pushing a square of plastic into my mouth, clamping it on my outer face and operating a laptop where images of thread-like tributaries, teeth and bone appeared.
“Great, Indar,” he said, as I kept my head tilted looking at the strange screen. “This x-ray shows a dark crescent in the root towards the right side of the image. This is decay and has revealed the main nerve to your face. The darker material in the root is not decay, it is calculus, hard plaque, built up on the roots. Both teeth are not repairable or, impractical to repair under the circumstances and extraction is quick, permanent and as inexpensive as possible. There are no cysts or tumors to make the procedure hazardous, which is good. This should take a maximum time of twenty minutes. Don’t worry, there won’t be much pain and it should heal within a week’s time.” His charade of words brought along with it the numbing of my mouth. I assume that he rambled on just to let the xylem injection take its toll.
“So,” he continued, “let’s get to work.”
With that said, his hands reached for a forceps and for something else with semblance to a socket’s handle.
I breathed through my nostrils as the dentist loosen my gum with the chrome gadget. I hardly felt anything and I thought that this would be a piece of cake. Then I felt a gripping on my enamel, twisting and pulling, twisting and pulling. I wasn’t feeling any pain but I felt the pressure of my tooth being rooted out. As if reading my mind, Mr. Mohammed told his assistant to hold my head down and said: “The injection kills the pain but not the pressure so you’re going to feel a little pulling in here.”
I didn’t answer, I couldn’t.
Applying more strength, the dentist twisted and pulled harder, simultaneously between both teeth marked for death. An uncanny cracking sound erupted inside the cave of my face and I wondered if I alone had heard it.
“I didn’t see this coming,” said the dentist, glancing quickly at his assistant. His words sounded nervous, unfeigned and I sensed that something was way out of proportion as my eyes dilated and my heartbeats went running even faster.
I hadn’t felt any blood copiously welling up inside my mouth but, when the assistant inserted a transparent suction tube and I saw red coloring the inside walls of the plastic, I felt an inkling that I was about to faint.
Didn’t see what coming? I asked myself. What wasn’t supposed to happen that did happen? My mind screamed out a million questions as my mouth was once again being dug into.
Crack… crack… crack…
What the hell? Was this man a dentist or a God damned butcher? My breathing flared my nostrils as the suction tube was once again vacuuming the blood out of my mouth. Seeing the blood drove me to dizziness all over again.
Crack… crack… crack…
“We’ll have to work fast,” said the butcher. “Get the saw, and get ready, we’ll have to stitch him up.”
What… what saw?
“Just relax, Indar,” said the dentist, “this is going to be a little longer than planned.”
Like I have a choice! was my mind’s remark. I doubted my face could have expressed any rancor since it was entirely numb but I hoped that at least it did show in my eyes.
“Mr. Dentist” suppressed my head from moving by placing a strong hand on my forehead as he pulled and twisted my tooth. A few creeks and cracks and it was out. The same violent approach was met by the other tooth and now both of them were out but the assistant seemed to be vacuuming all the blood I had left in my body as the dentist quickly switched on a saw.
This is freaking me out!
The saw, guided by the dentist’s pair of hands cut into the expose bone which was once submerged. Bone fragments and drops of blood pitched wildly, a speck hitting the dentist millimeters away from his eyeball, causing him to jerk back. By the time the saw was no longer needed, the assiduous assistant was once again using the extant suction.
“We’re going to stitch you up now,” it sounded as if it was the dentist voice.
Something… something, piercing, poignantly, was it the needle? No, the needle was still in the dentist’s hand. Was it a protruding sharp edge of bone? No! It was travelling, moving along my neck.
I was mortified, couldn’t speak, shackled and handcuffed at the same time, how was I going to tell them what I was feeling? Was it supposed to be this way?
“It’s been almost two hours now, we are going to have to re-inject your mouth again, so that the numbness don’t reside during the process of sewing.” The dentist spoke fast, wasting no time as the assistant was already passing the syringe to him. He injected me again, then about two more times and the hot, metastasising started all over again. Within minutes, my face was even more numb than it was before. I felt tiny pressures, and noticed the dentist’s hands in sewing movements.
It was taking very long, time itself seemed to be dragging. I felt claustrophobic, felt like my lungs were screaming for a proper intake of oxygen, felt like fainting away but I couldn’t… I won’t faint, I told myself as I repeatedly tried inhaling fresh air through my nostrils, trying hard to at least stay on the edge of reality.
The dentist then deviated away from over me and I observed that he was finished doing his job. He sounded quandary and I was in no position to listen attentively although I heard his every word; his words was not registering in my brain.
“The calculus in the x-ray hid the image of severe bone degradation caused by periodontal disease. The tooth root was therefore ‘welded’ onto the bone of the jaw, which was weaker than the root itself. So instead of the root separating from the bone the bone broke out along with the tooth… it will heal but it takes a very long time, almost a year.”
His sentences were becoming blurred.
“When… it… grasping… brain…”
I was going to faint. My mind went completely to images of Geneva and my family, flashbacks of good times we’ve shared. I remember recently learning the word angina which came from the Greek word anklon which meant strangling. That was exactly how I was feeling – strangling – as tiny beads of sweat coldly covered the entire surface of my skin.
Then I felt it, the hard, tiny, sharp object which was earlier on piercing along my neck was now in the region of my chest, on the left side. My heart began to palpitate and I was moving closer and closer into the solace of fainting…
A famous line from a song I always had Geneva giggling with: Wherever you will go I’ll follow you. Now those words are useless, although I’m sure that she’d remember it for as long as she’s alive. I wish I could say it to her again, watching her face light up in glee as her lips form into her gorgeous smile. I never knew that a splinter of bone could have possibly traveled so fast to the heart resulting in painful coronary thrombosis. Now I am transparent as the unused suction tube, re-living my last day over and over again until God is ready for my soul to return to the sky.
Blacklight Publishers
Other titles by Ryan Ramoutar:
A True Bizarre Story (short story, available)
Breakable Moments (novel, available)
Kiss of a Killer (novel, available)
The Caterpillar and the Rooster (short story, available)
Other titles at Blacklight Publishers:
Burning Tears, by Lucia Trifan (art album, available)
Carol, by Gabriel Szeitz (novel, available)
Little Sebastian and the Little Doll He Loved, by Lucian Merisca (short story, available)
Past East, by Gabriel Szeitz (novel, incoming)
Trisha. An epic novel, by Reg Whitelock (epic adult novel, available)
Trisha. The Caribbean Cruise, by Reg Whitelock (promotional chapter, available)
The Roxolan Princess, by Gabriel Szeitz (pilot short story, available)
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