The Dentist – End….

WHRRRRR! Oh boy….it’s the drill, and there is nothing quite like having your mouth full of gravel. I feel the cold spray of the water on my raw throat. I absolutely want to gag with all the water, the gravel, the air, but somehow I manage to keep my mouth open my eyes shut, and my tongue intact as the dentist drills on….
I try and launch myself from Bermuda, although I don’t really want to to. Then I drift back in time to when I am a little girl visiting my grandparents on their farm. I see the massive old house with my swing in the back. Grandad is snoring in his easy chair and my Granny is making a cherry cobbler. It smells like heaven. Big red cherries, topped with a a wonderful, flaking golden crust. She is putting it in those neat little colored bowls. She turns and smiles at me just as she is taking the vanilla ice cream from the freezer. I hear the tinkle of spoon as it touches the bowl…
“Ouch!!”
My smiling dentist just hit a nerve.
“Oh, now that didn’t hurt did it? We are almost there” he says.
(Just where are we???)
“Now that was nothing but a little pressure,” he smiles again.
My brain reels. Yes, to him it is a little pressure, to me, it is intense, disfiguring, crippling pain. It feels as though someone has taken a curling iron and twisted it into my gums.
Finally, it is time for the last episode of this ordeal. The part where it feels like they are stuffing your tooth with cotton gauze and tweezers. There is the taste of some sort of bitter mixture, melted metal that seeps into every crevice of your mouth and makes your eyes water.
After the metal poisoning, we were at the end, it was over. The dentist disconnects my laughing gas. My face is still numb but I find that my feet and legs have returned to me. I can’t talk very well, and I don’t really want to talk at all. I drag my jaw, which is brushing the floor, up to the receptionist.
“You’re all done! We will see you in April!” For whatever reason, she is happy too. The Happy Dentist People.
I mutter something in the universal language of slurred speech that all dental people understand. Then I walk outside. I look around to see if I still have Cher’s car, but there is no silver Mercedes in sight. Reality slaps me in the face. Sighing, I hop into my Honda and drive into the noisy barrage of traffic with the sun glaring into my eyes.