Young Doctor Young by John Sheirer

For much of Cindy’s life, people she encountered in the medical world had one attribute in common: they all looked ancient to her young eyes.

Her first dentist had wrinkled fingers the size of hot dogs, but he could still fit seven of those blotchy digits inside her mouth as he drilled Cindy’s first fillings. Her school nurse had quite a few bristly gray chin hairs and was rumored to be well over one hundred years of age. And the doctor who delivered Cindy and saw to her health needs until she was eighteen had bags under his eyes so big he could have kept a stethoscope in one and reflex hammer in the other.

Things began to change when Cindy made her occasional visits to the health services clinic in college. One doctor who examined the ankle she twisted on the dance floor seemed like a pretty cool, almost-middle-aged guy, a lot like the hip young professors who hung out at the student center or shot baskets in the gym. The nurse who gave Cindy a flu shot was barely thirty and cute enough to make the college boys blush as she rubbed an alcohol-soaked cotton ball on their shoulders before stabbing them with the injection.

As she aged, the people in Cindy’s medical world seemed to grow progressively younger. Now that she was hovering around the half-century mark, she had reached some sort of median patient-professional age. About half of the people in white coats looked to be her age or older, but the other half looked like they were about to shave for the first time or still carry a provisional driver’s license tucked in their blue jeans pocket.

The most extreme example was the urologist who performed her husband Ted’s vasectomy a decade ago. When Cindy asked the doctor how many of these operations he had done, he replied, “A bunch, you know, like, several.” From the rough way he handled Ted’s still-sore body during the follow-up exam a week later, Cindy could tell he’d never been on the receiving end of the procedure himself. And the nurse assisting him looked too young to be a legal participant in an activity that involved genitals.

These situations kept repeating. When Cindy and Ted took their twenty-year-old son to the emergency room with a broken wrist, his doctor looked like he could be on their son’s intramural soccer team. Kid Doctor decided to consult with his supervisor, so Cindy and Ted expected a craggy old guy who smelled like mouthwash and mothballs. But the supervisor looked young enough to be the first guy’s slightly older brother, who just stepped out of a Hollister ad.

The young cardiologist who oversaw Cindy’s first treadmill stress test kept calling her “Ma’am.” The doctor who did Ted’s knee surgery last summer mentioned that he and Cindy had some mutual friends, so she looked him up on the Internet and discovered he graduated from high school three years after she did. Cindy liked to describe her recent physical exam this way: “The phlebotomist who drew my blood was so young that she was simultaneously sticking my vein while texting her friends about that night’s Bieber concert!” Cindy sometimes liked to exaggerate.

These youngsters had been wonderful practitioners (with the notable exception of the ham-fisted urologist, whom Ted called, “Dr. Knuckles”). Cindy held great confidence in them even as she chuckled and wondered what they were planning to wear to the prom.

What worried Cindy in recent months was that these youthful technicians, nurses, and doctors gave her an unwelcome window into the future. How young would the doctors look when she might need a hip replacement in a decade or so? What about the dentist who pulls the last of her teeth and fits her for dentures? Would the teenager on the nursing home staff call her “grandma” as she feeds her strained peas and applesauce?

Of course, those visions are better than the alternative.

When she told Ted at breakfast one morning about how young all these medical people were becoming, he told her about a former student who stopped at his office a few weeks before. “She’s a smart, confident woman, young enough to be our daughter,” Ted said. “She has a professional attitude and combines it with a friendly smile and sympathetic, comforting eyes. Those qualities will serve her well in her chosen profession.”

“What’s that?” Cindy asked.

“Let’s just say that I’m happy to see kid doctors instead of her,” Ted said, squeezing his wife’s hand over their pancakes. “She just passed her certification exam to be a funeral director.”

***

Later that day, Cindy was looking through some of her insurance records for a gall bladder operation she had about five years before, partly out of professional curiosity. She is an insurance professional, after all. But she was also going through her files out of a twisted nostalgia for the “good old days” when she couldn’t use her stomach muscles for about a year. She knew it was weird to long for those days when her body felt alien to her, but, if life had taught Cindy anything, it was that being a human being was a strange experience.

Cindy’s operation was years ago, back before they started removing gall bladders in a civilized way, with only two pinpoint incisions. Cindy had the kind where they cut a ten-inch gash across her belly. Her surgeon was at least two decades older than Cindy was at the time, which was a comfort.

The operation was set for very early in the morning, just as the light broke through the pre-op room’s windows. Cindy had sweaty, overactive, restless sleep at home the night before because, well, the doctor had the foresight to tell her about that ten-inch incision. So, as Ted stepped out to use the rest room and Cindy stared at the dim ceiling about an hour before the big moment, another doctor she had never seen before jogged into her room, bouncing happily on the balls of his feet. He was probably a decade younger than Cindy and seemed to be enjoying his youth.

“Hi there! I’m Dr. Young!” he called cheerfully and without irony, barely glancing at Cindy as he took her chart from the wall. “Gall bladder, eh? Pull up your pajama shirt please.”

Cindy did as she was asked, as patients do in that automatic way they are all taught to obey doctors. Dr. Cheerful put the chart back, walked over to the bed, and tapped Cindy’s stomach lightly once. “Yep,” he said happily. “Gall bladder. Gotta come out. Bye.” As quickly as he’d arrived, he jogged back out of the room, chuckling to himself. Cindy just stared after him, wondering what the hell that was all about.

Cindy noticed a puzzling line in the records that read, “Second Opinion: $200.” Her eyes narrowed. She knew that second opinions were pretty standard in the insurance industry, but she didn’t remember getting any second opinions—just her regular doctor who referred her to the surgeon. But then it hit her: that young, bouncing, happy guy. He was in her room for maybe twenty seconds, but that constituted her official second opinion.

“My goodness!” Cindy said to herself. No wonder that guy was smiling. He got two hundred dollars for twenty seconds of work. Sure, he had to get up early, but no earlier than the kid who does Cindy’s paper route for a few bucks a day.

“Hey, Ted?” she called out. Her husband stepped into the living room from his office where he had been grading student essays. He was there quickly because he was always happy for any reason to join his wife and any excuse to abandon student essays.

“Yes, Sweetie?” Ted said.

Cindy waved the paperwork toward him. “Remember my gall bladder surgery?”

“Sure,” Ted replied. “Tough time for you. But you got through it.”

Cindy told her husband about the nearly instant second opinion. “Guess how much he got paid for that?”

Ted pondered. He was better with words than with numbers, which complemented Cindy’s head for figures. “No idea.”

“Two hundred smackers!” she said.

“Seriously?” Ted asked.

“Yep,” Cindy replied. “For less than a minute.”

“It’s a racket,” Cindy said. “I’ve seen all kinds of rip-offs in the insurance industry, but I never knew about this one. And I never imagined they’d do it to me.”

“Can you imagine if other professions did shifty stuff like that?” Ted asked.

“You mean teachers don’t do second opinions for extra cash?” Cindy joked.

“I wish!” Ted said.

“Hey,” Cindy said, playfully nudging Ted in the ribs. “Why not? You could make a few extra bucks so that we could both retire earlier.”

“Yes!” Ted replied. “I can see it now …” he waved his hand in a broad arc, picturing some kind of marquee across the front of a tall office building. “Educational second opinions!”

“I love it!” Cindy said, sharing the view of the imaginary marquee. “Here’s how it could work. Every once in a while, you would call in sick to your regular teaching job and hit the road to various schools. Other teachers would show you a student’s test. ‘I gave him a C,’ one teacher might say. ‘What’s your opinion?’”

Ted picked up where Cindy left off: “I’d study the test, evaluate it closely, draw upon my many years of teaching experience and my vast education and training, then say, ‘There are ten questions on the test. This kid got seven correct and partial credit for another one. Yep, that’s a C.’”

“You’re cute when you’re being so professional, Teddy Bear,” Cindy said, laughing.

Cindy and Ted played out the possible scenarios. They imagined another teacher handing Ted a particularly troubling student essay that seemed like a B as far as content goes, but the grammar and punctuation seemed to indicate a C.

“What do you think, Dr. Teddy?” Cindy asked.

Ted pretended to think about it. “Hmm. This would be a tough one,” he said at last. “I’d have to take this essay to my lab and put it up on a big lighted panel like the kind doctors use to examine x-rays. Let’s see—strong content, meaningful coverage of the topic, typed on non-erasable paper ... but those troubling tense shifts, non-parallel sentences, comma splices. This calls for a very creative diagnosis. I’d meet with the teachers again. The air would stink with anticipation so thick that we’d have to force ourselves to breathe. ‘We’ve got some complications, people,’ I would say in a deep, wise voice—calm despite the life-and-death stakes of the moment. All eyes would be on me. And then I’d render my second opinion: ‘It’s a B- slash C+.’”

“Brilliant!” Cindy said. “Then collect your two hundred bucks!.”

“But wait!” Ted called out. “Who pays that money? Who’s driving this gravy train?”

“Here’s where my expertise comes in,” Cindy replied. “I’ll start an educational insurance company. Students are going to have to start paying for coverage to protect their futures against the uncertainties of education.”

“Right!” Ted said.

“Think about it,” Cindy continued. “How much is getting an A worth? Can you put a dollar value on it? I can’t, but I’m sure somebody can. And, once that amount is clear, we’ll also be able to figure out the value of a C. What’s really crucial is that we’ll know the exact dollar value difference between an A and a C. So education insurance would become necessary to protect future earnings against the fiscal tragedy of getting too many C’s in school. And, more importantly, the big education insurance conglomerates I’ll be running will be only too happy to dish out $200 a pop to qualified teachers like you and your close friends who can offer the crucial second opinion that can make or break a student’s future.”

“When do we start?” Ted asked.

“Well,” Cindy pondered. “We both have to work every day this week.”

“Yeah,” Ted continued, adopting a disappointed tone. “And I’ll be teaching summer school again this year so that we have enough money to fix the roof.”

“Maybe next summer?” Cindy asked.

“Sure,” Ted replied. “Next summer for sure.”

Cindy looked at the insurance forms in her hand for a moment, and then she put them back into a folder and put the folder into a cardboard box. Ted gazed off toward his office door where the stack of student essays was only half read on his desk.

“We can dream,” Cindy said.

“Yes,” Ted replied. “No one can stop us from having an imagination.”

Cindy gave her husband a quick kiss on the cheek. Ted turned toward his office door.

“Hey, Dr. Teddy?” Cindy called out just before he left the living room.

Ted turned. “Yes, my little honey bear?”

“I was just wondering …” Cindy said. “What would happen if the second opinion didn’t match the original, and the teachers couldn’t work out an agreement with their consultant? The kid’s future income would hang in the balance. What then?”

“Gosh,” Ted marveled. “That’s a great question.”

Cindy thought for a moment, and then her face brightened. She thought of young Doctor Young and his clipboard. And then she asked her husband in the same tone and turn of phrase that she used when she asked him to the movies for their first date all those sweet years of youth ago, “How much do you think you’d charge for your third opinion?”

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John Sheirer (pronounced “shy-er”) lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, with his wonderful wife Betsy and happy dog Libby. He has taught writing and communications for 27 years at Asnuntuck Community College in Enfield, Connecticut, where he also serves as editor and faculty advisor for Freshwater Literary Journal (submissions welcome). He writes a monthly column on current events for his hometown newspaper, the Daily Hampshire Gazette, and his books include memoir, fiction, poetry, essays, political satire, and photography. His most recent book is Fever Cabin, a fictionalized journal of a man isolating himself during the current pandemic. (All proceeds from this book will benefit pandemic-related charities.) Find him at JohnSheirer.com.