My current state of restlessness and shame was visible in my reflection through the dentist’s inquisitive, saucer-like eyes. The whispers between him and the hygienist felt more violating than the rough pressure of gloved hands in my open mouth. The preservation of their greedy knowledge didn’t last long, I knew even before coming in that I would leave this room with one less tooth. I had three cavities, little rotten holes plaguing only the bottom set, so my jaw hung open with ease as the black orifices within the tooth’s stomach stared at the roof. His bleak, almost disappointed tone and her pitiful smile confirmed the severity of its corrosion, the one I’d been eyeing in the bathroom mirror for weeks, avoiding it when I chewed and brushing it with deeper consideration than the rest.
The tooth was gone long ago, lifelessly sitting in the socket, fastened into the ground by the frail roots of a dying tree. I would soon mirror my little sister’s fucked up smile, the gaps in between looking like an unfinished puzzle. I thought about leaving the sterile building, thanking the dentist for his unspoken confirmation, only to tie one end of a string to the tooth and the other to a doorknob, but that method never worked, even when I was a kid. Baby blue hands constricted my mouth, and my tongue had gone dry from reused air; there was not yet time for communication besides the strenuous nod of my head.
I missed the feeling of having loose teeth. I missed rocking them back and forth until I made a small opening, a cave where the taste of iron never left, and the pulp beneath the gums’ underbelly rose to the surface, like the slop at the bottom of unstrained orange juice. I missed the excitement of the tooth’s legs detaching from its tendons, so the citrus and iron fell down the drain. Out of the 32 external bones, the molars were always the most satisfying, with crater-sized holes. This was one of those lucky few.
Cavities used to be such a jarring infliction as a child, but now it’s as natural as the molding fruit in my kitchen. Not the ripe, youthful kind beneath childhood teeth, but the bruised kind with sprayed preservatives in the clearance aisle of the produce section. It’s as natural as the roadkill that we no longer cry over. The tooth isn’t loose, it’s just rotten. This progression of aging is no longer liberating, no longer rewarded by money beneath the pillow. I’ve never been so envious of my sister’s gapped grin.
“How many?” I asked once he finished his examination, unhooking my jaw.
“Only the one, the other two can be dealt with, but the recovery of those will be a harder procedure than the one removal. You might feel a little pain, especially after when you eat and brush your teeth. Don’t worry, we’ll put you under while it’s happening.”
I watched him clean a scalpel that was polished below the neck while the sharp tip was covered in my blood. Dentists always devote their attention to a shiny tool when they speak to you, and doctors scribble unknown words behind a clipboard with their elementary-level handwriting. There’s nothing for the patient to do besides avoid eye contact at the right times and stare at the wrong.
“I have to be somewhere by five.” There was nowhere I had to be for the next two days.
“I understand that this an inconvenience, but the longer this sucker stays in, the worst it’s gonna get. Honestly, it’s eroded so heavily, I’m surprised you could stand it for this long.”
It’s somewhat of a phenomenon, how so many people have nightmares about their teeth falling out, left with a mouthful of dense, small bodies. I am not one of those many people, I can never tell when something is dead.
“I want it out.”
I asked for the anesthesia through inhalation, I could hardly handle a needle in my arm, let alone my mouth. He prepared the drug while I stared at the motel art on the walls, stock images of ugly fish, and over-saturated daisy fields.
“I’m almost ready over here.”
I nodded as he messed around with unidentifiable tubes and knobs, knowing he couldn’t see me. He wore one of those unflattering blue masks and the same goggles they make you wear in science class. His 1971 Stanford uniform protected him from my mouth’s black hole.
“I’m gonna have you count down backward from 100. You’ll start a little bit before the mask goes on. Don’t worry, I’ll tell you when.”
He attached the elephant trunk tube to the mask. “Ready?”
“Ready.”
“Alright, start counting.”
“100, 99, 98,”
He put the mask on, and I breathed in deeply.
The gas was initially cold against my skin, and its aridity caused prefuse dehydration. Every breath was sharp. At one point, I tried to swallow the fog as I grieved the last drops of unpolluted spit that fell down my throat.
80,
I thought of the dogs in choke chain collars and muzzles, and how their defiance is expressed through the backlash of rattling metal against their coat and the quiet of a baby’s forced pacifier.
70,
My eyelids began to fall, becoming heavier with each opening. Despite the consciousness leaving my body, the dentist’s face above mine somehow became clearer, and the dimness of the sunglasses had a counter effect, causing the inspecting light to spread throughout my eyes with the blinding exposure of a flash photo in the dark. This is what an alien abduction must have felt like, with a strange, humanoid face hovering over my body, which had become just as foreign as the rubber upholstery that I lay on, comfortably detached.
60,
I thought of a good, natural mother, who tasted like sweat and dry French kisses. She refrained from taking any drugs while giving birth. I stood beside her bed and held her hand with encouragement, nothing more than that. Her legs were spread, pulsating with the thrill of life. The baby began to crown, prostrated between her sticky thighs as she looked up at the vinyl ceiling, waiting to see the beacon of hope, an unknown sight to anesthetics. I followed her furrowed brow to the ceiling, which was nothing more than an elevated floor, covered with dirty footsteps and bodily fluids. Above all that was another woman, lulled into complacency by anesthesia, and above her was an artificial light, that I hoped was brighter.
She was crying, not out of pain, or shock, not even happiness, I don’t know why, but suddenly I realized that she was all too real. I wanted to pull the doctor out from between her legs, but only the baby was already halfway out.
50,
The anesthetized beacon of hope was simply the absence of light itself, as my eyes tucked themselves deep into the sockets. My breath within the mask seemed to be escaping through the small crack that emerged when I breathed in, retracting the skin ever so slightly. A nauseating odor of sweat filled my lungs, creating condensation from within my body. I saw dew drops infecting the bloodstream, they turned into pockets of putrid air that traveled from the center of my chest to my brain. My heart was nothing more than a mound of sour blood clots joined together by uncomfortable chemical force, disintegrating with each breath. This process was unalarming. I felt my head limply topple over to the side, half expecting it to snap off and fall to the ground, but it just hung there, midair with an outstretched neck.
40,
A latex hand reached for the right side of my face within seconds of my fall. The mask was still fastened to my face, but he pushed it against the skin with forced security. Latchkey child in a plastic dome.
30,
I was hit by a wave of relief that momentarily seized the narcotic haze, or depending on your position of goodness, intensified it, as I thought of the complimentary toothbrush the hygienist would give me at the end of the procedure. My swollen mouth stuffed with cotton, eager to polish the empty flesh with watering eyes. The other two bodies ached for the same euthanization that their parasitic neighbor would soon face. I told them that one loss was easier than three, but I heard no response, and I knew that I’d be back here in two days.
Opal Green is a freshman at DePaul University from Portland, Oregon, studying journalism and creative writing. She focuses on fiction, essays, and poetry. She self-published her zine, “Bird of Prey,” a collection of short stories and poetry in 2024.