Judy Moody, M.D. (6 page)

“We have a secret just for you. PRUNES!” said the cartoon lady on TV.

“PRUNES!” cried Judy. “UCK!”

“Bite them, chew them. Don’t pooh-pooh them,” said the TV lady. “CALIFORNIA PRUNES! The energy-packed super snack. Majorly delicious! Off to climb Mt. Everest? Take some PRUNES with you today.”

Judy did not think Stink would be climbing Mt. Everest anytime soon. He could barely climb out of bed. But it was worth a try. All she had to do was convince Stink to eat one prune.

Judy tiptoed downstairs and opened the kitchen cupboards. Tea bags, peanut butter, pretzels, crackers. . . . They had to be here somewhere. Judy pulled a chair over to the up-high cupboards. Ah-ha! A shiny bag!

Gravy?!

Gravy did not help you climb Mt. Everest. Gravy did not cure tonsils. Gravy did not make you live longer.

She spotted a yellow sun shining on the front of a pink and purple bag. Finally! Judy stared at two shriveled lumps. Prunes were icky. Sticky. Prunes were wrinkly as elephants and looked like one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old buffalo droppings. Two-hundred-year-old dried-up bellybuttons. Two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old tonsils. Why do you have to eat bad stuff for good stuff to happen?

The world was backwards, according to Judy Moody.

Dr. Judy went back upstairs. “Stink! Wake up!” said Judy.

“Wha . . . ?”

“I have your cure! Right here in my hand. No more fever. No more grapefruit tonsils.” Judy held out her hand. She showed Stink the prunes.

“What? What are those?” asked Stink.

“Prunes. The secret to not getting sick. The secret to climbing Mt. Everest.”

“They look like moon rocks. Or petrified prune rocks.”

“They do kind of look like the owl pellets we had in Science. . . .”

“Owl pellets! Owl pellets are hairballs. Owl pellets are spit-up.”

“Prunes are just plums,” said Judy. “C’mon. One bite.”

“No way, Prunella De Vil. I am not eating a hairball. I am not eating spit-up.”

“Don’t you want to live longer? Don’t you want to have teeny-tiny tonsils again?”

“Okay. Then help me. Say nice things about prunes,” said Stink.

Judy sniffed a prune. “They don’t smell like buffalo droppings.”

“That’s the nicest thing you can say about a prune?”

“They’re not hairy.”

“Not hairy is good,” said Stink.

“I know,” said Judy. “Close your eyes. On the count of three, we’ll BOTH eat a prune at the same time.

“One, one thousand —”

Stink closed his eyes tight.

“Two, one thousand —”

Judy threw her prune in the trash.

“Three —”

Stink actually put the prune in his mouth.

“Eee-yew!” cried Stink.
Thwaaa!
Stink spit out the prune. It went flying across the floor and landed in a dust ball. “I licked it! It touched my taste buds!”

“It’s supposed to taste MAJORLY delicious. The TV said so,” Judy told him.

“It tastes majorly disgusting,” said Stink. “You tricked me!”

“I was just trying to help you feel better,” said Judy. “Now I’m a bad doctor and you’ll
never
feel better.”

“I feel better knowing I’m not going to eat that prune.”

“Stink, don’t you get it? That was the last prune. Now it has cat hair and spit all over it. What are we going to do?” Before you could say majorly dust ball, Mouse pounced on the cat-hairy spit-up prune.

“No! Mouse! Wait!” said Judy.

It was too late.
Ga-loomp!
Mouse chewed it up and swallowed. Hairball, spit, and all. Judy and Stink fell on the floor laughing.

Prune Lips licked her paws, face, and whiskers. “Mouse,” said Judy, picking up her cat, “you are going to live a very long life.”

“
Nine
long lives,” said Stink.

Doctor Day! The day Judy got to dress up like Elizabeth Blackwell, First Woman Doctor, and do a REAL LIVE operation for Class 3T. An operation was the best of all the brainstorms from her list. The best Human Body project ever. Better even than trying to doctor Stink.

Her patient was special. Her patient had green skin and did
not
talk back. Her patient would not hog the TV and drink all the ginger ale and spit out healthy prunes.

Her patient was perfect. She could hardly wait.

First she took one more bath.

Stink knocked on the bathroom door. “Knock-knock!”

“Who’s there?”

“Stink, minus one bellybutton.”

No answer.

“Mom! Judy’s hogging the bathroom and she already took a million baths yesterday.” Stink banged on the door. “Hurry up! I need to get in there!”

Judy came out with a towel on her head, and all-wrinkly hands and feet. “I liked it better when you were sick,” said Judy.

“I liked it better when you didn’t look like a spit-up prune,” said Stink.

“Doctors have to be really, really clean, Stink. Elizabeth Blackwell took three cold showers a day!”

“Elizabeth Blackwell didn’t leave a lake on the floor.”

“Hardee-har-har.”

“Hip bone’s connected to da leg bone,” Judy sang as she got dressed. Today was going to be the amazing-est human body day ever, from head to toe.

At school, Judy had ants in her pants all through Spelling, bees in her
patella
-knees all through Math. At last it was Science. Mr. Todd said the magic words. “Time for our Human Body projects. Rocky, why don’t you go first?”

Rocky wrapped himself in toilet paper like a mummy, and told how eating a mummy can help your tummy! No lie. Doctors in the old-old-olden days thought mummies could cure stuff like stomachaches. So they ground up mummies, bones and all, and used them for medicine.

“Creepy!” said most of the class.

“Fascinating,” said Judy.

Jessica Finch wrote
medi-words
on the board. Words like
intelligirl
(really smart girl),
brainiac
(has super-Einstein, not-kidney-bean brain), and
brain case
(sick in the brain), which she added to the dictionary. Then she passed out a word search. Judy found all the
medi-words
at
brainiac
speed.

Finally, Mr. Todd called on her. Dr. Judy Elizabeth Blackwell. She put on her doctor shirt, a stethoscope, and a left-eye patch. She taped plastic bags over her shoes. She colored between her eyebrows with a black marker and stuck fake bugs on her head with tape. “Today I am Elizabeth Blackwell, First Woman Doctor,” said Judy. “I’ll start with a poem.” She took a deep breath, so she wouldn’t get a terrible case of nerves. Or a bad case of sweat.

Everybody clapped. “Any questions before I begin the operation?” Judy asked.

“Why are you wearing pajamas?” asked Hailey.

“Scrubs,” said Judy. “It’s a doctor shirt. Doctors have to be really, really clean and take tons of baths a day.”

“Why do you only have one eyebrow?” asked Frank.

“It’s a uni-brow. Like Elizabeth Blackwell had. Plus it makes me look smart. Like an
intelligirl
who is not a
brain case.
”

“Why do you have that pirate patch on your eye?” asked Brad.

“Elizabeth Blackwell got an eye infection and they took out her eye, so she wore an eye patch.”

“Ooh. Gross!”

“Why do you have fake bugs on your head?” asked Jessica Finch.

“They didn’t really know how to fix her eye, so they put bloodsucking leeches on her head. They thought it would help.”

“EEE-yew!” said a bunch of kids in the class.

“Did you write that poem?”

“Well, it wasn’t a gnome!”

“Why do you have plastic bags on your feet?”

“In case of blood,” said Judy.

“Class, let’s let Judy show us her project,” said Mr. Todd.