The Royal

- Season 8

(2009)

The Ormerods accompany Sister Brigid to Ireland for Moira's funeral where married Sergeant O'Malley is among the mourners. It becomes clear that he is baby Aisling's father and his wife is about to find out. Back at the Royal new Dr. Ralph Ellis is thrown in at the deep end when he attends to Ruby, a teenager injured at a children's home, but reluctant to leave her little sister to go to hospital.

The Ormerods relieve a troubled Sister Brigid, who was considering leaving the veil to bring up Aisling, when they agree to adopting the little girl. Back at the Royal the porters have a hare-brained scheme to raise chickens whilst Ralph Ellis faces racial prejudice when he diagnoses school-girl Tracey Wong with non-contagious leprosy to which other parents show hostility.

Matron is put in an awkward position when her married friend Margo appears to have syphilis, about which her husband is unaware. Jack and Alun go after buried treasure but only succeed in puncturing a sewage pipe instead. Gordon and Ralph are called to a cliff-top rescue, which Ralph almost jeopardises when he ends up in need of rescuing himself. New administrator Jean McAteer gets to grips with the job.

Rag-and-bone man Lester Marsh is brought into the hospital after being knocked down and kicked by his horse. Gordon has to be taken by lifeboat to attend an emergency on a yacht and ends up comforting a grieving widow. For Susie, however, things are looking up as she asks Alun for a lift - to her wedding to a very wealthy man.

Following the departure of Susie after her whirlwind courtship and marriage a new student nurse, Faye Clarke arrives to take up her position at the Royal. Meanwhile receptionist Lizzie falls head over heels for a handsome stunt-riding motor-bike daredevil.

A secret from Jean's past comes back to haunt her at the Royal, and Dr. Weatherill has to break some shocking news to a young couple.

Alun dates ice cream saleswoman Daniella but it is clear that she is only using him so Lizzie and Jack conspire to break them up by exposing her true colours. Schoolgirl Denise Mount gives birth to a baby fathered by classmate Ray and their parents are anxious that the child should be adopted, but they have reckoned without Sister Brigid's powers of persuasion. Jean is stalked by the unstable wife of a man with whom she had an affair but leads the hospital in siding with the woman against her philandering spouse's attempts to have her sectioned. She nonetheless feels ...

Jean stays on and reluctantly agrees to accompany married Mr. Rose to a golf function. Jill and Sister Brigid take the Ormerod children to an amusement park but the day ends in a double drama when a feud between employees almost kills a man and Gordon's son Tom is rushed to the Royal with appendicitis - which gets Jean off the hook when Mr. Rose is recalled. Ralph takes pity on Sheila, a depressed young widow with three small children and saves her from prison when she is charged with shop-lifting.

When a Girl Guide pack camps locally one of the elderly leaders goes down with a mystery illness whilst the other, having innocently drunk spiked fruit squash, crashes the bus, landing them all in casualty. They decide it's time to quit. Lizzie and the nurses take Alun's demo disc to stoned DJ Lenny Lomax on board the Radio Neptune pirate ship but during an argument over unpaid wages Lenny accidentally shoots a crew member, requiring Gordon and Ralph to make a mercy dash in the lifeboat.

Jean faces an uphill struggle with the local District Health Authority after its chairman Sir Charles's daughter, is admitted to the hospital. Jack goes off on a fishing trip, which is interrupted when a car crashes into the lake. Also making a splash is the cowboy builder who accidentally disconnects the wrong pipe in casualty.

When an unexploded WW2 bomb goes off, Jill and Ralph have to operate on a tramp trapped in the wreckage of a collapsed building, aware that a second bomb may also explode. Meanwhile a young boy is wounded by a shotgun blast allegedly fired by a burglar but Gordon believes the youngster's grandfather is keeping something back and the pickle magnate who donates the money to repair the casualty department damaged by the inept plumber is also not whom he claims to be - as Ralph well knows.

Aisling's adoption party ends in tears for most of the guests but Sister Brigid and Mr. Rose, appalled that an elderly woman has been incarcerated in a lunatic asylum for having a baby as a teenager, ensure that she ends her days in comfort. Meanwhile Gordon advises a hard-drinking fisherman to cut down his intake but whilst his daughter is having fertility problems the man's wife is heavily pregnant - by her daughter's boyfriend. Chaos ensues - with Gordon as a victim.