Judy Moody, M.D. (3 page)

The next Monday was a better-than-best-ever third grade day. At lunch, Judy ate her PBJ sandwich in seven bites, then walked-not-ran to the playground. Class 3T had a ten-minute recess before their field trip to the hospital.

Judy’s mom was a driver and parent volunteer, so Rocky and Frank rode in their car. Mom made Judy ask Jessica Finch, too.

“Did you know
muscle
comes from a word that means mouse?” asked Jessica. “If you move a muscle, it looks like a mouse.” She flexed her arm.

Judy used all forty-three muscles it took to frown at Jessica Finch.

At the hospital, Dr. Nosehair led Class 3T down a long hall.

“Why does that doctor lady have a rabbit?” asked Frank.

“Animals aren’t allowed in the hospital!” said Jessica.

“It’s a new program called Paws for Healing,” Dr. Nosier told them. “People bring animals to patients in the hospital to help them feel better. Holding an animal and petting it can actually lower a person’s blood pressure, and help a patient forget about being sick.”

“RARE!” said Judy.

Dr. N. took them into a room in back of the ER, where Class 3M was already waiting. There were lots of machines. And important-looking stuff.

“What’s the first thing you would do in an emergency?” quizzed Dr. Nosier.

“Call 911!” everybody said.

“Would you call 911 to find out how long to cook a turkey?”

“Only if
you’re
a turkey,” Frank said. Judy and Frank cracked up.

“Is a crossword puzzle an emergency?”

“Only for my dad, who tries to beat the clock,” said Judy.

“Believe it or not, we do get people who call 911 for such things. But let’s say we have a real emergency, like a car accident or a heart attack. Everything around here happens super fast. As soon as the ambulance arrives, the EMTs, people trained to handle medical emergencies, start ‘giving the bullet,’ — telling us what happened.
Train wreck
means the patient has lots of things wrong with them. Who knows what
code blue
means?”

“Lots of blood?”

“All the people in blue shirts have to help?”

“It means somebody’s heart stopped,” said Dr. Nosier.

“You fix hearts that stop?” asked Alison S.

“You must help a lot of people!” said Erica.

“All doctors make a promise to help people. It’s called the Hippocratic oath. Hippocrates was the Father of Medicine. In the old days, you had to swear by Apollo and Hygeia to help people the best you could. If you didn’t know what was wrong with a patient, you had to say ‘I know not.’ The old oath sounds funny to us now, so a doctor named Louis Lasagna rewrote it.”

“Louis
Lasagna
? Did he invent pizza, too?” asked Frank. Dr. N. laughed.

“But how do you always know what to do?” asked Rocky.

“Being a doctor is like being a detective. You look at all the clues and try to solve the mystery. In the ER we just do it in a hurry. Think of it like each one of us is a human jigsaw puzzle. My job is to figure out the missing pieces and put the puzzle back together.”

“RARE!” whispered Judy.

“I’m the best at jigsaw puzzles,” bragged Jessica Finch. “I did a five-hundred-piece jigsaw puzzle of Big Ben all by myself!” Sometimes Judy wished Jessica Finch would shut her
mandible.

“Now I’ll show you what some of this stuff is for,” said Dr. Nosier. Dr. Judy got to use a stethoscope to listen to her own heartbeat!
Ba-boom, ba-boom!
Then she took Frank’s blood pressure (for real!), looked for Jessica Finch’s tonsils, and saw eye insides with a special kind of scope. They took turns riding on a bed called a gurney, walking with crutches, and sitting in a wheelchair.

Dr. N. turned out all the lights and showed them X-rays. There was a brain (it looked all ghosty), a dog that got hit by a car (it looked all sideways), even a violin (it looked all dead!). “X-rays help solve the mystery,” he said.

They even got to see a real live, ooey-gooey heart on a TV. “This is better than the Operation Channel at home!” Judy said.

And they got to practice on life-size dummies called Hurt-Head Harry and Trauma Tammy. “I have a practice doll, too,” said Judy. “With three heads. Hedda-Get-Betta. I practice being a doctor, like Elizabeth Blackwell.”

“How would you like to practice being a patient with a broken arm?” asked Dr. N. “And I’ll show everybody how we put on a cast.”

Judy Moody could not believe her inner, middle, or outer ears. “Can I, Mom?”

“Sure, if you want to.”

“Hold out your arm, Judy Moody, First Girl Doctor.”

Judy grinned with all seventeen muscles it takes to make a smile. She held her arm out straight as a snowman’s stick-arm. Dr. N. wrapped it around and around with soft cotton stuff.

“I’ll use a special plaster bandage that turns hard when it dries so Judy won’t be able to move that arm. That way her bone will stay in place and heal back together.”

“My
radius
or my
ulna
?” asked Judy.

“I see you know your bones! Can you still wiggle your
phalanges
?”

Judy wiggled her fingers. Everybody laughed.

“A not-broken arm is even better than a broken arm! I wish I never had to take it off.”

“Tell you what,” said Dr. Nosier. “If your mom says it’s okay, you can wear it home. I’ll show her how to take it off.”

“Can I, Mom? Can I? I can fool Stink! Please, pretty please with Band-Aids on top?”

“I don’t see why not,” said Mom. “Sure!”

“RARE!” said Judy. She, Judy Moody, was a mystery. A human jigsaw puzzle with a broken arm . . . NOT!

Judy was so happy from Hospital Day that even her eyebrows were smiling. She stared at all the autographs on her cast. Even Dr. Nosehair had signed it. His autograph looked like a messy blob, but still!

She could hardly wait to get home and show Dad her cast. Maybe she could even get out of setting the table, on account of her broken arm (not!). Wait till she told Stink!

When she got home, Stink was waiting at the front door. Judy held up her cast.

“You broke your arm?” asked Stink. “Sweet!”

She, Judy Moody, was in an operating mood! As soon as she got her cast off, Judy asked Stink to play Operation, a game where you remove body parts with tweezers and try NOT to make the buzzer go off.

Dr. Judy performed a delicate operation and removed butterflies from the patient’s stomach. Next she removed his broken heart. Stink went for the charley horse.
Buzz!
“Hey, his nose lights up red,” he said. “Like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer!”

“You did that on purpose!”

“Did not!” Stink tried to remove the pencil from the guy’s arm, to get rid of writer’s cramp.
Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!

“Stink. Give me the tweezers. Your turn’s over when you buzz.”

“Let’s play something else,” said Stink.

“I know,” Judy said. “You can help me with my Human Body project for school.”

“That’s not playing. That’s homework,” said Stink.

“
Fun
homework,” said Judy. “I’m going to do an operation with real stitches and stuff.” Judy got out her doctor kit. “All I need is somebody to operate on.”

“You’re not operating on me. Just so you know. No slings or eye patches or anything.”

“Can I at least take your blood pressure?”

“I guess.” Judy put a cuff around Stink’s arm and pumped air into it. “I’m afraid you have high blood pressure, Stink,” said Judy. “Your heart’s beating super fast.”

“That’s ’cause I’m scared of what you might do to me!”

“I have a better idea.” Judy went straight to Toady’s aquarium. “Operation Toady! You hold him down, Stink, and I’ll make the incision.”

“The what?”

“The cut. Hel-lo? It’s an
oper-a-tion
.”

“You’re loony tunes!” Stink said. “You can’t cut Toady open.”

“I’ll stitch him back up. C’mon. Just one small, teensy-weensy snip?”

“N-O, no! Give me him!”

“It’s the only way to see toad insides. Admit it, Stink. You want to see toad guts.”

“Not
this
toad’s guts.” Stink rushed over to his desk and rooted around in the top drawer. He held up a cardboard badge that said ASPCA: S
AVING
L
IVES
S
INCE
1866.

“Busted!” said Stink, holding the badge up to Judy’s face. “It’s against the law to be mean to animals or hurt them. Ever. Just show them respect and kindness. You’re not even supposed to let your dog drink out of the toilet.”

“I don’t have a dog. And Mouse doesn’t drink out of the toilet!”

“Good. If she did, you’d go to jail.”

“I was just going to practice on Toady. Not put him in the toilet!”

“You’re not allowed to test stuff out on animals. You’re supposed to test on beans. Or pumpkins. People who make soap and shampoo and underpants and stuff are always testing it on animals, and the animals get hurt or even die.”

“Stink, nobody makes animals wear underpants.”

“Yah-huh. They do. No lie. It makes me really sad and mad that people do stuff to animals. I’m so sad and so mad I’m . . . smad!”

“Okay, okay! Don’t be smad. I cross-my-heart promise I won’t shampoo Toady or make him wear underpants or anything. I just wish I had something really good for Sharing tomorrow. Something nobody’s ever seen. Something
human
.”