Close, but No Golden Stethoscope

It began with the "65 Best Ways to Love Our City," followed by "15 Best Neighborhoods," "93 Summer Escapes," "25 Best Places to Work," "30 Ways to Be Green," "541 Best Schools," and "50 Things Every Seattleite Must Do." In short order, the upstart glossy Seattle Metropolitan—featuring a masthead chockablock with Weekly alums, gay and straight—has shattered the glass ceiling of numerical category-specific superlatives, rendering the classic "Top 10" list utterly archaic and inadequate.

Last month, in an issue marking its one-year anniversary with Grey's Anatomy hunk Patrick Dempsey gracing the cover, Seattle Met truly outdid itself with its "296 Top Doctors" issue.

But what about the guy who came in 297th?

That guy is Dr. Cordell Haversham, an elbow therapist with a small practice in Crown Hill. A native of Grand Cayman, Haversham came to the States in 1982 to study medicine at Creighton University in Omaha. He moved to Seattle in 1991. In the month since learning that he missed the city's top 296 docs by one spot, Haversham has spent most of his free time at the 15th Avenue Northwest watering hole Goofy's, numbing his unranked pain with cheap bourbon, unfiltered cigarettes, People's Court reruns, and mozzarella sticks.

Last Friday, Dr. Haversham had finally recovered enough, and was sufficiently loose-lipped, to gab about his near-miss in an exclusive Weekly Q&A, which is printed in its entirety below.

SW: Dr. Haversham, what were the central factors in this cruel snub?

Haversham: An obvious anti-Cayman bias, would be my guess.

SW: Come on.

Haversham (taking a huge drag off his cigarette): No, seriously, I heard Steve Wiecking once had his heart broken by a gorgeous Cayman gymnast named Renaldo. It's got to be that. I'm a tremendous elbow therapist.

SW: Do you think maybe it could have been the relatively obscure nature of your area of expertise?

Haversham: At first, I thought maybe it might be that, but how many doctors can say they're responsible for repairing the elbow of the best minor league relief pitcher in Everett? The elbow is an essential, underrated joint. Just think what you couldn't accomplish without elbows. I would have expected the judges to recognize such nuance.

SW: Point taken, but I discerned a strong bias toward cardiologists in the rankings. Even you can concede that the heart is more important than the elbow.

Haversham (guzzling his tumbler of Fighting Cock bourbon like it's chocolate milk): If you want to get technical, I suppose. But I'd argue that I'm more versatile than even the finest cardiologists. In a pinch, I can also fix knees, wrists, and knuckles. They only address the heart, which while vital, is a rather simple organ to deal with. It either beats or it doesn't.

SW: One of my sources at Seattle Met mentioned something about a botched colonoscopy during your residency in Nebraska.

Haversham (talking with his mouth full of fried cheese): That was the patient's fault, and it's ultimately why I got out of asses and into elbows.

SW: Do you care to elaborate?

Haversham: No, I don't.

mseely@seattleweekly.com