Mark Calder is clearing his desk when Jane comes in and asks what he's doing. He tells her that he is leaving and that he has got another job. It transpires that he is going to be the manager of a tobacco company ! Jane is annoyed with Mark, telling him he'll be dumping all the work on to her. He says she should be pleased for him. She looks in disbelief at him and says he's missing the point. 'In this job we save lives, in yours you'll be cutting them short,' she tells him.
One patient, Mr.Tandy is being examined by Adele when his wife walks in and orders him to come home. She explains that her husband has a fettish for nurses and Mike asks if he's receiving treatment for it !
Meanwhile Terry Cooper is on leave from the army and comes home to his wife Alison. Terry says he wants whats owed to him and tells her to get into bed but she doesn't want to have sex. Terry becomes angry and tells her the only thing that keeps him going is the thought of her. He grabs her, she pulls away and slips and falls off the balcony of their first floor flat. An ambulance is called and when she arrives in Holby she undergoes several tests to determine if there is any long term damage. She appears to have escaped from the ordeal without much damage but she has to be kept in for a fortnight for observation. Terry's leave is only for 10 days so he is devastated that he won't be able to spend time with Alison.
Several patients come into the hospital after coming in contact with an oil tanker. The tanker had crashed spilling barrels full of harmful chemicals which were going to be 'tipped' or dumped. The driver Pete Adams is unconcious at first and a young lad Billy Farady who is in the middle of his paper round sees the lorry and phones for an ambulance. He talks to the driver and tells him stories to try and keep him alive as the ambulance is on his way. A middle aged man is out jogging and comes to see what has happened as does a man who is out walking his dog. All three end up in Holby Casualty because they touched the chemicals. The driver recovers well after being attended to at Holby and his wife arrives demanding an explanation as to why he was carrying that muck. It appears that a variety of chemicals mixed together caused the liquid to be highly toxic and those who touched it had reddened blistered skin on the infected area. Mrs.Adams visits the man who gave her husband the load but he threatens her that if she reports him to the Police then her husband will 'go down his him'. Still, Mrs.Adams reports him to the Police risking the consequences to her husband. Billy, who is an asthmatic, returns home after his paper round and is feeling unwell. His mother Betty calls an ambulance. Billy's condition deteriorates and the team at Holby knows that his condition is serious. His mother goes in to visit him but he is in an unconcious state so she wraps her necklace in his hand and leaves him to the doctors. Not long after she leaves his cubicle he stops breathing and dies. His father Ted (George Sweeney) arrives asking how his son is, only to be told by his wife that he's dead.
Meanwhile Ash has worked out why Mark Calder is leaving. The fax that he got Jane to leak to the press at the end of a previous episode said that Holby and Queens hospitals were both to close. Everyone was in uproar but then the real truth came out that only Queens was to close. Then the feeling was of relief that only one of the hospitals was to close, thus softening the impact. Calder had engineered the whole situation. Ash says, 'He'd make a great politician.'
Episode first broadcast Saturday 15th January 1994
Written by Christopher Watson
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