# Comedy Doctor — Chapter 12 ("The Memory He Chooses") — Repair Verification Round

Stance: skeptical professional editor. Register calibrated to the reading guide: warm, precise, lightly comic; observational and character-true; Emily Henry at ~60% banter density; never sitcom rhythm. Target reader: the cozy contemporary-romance reader who wants craft specificity and the dignity of small routines, not quotable zingers. This round verifies the four blocking orders from the prior audit against the revised text and re-runs the full inventory and distribution checks rather than trusting the repair memo's self-report.

## ORDER VERIFICATION

**Order 1 — Dom/forms correction mechanism (prior item 9): EXECUTED.** June now says "Dom's shop has a form." (line 29); Theo's "Dom has several forms." (line 31) is once again a singular-to-several correction, not a restatement. The comedy is Theo's professional exactness — he has stood at Dom's counter; she did one errand — and it does cohort-continuity work. Checked against the order's failure mode: the topper now changes the count, which is the correction shape the order demanded. Re-scored funniness 2 (item 8 below). Per the order's own terms, **the Dom-forms family is now closed: no instance in Ch13+** — this must hold in the tics log.

**Order 2 — "regulation card behavior": EXECUTED, no equivalent substitute.** Line 37 now reads "pulled her own card out of her jacket pocket, already filled in and folded once. She set it face down on her knee." — pure literal action, and it does read funnier flat, as predicted. Swept the full chapter for replacement mock-officialese ("regulation ___," "standard-issue," "per protocol," "as required" shapes): zero. Nearest candidates checked: "OUTLET PLATE OFF, SCREWS WITH IT" in block letters (line 89) is Theo literally writing a card, not narrator mock-officialese; Odile's "I WILL NOT HAVE AMBUSHES IN MY ROOM" (line 7) is her sanctioned card register, pre-existing and licensed.

**Order 3 — outlet-taping tell-shape: EXECUTED via cut.** Line 71 now runs pure procedure in June's installer voice: "I unscrew the outlet plate first. You unscrew it, you don't tape around it. Then I run blue tape along the baseboard, and I prime." No "how you can always tell" flourish, no half-armed culprit slot. Swept for relocated tell-shapes: the nearest neighbor is "The formula was taped inside the supply closet door, that's how often that room got put back" (line 75) — checked and cleared: that is not a connoisseur's-tell about other people's work; it is a concrete fact June reports about her own room's history, and the inference (routinized erasure) is the chapter's wound, not a joke at a stranger's expense. Inventoried below as its own item. The outlet plate survives as the tenderness beat at line 87 ("Off the wall, sitting on the floor with its two little screws... that's the true part") — not comedy, correctly so.

**Order 4 — "misfiled by size": EXECUTED, disproportion now physical.** Line 97: "the card under his pen looked too small for what she had put on it." Non-clerical, renders the disproportion through the object as ordered. Swept for replacement clerical/legal narrator figures: none added. Full clerical census below.

## INVENTORY

1 — "drew two lines through CONEY ISLAND, AGE 12, as if he were voiding a check" (line 3) — mechanism: register collision — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (he voids checks at that exact desk) — dramatic work: establishes the selection problem — workshopped: no

2 — "Charming. Round at every corner. A memory with the pit taken out." (line 3) — mechanism: deflation of his own safe choice — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: names why the safe memories fail — workshopped: no

3 — "her pencil capitals slightly too large for it, as if the card had been chosen to be insufficient" (line 5) — mechanism: attributed-intent incongruity — source: character (Odile via Theo's read) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (her heavy stock, her capitals) — dramatic work: Odile engineering constraint, reread-consistent — workshopped: no. (Not in the prior inventory; added this round.)

4 — "IF IT WOULD FIT IN A GREETING CARD, CHOOSE AGAIN. - O." (line 7) — mechanism: insult-as-instruction — source: character (the one licensed quotable) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: mandates the handoff, plants PARTNER — workshopped: no

5 — "only the word PARTNER... like it had always meant a specific person with a tote bag and opinions about edges" (line 9) — mechanism: incongruity via specificity — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: paperwork turning into a person — workshopped: no

6 — "it was a perfectly good story, and it was a story about being handy" (line 11) — mechanism: deadpan self-diagnosis via flat repetition — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: names the useful-Theo trap — workshopped: no

7 — "don't make it a thing." / "He had, in the intervening twenty-two hours, made it a thing." (lines 15–17) — mechanism: repetition with timing reversal — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: launches the overpreparation sequence — workshopped: no

8 — Overpreparation block: "non-interview angle"; the second water glass; three tested pens, "the dead one already exiled to the drawer"; the chair shuttle between "transaction" and "deposition" (line 17) — mechanism: escalation + specificity overload — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: anxiety as logistics; stages June's deflation — workshopped: no

9 — "Dom's shop has a form." / "Dom has several forms." (lines 29–31) — mechanism: precision correction (singular-to-several) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Theo's professional familiarity with Dom; cohort continuity — workshopped: no. **Repaired per Order 1. Family closed after this instance.**

10 — "Theo. It's two index cards. You set a table for two index cards." / "There's also water." / "I see the water." / "She sat, though" (lines 33–37) — mechanism: deflation + commitment-to-bit — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: June names the overpreparation as care she will accept — workshopped: no

11 — "You look like you'll lose consciousness otherwise." (line 37) — mechanism: deadpan hyperbole — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: sequences the exchange — workshopped: no

12 — "Chicken thighs on the other side. Eighty-nine cents a pound. The drawing has a chicken-thigh ghost in it if you hold it to the light." + June writing *chicken thighs* on his card "before he had offered it" (lines 53–55) — mechanism: de-sentimentalizing specificity — source: situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: keeps the sacred memory unsentimental; the annotation is the custody/intimacy beat — workshopped: no

13 — "The formula was taped inside the supply closet door, that's how often that room got put back." (line 75) — mechanism: deadpan implication (the room erased so routinely it has a recipe) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: her wall was nothing special to the institution — the wound stated sideways — workshopped: no

14 — "It never fully runs clear; you just decide a point at which it's clear." (line 75) — mechanism: deflation of the completion myth — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: theme freight; feeds GREEN FIRST — workshopped: no (aphorism-shaped; passes on craft-truth and her stress-mode voice card, as previously ruled)

15 — "He had four questions and three of them were repairs... was not even a question; it was a closing argument. Each arrived fully formatted, immediate as a frame wanting a shim." (line 79) — mechanism: enumeration / self-audit — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the growth beat — he asks "What white, exactly?" instead — workshopped: no

16 — "I billed zero hours because it was my own room, which was my own genius decision." (line 91) — mechanism: self-aimed irony — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the wound without nobility — workshopped: no

17 — "No standing figure gazing upon the white wall." (line 91) — mechanism: parody of the forbidden painting — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: art-directs Week 5; guards against sentiment — workshopped: no

18 — "Mara would ask the table how the handoff went, because Mara would absolutely ask" (line 97) — mechanism: repetition-for-certainty — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: sets Tuesday's public-couple pressure — workshopped: no

19 — "Don't get there early and arrange the easels. Or do. I can't legislate your whole life." / "There's a chance I arrange the easels." / "I know." (lines 99–101) — mechanism: repetition-with-variation + mutual acceptance — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: she licenses the tic, he owns it — workshopped: no

20 — "Thanks for the water I didn't drink." (line 103) — mechanism: callback/deflation — source: situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: closes the chapter's longest setup by accepting care while naming its uselessness — workshopped: no

21 — "anything he kept in that drawer he eventually used" (line 107) — mechanism: dry self-knowledge — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: motivates destroying the safe cards — workshopped: no

Prior items 11 ("regulation card behavior"), 14 (outlet tell-shape), and 20 ("misfiled by size") are resolved by cut/replacement and no longer inventory.

## DISTRIBUTION CHECKS

- **Density:** 21 items in ~2,300 words, clustered at frame and setup, thinning correctly through June's wall memory. Meets the register's commitment for an off-Tuesday two-hander.
- **Clerical/legal-register census (the focused re-check):** narration figures now number exactly the four sanctioned survivors — "voiding a check" (3), "transaction"/"deposition" (17), "closing argument"/"fully formatted" (79) — plus "legislate" in June's dialogue (99). "The agreement had a checklist... the thing I signed" (71) is literal document content, not a figure; "billed zero hours" (91) is June's self-aimed fiscal irony in dialogue, one instance, not Ch08's spine re-rooting. **The cap of four narration figures is met, not beaten. Zero new instances in Ch13 narration** — this is the standing line.
- **Mechanism variety:** deflation, escalation, specificity overload, hyperbole, self-irony, parody, enumeration, callback, precision correction, attributed intent, timing reversal — varied; with the two overlay items cut, **source is now 19 character / 2 situation / 0 narrator-overlay**, the healthiest split this book has posted.
- **Ch11 retired families (re-verified against the text):** `Not symbolically` — zero. `not a personality` — zero. `cargo` — zero. `principle of the dollar` / label-theme jokes — zero ("wrapped and labeled," line 19, is literal stock handling). `That's the whole ___` — zero; "That's the part" (line 57) re-checked: different syntax, non-comic confession, cleared. `load-bearing` — zero (gate: 0 open BANNED). Recognitional "the way you/people" simile — zero used of the 1/chapter cap ("going the way of the first two," line 3, is idiom). Standalone "Oh." — untouched. Coffee tic — absent; the water gag is new, character-sourced on both ends (Theo pours it, June names it, June thanks him for not drinking it), and closes within the chapter.
- **Water/table/card humor sourcing:** every instance lives in dialogue or in a decision a character makes — "You set a table for two index cards" (June), "There's also water" (Theo's helpless inventory), "Thanks for the water I didn't drink" (June's exit). The narrator reports and never winks. Character-sourced throughout; confirmed.
- **Sweetness:** not oversweetened. The erased-wall memory keeps its bill ("billed zero hours," the dead salmon, "you'd never know"), and the repairs removed wit, not sharpness.
- **Cringe:** none; no quip lands at unrepaired expense; the one three-beat volley (item 10) still exits via action.
- **Mechanical gate:** PASS, open 0, allowlisted 0, WATCH 50 — nothing comedy-adjacent among the WATCH hits.

**CHAPTER VERDICT: CLEAR.** All four repair orders executed as written, with no equivalent-substitute smuggling at any of the four sites. Majority funniness-2 (21 of 21 surviving items), character/situation-sourced with zero narrator-overlay, non-portable, mechanisms varied. Strongest item: "Thanks for the water I didn't drink." (line 103). Weakest surviving item: "because Mara would absolutely ask" (line 97) — lands, but on the strength of prior chapters' Mara, not this one's.

**REVISION ORDERS:** none — no blocking findings remain. Two standing directives carry to commit and to Ch13, both already owed under the prior audit's terms: (1) at commit, append the tics.md row — book-specific clerical/legal figures, Ch12 narration count 4 (at cap), plus the Dom-forms family closure and the overpreparation/easel-callback spine closure; the repair memo acknowledges this row and it does not yet exist. (2) Ch13 inherits: no new clerical/legal narration figures, no Dom-forms instance, no decorative straightening beat.
