Dr. Shephard's Cross Country Adventure
Dr. Jack Shephard is a hotshot young doctor who longs to leave the drudgery of the emergency room and finally leaps at his chance at more money and less work on the West Coast. On his last day, Jack's relationship with his co-workers is presumed to be anything but a warm one. None of his colleagues will join him for a drink, and a cake in his honor has an iced portion of the phrase "Good riddance, asshole" sliced out.
Jack's cross-country drive in a 1956 Porsche 356 Speedster to become a Beverly Hills cosmetic surgeon is interrupted when he crashes in the rural hamlet of Grady, South Carolina. The crash is through the fence of local judge Evans, who sentences him to community service at a nearby hospital. Jack offers to pay for the fence, but the stern judge increases his community service each time he talks back.
Defeated, he reports to the hospital, where Nurse Packer humbles him by ordering him to clock in and out, as would a factory worker.
Though upset, Jack finds his clinic work much more laid-back than the emergency room. His are simple cases such as spots before the eyes (from an elderly patient not cleaning her glasses), fishing hook impalings, and even reading mail for a young illiterate couple, whose baby he later delivers.
The experience also humbles Jack when he mistreats a case of mitral valve regurgitation leading to late cyanosis in the child. The town's elderly and idiosyncratic doctor, Aurelius Hogue, orders Jack to give the boy a Coca-Cola. Dismissing Hogue's treatment as quackery, Jack calls for a helicopter to transport the boy to another facility in Athens, Georgia, to see a heart specialist. Hogue learns the boy had chewed his father's tobacco and explains the carbonic acid component of the soda would stop the pain.
The two doctors finally bond when Jack saves Hogue after he suffers a near-fatal heart attack. Since Hogue is retiring, Jack is urged by the folksy locals to stay - it pays only $35,000 a year (a fair amount of money with a low cost of living) but is made tempting by his budding romance with a tomboyish ambulance driver, Vialula, better known as "Lou". She is a single mother to a four-year old girl, the product of a relationship she had with a former husband while living in New York.
Jack confides that he grew up in a small town in rural Indiana, where his parents lived and died, and can't see himself confined to a small town.
Lou is also pursued by Hank Gordon, a local insurance salesman. Hank waits for Jack at the mayor's lakeside lodge, where Jack has been staying. Jack expects a fight, but Hank explains that though he can't give Lou what Jack can, he's still a better man for her. Jack comes to realize he's not selfless enough for a life with Lou and plans to not see her anymore.
Jack finishes his community service and is free to go to California after his car is fixed. He shows signs of maturity from his experience in Grady and has become attached to his patients. Putting career first, he leaves.
On the west coast, Jack's new boss Dr. Halberstrom hires him at the interview, thanks to an unexpected letter of recommendation from Hogue. But Jack quickly tires of the superficiality of Beverly Hills. He's surprised by Nancy Lee and Hank, who have fled Grady to come to California. Hank tells Jack he took his own advice to "do what a man's gotta do." Jack, seeing an opportunity at true happiness, returns to Grady, hoping to patch things up with Lou, who takes him back.