A Million Little Pieces - James Frey [30]
The Dentist lays the straps across my body so that the buckles fall beneath the chair. He crouches down and he hooks the loose end and he pulls it and the straps start to tighten around my body.
Let me know when it’s secure.
He continues to pull, the straps get tighter and tighter. When I can’t lift or move my arms in any way and when the straps start digging into my skin and pressing the Babar book into my chest, I let the Doctor know the straps are secure. He locks the buckles and he stands and he walks to the sink to wash his hands. Doctor Stevens and the Nurses step forward.
We’re going to try and do this as fast as we can.
Make sure you do a good enough job so that I don’t have to come back here.
I’ll definitely do that.
Let’s go.
I close my eyes and I try to settle in and make myself comfortable. There are wads of cotton in my mouth and there is a throbbing agony from the earlier drilling and there are thick, blue nylon straps digging into my skin and pressing a book into my chest. There are fingers grabbing my upper lip and pulling it back and there is a cold spray dousing the exposed remains of my front two teeth. There is a tennis ball in each of my hands and there is the knowledge that I’m about to undergo a dual root-canal procedure without any anesthesia. There is the sound of my heart beating ever more quickly. There is anticipation. There is fear. There is no comfort.
The drill is back on and it is working through the fragment of my left front tooth. It is moving through a thinner, more fragile section of bone, so it works quickly. It shoots the grit, makes the hole, penetrates. At the point of penetration, a current shoots through my body that is not pain, or even close to pain, but something infinitely greater.
Everything goes white and I cannot breathe. I clench my eyes and I bite down on my existing teeth and I think my jaw might be breaking and I squeeze my hands and I dig my fingers through the hard rubber surface of the tennis balls and my fingernails crack and my fingernails break and my fingernails start to bleed and I curl my toes and they fucking hurt and I flex the muscles in my legs and they fucking hurt and my torso tightens and my stomach muscles feel as if they’re going to collapse and my ribs feel as if they’re caving in on themselves and it fucking hurts and my balls are shrinking and the shrinking fucking hurts and my dick is hard because my blood hurts and my blood wants to escape and is seeking exit through my dick and my dick fucking hurts and my arms are straining against the thick blue nylon straps and the thick blue nylon straps are cutting my flesh and it fucking hurts and my face is on fire and the veins in my neck want to explode and my brain is white and it is melting and it fucking hurts. There is a drill in my mouth. My brain is white and it feels as if it’s fucking melting. I cannot breathe. Agony.
The drill comes out and a vacuum starts sucking the dying flesh surrounding my root from the canal that holds it. The agony does not subside. The vacuum stops and the remaining flesh is scraped from the interior of the canal with some sort of sharp pointed instrument. The agony does not subside. The vacuum goes back and comes out, the scraping continues. The agony does not subside. The root has to be clean to heal correctly. Please clean the Motherfucker fast. Please please please clean the Motherfucker fast. The agony does not subside.
I start to fade into a state of white consciousness where I am no longer directly connected to what is being done to me. My arms are no longer my arms, my legs are not my legs, my chest is not my chest, my face is not my face, my teeth do not belong to me. My body is no longer my body. There is white. Everywhere there is white. There is agony. It is agony that is unfathomable. I try to will myself back to reality and back to the drills and the vacuums and the instruments and the cotton stuffing and the spray and the grit and the Doctors and the Nurses and the rebuilding of my teeth, but I can’t come back. My body won’t let me come