Wednesday the Rabbi Got Wet by Harry Kemelman Page A

patient.”
    “No need to get hot about it, Dan,” said Muntz soothingly. “We’re just trying to help,” Kantrovitz chimed in.
    “Help how? The man is dead. Don’t tell me you haven’t ever lost a patient.”
    “Of course, that’s over and done with, we’re concerned about you now, according to John there’s a good chance of a malpractice suit.”
    “So I’m insured for it.”
    Muntz nodded. “Naturally. But John here feels that Kestler might do a lot of talking. In fact, Chet Kaplan was telling me he did a lot of yakking at the funeral.”
    “So?”
    “So that could be bad for all of us.”
    “How?”
    “Oh, you know, a lot of people have funny ideas of how a clinic works,” said Muntz vaguely.
    Ed Kantrovitz was a thin, serious man, who did not so much speak as make pronouncements. “Look at it this way, Dan,” he said, he pursed his lips while organizing his thoughts. “Somebody tells somebody that somebody died, the first thing that’s likely to be asked is who was his doctor. So suppose he says it was one of the men at the clinic. Now the person can go away thinking it might be Al or me, or John –”
    “Or me,” said Cohen. “And if they said it was one of the doctors from the hospital, it could be any one of a hundred doctors.”
    “Let’s not get too hypothetical,” Muntz suggested. “Right now we’re concerned about Kestler.”
    “Sa-a-y.” Kantrovitz snapped bony fingers. “Isn’t Kestler the guy you were telling me about a while back, Dan, the one who brought suit against you?”
    “Yeah, that’s right. When I put up my fence, he claimed part of it was on his land.”
    Dr. Muntz stared, his blue eyes protruding as though they would pop out of his head. “And you treated him?”
    “Well, he couldn’t get another doctor, and that was just business.”
    Dr. Muntz shook his head slowly from side to side. “You ought to know better than that, Dan.”
    “Well, what’s wrong –”
    “You don’t treat someone that you’re emotionally involved with,” Muntz said flatly.
    “You wouldn’t treat a member of your own family if they got sick, would you?” demanded Kantrovitz.
    “What’s wrong is that it doesn’t look good,” Muntz said. “Here’s a guy you got a right to feel sore at, and you give him a pill that maybe results in his death. What’s more, you don’t just give him a prescription. No, you call it in to make sure he gets it right away. Now that just doesn’t look good, not to the man in the street, and if there’s a trial, he’s the guy that’s going to be sitting on the jury.”
    “But the guy was sick, and I thought – I could help him,” said Dr. Cohen. “Could I just turn away –”
    “That’s exactly what you should have done.” Muntz interrupted. “He was not your responsibility. You should have told them to call the police and they would have sent an ambulance and taken him to the hospital.”
    “And if he’d got worse on the way, or even died –”
    “He wouldn’t have died, and if he had, it wouldn’t have been your fault.”
    They argued at length, keeping their voices low since they were in a public place, looking around every now and then to see if anyone was listening, and they got nowhere. Dr. Cohen insisted that it was his duty to treat anyone whom he had the knowledge and skill to help if they asked for his aid, and Muntz and Kantrovitz maintained with equal stubbornness that his first duty was to himself, that he had the right to refuse treatment if his own standing in the profession and community was thereby jeopardized. DiFrancesca remained silent for the most part, except when it looked as though the argument might become personal, then he would shift uneasily in his seat and say, “Aw, fellers.”
    When they finally rose to return to the office, there was a distinct coolness in the manner of the two older men toward Cohen, and even a cool civility toward DiFrancesca for not having supported them.
    That evening, Mrs.