A minute later, he popped out from behind the screen in a white lab coat, tufts of blue chest hair peeking out above the collar. “Ready!”
I guess he thought, like the shower, a shirt was optional. I couldn’t help wondering if he even had underwear on under there. Just the thought skeeved me out so much I couldn’t look at him.
“I run hot,” he said like he could hear what I was thinking.
“Oh,” I said, and hurried down the stairs, trying not to think about whether what he’d just told me was, “No, I’m not wearing anything under this lab coat.” It wasn’t till I got to the bottom that I noticed he was still barefoot.
Not surprisingly, Jeanine insisted on interrogating Dr. Charney before she let him touch Dad. And I have to admit, it was one of those times that I was happy Jeanine is so Jeanine.
First, she demanded to know why Dr. Charney didn’t have a receptionist like a real doctor. Was it because he didn’t actually have any patients?
Not having a receptionist meant he could charge people less for seeing him, he explained. Then he picked up a date book from the coffee table and showed her how people came into the clinic and penciled in their own appointments. This actually seemed really smart to me. If it did to Jeanine too, she didn’t let on.
Next, Jeanine wanted to know why Dr. Charney wasn’t seeing patients that day, a weekday.
Because, he explained, he took Thursdays off and saw patients on Saturdays so they wouldn’t have to take off work.
“What a great idea!” Dad said.
Jeanine was still not satisfied.
Finally, Jeanine asked about the doctor’s school degrees. Dr. Barber, our pediatrician, had a wall in his waiting room covered with framed degrees and covers of magazines that named him one of the best doctors in New York City. “Where are yours?” she asked.
Dr. Charney screwed up his mouth, then walked out of the waiting room.
Jeanine and I exchanged looks. Was he coming back? Was this the question fast-talking Dr. Charney didn’t have an answer to? This wasn’t entirely good news since an artist pretending to be a doctor was still better than no doctor at all. I was just beginning to wonder what we should do now when Dr. Charney marched back in, two yellowed sheets of paper held high. “Found them!” he said with a big smile and handed them to Jeanine.
Her eyes bulged.
“Happy now?” he said.
“You went to Yale? Did you know that five U.S. Presidents went to Yale?”
“I am aware,” Dr. Charney said.
“So why don’t you have these out here on the wall where people can see them?”
He held up the papers and studied them. “Not really much to look at, are they? Besides, then there would be less room for these,” he said, pointing to his paintings.
By the time Dr. Charney was finally permitted to examine him, my father had started to get his memory back. He could now remember that we’d told him he’d fallen off the roof, which seemed like a good sign even if he couldn’t remember the fall itself. Either way, Dr. C was sure he hadn’t had a stroke. Just to be safe though, he wanted Mom to take him for a CAT scan. So when she and Zoe finally got to Petersville an hour after we’d called her from the doctor’s office, she had to turn around and drive right back to Crellin with Dad. Josh’s mom said we could stay with her and Josh at the library till they got back.
The first thing Jeanine did when we got to the library was sit down at the computer and google Dr. Z. Charney. There were so many hits, I was sure they couldn’t all be him. The first was an Amazon link. Jeanine clicked on it.
A photo of a smiling man holding a book called Hometown Healing: Breaking All the Rules popped up. He was wearing way more clothing than I would have bet the man I’d just met would ever wear—shirt, tie, and blazer—but there was no denying it was him. Under the photo, it said the book was about being a doctor in small towns where most people don’t have much money and few have health insurance. It also said that the author had practiced medicine in small towns all over the country before settling in Petersville, New York.
The next hits were all articles about the book and the awards it had won. About halfway down the first page though, the results changed. They weren’t about Dr. Z. Charney anymore, but someone named Zed Charney, painter.
“No way,” I said. “Find a photo.”
It took some clicking, but there, on some art gallery site in a photo of a party celebrating his new exhibition in Seattle was Dr. C, wearing a shirt open to his belly button, the chest hair I was becoming way too familiar with out there for everyone with an internet connection to see.
“Mom told me that this new museum in Spain just bought two of his paintings,” said Josh, who’d joined us at the computer.
I couldn’t remember seeing Jeanine so impressed by anyone living since she’d learned about some kid who’d figured out that the federal government could save millions of dollars each year if it just changed the font it used when it printed stuff.
I was blown away too. I’d never met someone like Dr. C, not just someone who’d done as much as he had, but someone who’d done all that stuff and didn’t even go around telling everyone he had.
By the rules Zane Kramer, and now Charlie too, believed the world worked, Dr. Charney simply couldn’t exist. What he’d done, who he was, none of it was possible.
But it was. And Dr. C was living, breathing proof.
“Hey, what’s that?” Josh said, pointing to the dish towel sack I was still carrying around.
“Oh, right.” I’d completely forgotten.
