The English Present
By Anna Rousseau
annadelamico@yahoo.co.uk
Genre: EC Humour/Short Christmas Story
Parts: 1/1
Rating: U
Set: Season 6
Archive: Feel free, just tell me where.
Disclaimer: Elizabeth Corday and Dr. Dave Malucci unfortunately don't belong to me neither
does ER which belongs to Warner Brothers. To my friend's great distress, the other
celebrity mentioned doesn't belong to her, but to his wife and the BBC
Plug: If you haven't already - check out Randi's Fanfic Disk on Yahoo!Clubs run by
myself and fellow ER writer Carrie Verkman.
Notes:
Sorry I haven't been ficcing recently - blame the mocks, but now it's the holidays and I
have tons of time on my hands, please e-mail me with challenges as I love doing them! By
the way, the fic is great on a.t.e.c. at the moment! This was in response to a Fanfiction
challenge set by my friend Becki who wanted to see all her following favourite things in a
piece of ER fic. Be warned her taste is unique!
*Chocolate
*ER
*Laurence Llwelyn-Bowen (see notes at end)
*'Changing Rooms' (ditto)
*Turquoise Aliens
*Daphne & Celeste
*Christmas
Sinking down into the poorly sprung sofa cushions of the ER's staff lounge, Elizabeth
Corday breathed a sigh of exhausted relief. A ghoulish six hour performance of
cardio-vascular theatrics with the ever-charming 'Rocket' Romano had left her drained of
all the energy the was left with after the graveyeard shift. Corday felt that her perfect
Christmas with Mark had already been ruined.
She glanced at her watch.
By this time, the turkey should be going in the oven (with bacon on top, whether he liked
it or not) and the icing applied to the fruit cake. Her stomach growled like a ravenous
lion, but for now she'd just have to be content with what ever Doc Magoo had to offer.
Burger?
Pizza?
Cheesecake?
Corday's eyes travelled across the lounge, and settled in a predatory way on a box of
chocolate-dipped doughnuts, balanced on top of the microwave. Quite miraculously, she
quickly found the strength to move herself to the opposite side of the room. Beside the
teasingly open container was a note scribbled on a corner of an abdominal T-Sheet. She
recognised the traditional illegible physician's scrawl as being Dave Malucci's, third
year resident-pain-in-the-ass.
"KEeP ofF - or i'M HUNtINg YoU DOwn wiTh aN lP KiT"
Corday chuckled in spite of herself before reading the post-script.
"iT WON't bE pReTTy!!!!!"
He eyebrows raised briefly before she bit into the velvet layers of chocolate, grease and
sugar, enjoying the privilege of being able to pull rank. Soon that doughnut was joined by
a few others, and before Corday knew it, the box was a gaping hole of nothingness. If Dave
came to her for an explanation, she decided to tell him that the doughnuts had been
abducted by cholesterol-loving turquoise aliens on a sugar kick before they took over the
world.
Halfway through imagining what smart-ass comeback Dave would conjure up, Corday saw a
brown padded envelope addressed to her on the counter she was leaning on. It was stamped
in the corner with a British postal mark.
Curious, she cautiously tore at the package until she saw the contents. She jumped up and
held it in her hands, like it was a delicate vase that could break at any moment. The
surgeon's face lit up like the lights that lined the halls of County's busiest floor.
The sight of her greatest passion, on the front of the shiny, heavy book that she had lost
all hope of finding in the States converted her tired demeanour into a giddy one. She
gazed at the image on the cover. The long chestnut hair flowing softly over a seductively
open-necked shirt, leading to a cuff which half covered a powerful left her transfixed.
Melded to the spot.
Her fingers played over the surface of the book, soothed by the presence of her personal
bible. This book contained everything a respectable English woman needed to know about her
favourite topic. DIY.
Suddenly the door from the corridor burst open and in strolled Dave, brushing snow off his
jacket, freezing from a venture into the crystal-cold Chicago Christmas morning.
"Hey!" Dave started to complain about the disappearance of his doughnuts, but
instead stopped when he caught a glimpse of what the Associate Chief of Surgery was
admiring. "Wow, man - that chick's butch!"
Corday glared and snapped at him as viciously as a piranha just on a feeding frenzy.
"He's not a woman, Malucci!"
Dave shrugged and looked at her as if she had just started reciting Daphne & Celeste
lyrics to him. "Who the HELL is this 'guy', anyway?"
She brandished the book in front of him. "What! Don't tell me you don't know who
Laurence is?"
He read the title.
"CHANGING ROOMS: £500, 48hrs & ME" by Laurence Llwelyn Bowen, Interior
Designer Extrodinaire
"Eh?"
Corday sighed and flung open her locker, which was covered, every square inch with the
smiling image of this man - a candle burned softly in the corner, topping off the shrine.
"Dave, this man is a god - who else is as talented as him?"
Dave caught sight of a picture of a Laurenc make-over, a living room that looked like a
zebra-striped hooker's bedroom...not that he knew what they looked like.
He looked at Corday's grin, then the book, and back to Corday.
"Oh, wait here, I'll go get Dr. Weaver for you."
With that, Corday was left alone with her book, enveloped in her arms. She barely heard
Dave's cries for help.
"Chief, Dr. Corday's been mainlining bourbon in the lounge."
"What? Not again, what is it with the doctors here?"
THE END
reply to annadelamico@yahoo.co.uk
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Background Info:
For all you without Auntie Beeb (BBC America to all you Yanks), the programme in this
piece is 'Changing Rooms', this is a DIY show where two couples swap houses for the
weekend an have £500, a designer and a handyman ('Handy Andy') to makeover a room. The
designer mentioned is Laurence Llwelyn-Bowen, he's the one who usually ends up making
someone's lounge look like a brothel and he has long layered hair that seems to be as well
cared for as Jennifer Aniston's. He usually paints in leather trousers and shirts with
massive Renaissance cuffs.
