My eyes widened as she approached me.
"Don't worry", she said in a calm voice that only heightened my fear to terror. A twitch started at the back of my throat and I could feel a scream coming. I opened my mouth and……
I was in a dentist's chair.
If someone had told me a few weeks ago that I would find myself trembling at the rather good looking dentist that approached me with what looked suspiciously like the pliers gangsters in Hollywood movies use to separate people from their fingers, I would have disbelieved the person. But after tossing around on my bed the previous night, weeping like a little girl, I decided it was time to get rid of the troublesome tooth. Consequently, first light at daybreak saw me outside the nearby Health Center's dental department. I stood and stared at the building for a few minutes, my apprehensions rising. Several friends and family members had been to the dentist before and none had returned with any encouraging stories. If anything, they returned with swollen jaws and bleeding mouths that made me swear that nothing would see me have to visit a dentist. But here I was, feeling like someone had decided to setup hell fire in my mouth. And was dancing the conga inside as well.
My gaze lingered and my apprehension grew to fear. The images those I knew that had returned from the dentist, looking like prisoners of war flooded my mind and my resolve weakened. The dental department building did nothing to strengthen it. It looked like it had been built when my grandfather was considering carrying yams to my grandmother's family. And hadn't been touched since then. The dust on the windows looked so thick, I first assumed someone had stuck a dust colored rug to them. I seriously began considering going back to my regime of painkillers and weeping at midnight.
At that point, the conga dancer in my mouth picked up pace and a sharp twinge from the rogue tooth sent me sprinting into the building.
As soon as I stepped into the reception, I was instantly convinced that I had stepped into a refugee camp. I had left home early, in a bid to beat any other intending dental complainants to the dentist. Apparently, there were people who suffered it more, because as I appeared in the doorway, about twenty unhappy eyes raised to look at the new entrant, like prisoners at a war camp looking up to sadly welcome their most recently captured comrade. My eyes quickly scanned the assembled tooth-disturbed and my resolve weakened even further. Closest to me was a man whose cheek was so swollen, he could only have been storing a golf ball in his mouth. I admit it was a bit funny because it made him look like a chipmunk and I near expected him to start singing. Then there was a lady, rocking back and forth in the plastic chair she sat, in shedding silent tears and probably muttering a prayer to the god of teeth and toothaches to either resolve her problem within the next few minutes or witness her hurl herself over a bridge. Again, I began to consider turning on my heel and taking the next available commercial bike back home and spend the rest of the day nursing my mouth and alternatively screaming. But then, my mouth seemed to have a consciousness of its own and another sharp twinge sent me reeling into a plastic chair.
I found myself seated beside a young man with large, sad eyes who was slowly shaking his head as he clutched his jaw, like he had lost his wife and her brother punched him for using his sister for money rituals. As I settled into the chair, he raised his eyes to look at me for a few seconds. Before asking in a low, tortured voice:
"How many teeth?"
I quailed.
"What?" I asked, my voice quaking.
"How many teeth have you removed?" He asked, like we were prisoners and he was asking how many people I had killed.
"This is my first time removing a tooth," I returned. "And hopefully my last."
He nodded slowly, like a gangster who is highly unimpressed with the number of crimes his fellow prisoner has committed before holding up four fingers. "Removed four. Here to take out the fifth one and fill another with a hole in it." He nodded at a man seated ahead of us, supporting his jaw with his right hand. "See that guy? We've been here together on three occasions. Taking out his fourth today."
I began to wonder if there was some kind of toothache mafia going on here.
"Look", he continued. "This is your first time so I must warn you. It is going to be very painful. Very, very painful. You won't be able to eat or sleep properly for days. Your jaw will swell so much you won't be able to speak properly. In fact, if you have been using painkillers, you had better started looking for a newer stronger brand, because nothing will prepare you for the pain you will experience today after removing that tooth."
I subconsciously began to get up from my seat.
"Where are you going to?" he asked.
"Er…"I stuttered, "j-just to use the toilet. Excuse me."
And without any idea of where the toilet was and with no intention of using one at all except relieve the urine that had quickly built up in my bladder as the man described the post extraction sensation, I got up from the seat and headed towards the exit which doubled as the entrance. I was only a few paces from the door when the dentist walked in.
It was like the sun had for the first time shown into this dreary reception hall, in spite of the fsact that it had been blazing outside for at least an hour. Her face alone convinced me that dentists weren't quite the evil spirits I had concluded they were, bent on causing maximum pain to innocent toothache sufferers. My fear of the Dental Gangster's story grew feet and fled.
"Seems like someone was eager to see me," she said, as she spotted me where I stood. "I'll see you first then."
"Who…m-m-me…?" I stuttered, my fear returning with its friends and family members and my adoration of her lovely face going up in smoke.
"Yes. Follow me."
I followed zombie-like as she led me to a white door and pushed it open. Within was a room that had been divided into three compartments, though I couldn't see what was in the other two compartments but I assumed it contained what was in this one. One of those dentist chairs I had seen in movies but this one looked so old I was convinced it was a torture device. I was about to deny all charges of wrongdoing when she motioned to me to sit-or lie- in it. I complied without another word.
"Give me a moment to get ready," she said, moving out of sight to where I had seen a sink previously and I soon heard water running as the door open and a white lab coat wearing man walked in, a large muscular man in tow. I was now convinced I had mistaken a criminal interrogation chamber for the dentist's.
"Ah, Doctor Tolani," the lady dentist called from behind me. "Good morning. Straight to work?"
"Straight to work o, my sister," the Doctor Tolani replied before moving off to one of the other compartments, the WWE fighter in tow. So they weren't here to force me to confess where the rest of my gang was after all. I relaxed a bit. Soon I heard the sound of running water stop just as I heard Doctor Tolani say "Sit and open wide." from the other compartment.
My dentist reappeared in my line of site with what looked like a funny shaped spoon. "Now relax and open wide."
I had barely relaxed and opened wide before she shoved the spoon-thing into my mouth and turned it around in different directions leaving me at the point of gagging. "Hmm," she mused, apparently having spotted the troublesome tooth. "That has to be taken out." She said, striking said tooth twice with the spoon-thing and sending me into a brand new world of pain that left me nearly blind. I moaned in complaint. She took out the spoon-thing.
"That tooth has to be taken out," she said in a matter-of-fact tone. "Would you like to have it taken out now or would you rather come back to have it taken out."
I strongly favoured going home, of course, and never speaking of a dentist's again. But then the last thing I would do was appear to chicken out of removing a tooth before this very beautiful lady. Besides, what would the toothache gangster think of me, that I had run away from removing a first tooth when he was here to take out a fifth? I mumbled an answer.
"Pardon?"
"Take it out" I blurted out.
"Okay! So let's get started. Nurse Titi!" she called. The white door opened and the blackest nurse I have seen in my life that began to convince me that I really wasn't quite as dark as I thought stepped in. Her face was as solid and unsmiling as the rock of Gibraltar. I began to seriously reconsider my options.
"An extraction." My dentist said simply. Nurse Titi nodded and stepped out for a moment, reappearing shortly after with what looked like and assorted set of pliers. My eyebrows raised slowly.
"Did you eat this morning?" Nurse Titi asked. I nodded, quite unable to answer. "I will inject you with something to make you unable to feel the pain while the tooth is being extracted. Open wide."
I opened my mouth only wide enough for a fly to struggle to get in.
"Wider!" she ordered and my mouth fell open. She drew a syringe from somewhere and shorlty after the twinge of the injection, the pain began to disappear, like magic.
"Are you still feeling pain?" she asked. I shook my head. "Good, the extraction will start shortly." Then she stepped back and my dentist reappeared after a few minutes, her hands gloved and clutching one of aforementioned pliers. My mouth was already wide open for the screaming. A glance at Nurse Titi's face and the scream died to its roots.
"Just relax," my Dentist said. "This shouldn't take very long."
If only she were right.
For what felt like the next half hour, my tooth was attacked by the dentist like a gladiator seeking ultimate victory in an arena. I twitched moaned, groaned and shed tears alternatively, while praying in my mind that the silly tooth should just give itself up and spare me even more pain. I realized that when the Bible said there was a place where there would be gnashing of teeth, it must have been talking about more than one place, this place being one of them because the sounds coming from the next compartment convinced me that Doctor Tolani had reduced WWE fighter to a weeping little girl.
Finally, with a massive heave from the now sweating dentist, the tooth was out and I was out of tears to shed.
"Your problem is now out." She said, holding up the tooth. The amount of blood on her gloved hands made me woozy and I could barely keep my eyes open. She wiped my mouth with cotton wool, then stuck some more in my mouth and asked me to bite hard. I barely had the strength for that. I was ushered out by Nurse Titi who screamed "NEXT!" just as I cleared the door. More instructions and a cache of drugs enough to keep an army company healthy for a three year war campaign later, I was outside the health center and trying to flag down a commercial motorcycle. I saw one coming from the distance and weakly tried to flag it down. It was only when it was right in front of me that I realized it was a DHL delivery bike and the courier man looked at me like I was mental.
Maybe I was.
My mouth hurts.
No, my entire head hurts.
Ouch!
http://zakuraweekly.com/dental-mental/
So the first issue of Zakura Weekly, Naija's craziest mag as edited by yours truly will be making its debut on Sunday. Y'all can subscribe to get it free when it drops. It is in soft format though, so if you'll need a pdf reader on your laptop/mobile phone to read it. To subscribe, just head on down to http://zakuraweekly.com/subscribe-to-zakura-weekly/ . Cheers!
