The Burglar in the Closet - By Lawrence Block Page 0,10
is capable when one’s mouth is full of fingers. The probe, relentless, touched the nerve again.
“You feel that?”
“Urg.”
“Little cavity, Bern. Nothing serious but we’ll tend to it right now. That’s the importance of coming in for a cleaning three or four times a year. You come in, we shoot a quick set of X-rays just as a routine measure, we have a look around, poke the old molars a bit, and we catch those little cavities before they can grow up into big cavities. Am I right or am I right, keed?”
“Urg.”
“All this panic about X-rays. Well, if you’re pregnant I suppose it’s a different story, but you’re not pregnant, are you, Bernie?” He laughed at this. I’ve no idea why. When you’re a dentist you have to laugh at your own jokes, which might be a hardship but I suspect it’s more than balanced by the fact that you remain blissfully unaware of it when your precious wit goes over like a brass blimp. Since the patient can’t laugh anyway, his silence needn’t be interpreted as a reprimand.
“Well, we’ll just take care of it right away before I turn you over to Jillian for a cleaning. First molar, lower right jaw, that’s a cinch, we can block the pain with Novocaine without numbing half your head in the process. Of course some practitioners of the gentle art would wind up depriving you of sensation in half your tongue for six or eight hours, but you’re in luck, Bern. You’re in the hands of the World’s Greatest Dentist and you have nothing to worry about.” Chuckle. “Except paying the bill, that is.” Full-fledged laugh.
“Urg.”
“Open a little wider? Perfect. Beautiful.” His fingers, tasting as though they’d been boiled, deftly packed my mouth with cylinders of cotton. Then he took a curved piece of plastic tubing attached to a long rubber tube and propped it at the root of my tongue, where it commenced to make slurping noises.
“This is Mr. Thirsty,” he explained. “That’s what I tell the kids. Mr. Thirsty, come to suck up all your spit so it doesn’t gum up the works. Of course I don’t put it quite so crudely for the little tykes.”
“Urg.”
“Anyway, I tell the kids this here is Mr. Thirsty, and when I whack ’em out with nitrous oxide I tell ’em they’re going for a ride in Dr. Sheldrake’s Rocket Ship. That’s ’cause it gets ’em so spacy.”
“Urg.”
“Now we’ll just dry off that gum there,” he said, peeling back my lower lip and blotting the gum with a wad of cotton. “And now we’ll give you a dab of benzocaine, that’s a local that’ll keep you from feeling the needle when we jab a quart of Novocaine into your unsuspecting tissue.” Chortle. “Just kiddin’, Bernie. No, you don’t have to give a patient a liter of the stuff if you have the skill to slip the old needle into the right spot. Oh, thank your lucky stars you’ve got the World’s Greatest Dentist on your team.”
The World’s Greatest Dentist shot me painlessly with Novocaine, readied his high-speed drill, and began doing his part in the endless fight against tooth decay. None of this hurt. What was painful, albeit not physically, was the patter of conversation he directed my way.
Not at first, though. At first everything was fine.
“I’ll tell you something, Bernie. You’re a lucky man to have me for a dentist. But that’s nothing compared to how lucky I am. You know why? I’m lucky to be a dentist.”
“Urg.”
“Not just because I make a decent living. Hell, I don’t have any guilt on that score. I work hard for my money and my charges are fair. I give value for value received. The thing about dentistry is it’s very rewarding in other ways. You know, most of the dentists I know started off wanting to be doctors. I don’t know that they had any big longing for medicine. I think half the time the attraction was that their parents thought it was a great life. Money, prestige, and the idea that you’re helping humanity. Anybody’d be happy to help humanity with all that money and prestige there as an added incentive, right?”
“Urg.”
“Speak up, Bern, I can’t hear you.” Chuckle. “Just joking, of course. How we doing? You in any pain?”
“Urg.”
“Of course you’re not. The WGD strikes again. Well, all these guys went to dental school instead. Maybe they couldn’t get accepted at medical school. A lot of bright guys can’t. Or maybe they looked