Scalpel! Clamp! Eyeliner!

NEW YORK — Dr. Susan Zahalsky has been waiting for this moment for a long time. She’s haunted cosmetic counters, tried personal shoppers, even called modeling agencies for recommendations of good makeup artists. And still, she hasn’t found a look that shows not just what’s in the mirror, but what’s in her heart.

“I want a look to reflect my inner self,” she says.

So, here she is, at a midtown Manhattan designer showroom, being interviewed by a producer and shadowed by a camera crew from E! Entertainment Television’s “Fashion Emergency,” ready to have a small team of experts have a go at bringing out the real her. She doesn’t even care that the process will take place before millions of viewers.

On the show, which premieres Monday, plus-size supermodel Emme and fashion pros Leon Hall and Brenda Cooper rush to the aid of fashion victims like paramedics to a 911 call, swooping down on the “patient” with a team of design, makeup and hair specialists. They hang in there until every patient is out of fashion danger.

And what was the doctor’s emergency? Last summer, frustrated with the limitations of the managed-care system in this country, she took her rehabilitative medicine practice to Denmark to see how that less burdensome system works. She began studying the language and, in the process, gained a Danish boyfriend.

Now, she’s been invited to a holiday dinner with her boyfriend’s family, and the pretty 5-foot-3, size 10/12 brunet wants to be noticed among the tall, blond and beautiful Scandinavians. Chatty, funny and openhearted, she’s already got the personality. What she needs now is the look.

As the “Fashion Emergency” camera rolls, Zahalsky, 34, describes her symptoms.

“When I shop at stores, I feel like most of the clothes are made for a taller, thinner person with no rear-end. Most of the time, I have to order things from catalogs.”

Emme arrives looking chic in an ensemble of dark tones. Clothes consultant Hall is already there, as is Peter Brown, the makeup artist for the day. Emme, perhaps the most famous size 14 in America, is positive and sunny. Hall is a dapper straight shooter, a sassy, fun-ny Southerner.

“Inner beauty never got anybody a first date,” Hall says. Emme makes a face and elbows him half-seriously. “Maybe a second or third,” he concedes, “but not a first.”

Hall, who, after tripping over “Zahalsky” a few times, renames her Dr. Zed, was responsible for choosing designer Yoehlee for this make-over.

“She understands cut and simple design,” he says. “Her clothes are not hussy. Yoehlee’s a purist. Her stuff is never tricked up.

“The first thing people should notice is how a woman looks in a dress, not how a dress looks on a woman. You should be the sparkle,” he says.

After the cameras trail Zahalsky walking into the designer’s showroom and being introduced by Emme and Hall to Yoehlee, the “fashion emergency” ducks behind a screen to try on the outfits the show hosts have chosen for her. The first is a tunic and pant set of stretch double georgette in a deep, nearly purple, navy. Yoehlee calls her approach “intimate architecture”--a phrase the hosts love.

The second outfit is a silvery gray (they call it “glacier”), frosted panne velvet dress with a matching cover-up. Next, there’s a machine-washable black gabardine skirt and shirt. The skirt is knee-length, and there’s satin on the shirt’s collar.

“Balance and proportion make a woman look elegant,” Hall says.

But they choose another gabardine skirt set with a shorter jacket for Zahalsky and top it with an overcoat of embossed wool. She looks lovely. She does a few runway turns for the camera, and that segment is done.

“It’s exactly the look I wanted,” Zahalsky says. “Elegant, professional and understated.”

During a lunch break, Emme talks about the show’s goal “to make America beautiful, one person at a time.” She calls the make-overs “a vehicle to help one’s body image, to give someone hope and aspirations.

“We open the door for you,” Emme says, “but it’s going to be up to you to pull yourself through that door and make opportunities blossom. We can’t do it for you.”

That’s not always easy, even for people seeking make-overs.

“Their attitude is ‘All right, I asked for help, but I’m not going to let the designer put me in something they think I would look good in.’ So, people say, ‘Oh, I never look good in that,’ or ‘I never look good in this.’

“It’s like, listen, you’re getting a chance to have a make-over. Let them just do what they feel will look good on you, then say, ‘Oh, I’d like to have this adjusted,’ but during the process try not to be self-defeating. Let it happen, let go and let the best in the business help you out, and then you might see yourself in a whole new way.”

Zahalsky, sitting nearby, gets excited. That’s exactly what she is ready for, she says. She’s been a dream so far. She hasn’t shown any annoyance toward the multiple takes, fashionese or expert attention. (“It’s a peek into a whole world I’m not a part of.”) She’s positively eager to get to the hair salon.

Then . . . she gets to the hair salon. It’s the Miano/Viel Salon & Spa, an obviously pricey place with cherrywood stations designed as easels and hair potions that come out of bright bottles in near-magical shapes. Damien Miano, who has worked on Tipper Gore’s hair, will do the styling. But there’s a problem.

Zahalsky wears a hairpiece because of a long-ago assault that cost her some hair. It’s an expensive piece and one that she’s not willing to chuck. It makes her chestnut hair rest just past her shoulders, but it also limits it to one style.

The doctor has talked so much about her need for the hairpiece that Miano is worried about what he will find when he removes it. With obvious relief, he discovers hair that’s thin, but definitely something he can work with. But Zahalsky is afraid; she doesn’t want a style that would prevent her from using the piece again, she doesn’t completely trust Miano, and her boyfriend has expressed a preference for long hair.

Everything stops for a while, as Emme, Hall and Miano try to alleviate her fears. They tell her nothing is wrong with her hair; Miano runs his hands through it, playing with different styles. Emme talks to her alone, getting close and speaking softly; other times, she and Hall work as a cheerleading team.

After half an hour, the coaxing pays off. Zahalsky agrees to an asymmetric bob. Miano cuts it and, even wet, it’s clear that the cut is a great one and very flattering. The doctor is thrilled.

Next, makeup. Peter Brown, who comes across as a lean Texan, but is actually from the Midwest, knows exactly what he wants to do.

“She needs a little more warmth and vibrancy,” he says. “She’s pale and spartan now, puritanical, which is in line with the holiday, but. . . .”

Brown gets to work. He adds lashes, curls them and cleans up her eyebrows a bit. He creates a face that still looks like Zahalsky but now reveals a kind of clean glamour. She won’t be able to duplicate all he’s done, but she can get close.

Nearly eight hours since the make-over began, it’s back to the chair for blow drying. Emme has left for another appointment. The crew is tired.

But Zahalsky has enough energy for everyone. She’s seen herself transformed.

“It’s the best haircut anyone on the planet has ever gotten! It’s exactly the look I’ve always dreamed of.”

Miano says the style gives Zahalsky’s fine hair density.

“The lines, the length are much more flattering. It’s a cut with some texture to it.” Plus, the wispy bangs camouflage her worry lines.

The parting shot is Zahalsky’s thanking the experts and twirling in front of the cameras, glowing with the excitement of a new her.

“It’s fantastic. It exceeds my expectations,” she says. “It’s a look I always wanted but was not reflected in the way I looked.”

Postscript: Later that night, when Zahalsky’s boyfriend came to pick her up at the train station, she was left waiting because he didn’t recognize her. They finally met up when she was the last person in the station. Despite her haircut, he’s still her boyfriend.