MENTAL DENTAL
by David Shactman
The odor. I can’t describe it, but every dentist office has that same antiseptic smell. One sniff and my muscles tense and the old anxiety returns. Automatically, I flash back, and I am eight years old and getting a cavity filled for the first time. I sit bolt upright in the hard, black dental chair staring at the metallic equipment. The dentist reaches up and adjusts a lamp that shines directly in my eyes. He bends over me with a menacingly long needle.
“This will only hurt for a second,” he says, as I suddenly realize he is about to stick the thing right into my gums.
I brace myself for the same pain I know from school vaccinations. But this is worse, because after the needle penetrates, he pushes the plunger and the ice-cold liquid shoots through my gums. My buttocks clench, arching my back against the chair. But then it’s over. My fingers relax their death grip on the metal chair handles. I start to breathe again.
"That wasn’t so bad, was it,” he smiles, with that self-assured adult air, telling me it really wasn’t what it really was.
But now, I’m in my 40s, and as I lower myself onto the dentist’s chair, it is no longer the black, upright, metallic chair of my childhood, but a soft, pastel-colored, recliner. As soon as I settle in, a perky, young, female assistant enters the room.
“How are we doing today Mr. Miller,” she asks, with a sing-songy voice like she is talking to a little boy. She must have just graduated hygienist’s school and is drop-dead adorable. She steps on a button, smoothly lowering my seatback to a fully reclined and utterly helpless position.
“We are overjoyed to begin the morning this way,” I answer, trying to preserve some measure of dignity despite my supine position. A sliver of smile acknowledges my humor as she reaches for a stainless-steel dental pick with a hook that looks like it could catch a fish.
“Let’s do a quick check before the procedure, shall we?” she says, like both of us are going to probe my gums with this piercing instrument. “Open wide,” she sings, as she picks some bits of old, rotten food from between my teeth. I try to ignore her breasts which are jutting out just below my chin. She probes between two lower teeth and I hear my blood being sucked up by the gurgling device she has hooked over my lower lip.
“Have we been flossing regularly Mr. Miller?”
“Most of the time,” I exaggerate. “I want to make sure there’s enough work for all you graduating hygienists.”
“Oh, I’ve been doing this for five years now,” she answers like a seasoned professional, bruising my ego with the realization that this pretty woman in her twenties looks like a teenager from my middle-aged perspective.
After scraping some unseen plaque from the back of my teeth, she grasps the air hose with one of her gloved hands. The pressurized air shoots into my mouth, finding every little exposed nerve ending.
“Rinse,” she commands, raising my seatback and appearing oblivious to any pain she may have caused. “The doctor will be with you shortly.”
Grateful that this part of the ordeal is over, I manage a garbled “thank you” before bending over and spitting a combination of blood and saliva into the little white bowl. A long string of fluid droops from my lower lip. I grab my paper bib to catch it before it stains my shirt. Too late, as I glance upwards, embarrassed, but she has already left the room.
“Bruce, glad to see you again,” says Richard, my long-time dentist, entering the room dressed in his light blue surgical gown. “Is this your first root canal?”
“It is, my friend, and I don’t intend to be awake for the gory details.” I don’t have to tell Richard that the primary reason I have been going to him all these years is his generous employment of nitrous oxide.
“Not a problem,” says my dentist through his paper mask. “We will transport you to la-la-land before you even sense my gentle touch. Would you like headphones? Classical, jazz, or rock?”
Dentistry has come a long way since my childhood, but I politely decline. Looking as cute as all the girls I dreamed about in high school, the hygienist returns, wheeling in the machine that dispenses the anesthetic known elsewhere as laughing gas. Richard adjusts the settings. “I think we should turn it up a little,” he says, recalling that I experienced some discomfort the last time around. “If you start to feel any nausea,” he adds, “raise your arm to let me know.”
He lowers my seatback until I am staring up at the two figures above me. Richard bends over me and adjusts the oddly named “scavenging mask.” I know this term because my fear of everything dental led me to check it out on the Internet. The first thing I saw in bright red letters was:
HAZARD
Dental workers are exposed to Nitrous Oxide (N2O) during administration of this anesthetic gas to patients. Exposures should be minimized to prevent short-term behavioral and long-term reproductive health effects that can be produced by N2O.”
Apparently, the mask not only administers the nitrous oxide, but also “scavenges” the exhaled chemical and steers it to an outside vent. The website goes on to list the potential ways the implements can fail and over-expose dental workers. It also mentions that the faulty substitution of too much nitrogen, in place of oxygen, can kill the patient.
The mask is uncomfortable at first, but soon I am able to relax. I sense a slight tingling in my arms and legs. A feeling of warmth spreads throughout my body. The two masked figures bend over me, practicing what is known as “four-handed dentistry.” They begin to fade into the distance as Richard asks his assistant to hand—hand—him—him-him, the sound softly reverberating in my ears.
I’m on a beach you can only hope to visit in your perfect imagination. The sand so fine, it feels like someone polished each tiny grain until it was feet-tickling smooth. And white. Eye-squinting white and footprint-free. The water is a transparent, aqua green. The kind you only see on your February vacation to some tiny little Caribbean atoll. Not a cloud mars the blue sky, and the sun feels like goodness itself, warming my body as I lay on my towel, eyes shut, with only a wisp of wind and the gentle lapping of tiny waves.
Suddenly, she is standing above me, and at first, I don’t recognize the adorable young hygienist in such a different setting. And no wonder. Instead of the shapeless, blue, surgical scrubs, she wears a tiny yellow bikini with a thong that leaves little to my imagination.
“Bruce, that’s you, isn’t it?” she asks, addressing me by my surname for the first time. “I was sitting all alone and spotted you over here.”
“Hi, I didn’t recognize you out of uniform. Have a seat,” I say, scooting over to one side of my beach towel.
“We’re not supposed to fraternize with patients, but I guess no one will see us here,” she says, glancing up and down the deserted beach before sitting next to me.
We begin some small talk when she spots my tube of sunscreen lying on the blanket. “Oooh, could I borrow your sunscreen? I completely forgot mine.”
“Sure,” I answer and watch her rub the white cream into her nicely tanned arms and bare midriff.
“Would you mind doing my back?” she asks. And there I am, kneeling above her back, rubbing the lotion into her shoulders, and unavoidably, looking down her bikini at a pair of very young and firm breasts. I’m old enough to be her father, I’m thinking, and I don’t want to embarrass both of us by failing to understand our age difference. But she interrupts my train of thought.
“How come older men know just how hard to rub?” she asks.
“Oh, it comes with years of experience,” I answer, shocked at the alluring implication of her statement. I squirt some more sunscreen in my hands and move down from her shoulders to her back.
“Is the strap in the way? Nobody’s around,” she shrugs, and in one motion removes the top of her bathing suit.
There are no tan lines. Her breasts are tanned and smooth and her reddish-brown nipples are pert and taut in the gentle breeze. She turns toward me smiling and places my hand on her..."OWWWW!"
The dentist’s drill has slipped and punctured my gum. I realize I had been dreaming as I see blood spurting from my mouth like a ruptured artery and running down my bib and onto my clothes. The pain is a molten spike shooting through my head. I look up from my prostrate position, fearing I am grievously hurt and squinting through the pain.
The dentist and hygienist come into focus -- and they are laughing! From my helpless position, I notice the scavenger mask has slipped from my nose. They must have been bent over me, unknowingly inhaling the laughing gas.
“Hand me some gauze,” he says to her, still laughing. “Begauze I made a mistake,” he jokes, as they giggle inappropriately, thinking I am out in nitrous land and can’t hear them.
I am horrified, blood is everywhere, and the pain is excruciating, pulsating in my head. The two of them are still sniggering as he stuffs more and more gauze into my mouth, trying to stem the flow of blood.
“He looks like Santa Gauze,” the hygienist says, sending them back into paroxysms of laughter.
I try to speak, to cry out, but there are suction tubes and metal clamps and piles of gauze in my mouth. All I can manage is a helpless, muffled, grunt that rekindles their amusement. Then, everything starts to fade into the distance and the room begins to spin. I am whirling around and around in a vortex, falling farther and farther from their receding faces. The spinning is making me nauseous and I raise my hand toward my throat in anticipation of throwing up.
I feel hands by my mouth and nose as the dentist removes the scavenger mask. Opening my eyes, I look up from my prone position. He is still smiling. “All done,” he says. “Everything went fine. I think we may have given you a bit too much nitrous, because you raised your arm and looked a little upset; but I bet you didn’t feel a thing. See you next time,” he says, already hurrying toward his next paying patient.
The hygienist motors my chair back to the upright position. She hands me a little goodie bag with a rubber tip, a tin of dental floss and a toothbrush. “We’re all done Mr. Miller,” she says with that adorable little smile.
“Now, wasn’t that as easy as a day on the beach?”