Written to the prompt N is for Needle
My First One in Real Life
I was twenty-two years old, and about eight stone wet through.
I was wearing a home-sewn wrap-over skirt – small brown and white flowers and green leaves on a black background, the hem finished off with cream broderie anglaise. The top half of my skinny frame was covered by a green sleeveless v-necked t-shirt, over which I wore a slim plaited leather belt, a holiday present from my sister-in-law’s mum. Low-heeled tan sandals completed the presentable if not highly fashionable – for the early 80’s – summer look. I left my desk in the red brick council offices which had replaced a number of terraced houses in the town centre, and merrily tripped my way through the red light district bordering our offices to get to the big Victorian villa that served as a dental surgery.
My previous dentist, the brother of a school-friend, had left town – by choice, not from malpractice – and this was my first visit to his replacement, who looked like the singer Howard Jones. Ludicrous blond hairdo and head to toe in black, possibly so the blood didn’t show up.
I’d gone for a check-up, and he duly examined my teeth. ‘You need a filling,’ he said, reaching for his instruments of torture and selecting what I assumed would be a syringe, but when he stabbed it into my gum seemed to be the diameter and bluntness of a garden hosepipe.
To give time for the anaesthetic to take effect, the dentist sent me back to the waiting room where there was one of those rattan chairs with the massive circular back – you know, the ones that look like you could bend them round into a Jane Austen bonnet.
A man about ten years older than me was sitting in it. We made the usual waiting-room embarrassed eye-contact and I took another seat on one of an assortment of mismatched dining chairs.
My mouth started to feel strange. I tried to smile surreptitiously to test it, but only the right-hand side of my face moved. The left-hand side didn’t budge. I tried again; same result. And there was something wrong with my eye. I blinked once or twice, but only my right eye shut. I blinked a few more times. My left eye stayed resolutely open and the man in the rattan chair looked at me with a mixture of bewilderment and terror as if wondering why I was grimacing and winking at him.
When I was called back I said to the dentist – or rather I slurred to him – that there was something wrong with my mouth and eye.
He didn’t seem unduly worried, and started drilling.
My scream was heard all over town.
‘Can you feel that?’ he asked, a little unnecessarily, in my opinion.
I wanted to jab him in the undercarriage with one of his own syringes to give him some idea of the pain, but I simply said, ‘God, yes.’
‘Oh,’ he said breezily, ‘I know what’s happened. I’ve frozen your motor nerve instead of your sensory nerve. That’s why you can’t shut your eye. Nothing to worry about. I’ll just give you another injection.’
This one felt as if it was going into my gum, through the back of my head and into the chair.
We waited for it to take effect and then he gently prodded at my tooth.
‘Can you feel that?’
‘No.’ Hurray.
As he filled the tooth I closed my eyes to pretend this was not really happening, except, of course, my left eye stared forlornly at the ceiling and now it was running like a gutter in a rainstorm.
My light green t-shirt became dark green in patches from dribble and tears.
‘How did you get here?’ asked the dentist.
‘Walked,’ I replied.
‘Well, we can’t have you going through the streets with your eye permanently open in case you get a bit of grit in it. I’ll get you a pad and some plasters to hold it on.’
He went off and came back holding a bandage that was long enough to mummify an elephant. Hastily stitched into the centre of it was a cotton wool pad.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘We’ve run out of plasters.’ He made me hold my eyelid closed, then he put the pad on it and wrapped the bandage around my head several times, finishing off with a neat bow on the front. ‘There,’ he said. ‘That’ll protect it until the anaesthetic wears off in a couple of hours. Which it will do. But you will come back at five o’clock and let me know you’re all right, won’t you?’
‘OK,’ I said, too damp and stunned to say much else.
I had to walk back to the office with tears and dribble down my t-shirt and a bandage round my head. Every so often my eyelid flipped open like a cartoon roller blind and I had to poke my finger under the bandage to bring it back down again, trying to avoid the pitying looks from passers-by.
The afternoon wore on, the anaesthetic wore off and my eye and mouth returned to normal. I walked back to the dentist’s to show him I was all right.
‘I knew you would be,’ he said, and then he uttered those words I will never forget. He said, ‘I’ve read about this in books, but you’re my first one in real life.’
I walked away, and never went near a dentist for another twelve years.
© Carol Carman 2024
Like this piece? Fancy buying me a cuppa? I don’t get paid for doing Writing Club, and I know that buying my books isn’t always feasible, but if you’d like to show your appreciation, you can do it by clicking the red ‘Buy me a cuppa?’ button and giving me a tip, you lovely person. The amount is up to you, and you don’t need a Paypal account to do it.
If you’d like me to come and give a talk to your group – I can talk about my writing and my work at the BBC, and I’ve got plenty of comedy poetry to keep you entertained – please email info@mccawmedia.co.uk