Sharon Thomas
Rebecca Craig Scott Williams
Roger Evans Virgil Williams
Anthoney Topham Joely Davidson
Ruby Visaria Martin Davidson
Stuart McGugan
Written by Heather Edmonds
SERIES 16
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