A Million Little Pieces - James Frey [28]
Doctor Stevens steps forward and stands over me.
I’m going to lean you back a bit.
Okay.
He reaches down and he pulls a lever and he slowly and gently leans me back. The halogen light is directly over me and it is blinding in its brightness and I close my eyes. I am holding the balls and the Babar book is resting on my chest, just above my heart.
Do you mind if I move this book?
I’d rather you didn’t.
That’s fine. We’ll work around it.
I hear the shuffling of feet and the placement of bins and someone lifts my head and places the strings of a bib around the back of my neck and clips them and places the bib on top of the book. The chair moves farther down and farther back and a small firm pillow is placed beneath the base of my skull.
A female voice. A clinical manner.
I need you to open your mouth.
I open my mouth.
If it hurts, say so.
Okay.
Now stay still.
I stay still as someone’s hand pulls my bottom lip out and stuffs the space between my lip and gum with cotton. I can feel the stitches stretch and blood start to seep. The same procedure is done with my upper lip and my cheeks and it feels as if my mouth is full of soft fibrous dirt and almost instantly, everything is dry. A spray of water moistens it, but not enough. It is dry and it will stay dry no matter how many sprays I get.
I lean back into the chair and I close my eyes and I open my mouth wide and someone hands me the tennis balls and I take a spray and I hear low quiet words and the sound of a drill being tested. The drill goes on and off, on and off.
Check the sander.
A sander goes on and off, on and off.
Check the secondary drill.
The secondary drill goes on and off, on and off.
I feel the presence of People standing over me. A hand grabs my upper lip and gently pulls it so that my gum is exposed. A spray covers the remains of my teeth.
Here we come, James.
The spray continues and sander is turned on and as it comes in toward my mouth it gets louder and the noise is high and piercing and it hurts my ears and I start squeezing the balls and I try to prepare for the sander and the sander hits the fragment of my left outside tooth. The sander bounces slightly and white electric pain hits my mouth and the sander comes back and holds and pain spreads through my body from the top down and every muscle in my body flexes and I squeeze the balls and my eyes start to tear and the hair on the back of my neck stands straight and my tooth fucking hurts like the point of a bayonet is being driven through it. The point of a fucking bayonet.
The sander moves its way around the contour of the fragment and I stay tense and in pain and I can taste the grit of the bone on my tongue and the spray is spraying and it collects the grit and sends some of it down my throat and some of it into the space beneath my tongue. It continues, the sanding and the spraying and the grit and the pain, and the constant electricity of it keeps me tense and hard. I sit and I squeeze the tennis balls and my heart beats even and strong as if it needs the test of this ordeal to prove that it works correctly. The sander stops and I relax and I take a deep breath. There are soft voices and there are instruments being picked up.
I think there’s a cavity here, James. I need to check.
The cotton in my mouth has shifted enough to allow me to speak comprehensibly.
Then check.
It’s gonna hurt.
Get it over with.
I prepare for more but I’m not prepared for what hits me. As a sharp pointed instrument pokes around one of the sanded edges of my tooth it finds a small hole and it penetrates the hole. The electric pain shoots and it shoots at a trillion volts and it is white and burning. The bayonet is twenty feet long and red hot and razor sharp. The pain is greater than anything I’ve ever felt and it is greater than anything I could have imagined. It overwhelms every muscle and every fiber and every cell in my body and everything goes limp. I moan and the instrument goes away, but the pain stays.
It’s definitely a cavity. We need to fill it to cap the tooth correctly.
Every fiber