Well, that was
fun wasn’t it?
In the end Cath
decided that, whilst being a Doctor was far harder than she imagined, it paid
the bills and enabled her to live in one of those homes that, in the 60’s, used
to house about 17 different families but are now occupied by the kind of yoga
practising couple who drink coffee by the thimble-full and make their own
pasta.
It had a few
other drawbacks too, like having to change your identity from a disgraced Nurse
Hardacre into a rather revered Doctor Sutton, but that’s not a problem these
days. It used to be far harder before the internet of course. In those days, in
order to prove your qualifications, you used to have to go all the trouble of
pointing to a framed diploma on the wall of your surgery, these days you simply
replace every online image of the person you are pretending to be with a
picture of yourself.
Just a few years
ago, for example, I played left back for a Scottish first division football
team by convincing the players and management that I was Nigel Winterburn, the
ex-Arsenal and England defender turned part-time TV pundit. “Seems to check out
ok” said the physio as I passed my medical and handing me back my expertly
forged Nectar card. I drew a reasonable weekly wage – not Premiership money, obvs
– until I ruptured my spleen taking a throw on, at which point I withdrew from
football altogether, carefully remembering to restore Google back to where it
was before I started.
Cath often reflected upon the predicament that
got her into the pickle in which she now found herself as she stared into the
gaping wound of another trauma victim that had been presented to her by the
expectant ambulance crew. Had she not bemoaned the falling standards of NHS
doctors who, she felt, cared less about patients welfare and more about the
model of Nespresso machine that they were now able to afford, she would still
be nursing away in Sheffield with the sort of bossy-boots attitude for which
those nurses who wear the darker blue uniform are rightly known. She had been
good at the “Hattie Jacques” frown and could change a dressing with her left
hand whilst inserting a particularly stubborn catheter with the right.
Unfortunately, she had been abrupt with the wrong junior Doctor and had been made
to hand in her badge and gun by a senior administrator who looked as if she was
trying to swallow a wasp-infested lemon.
It took
circumstances and a fair degree of ‘bottle’ to place herself in Edinburgh with
a stolen CV, a forged passport and an application for the vacant Doctor’s post in
the busy A & E department of the West Lothian Trust. In the overworked Dr Brigitte
Raynes (Sharon Small) she had found a willing employer who was so impressed
with her CV that she completely forgot to check out her LinkedIn profile. “You’re
too good for us” she stated, handing her a contract and wheeling in a casualty,
“when was the last time you replaced a kidney?”
So Cath, now
Ali, bumbled through the first three episodes, applying bandages, re-starting
hearts and amputating the odd limb, while her colleagues, apart from raising
the occasional eyebrow when they caught her referring to ‘Resuscitation For
Dummies’, complemented her on her skill, bedside manner and willingness to empty
bedpans. Not one, however, asked to connect with her on Facebook.
The tangled web
of deception was bound to unravel. When estranged father of her daughter, Karl
(Blake Harrison, sounding nothing like Neil from the Inbetweeners), turned up
unexpectedly there was the distinct sound of a bag being vacated by a cat. Of
all the missed opportunities in the world, the one that I find the most
frustrating is why, when Karl realised that Cath (Jodie Whittaker) was
masquerading under a false identity, did they not give him the line “Doctor
WHO?”
Perhaps the
writers felt that this would take a little of the realism away from the piece.
Too late I’m afraid, for, while Trust Me made for a fine, edge of the seat
drama, filled as it was with plenty of moral dilemmas and moments of genuine
tension, it did not pay much heed to realism. After Karl is struck down by a
car following a fist fight with her new boyfriend, he is briefly left alone and
comatose with the very Doctor that his ex-missus was now shacked up with.
Whilst everyone was looking the other way, poor old Karl croaked. “I don’t know
what happened” says Dr Brenner, still standing on the oxygen line, ‘he’s just
gone all blue and dead’.
‘Oh, well,’ says
Cath, ‘much as I’ll never trust you again, I’ll change my name back to Doctor
Sutton and carry on working here. Put him in the incinerator for me would you?’
Promotional
interviews and general ‘blurb’ before the start of this series suggested that
this sort of thing goes on more than we would like to imagine and I don’t doubt
that some dodgy diplomas and suspicious certificates have enabled some
unscrupulous gits to practice medicine when they shouldn’t even be allowed near
Elastoplast but, come on. It’s hard enough to get paid by the NHS for supplying
something they actually asked for, let alone carving out a career as a medic in
A & E on production of someone else’s CV and a stethoscope.
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