Read Wednesday the Rabbi Got Wet for Free Online Page B

where he had been equally unsuccessful. Yet he was a good doctor who had received excellent training and who showed sound diagnostic judgment, and he was a sincere, friendly man.
    Perhaps he was too friendly, a former classmate suggested, he was lunching with a colleague when Dan’s name came up. “You take the average patient, he’s not looking for friendship, he’s hurting and he’s worried, he needs assurance that his doctor knows just what’s wrong with him and just what will cure him. I don’t say a doctor has to be cold and aloof, although you take a sonofabitch like Jack Sturgis – and you know how big his practice is – well, he’s so downright nasty that it inspires confidence, they figure that nobody could afford to be so nasty unless he was also damn good. What I’m saying is, your patient has to look up to you, with Dan Cohen, he’s like your uncle who tells you to rub yourself with chicken fat to cure your arthritis. See what I mean?”
    “Yeah, but how about Godfrey Burke,” said the other. “Now he’s a real friendly guy, always laughing and joking with his patients, and look at the practice he’s got.”
    “Jeez, Godfrey Burke, he’s six four or five and he must weigh two hundred seventy or eighty, a big bear of a man like that, if he weren’t friendly, he’d scare the pants off you. But he’s friendly like he’s sorry for you, like you were a puppy or something, and he’s going to fix you up. I guess what I mean is, Dan is like the old-fashioned family-type doctor, the kind that used to sit up half the night with a pneumonia patient waiting for the crisis, well, that attitude is out nowadays. People are suspicious, they think if you’re too anxious, you must have some sort of angle, like maybe you don’t know what’s wrong and you don’t want to admit it. Or maybe you made the wrong diagnosis and gave the wrong medication.”
    Dr. Cohen used to agonize over the question himself, there were reasons that he could adduce. In Delmont the medical fraternity was a closed corporation who had shut him off from the local hospital facilities, either because he was the stranger or perhaps merely to reduce competition. But why had he done no better in Morrisborough? He told himself it was because he was the only Jew in town. On the other hand, the townspeople, for the most part Yankees, had been friendly enough when he met them on the street. Why hadn’t they come to him for medical treatment?
    But that was all in the past. Now, he was doing well in Barnard’s Crossing, where he had been for less than a year. It was an ideal arrangement, the clinic had excellent facilities with plenty of parking space, they had a bookkeeper who took care of the billing, a technician to do electrocardiograms, blood and urine analysis, and even a graduate nurse who gave flu shots and could assist in minor office surgery or therapy.
    And the town, too, was a pleasant place to live, with a large active Jewish community, he was a member of the temple, his wife belonged to the Sisterhood and the two children attended the religious school. His colleague Al Muntz was a close friend of Chester Kaplan, the president. Muntz had even hinted that if he were interested, he would be made a member of the board of directors at the end of the year. “It’s a good thing for your practice. Dan. Ed and I are both members of the board.” He laughed. “Hell, if I could manage it, I’d get John DiFrancesca on.”
    “I’m not particularly religious, though.”
    Dr. Muntz was stout, with a fleshy face and pale blue protruding eyes. When he opened them wide, he gave the impression of being shocked or amazed, he opened them wide now. “And I’m religious?” he demanded as though the imputation were an insult.
    “Well, I mean as a member of the board you’re expected to go to services on Saturday, aren’t you?”
    Muntz laughed coarsely. “I don’t know who expects it. Whoever he is, he’s been waiting a long time. I go on