Karl couldn’t resist a last look at himself as he went out. He grimaced
widely and examined his now perfectly aligned teeth. Although it was
nearly three months since Mr. Briars had removed his braces, the
Hollywood smile in the mirror was still a novelty. Feeling jaunty in
his new Levi’s, button fly not zip, he flipped his black leather
jacket over his shoulder and opened the front door.
It was an overcast day with just a smudge of sunlight. Karl stepped
out, taking care to avoid the puddles in his suede cowboy boots.
Yesterday’s rain had left the pavement slippery as an ice-rink, and
his soft-leather soles skidded occasionally on wet leaves – it was
difficult to keep up his Mr. Cool image under these conditions. Even
so he was pleased to see that a couple of women eyed him up as he
went past. One of them wasn’t half bad – a handsome brunette with
smouldering eyes, and a push-up bra by the looks of it. Under
different circumstances he might have tried a chat-up line, but
today he was in a hurry – his appointment was at five and it was
nearly that now.
The dental surgery was a trendy affair on the town’s main
shopping street. Mr. Briars had recently moved there from the
hole-in-the-wall place that he used to rent above the dry-cleaners
on London Road. Karl had moved with him; he’d been going there ever
since leaving rehab. It had felt right to stay loyal. In any case,
the increased prices that had come with the move didn’t affect Karl
since his was still on benefit and had his dental costs paid for.
He pushed open the plate glass door, dead on five. There were no
patients waiting, just the middle-aged receptionist behind the desk.
He flashed her a smile.
“Hello Mrs.W. How’s my favourite girl?”
She giggled and as always flushed to the roots of her hair,
“Oh! Get away with you.” She looked at the appointments diary on her
desk and frowned.
“I ain’t got you down luvvy. Are you sure…?”
“The boss phoned me last week and asked me if I could change
my appointment. I was supposed to be coming in tomorrow morning, but
something cropped up. Don’t know what…”
“Oh, that’s right, he’s off to one of his conferences again.
Last minute job – you know what he’s like.” She spoke indulgently
like a mother.
Karl nodded, “How long’s he away for this time?” He tried to
sound casual. It was strange that Rowena hadn’t mentioned anything.
But then again if it was that last minute…
“I think it’s a week. We’ve had to get a supply in to cover, but she
couldn’t make it til Friday, too last minute they said. It’s like I
said to Mags just the other day…”
Karl shoved his hands in his pockets and mooched over to a
chair, next to the box of lego and the rack of Country Living
magazines. Mrs. W fizzled out, seeing him so uninterested. His
relationship with Mrs. W, had never got beyond hello and a wink, and
he had no plans to take it further.
“How’s about a cup of coffee, while I’m waiting? Customer
service and all that.” He winked at her.
That flustered her. But then she was easily flustered.
“Sorry luvvy, but I can’t leave the desk,” she looked torn.
The door to Mr. Briars’ surgery opened and a woman walked out,
holding her hand against her cheek. Mrs. W, relieved of her dilemma,
whisked the woman’s card through the machine and arranged her next
appointment. Karl supposed her mother hen patter kept the patients’
minds off the surgery’s extortionate prices.
The next moment, Mr. Briars himself appeared at the door in
his white coat. He seemed delighted to see Karl.
“Good evening young sir. Come on in. You know the drill.”
Karl, standing up quickly, smiled as usual at the lame joke.
“Should do by now. This is practically my second home.”
Mr. Briars stood by the door like a warden while Karl sailed past.
As Karl made himself comfortable in the squishy leather seat he
heard the dentist tell his receptionist that she could go home
early.
“We could be some time,” he explained as she insisted she didn’t
mind staying on.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “I’m sure I can manage to fill out a few
forms on my own, not to mention the appointments diary. Honestly
Cindy, you don’t have to worry about a thing.”
A few seconds later the front door slammed and a key turned in the
lock. Mr. Briars came back into the room looking pleased with
himself. He rubbed his hands together and had an almost gleeful
expression on his face as he said,
“Well then lad. Are you ready?”
Karl grinned genuinely unconcerned. He’d spent the last two
years in and out of the dentist’s chair and it held no more fears.
Mr. Briars was always sensitive. He had a soothing, hypnotic voice
and a feather-light touch. He told you what he was going to do,
rather than just going ahead and doing it. He didn’t spring nasty
surprises and he was never patronising.
When Karl had first come to him, his teeth had been in a dreadful
state. Years of being off his head on crack and heroin meant that
they were rotten and loose, and in some cases beyond rescue. His
mouth had looked like a row of well-worn tombstones even though he
was barely thirty. Mr. Briars had hardly batted an eyelid at so much
decay; he didn’t even ask about how it could have come about.
Instead he’d given Karl a photograph album full of before and
after-shots to show him how gummy mouths and stumpy black teeth
could be changed into beautiful smiles. It had give Karl hope that
he was not a lost cause.
A sudden lurch and Karl found himself flat on his back.
“Oops, sorry about that. Bit heavy on the old lever there.” Mr.
Briars pulled down the angle-poise so that it shone in Karl’s eyes.
Karl blinked, “Er, you couldn’t right me up a bit could you? And
maybe shine the light away from my eyes?”
Apart from anything else he liked to have a view of the mobile on
the ceiling; it was meant for children but he always found it
comforting to watch the dolphins rotate peacefully through their
foaming sea.
Mr. Briar’s giggled and the chair jack-knifed violently so that Karl
found himself sitting at a stiff right-angle, nose almost touching
the light-bulb.
“Oh dear I’m all fingers and thumbs today. Hang on there and I’ll
ease you down a bit.”
He hummed tunelessly as he cranked Karl, slowly this time, into a
more comfortable position. As he flexed the light down once more,
Karl thought he caught a whiff of alcohol on his breath.
“Where’s Gemma?” Karl asked, suddenly realising that Mr. Briars’
nurse was absent.
Mr. Briars waved his hands in the air, “Oh she wanted to go home
early. Her father’s sixtieth, or some such thing. You know how it
is.”
Karl wondered at his casual attitude. During his previous visits
Gemma had seemed like a crucial part of the team, Mr. Briars hardly
making a move without her cooperation.
“Don’t worry,” he said as if reading Karl’s mind, “I got her to
sterilise everything before she went. It’s all laid out and ready to
go.”
Karl twisted his head to the little metal trolley to which Mr.
Briars was pointing. Scalpels, mirrors, tweezers and sharp-looking
surgical instruments glittered under the buzzing strip-lights. It
would be better not to see them all laid out like that, like a
sadist’s kitbag. Mr. Briars lifted a scalpel up to the light and
rotated it slowly. He ran his finger thoughtfully over the point and
then placed it carefully back on its tray.
Karl turned away. He was disappointed that Gemma wasn’t there. Even
more than the mobile she was something pretty to look at to keep his
mind off what was happening in his mouth. She’d even held his hand
once during a particularly difficult extraction when there’d been
the grinding of bone as well as the squelch of flesh. Karl had
focused on the soft under-swell of her breasts through her white
coat and had come through the ordeal pretty well considering.
Mr. Briars washed his hands and snapped on his surgical gloves. He
approached the chair with an air of determination and wheeled the
trolley closer. He sat down behind Karl and leant over him.
Something metal in his hands hovered close to Karl’s face.
“Open wide,” he grinned as he prised Karl’s mouth open, pressing hard
against his tongue with the concave back of his mirror.
“Oh…oh…” Karl complained, feeling a gagging sensation at the
back of his throat.
“Now lets see what’s going on,” said the dentist, with
a boffin-like delight in his work. “Now if I remember correctly,
those temporary veneers were on the two upper lefts and the two
front, and then lower fronts as well.”
He was burrowing something sharp round the edges of
Karl’s teeth and quite deep into the gums.
“Oh, ow… that hurts,” Karl screeched, tongue, teeth and lips
closing against the sharp metal in his mouth, making things worse.
As Mr. Briars withdrew the instruments Karl tasted the iron-tang of
blood.
“Have a swill,” Mr. Briars said cheerfully,
stepping on a lever that sent Karl rocketing upright again.
Gobbets of flesh swirled with blood and saliva as Karl
gurgled and spat into the basin. “Aren’t you going to give me a jab
first?” He asked, lower lip trembling, blood drooling onto his
shirt, “And shouldn’t you put that bib thing on me?”
Karl was unpleasantly
surprised. He’d gone through any number of extractions and
root-fillings as well as tooth implants and brace tightening – but
nothing had hurt as much as today.
Mr. Briars
stroked his neat goatee and wondered aloud, “Hmm yes, now where does
Gemma keep those things?”
“In that cupboard
there.” Karl was well acquainted with the layout of the surgery’s
storage having been such a regular over the last two years.
“Look,” he
said, using his hands to ease him upwards, “maybe it’d be better for
me to come another day. When Gemma is here. Those new veneers can
wait.”
A firm hand on his
chest pushed him back into the chair, “You were right,” Mr. Briars
said, whipping the white plastic bib round Karl’s neck, “It was just
where you said. Now where were we?”
“Anaesthetic?” Karl suggested, working out how may steps would take him to the door.
“Of course,”
Mr. Briars said, conjuring a syringe from one of the shelves on his
trolley. He held it up theatrically and squeezed a drop of the clear
liquid through the tip of the needle.
“One I prepared earlier,” he said in a jovial tone, “Now open wide! That’s good. Now
let’s see.”
Karl focused hard on
the spinning mobile above his head; there were four, no five
dolphins, leaping joyfully among turquoise waves.
“Sorry. Did
that catch?”
Karl nodded as much as he dared with the needle and syringe still wedging open his
mouth.
“I haven’t done
anything yet. Now hold still. You might feel a little prick.” Mr.
Briars chuckled.
Karl eyes
opened wide with pain as Mr. Briars rammed the needle home into a
sensitive spot on the roof of his mouth. Only the dentist’s hands
resting on his chest stopped him from hitting the ceiling.
“There, there,
the worst is over now. Relax. Just let it happen, just got to empty
the syringe. You’re doing marvellously.”
His voice was
soothing, but did nothing to relieve the stabbing pain in Karl’s
mouth. Mr. Briars pulled out
the syringe and dumped it in the sink.
“That bloody hurt!”
Karl protested, feeling a drag of numbness on his cheek.
“Sorry about that.
Sometimes you just snag a stray nerve. Can’t be helped. Bloody
nuisance – but there it is.” He sounded brisk rather than sorry.
He pushed his fingers
into Karls’ mouth and kneaded the gums and the insides of his
cheeks. Karl could taste the rubber of his gloves.
“We’ll just wait a
moment to make sure the anaesthetic has taken effect. Would you like
some music?”
Mr. Briars had
a relaxation tape that he often played to calm his patients. Karl
had heard it many times before, whale calls, birdsong, Tibetan bells
– that type of thing. Karl nodded as best he could with his mouth
full of fingers. At least the pain was fading now. A pleasant woozy
feeling came over him and he sagged further back into the chair. It
would all be over soon, and he was looking forward to seeing his
permanent veneers, and the end result of so many months of surgery.
Mr. Briars slipped a CD into the player and pressed play. There was a humming and
whirring from the machine, the soft thud of footsteps and then
rattling as the dentist selected his tool. A steady drum-beat and
the riff of bass guitar rumbled through the room as Karl’s lips
opened to the pressure of cold metal. Mr. Briars was leaning over
him now; he could feel the hot pant of his breath against his face,
and could see a ring of perspiration under his arm.
“These temps can be a
devil to get off,” the dentist complained, suddenly jumping to his
feet.
A gravelly
rock-and-roll voice belted from the speakers. It took a second for
Karl to realise that this wasn’t the usual relaxation mix. It took
him a few more seconds to realise that this was the same band he’d
paid to see last week at the Majestic with Rowena.
Mr. Briars was probing deep into his mouth. Gravity distorted his upside down face,
making it look top-heavy.
“Your kind of music?” he asked, upside down jowls wobbling slightly as effort
reverberated through him.
Karl shook his head.
“Really? You surprise
me. Thought that something like this was just the ticket for the
younger generation.”
Karl couldn’t see how a nod or shake of his head could explain everything
he wanted to say. The other option of grunting, and possibly being
asked to repeat himself, was just too tedious. He just kept still,
mouth open a tad more to accommodate Mr. Briars’ sawing motion. He
could feel splinters of something hard at the back of his throat,
tooth enamel maybe or, God forbid, bone.
“Didn’t they play last week at the Majestic in our own fair city?” Mr. Briars
rammed something like cotton wool, between Karl’s top gum and the
inside of his upper lip. Karl’s mouth
filled with saliva. There was a raging tickle in his throat and he
wanted desperately to swallow.
“Hold still lad. Time to take a swallow in a moment when I finish this. You can
swill too if you like – when I’m done.”
Karl looked up in surprise. Normally Mr. Briars allowed him to take a rest any time
he wanted. What was so different about today? Mr. Briars’ face was
screwed up in fierce concentration. He was working furiously,
rocking the scalpel backwards and forwards like a chain-gang con
crowbarring a rock. Karl could smell his sweat. Karl wanted to know
why peeling off a veneer that had only been applied a month ago
should require so much effort. He tried to lift his hand from the
chair in a recognised signal to say that he needed a break, but for
some reason he couldn’t. At that moment his
mobile phone bleeped from his jacket on the back of the door.
“Shall I?” enquired
Mr. Briars, retreating backwards from Karl, scalpel gleaming red in
his hands. Karl shook his head,
but “Leave it,” came out as an elongated grunt. Every time he opened
his mouth, something thick and viscous dribbled down his chin.
“Oh, it’s from someone called Rowena. There’s a coincidence – same name as my wife.
She says, ‘He knows.’” He examined the phone thoughtfully and then
tossed it on the floor, “God knows what that was about? Now where
were we?”
He dived back at Karl who found he could do no more than squirm weakly against the big leather
chair. Karl could see his pointy suede feet at the end of the chair,
but he couldn’t feel them. His hands wanted to white-knuckle against
the square armrests, but they just flopped like dead birds. He saw
Mr. Briars’ upside-down head looming at him. The scalpel
flashed into Karl’s mouth and Mr. Briars’ fists tightened with
strain. The music blaring from the system was reaching a crescendo.
“The problem is,” Mr. Briars explained in a loud voice, “Sometimes, and often
when there’s been a history of substance abuse, tooth implants don’t
take,” he frowned and then smiled as he extracted one of Karl’s
recently installed implants, “Got you, you bugger. Excuse my French.
Sorry Karl but the bone underneath was just crumbling away. Couldn’t
be helped.”
Karl cowered against
his chair, or tried to but couldn’t manage more than a faint twitch.
He heard a clatter as Mr. Briars chucked the implant into the sink.
A shadow cast over him as the dentist came back into his line of vision.
“My wife loves this music. You know she’s a few years younger than me?” Mr. Briars
said conversationally, “In fact she went to the show the other
night, you know the one we were talking about at the Majestic. I
didn’t go, not my cup of tea really. Afterwards I rang her on her
mobile and, silly me, I got you. Must have pressed your number by
mistake.”
Karl’s eyes opened wide in final understanding. That night he’d looked after Rowena’s
mobile in his jacket. She’d said she didn’t want to take her handbag
into the theatre in case it got lost or stolen. She’d put the phone
on vibrate just in case the baby-sitter called; James was out giving
one of his talks to the local WI. Karl must have answered it by
mistake, thinking that it was his phone. Briars had sounded cool as
a cucumber when he’d arranged Karl’s change of appointment. Karl
hadn’t realised until now what must have happened.
“Now open wide,” Mr. Briars bawled over the raucous rock beat, “I’m afraid all those
little toothy-pegs are going to have to come out.”
Karl, over-dosed on
anaesthetic, screamed silently, as Mr. Briars smiling fiendishly, a
manic expression in his eyes, lowered the drill carefully into his
mouth.
By Julie Glennie
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