When he asks how I handle pain, I feel a rough buzz in my toes like a cow is sucking on them.
It feels so real that I look at my feet to see if they’re twitching or something, and when I look I see mud from my boots smeared all over the leather chair, which is super comfortable for a dentist’s chair, but the mud is just drying there like caked shit, and like already infiltrating the clean, straight shot of what I think might be coming next. What I hope is coming next. I’m embarrassed about the mud but more nervous excited about everything else so I brush past it like I’m swatting a fly. I hear it buzzing. I count backwards from ten and make it to seven before I swat, AKA get a freaking grip.
I’m not proud, I say kinda modest, adjusting my hat, but not well. No sir. Ha ha.
He nods compassionately. This guy is handsome. His handsomeness is pretty undeniable, his curls thick with good genetics and a conditioner that is absolutely not the 3-in-1 Walmart combo on the floor of my shower. His eyes are giant and shiny brown, like this fawn I spotted a few weekends back. My belly real low in the dirt while I waited for a Big Kahuna like Randy caught the weekend before that. Which was super motivating, that he caught one. But I didn’t bag a Big Kahuna, instead all I saw was that sweet little guy grazing.
Handsome Dentist runs a hand through his hunky model hair and assures me that he sees this all the time. Has had a root canal or two himself and let me tell you, he gets it. Don’t worry about the pain, he says. I think your insurance would cover nitrous, if you’d be open to it.
Straight shot. Warmth like a bullet goes, goes and goes everywhere.
A hygienist appears, taking away some of the tools, and she says Oh definitely. They definitely would cover it.
I nod back, trying to look cool and thoughtful. The licking is now on my calves, bristly and excited and traveling up to meet the everywhere warmth. Sure sure, that’d be great, I say. Appreciate it. He explains that he can’t repair the root canal here, which makes me feel like I swallowed a fistful of ice cubes, which is maybe close to feeling surprised sad, but then he says that he technically could repair the root canal but because of the bone loss due to the infection (yikes!) he’d like to send me to the endodontist to be extra sure it’s really handled. I totally understand. He leans back on the side sink thing, uncrossing his arms but crossing his legs.
I say that, that I totally understand, stuffing my sad surprise down my jeans into my boots into the holes in my socks. He shakes my hand and winks.
When I stand to leave I hit my head on the huge moving light thingy. My boots get more mud on the ground, and I go to apologize to the hygienist about it but she’s already left the room, is already laughing in the hallway with another patient or Handsome Dentist or just at a thought she was having in her head.
***
The endodontist is not handsome. He looks kind of like a tall porcupine, his head too small for his stretchy frame, his hair thinning and spiking out like it’s been electrified with gel. The office is super swanky and these chairs are even nicer than Handsome Dentist’s. There’s a view of the Columbia out of these giant windows in front of me, and the sky is blue and Russian Olives are all over the bike path. I love them, the Russian Olives. The leaves are this shaky jade green and the wind is always going through them. I see these thin, beautiful bird wings swooping in and out of the leaves. I realize a couple of kids are on the path flying them, because the wings are actually attached to these remote control plane things. Only they don’t look like planes, they look like birds.
Porcupine Slim gives me what I would call a spiel, based on the way his voice lies flat and how he spreads the words like he’s bored. Basically he says that when his 360 degree X-ray thing whizzed around my head earlier, which I had to take my plugs out for, which was kind of a whole thing, he found that I had a fourth canal that the previous root canal totally missed. This could be why the pain, and also see here bone infection (ugh!). His spiel keeps going and I learn that he does this all day, every day, could do the root canal in two hours if I’m free. I’m definitely not, though.
The receptionist greets me at the end of the hallway with this huge smile, looking so happy. Like she was just waiting for me. The flowers next to her are this really pretty shade of purple and they smell nice. I make the appointment for as soon as I can, which is Thursday, because Randy already knows I’m dealing with tooth stuff and told me Thursday should be a chill day at the store. And Tammy could maybe cover. I feel the urge to tell the happy receptionist to take care and also to do finger guns. I do not do this. Instead I walk out of the huge glass doors with my hands in my pockets, feeling very red-cheeked and skin-scabby, which is close to semi-overwhelming shame. I feel this about having the finger guns thought.
The wind hits me as soon as I step outside, just whipping. I zip up my jacket and head to the car, squinting in the sun. I wonder if Maudie is taking her lunch break, and if she’s on grills today, or if the store will be busy. My forehead feels warm, which even with the wind is a really good feeling.
***
There was this time when I was younger, when we still went to Mass. It was warm, like late Spring, before the heat gets really bonkers and everyone’s flapping missals around to keep from losing it. I looked over and saw this girl my age in Prayer Position 101, eyes closed, hands folded, the whole thing, and I had this moment like I don’t think I’ve done that. I’d pretended to pray on cue, because Catholicism is like a paint-by-numbers for religious choreography, but I didn’t think I’d actually put any oomph into it. A prayer. So I closed my eyes and tried.
I still don’t know if it would qualify as like a Full Blown Religious Experience, but something happened where I felt a ton of things. And none of them. Like I’d swallowed St. Luke’s and all of Pasco and then the sky and then the universe and then the planets, which is a little backwards, but also that I was the universe and the planets, and like every blade of grass and not the sun but the everywhere light from the sun and also birds chirping - I was their sound, and they were my sound. And because there was so much happening it all sort of zapped to this perfect neutral. It’s weird to explain and embarrassing, because there aren’t the right words, but it felt true. The truest thing.
That was like when I tried nitrous for the first time.
I had the first root canal a year ago. They offered nitrous so I said yes and there I went again. Like I’d swallowed the universe whole and the buildings and the birds, and they were swallowing me. I was sound and light and green. Despite getting my roots canalled it was absolutely the most comfortable I’d ever been. Everything fluid and moving together and gigantic and small but also still. It was so Good.
Then the drill stopped and the dentist said something under his mask, and I felt my hands and my feet and my ass on the chair after a few minutes, which after that can only be described as Separate. I felt myself, again. Everyone was putzing in the room and I was already wracking my brain trying to remember what that felt like, that complete zap of neutral. Or total happiness. Because I guess nitrous is out of your system really quick.
Anyway I never went back there to get the permanent crown. Hence now infection (!) and Handsome Dentist, hence endodontist. I’m sure there are other things I could get it from, that swallowing happiness feeling, like other drugs or whatever. But I don’t know where to get those, and I’m not what you would think of as a finger quotes Risky Guy. Or a finger quotes User of Recreational Drugs. More importantly I know exactly where to get this. And it’s legal, and it will be all Good, soon.
***
I head right to the store after the endodontist, throwing my yellow vest on while I drive.
It’s a department store on the east side of town, but not like Macy’s, or maybe like Macy’s if it were for farming dads that say things like Me? I’m Just a Meat and Potatoes Type of Guy, and also ladies that like to drive their Jeep with the windows down on the highway, belting Jo Dee Messina. I love Jo Dee. Probably Brandi Carlisle more, though.
There’s a home and garden department, shooting stuff, hardware stuff, etc. Huge real estate dedicated to grills. You could say I’m Assistant Manager, but I’m also whatever Randy needs me to be. When I’m not doing that, going where I’m needed, I’m probably with Maudie.
I picture her sitting on the back stairs, squinting and flipping through flash cards fast, but looking up and smiling when she sees me, and putting down the flash cards and setting her fruit punch Gatorade on top so they don’t blow away, and she stands up and says, Hey you, and I’m close to her, on the stairs too, and I realize she smells like an Oreo shake and laundry detergent, which doesn’t sound ideal but is more than that, more than right, and I realize it’s my favorite smell, that it smells so good they should make it into a candle or a perfume or a plug-in air freshener. Not the spray kind, though.
I feel super warm all of a sudden, like I’m drinking the perfect temperature soup and it's scooping up all my organs in this really comfortable way, which is weird but also pretty close to a hug. The soup is steaming joy excitement. I realize I’m breathing hard because I’m like, hustling through the parking lot.
My foot slips and I almost bite the dust in this massive puddle near the gravel edge. Mud drenches my boots. It hasn’t rained for like ten days but this thing is serious. This puddle is out of control.
I see Maudie’s sweatshirt as soon as I turn the corner behind the building, the faded brown hood covering most of her face. Strings flapping all over the place. She smiles a little, not wide like in my head, but this tiny smile that makes me stop walking. It’s all still, for a minute.
She says Hey, Starburst.
‘Sup Cherry, I say when everything’s moving again. My vape smoke smells like pink Starburst, so she calls me that. She has this huge cherry patch sewn onto her backpack, and she’s always doing flashcards or highlighting in these gargantuan textbooks so her backpack’s always with her. Hence, Cherry. I sometimes feel weird saying Cherry because it feels too finger quotes Funny Guy, and I don’t mean it that way at all. I’m not a goofball. But it’s our thing, and she seems really comfortable with it so I’m trying to lean in. I’m trying to be less embarrassed more of the time, if not at all times, which takes a lot of intentional awareness and effort.
How’s studying? I go.
She says it’s good. She’s got a test next week but it should be fine. And because it’s slow on grills these days she can go over her notecards from behind the Green Egg, ha ha. I tell her that’s awesome, also LOL to the Green Egg. You could do a lot behind that thing. We’re quiet for a second while I look for my vape.
Anyways you’ll do great, I tell her when I find it, you’ll do really great. I give her a double thumbs up and immediately wish I didn’t have any fingers ever. Maudie smiles on the right side of her mouth, her dimple tucking away this little sliver of sunlight, and I never had hands to begin with. My tooth throbs. I’m about to offer to review her notecards, like we did before her last crazy hard test, when Jaxon comes out and stands next to me.
This guy.
Guys! Brosefs. Amigos. How we DOING, Jaxon yells. He is right next to me. Even though we’re wearing the same yellow vest it’s like his hurts my eyes more.
Maud says she’s good, just studying. She’s always so nice, and even though she hasn’t said it I know that she feels the same way about Jaxon I do. Jaxon says Right on, right on. Hit those books, hit ‘em HARD. He pounds his fist into his hand and smiles with his mouth open. I take a long pull from my vape, holding it in and doing this thing where I stare only at his forehead, not making direct eye contact with him. He usually tries to laugh this off and I try to act like I’m looking exactly where I need to be. It slices our interaction time probably in half, which is still at least like a quarter longer than I want it to be, but it’s fun.
He turns to me and goes, Oof, man. I heard.
Oh? I breathe a cloud of candy out. His forehead is covered in freckles, like so many.
He points to his cheek, makes his eyes all buggy. That TOOTH, my guy. Heard you have to have surgery or some shit. Brutal. I hate the dentist, man.
Randy must have told him, which I’m annoyed at but sometimes those things just slip. He’s running the store, Randy is, which is a lot. It probably just came out when Jaxon was being nosy anyways.
It’s nothing, I say, just a root canal.
I feel embarrassed because I hadn’t told Maudie and she’s put her notes down to look at me all concerned. Which then makes me feel good, that she’s looking and that she’s concerned. I take a hit from my vape and hold it for a minute.
When’s your appointment? She asks, searching my face for something. I don’t know what, though.
I tell her when and she nods. That’s actually my last full shift day, she says, smiling so huge. Like a really good thought is just lifting up the muscles for her and she doesn’t have to put any effort into it at all. I got un-wait listed, she says. I’m a Coug, now.
As in she’s transferring, there.
Jaxon cheers and hugs her, like picks her up, and suddenly there’s so much shaking noise in my body that there’s no room to freak about him touching her, that he didn’t ask if he could touch her, but now she’s on the ground and laughing kind of and telling him about living with her aunt in Pullman and going hiking all the time.
I just blurt out What about online classes? I thought the program was online, from here?
But Jaxon and her are talking still, and she doesn’t hear me so I must have been quiet about saying it in the first place.
The wind smacks me from everywhere. Finds its way into the hollows, rams itself up my nose and down the scrape of my throat. I hear it pulse in my fat red gums. I hear this voice in my chest, in my eyeballs, going over and over and over, Then I have the appointment. Then. I grab the rusty door knob to the break room. As I’m walking in I realize I put my vest on over my jacket and I have to take everything off, now. Then. Then. Then.
***
I remember where I am, here. The buzz starts to wear off after not very long. I let the Separate feeling kinda settle until all the other feelings come back, slowly slowly.
One feeling is guilty sad that I won’t go back to Handsome Dentist, because he was kind. And great.
But I won’t. I need to wait another couple months, maybe find a dentist out in Prescott or Connell. By that point the temporary crown Slim put on will be way past good and I’ll need something new, and things will feel true all over again. Like I can be really happy, whenever I want. I’ll definitely recommend Handsome Dentist to other people, when they come to the store, and they ask me how my day is, and I ask them, and then they ask the name of a good dentist around here. And then I’ll sell them a garden hose or a pressure washer, or something else they really need in that moment.
The second feeling is about Maudie. The words to name it come creeping up before I stamp them into the floor into the dirt into some super deep clay, somewhere.
A head floats in front of me, the hygienist’s. His eyes are smiling from above his mask and his voice sounds like it’s painting the walls at the end of some long, dark hallway.
What? I say, the lines of my body still fuzzy. Sorry, what?
He shows me this paper and says that unfortunately insurance didn’t cover things. The whole procedure. I’m free to take it up with them, just call the number on the back of my card and take it up with them. But could I sign here? Just here? He holds up a clipboard and I do. I sign right here.
The Russian Olives shake and shake outside the window. Even though I don't look at them, I know they're there. Just swinging in the breeze.
Cate LeBrun
Cate LeBrun is from the Pacific Northwest. Her work has been published in The Rising Phoenix Review and Doubleback Review. She currently lives in Austria with her husband and son.
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