Part the One: In which a Hospital is presented, and duly Wrapped in Mystery, Mr. Will Darcy Suffers an Accident, and Miss Elysabeth Bennet, Agent Provocateur, decides to have her nose Done.
Why it was called DWG Hospital no one knew, but it can safely be assumed that it was the worst Hospital in the World, or it would have been, had it not been inhabited with brilliant GP: s and Surgeons, in short Doctors who had such horrid personalities they were fired from any Decent Hospital, despite their Magic Touch. So they all came to DWG Hospital, the brain - child of someone who watches way too many TV Soaps, no doubt.
But we'll see more of DWG in a moment; first we have to, in the reckless manner of Harlequin/Mills and Boon - novels, introduce the Leading Dame and the Dashing Hero. This is no doubt due to an overdose of said novels, which is horrid but really, when you can have like ten of them for a dollar, how can you blame me?
Errrrrr, how can you blame anunspecifiedMysterypersonnosimilaritiestome?
OK, back to the Story...
Will Darcy, talldark'nhandsome (because he is), was wearing his sheep - skin coat, with the curly fur turned in so he'd be all warm and comfy, and the skin, dyed in a fetching dark yellow, turned out, so the ladies could all admire his fit figure.
And they did!
Well, anyway, he slipped on some ice (it Happens to be November), and really, now some ladies might stop reading RIGHT HERE because his back said "crack!", ok, sorry, I was trying to spare you some pain, it said:
So anyway it was THAT kind of ugly thing that happened to Darcy.
So he couldn't move.
But, rescue was near, in the form of a large group of nursing - students from DWG Hospital (wanna guess what they called themselves? Yeah, that's right. The Nursies.) and they all gathered around the prone shape of Darcy and assisted him to the DWG Emergency ("ER").
All the Nursies were pretty and Darcy decided at once they were very clever, because a Darcy wouldn't be a Darcy if he didn't want a girl who was Smart as well as Pretty. That silent redhead, now... She looked REAL clever, he said to himself. She had that... clever... figure. (This is were Darcy surrenders, because he can see when the metaphor is TOO extended even for this Author, and she wants to add she knows what a metaphor is, but she couldn't find the other word she should have used, it was on loan to "Ruffle at Raffles", and they wouldn't give it back, because that Story is like a BBC "Pride and Prejudice" six - hour series, and this is like "General Hospital", you'll see. (No, this isn't even the same league as "Dallas", I'm afraid.)
Yadda Yadda Yadda...
Anyway this is where a horrid - looking Matron comes up to Darcy and she tells all the scantily - clad Nursies to be off! She'll deal with this one HERSELF!
GASP!
Turns out, she's his cousin Anne deBunk, Girl - Scout extraordinaire, and it also will turn out she's had this major crush on her cousin Wills for well over a century now, a not uncommon occurrence in day - time soaps (if this is a Vampire Novel, the Author DOESN'T WANT TO KNOW!), and this despite the fact that she is probably his own half - sister, snatched as an infant from the bosom of his then delusional Mother (she got better).
So, Will Darcy is unable to move, and Horrid Anne is perched on his temporary bed, and meanwhile Darcy is sure he can see both George Clooney and Noah Wylie run past his bed, but they ignore him, no doubt due to the fact that Anne deBunk is suspended above his (lean, but muscled) chest (oh my! This IS a Vampire Novel!).
But We, my Heroic Readers (the two of you still hanging in there), must leave him in fear for a while (just pretend he's MacGyver) and meet Elysabeth.
Well, she has whatever looks that the current trend tells us Miss Bennets should have, probably not light hair, but you can bet your last silver peso this woman has gold fillings and sparkling eyes (or if it was the other way around?) and a lovely nose, sure looks better than mine does, ... only, once, as a child, her horrid twin brothers, Colin and Firth, smacked her, so it's a LITTLE bent in the middle, but this only adds to her charm, WE think, but Elysabeth hates her nose a lot.
This has a little something to do with the way Harlequin heroines look, because that's all Elysabeth reads, that and fan fiction. (You'll see.) It has a lot to do with her current boyfriend George Wickham too, because George Wickham is a bloke that the lovely ladies in TLC would call a "scrub", and he wouldn't ever understand that video of theirs, the one with a beauty - clinic.
Ergh, in short, he's a man that wants "his woman" to look like a supermodel, so this is why Elysabeth is right now in front of a mirror pinching her nose.
Anyways, if she had the money she'd get it done, but she doesn't, so she is determined to have to suffer through George's comments until she can get some cash, and if she cooks him dinner he might not dump her this week. So she grabs her copy of the latest Romantic Monthly, to find that recipe so aptly titled "Feed him - and he's yours For Ever..." but her eyes stop when she sees the tiny ad:
Tired of your looks?
We'll give you the face
you've always dreamed
about...
yadda yadda yadda,
the usual sales talk,
then the fine print
(DWG Teaching Hospital takes no
responsibility for any unsuccessful
operations etc etc etc)
and then it's the (to Elysabeth)
Good Part:
Nose Correction 95 dollars only!
GASP!
THIS she can afford, and so she leaves her flat in a hurry, after leaving a message to George:
HAVE GONE TO DO NOSE JOB
AT DWG HOSPITAL CHICKEN
TICA TIKA TIKKA IN FRIDGE
LOVE LYSSA XXX
Part the Two: In which Weird People all turn out to be Related to Darcy, Darcy has to Expose Himself to a Member of the Opposite Sex, and everyone is a Dwiggie.
"Please, Cousin Anne, you are slobbering all over my sheep coat!" hissed Darcy.
"Please, don't call me by that... mundane... name, Will. I'm... Morticia." (Yes, Your Author is now facing the truth, this might just be a Vampire Novel!)
Anne/Morticia smiled, revealing Yellow Teeth.
"You... must... floss!" cried out Darcy, a woman destined to become a princess had told him that many times.
"Anne Lavinia Drusilla Commoda deBunk, WHAT, no you stupid writer, I said WHAT? are you doing with a MAN?"
Anne spasmed in fear.
"Mother!"
"Indeed, 'Mother!'"
A dragon, disguised as a person (there is doubt whether she really was a woman), leaned over Darcy, who was sure by now he must have been drugged.
Never again shall I eat bagels off a stand, he wowed silently.
I shall never go hungry again, tomorrow is another day, I will go home to Tara!
Errrgh, okay... Anyway Darcy now thought he saw his Aunt Catherine deBunk, clad in a white coat and with syringes sticking out of her many pockets.
"Don't tell me you are a doctor in this story?" he cried out, but it was all futile.
"Certainly! Dear Nephew, it was lucky that I recognized you. I would have turned you into an oxen had you been a stranger assaulting my daughter! But it's all right now, I see you have decided to keep it in the family, which is fine!"
"I WAS not... And I'm NOT...!"
"Hush, hush, you shall marry Anne the moment you are released from this hospital..."
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!UUUUUuuuuuuurrggghhhh..." Aunt Catherine put a large hand across his windpipe, and silenced him.
"DEATH IS MINOR COMPARED TO YOUR DAUGHTER" he meant to curse her when he was released, but it came out as a plea for water.
He had some, courtesy of Anne.
Then he was shuffled into a room, and they tied his feet to the bedpost so he wouldn't run off, which was stupid as he still couldn't move.
"Hello my dear, you must be here for some surgery?" And she smiled like an ad for toothpaste.
Meanwhile, Elysabeth was not kicking her heels in some hallway, no, when she entered the Plastic Surgery Department (yup, they called it that at the DWG), a nurse ran up to hear and smiled. She looked like a Golden Retriever, so now you all understand this woman is a Jane. Now, Jane is all white fluff and pink bunnies, right? So we enter Jane's world:
"Yes," said Elysabeth, who had a mental block in her head, so Jane's world couldn't enter. More about this block later.
"What can Dr. Bingley do for you dearie? A new chin? Breasts? Sex - change?"
"How much is that?" asked Elysabeth against her better judgment. But really, had she known it would be this cheap and easy, she would have done her nose long ago...
"For a friend, that is, for YOU, dear... Make it two hundred seventy -five."
"Wow!" said Elysabeth, impressed.
"All right, all right, two hundred. But you are killing me."
"No, no, I don't want a sex - change. I WOULD like a nose job, tho'."
"Why, certainly! I'll take you to the Doctor." Said Nurse Jane, and pushed Elysabeth into a small room.
"A patient, My Darling!" she called, and a man turned around. He looked like a Mad Professor, so I guess he was.
"Ah HA! And what do YOU want, My Little Girl?" he said, sounding like a loon.
"I want the ninety - five dollar nose - job," said Elysabeth.
"Ask, and it shall be given," said he, and picked up a scalpel. "Nurse Mrs. Doctor Bingley, may we have some more lights, please?"
"Eh... I'd like some anaesthetic, and a consult first, thank you," said Elysabeth, who, and that had to do with that mental block again, wouldn't let anyone but George run her over like that.
GRUMBLE GRUMBLE said Dr. Bingley, and Nurse Bingley said something about doves and roses, but they really needed the money so they put her in a bed and Nurse Bingley pushed her to a room. It took them very long, because they had to pass the children's ward and the animal labs and the Garden, only to stop and play with the Little Children, pet the puppies, and smell the roses.
Darcy was able to sit up after an hour, and then someone entered his room.
"Bingley?" he asked, "Are you a Doctor in this Story?"
Bingley bounced, like all the young Bingleys do, until he remembered he was older in this Story.
"Well, I think I'm more of a Mad Professor," he said, and stroked his beard.
"Eh," said Darcy, I have a horrid feeling we're related, it's that kind of day."
"Yes, certainly, we sure are!" cried the Mad Professor, "I am your Mother's second husband's first cousin, on his Uncle's side!"
Darcy did the math.
"Oh no, that must mean you are my half - brother thrice removed!"
"Oh, it's worse than that! You see, I have cloned your cousin Fitzwilliam, and now there are TEN of him running around!"
"Fitz? Well, that's not so bad. I like the Colonel."
"Oh no, not that Fitzwilliam. His brother."
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Don't tell me you cloned Broxton Fitzwilliam, the Accountant?"
"I'm afraid so... and he has a tendency to, eh, morph, whenever he is near water."
"I knew I watched to many bad movies in the 80:s... This must be my punishment," said Darcy, always the vehicle for his Author's greatest fears.
"Anyway, you are scheduled for the leg - removal at eight, be there or be square," said Bingley.
"LEG WHAT?" If Darcy would have anything removed, it would be Bingley, he decided.
"Oh, don't worry, Cat deBunk is footing your bill, it'll be cheap."
"She will?" asked Darcy against his will. He'd always wanted to do something about his nose...
Darcy was tapping away furiously at his laptop when a nurse entered, spreading flowers and candy and pink cotton clouds... STOP IT!
Ok, ok, Nurse Jane rolled in Elysabeth... And Darcy choked.
"A WOMAN? A WOMAN IN MY ROOM? WHAT KIND OF HOSPITAL IS THIS?"
Elysabeth, a true Bennet, glowered at him. Nurse Jane, however, leaned over him and said...
Some time later
Darcy woke from what must have been the pinkest daze ever.
"Ehuurgh..." He muttered.
"Don't worry, that happens to everyone," a voice said from the bed next to his. "Everyone except me, oddly enough."
The woman! Darcy turned his head. She was sitting up in bed, dressed in something alluringly feminine, and she looked... alluringly feminine.
"But this is a men's ward!" he croaked.
"They're short of beds," she replied, and he realised she was typing on a laptop while talking to him. His heart beat an extra beat; the only women he'd ever met with laptops where in ads or on the Net, and who knew if those women really HAD laptops, I mean really, the last woman he'd chatted with told him she had an X48cuMAt - 5, and only guys had those!
"What are you doing?" he said, always eager to talk computers.
"I'm in chat with some Dwiggies," she replied.
"Diggers? Are you into motorcycling, then?" and he felt real disappointed.
"No, I said 'Dwiggies', you horrid," she gave him a look of what should have been contempt, but it turned sort of... smouldering. She took a deep breath. "... You beastly man." Maybe too much stress on the 'beast' - part, there, but Darcy wouldn't know woman lust if it hit him right between his eyes.
"Sounds like some kind of cookies..."
"Well, they are regular Babes, all of them..."
"I'm sure they have nothing on you," Ooooops, WHERE did THAT come from? And Elysabeth got all hot and bothered. Some time was spent very carefully Not Looking at each other, i.e. sneaking peeks at the other when the other wasn't sneaking peeks at you.
"ANYway," Elysabeth tried, "Dwiggies are people who like Jane Austen... They write fanfics and put them up on the web."
"Jane Austen? Well, ok I guess... I've written a couple of sequels to Pride and Prejudice, if you must know..."
"Really? What's the addy?"
"Eh... No, they're printed, real books. I write under a pen name: Emma Tennant."
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeekkkkk!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Now you know!!!
But back to story:
"Cool... My name's Elysabeth Bennet, by the way."
"My name is Darcy... Will Darcy," Darcy said, because he thought he was cool. "Wait, you are Lizzie Bennet?"
"NO! I'm Elysabeth, e - l - y - s, there is a HUGE difference!"
"Ok, ok... You can stop hitting me now..."
Part the Three: In which a Horrid Boyfriend turns up, the deBunks debunk, and Various Operations are almost Performed.
Now, this Author has read too much Barbara Cartland lately (well, YOU try reading six of them in like three hours, sure you can do it but it sort of... twists you.) and she REALLY intends for this Elysabeth - hitting - Darcy - thing to turn into a kiss... You know, he grabs her and she goes all weak and feminine... But
A: Darcy's a nerd
B: TRY doing that to a woman in the Real World, and she'll knee you!
C: Someone enters, stage right, at this point.
Elysabeth FELT his presence, and left the Darcy vicinity very, very, fast, despite that strong urge to go all weak and pretend he was overwhelming her with his Masculine Aura. But her Wickham - radar was far stronger than her Darcy - lust... (for now :-) )
"George!" she cried out, and went into his arms, "did you find the Chicken Tikka?"
"It was cold, babe." Said Wickham coldly.
"Well dear, I didn't have time, but it would only be a minute in the micro..."
"I don't like my food cold," he said sternly. "Next time..."
"Next time, I'll be really really beautiful, George!" she hugged him. "Didn't you see the note? I'm having my nose done!"
"You what? No, I'll rephrase that:
YOU WHAT?"
That wasn't, in case anyone was still hoping for some true feelings from the Wickham - camp, Wickham; that was Will Darcy.
He felt a little guilty for having himself, only a little while ago, considered a nose - job, when this pretty, no, make that beautiful, no, make that
Woman
was considering it... Why, that was IMMORAL! Were he a wolf, he would have huffed and puffed and... But he was no wolf, he was a man, and frankly, he didn't need this hospital - bed anymore, having regained all feeling in his legs and back. So he stood up.
"WHY would you get your nose done? You are a beautiful woman!"
Elysabeth blushed, and let go of George.
"Well... I..."
George, not so behind as all that, pulled his eyebrows together.
"HEY! You hittin' on MY woman?"
Elysabeth clung to her boyfriend.
"No! No, George dear, he just... He just..."
"He just WHAT?"
(You know, the Author at this point has an Insight: Barbara Cartland would now have the Bad Guy produce a whip, and start whipping the woman, really this happens in every other BC book, you know you shouldn't read such trash... Anyways, I hate that sort of stuff, so don't worry, there won't be any violence here; But how to get them out of this messy scene I ask you???)
AHA! How to Kill Two Birds with One Stone: enter Anne deBunk. With a saw.
"Hello, Dear Will. It's time for your amputation." She smiled, and drooled a little. She still needed a dentist's appointment badly.
"Well, I'll amputate SOMETHIN' all right," snarled Wickham.
"Anne! What are you talking about!" cried Will.
"Well, if you won't have me, NO ONE will have YOU! MUAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!! "
And her horrid laughter was so screeching they all fell to their knees and wriggled in agony.
Everyone except Elysabeth, who still had her Wickham - block in place... Sure, it was lowering since she met Will Darcy (Why? Don't ask me why! He's her True Love, doh!), but it was still there, and Anne deBunk was no match for the woman who cooked Chicken Tikka faster than you could say 'One more, please. Easy on the water.'!
Elysabeth grabbed Darcy's limp form and hauled him out into the hallway. She shut the door on the screeching.
"Wha... What happened?"
"She had you on the floor in no time," said Elysabeth. "Girl power, I guess."
"Girl power?" he coughed, exhausted. "You should talk! I saw you with that jerk!"
"He's my boyfriend!" screamed she, feeling like he'd hit a nerve. Well, yes, he had I guess.
"WHY on EARTH are you getting a nose job? You are the prettiest woman I've EVER seen!"
"OOOOOOOOOOh," sighed the Nursies/Dwiggies, gathered behind a corner. Will Darcy was just about the cutest male they'd ever laid eyes on. That is, until they turned around and spotted TEN Fitzwilliams walking towards them.
Sure, they were Broxton Fitzwilliams, the accountant(s), but hey, the Fitzwilliam Syndrome is always the Fitzwilliam Syndrome (no, the Author doesn't have a clue either, she's just trying to knot the loose ends) and the Nursies ran to their accountants and started drooling over them.
Meanwhile, Elysabeth's Wickham walls had just tumbled down and she was staring at Darcy with huge eyes.
"Did you just say...?"
"Yes! You are handsome enough to tempt me! You have bright eyes, and even covered in mud I'd love you! And keep your breath to cool your porridge: I'm coming on to you!"
And he attached his lips to hers, and gave her the gentlest of kisses.
"No," she mumbled, "I'm coming on to you!" And she began to ravish him.
While we all look away modestly (and at least one of my Readers sigh happily, and stop reading), our eyes may fall upon the room Darcy and Elysabeth just left.
In there, I wish you would be hearing the sounds of Christmas Carols, but I'm afraid the only sounds emerging are the sounds of the surgical saw...
FINIS
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