Mackey was of that generation whose chilhood dentist refused to give him any anesthesia whatever..
“I need to know when it hurts,” he had said.
So, when it hurt, Mackey let him know it. He screamed.
“Oh, that didn’t hurt,” said the dentist. And he continued what he was doing. Simlarly, Mackey continued to scream. An hour or so later, the dentist finished.
“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” he said. His words were lost, because Mackey was still screaming.
The dentist left the room. By the time the hygenist came in, Mackey had subsided to full-voiced crying. It took him another fifteen minutes to calm himself down to stuttering whimpering, before his legs could support him, and another five until he was able to take small steps.
So now, in his maturity, when he pays for his dentist visits himself, Mackey requires nitrous greet his body as it enters the dentist’s chair and remain engaged until the last procedural stroke of the dentist’s hand.
So it was this time. As he entered the examining room of Owl Creek Dental Associates, Jasmine, Dr Patel’s assistant, was plugging the nasal cannula tube into the nitrous system. She smiled at him.
“Here we are, Mackey, Just the way you like it.”
She held the transparent tube in an arc above the headrest as Mackey settled into the chair. Then, she lowered it over his face and inserted the cannula into his nares. She turned on the nitrous. Now Mackey smiled.
“Hi, Jasmine.”
“Close your eyes, Mackey.” He did so, “Bon voyage.”
At first, as always, Mackey didn’t believe.anything was happening. He was about to ask her to up the mixture when he discovered his eyelids worked differently than he remembered and he had to practise using them. Then Dr Patel came in.
“So, boychik, what’s the word?”
“The word is ‘Ow’, you damn fool. What do you expect? And, how you doon?”
“O, fair to middlin. My boy starts soccer next week. He’s four now. How’d he get so old, I wonder?”
“You let him. He must be very good.”
“He is. Now, what of this ‘ow’. Where is it?”
Mackey pointed to a molar, upper right.
“Okay. Open wide.” Patel began poking around in Mackey’s mouth. His gloved fingers probed the gum around the crumbling molar. Meanwhile, Mackey closed his eyes again and drifted off.
Nitrous affected Mackey almost always the same way. He was in space, within the Solar System but not near Earth, This time, he was beyond the Asteroid Belt, nearing the orbit of Mars, when Patel said:
“O. Okay. This is easy. I already regret wasting nitrous on you. Look, Open your eyes. Here it is.”
Sadly, Mackey struggled his eyelids open. He really like floating in space, and was enjoying the view. The asteroids tumbled as they circled the Sun. The way the Sun caught on the walls of their craters was seductive. Some actually sparkled.
“Huh. That was effortless. You don’t even have to charge me, do you?”
“Nothing’s that simple my friend,” said Patel over his shoulder. He’d taken off his gloves, and was rubbing disinfectant on his hands, “See Charlene on your way out.” He waved without turning around and left the examination room.
Jasmine walked into his line of sight. She smiled at him, gently. There was a softness in her smile that Mackey had never noticed before. He smiled back.
“Are you feeling better?”
Yes. He was.
“Are you strong enough?”
For what, Mackey thought. Then he saw. Jasmine was unbuttoning the first button of her uniform.
In less than a minute, she was straddling him, kissing him. His hand was on her breast. He could feel her nipple stiffen under her uniform, become hard as a jewel. Her hand was fumbling at his belt, his zipper, and then he was free. She guided him into her, pressing her body against his. But it was wrong. She was too light. There was too much clothing. Hadn’t she taken it all off? But her breathing was loud and hot. She was licking his ear. But it wasn’t wet…
-#-
“So, boychik, what’s the word?”
The rinse-sink beside his head shut off. The dream vanished. Mackey was lying comfortably in the dentist chair, fully clothed. Presumably, so was Jasmine. She was setting up some equipment and supplies behind his right shoulder, oblivious to him. He had no erection. Mackey hoped to God Patel had no clue what his subconscious had been up to. But there didn’t seem to ber any overt evidence of his lurid fantasy. Subtly, Mackey checked himself out again.
“Hard to shake the nitrous? Maybe Jasmine needs to turn it down a little?”
“O no. Not a chance. Leave it just where it is, you don’t mind.”
“Whatever you say, my boy. Now, where does it hurt?”
Mackey pointed to an upper right molar,
“Let’s take a look.”
Patel probed the gum near the shattered molar.”Uh huh,” he said. “I’m going to give you a shot,” Patel stuck the hypodermic needle in Mackey’s gum, pushed the plunger all the way in, and withdrew the needle. Mackey felt nothing. “We’ll take a minute to let that do its thing, then I’ll get rid of that bad boy,”
“Can I just take my mouth out and hand it to you, and I’ll come back later to pick it up?”
“By all means. You go back to Pluto, or wherever you were. We’ll call you when we’re done.”
Mackey closed his eyes. He was back in space,
Mackey could still hear the dentist and his assistant as they worked. Their conversation was completely professional, referring only to the work. For a while, he tried to imagine double entendres, hidden meanings in their words, then gave up.
Patel had Jasmine mix up some goo, then stand by with it and some gauze pads she’d piled into a thick little bundle.
In the nitrous, it seemed to Mackey as if a crew of tiny construction workers were scranbling around inside his mouth, erecting scaffolding, rigging a winch, tying it off to the molar through pulleys they had rigged to the scaffolding. Then they powered up the winch. With a strain, the tooth was removed from his jaw.
Patel took the little pot of goo from Jasmine and applied it to the empty socket. A wad of gauze swung into place.
“Now bite down hard,” said Jasmine.
“You’ll need to keep that gauze in place the rest of the afternoon,” said Patel. “No hot liquids, no coffee or soup or anything like that. Have a tuna fish sandwich, with loose tuna fish, And don’t rinse out your mouth. We’re trying to form a clot. Okay?”
Mackey nodded.
“Wha’d you say?” said Patel.
“”Huuk yee,” said Mackey.
“You’re welcome. Don’t forget to see Charlene on the way out,”Patel took off his gloves and washed his hands with disinfectant. Then he left.
“How are you feeling? You’ve been getting pure oxygen for the last two minutes,” said Jasmine. She was smiling politely, professionally. “Stay in the chair another minute, then sit up slowly. Here’s some extra gaue. When you feel you can walk steadily, you can go,” Then she left.
In the outer office, Mackey paid the bill. Then, he changed the gauze and went home.
-#-
Mackey’s marriage had not, shall we say, been an endless spring meadow of bliss . There were all the usual disagreements, and several unusual disagreements, and they all changed shape and names as time went on, so you couldn’t ever get a firm grip on them, The two issues that remained constant throughout, though, were maintenance, and chores. Mackey hoped that his first dental appointment in nineteen years would work as a turning-pont, that personal maintenance woul lead to home maintenance. He knew he wasn’t holding up his end. He didn’t feel good about it, but maintenance had seemed unmanageable, for some reason or another. He wanted peace with his wife. He actually liked her, as well as loving her, and the years of mild strife were changing.that. He wanted to rectify things before it was too late.
Claire was home when he got there. She didn’t seem displeased to see him, which was refreshing; she even offered to make him lunch. He told her what the dentist had said. She smiled and went to work. And he went upstairs, and vacuumed the bedrooms.
Fifteen minutes later, he was back downstairs with a load of laundry, which he took to the basement and put in the washer. He was amazed at how easy it all was, and how little time it took..When he returned to the kitchen, his lunch was waiting. Claire came in and sat with him while he ate. She seemed friendly and warm, unusual sentiments these days. She started to talk about what plants she wanted in the back yard that summer, but he stopped her. Had she heard anything about Occupy Wall Street recently? He hadn’t read anything about them in some time. Had she? They talked about the morning’s front page.
So by the end of lunch, neither had mentioned any chores. A plan he had half-formed on his way home had taken solid form. He wanted to just cruise into the afternoon and fix the back deck railing unbidden. And that’s just what he did.
The railing took less than forty minutes. He entered the kitchen from the back deck, sweaty and dirty. Claire was making a meatloaf. All the meat, rosemary, tarragon, eggs and chopped onions were in a mixing bowl on the table, and Claire was kneading the mess with her hands. The oven was on. so Claire’s skin had a very light sheen of sweat on it. Some stands of her hair had come loose and were in front of her eyes..
Mackey came up behind her. He held her lightly around the waist and gently pulled her towards him. Rather than resisting as he’d expected, she leaned back against him, then turned to face him.
“You look very sexy when you make meatloaf,” he said.
“Let me wash my hands.”
“Don’t.”
They were still in bed when the sun went down.
“Yo, boychik, you in there?” Mackey’s eyes were closed, but that whouldn’t distress anyone, to find him in his own bed with his eyes closed. “Maa-key, wake uuu-ppp. We need to taaalk.” What the hell?
- # -
Mackey opened his eyes a slit. The fluorescent examining room lights were searingly bright.
“I give good gas, hunh? Maybe Jasmine should thin the mixture some?”
“Don’t you dare. Leave it where it is. And you’re not charging me for that hour you just wasted of my prescious time.”
“What hour? You’ve been in here ten minutes.” Patel seemed genuinely injured by the thought. “Twelve. It took me four minutes to wake you up.”
“Really?” Mackey was still disoriented.
Patel probed around the destroyed molar with a gloved finger. “Huh. Looks like you had some work done on this tooth before. The fillings fell out and the tooth disintegrated, and here you are.” A gentle push on the inside of his gum made Mackey yell.
“I’m going to give you some novacain. You’ll feel a pinch.” Patel inserted the hypodermic into Mackey’s gum. He felt stabbed. He grunted a little.
Patel took the needle out. “We’ll let that do its thing, a minute or two. Then I’ll get rid of that bad boy.”
“Can I just take my mouth out and give it to you? You do the work. Then, I’lll come back and pick it up. You can bill me.”
“You use that lame line every time you come in here.”
“Medical science is always improving. I can try.”
“Not that line.” Patel was putting towels around Mackey’s neck. “Cash on the barrelhead! No billing here! Cash on the barrelhead!”
He closed his eyes.
He was back in space.
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