SHARPER KNIVES

A brazil nut, thought Thurlow, of all the damned things. That’ll teach me. He leaned back tentatively in the plastic chair and studied the posters which had been taped to the walls around him.

Confidential HIV testing.

Unwanted Pregnancies.

Mind That Child He May Be Deaf.

He thought: no wonder people avoid coming here. Sitting in the waiting room gave you a chance to consider your fate at leisure.

He checked his watch, then listened. From behind a distant door came the whine of an electric drill. Determined to blot the sound from his brain, he checked through the magazines on the table before him. Inevitably there were two battered copies of The Tatler, some ancient issues of Punch and a magazine called British Interiors. With the drill howling faintly at the back of his brain, he flicked idly through the lifestyle magazine. A pied-à-terre in Kensington decorated in onyx and gold. A Berkshire retreat with a marble bas-relief in the kitchen depicting scenes from The Aeneid. The people who lived in these places were presumably drug barons. Surely their children occasionally knocked over the bundles of artfully arranged dried flowers, or vanished into priest’s holes to be lost within the walls?

As he threw the magazine down in disgust the drill squealed at a higher pitch, suggesting that greater force had been used to penetrate some resistant obstacle.

A damned brazil nut. Next time he’d use the crackers instead of his teeth. God, it hurt! The entire molar had split in half. Torn skin, blood all over the place. He was sure there was still a piece of nutshell lodged between the gum and the tooth, somewhere deep near the nerve. The pain speared through his jaw like a white-hot knife every time he moved his head.

The receptionist – her name was something common that he never quite caught – had sighed when she saw him approach. She had studied her appointment book with a doubtful shake of her head. He had been forced to point out that, as a private patient, his needs surely took precedence over others. After all, what else was the system for? He had been coming here regularly for many years. Or to put it more accurately, he had arranged appointments in this manner whenever there was a problem with his teeth. Dr Samuelson was away on a seminar in Florida, apparently, so he’d be seeing someone new, and he might have to wait for a while. With the pain in his tooth driving him crazy, Thurlow didn’t mind waiting at all.

There were two other people in the room. He could tell the private patient at a glance. The woman opposite, foreign-looking, too much gold, obviously had money. The skinny teenaged girl in jeans and a T-shirt had Council House written all over her. Thurlow sniffed, and the knife rocketed up into his skull, causing him to clutch at his head. When the pain had subsided once more to a persistent dull throb, he examined his watch again. He’d been sitting here for nearly forty minutes! This was ridiculous! He rose from his seat and opened the door which led to the reception desk. Finding no one there, he turned into the white-tiled corridor beyond. Somebody would have to see him if he kicked up a fuss.

In the first room he reached, a fat woman was pinned on her back with her legs thrown either side of the couch while the dentist hunched over her, reaching into her mouth like a man attempting to retrieve keys from a drain. In the second room he discovered the source of the drilling. Here, an exhausted teenaged boy gripped the armrests of the chair with bony white knuckles while his dentist checked the end of the drill and drove it back into his mouth, metal grinding into enamel with the wincing squeal of a fork on a dry plate.

‘You’re not supposed to be back here, you know.’

Thurlow turned around and found a lean young man in a white coat looking crossly at him.

‘I’ve been waiting for nearly an hour,’ said Thurlow, feeling he had earned the exaggeration.

‘And you are …?’

‘Mr Thurlow. Broken tooth. I was eating a brazil nut …’

‘Let’s not discuss it in the corridor. You’d better come in.’

Thurlow would have been annoyed by the brusqueness of the dentist’s manner had he not heard the upper class inflections in his voice, and noted the smart knot of his university tie. At least this way he would be dealt with by a professional.

Thurlow entered the room, removed his jacket, then waited by the red plastic couch while the dentist made an entry in his computer.

‘I normally have Dr Samuelson,’ he explained, looking about.

‘Well, he’s not here, he’s …’

‘I know. Florida. All right for some. You’re new, I suppose. You’re very young.’

‘Everyone looks young when you start getting older, Mr Thurlow. I’m Dr Matthews.’ He continued tapping the keyboard, then raised his eyes to the screen. ‘We haven’t seen you for a check-up in well over a year.’

‘Not for a check-up, no,’ said Thurlow, climbing onto the couch.

‘I had a thing, a lump.’ He waggled his fingers at his cheek. ‘I thought it was a cyst.’

‘When was the appointment?’ Matthews was clearly unable to find the reference on his screen.

‘I didn’t have one. Anyway, it wasn’t a cyst. It was a spot.’

‘And the time before that?’

‘I lost a filling. Ginger-nuts. Same thing the year before that. Peppermints.’

‘So you haven’t seen the hygienist for a while?’

‘And I don’t need to see one now,’ said Thurlow. ‘They always try to fob you off with dental floss and sticks with rubber prongs on. What is this anyway, going on about the check-ups? Are you on commission?’

Dr Matthews ignored his remark and approached the couch. As Thurlow made himself comfortable, the dentist slipped a paper bib around his neck and fastened it.

‘Don’t you have an assistant?’

‘I used to, but she didn’t like my methods so I murdered her,’ said Matthews. ‘Ha ha.’ He adjusted the chair from a control pad by his foot, then switched on the water-rinse pump. ‘I always make jokes. It takes the edge off. Mouth open please.’ He swung a tray of dental tools over Thurlow’s chest.

Thurlow opened wide, and the light from the dentist’s pencil torch filled his vision. He watched as the hooked probe went in, tapping along the left side of his molars, and glimpsed the little circular mirror at the corner of his vision. Saliva quickly began to build in his mouth. The tapping continued. He knew he would have to swallow soon. Quickly sensing his unease, Matthews placed a spit-pump in the corner of his mouth. It made a loud draining sound, like water going down a sink.

Suddenly Thurlow felt the sharp point of the probe touch down on the bare nerve in his split tooth. It was as if an electric current had been passed through his head. If it had remained in contact for a second longer he would have screamed and bitten the tool clean in half. Matthews observed the sudden twitch of his patient’s body and quickly withdrew the instrument.

‘I think we can safely say that we’ve located the problem area,’ he said drily, shining the torch around, then lowering the large overhead light. ‘That’s pretty nasty. Wouldn’t be so bad if it was an incisor. It’s split all the way from the crown to the root. The gum is starting to swell and redden, so I imagine it’s infected. I’ll have to cut part of it away.’

Thurlow pulled the spit-pump from his mouth. ‘I don’t want to hear the details,’ he said. ‘It’s making me sick.’ He replaced the pump and lay back, closing his eyes.

‘Fine. I’ll give you a jab and we’ll get started.’ Matthews prepared a syringe, removed the plastic cap from the tip and cleared the air from the needle. Then he inserted it into the fleshy lower part of Thurlow’s left gum. There was a tiny pop of flesh as the skin surface was broken and the cool metal slipped into his jaw, centimetre by centimetre. Thurlow felt the numbing fluid flood through his mouth, slowly removing all sensation from his infected tooth.

‘As you’re squeamish, I’ll give you an additional valium shot. Then I can work on without upsetting you.’ He rolled back Thurlow’s shirt sleeve and inserted a second syringe, emptying it slowly. ‘It’s funny when you think of it,’ he said, watching the calibrations on the side of the tube. ‘Considering all the food that has to be cut and crushed by your deciduous and permanent canines, incisors and molars, it’s a miracle there’s anything left in your mouth at all. Of course, humans have comparatively tiny teeth. It’s a sign of our superiority over the animals.’

Thurlow finally began to relax. Was it the drug that was making him feel so safe and comfortable in Matthews’ hands, or merely the dentist’s air of confident authority? He hummed softly as he worked, laying out instruments in familiar order while he waited for the drugs to take effect. A feeling of well-being crept over Thurlow. His arms and legs had grown too heavy for him to move. His heart was beating more slowly in his chest. The lower half of his face was completely numb. Suspended between sleep and wakefulness, he tried to identify the tune that Matthew was humming, but concentration slipped away.

The dentist had placed two other metal instruments in his mouth; when did he do that? One was definitely there to hold his jaws apart. Although the overhead light was back-reflected and diffuse, it shone through Thurlow’s eyelids with a warm red glow. There was a metallic clatter on the tray.

‘I’m going to cut away part of the damaged gum tissue now,’ said Matthews. Hadn’t he demanded to be spared the details? The long-nosed scissors glinted against the light then vanished into his mouth, to clip through flesh and gristle. His mind drifted, trying not to think of the excavation progressing below.

‘I don’t think there’ll be enough left to cap,’ said Matthews. ‘The one next to it is cracked pretty badly, too. What the hell was in that nut?’

When the drill started, Thurlow opened his eyes once more. Time seemed to have elapsed, for now there seemed to be several more instruments in his mouth. The drill howled on, the acrid smell of burning bone filling his nostrils. However, thanks to the effect of the valium dose, he remained unconcerned. The drill was removed, and Matthews’ fingers probed the spot. There was a sharp crack, and he held up the offending tooth for Thurlow to see, first one half, then the other.

‘You want this as a souvenir? I thought not. Now, to do this properly I should really clear out your root canal and drive a metal post into the gum,’ he said. ‘But that’s a long, painful process. Let’s see how we can work around it without tearing your entire jaw off. Ha ha.’

The drill started up again and entered his mouth. Thurlow could not tell which of his teeth it was touching, but by the familiar burning smell he guessed it was drilling deep into the enamel of a molar.

‘That’s better,’ said Matthews. ‘I can see daylight through the hole. Now that we have room to manoeuvre, let’s bring in the big guns.’ He produced a large semicircular metal clip and attached it to the side of Thurlow’s lower lip. A new instrument appeared before the light, a large curved razorblade with a serrated tip, like a cheese-grater with teeth. The dentist placed it in his mouth and began drawing it across the stump of the damaged molar. The rasping vibrated through Thurlow’s head, back and forth, back and forth, until he began to wonder if it would ever stop.

‘This is no good, no good at all.’ He withdrew the instrument, checked the blunted tip and tossed it onto the tray in disgust. ‘I need something else. Something modern, something – technological.’ He vanished from view, and Thurlow heard him thumping around at the side of the room. ‘One day,’ he called, ‘all dentistry will be performed by laser. Just think of the fun we’ll have then!’ He returned with a large piece of electrical equipment that boasted a red flashing LED on top. Matthews’ grinning face suddenly filled his vision.

‘You’re a very lucky man,’ he said. ‘Not many people get to have this baby in their mouths.’ He patted the side of the machine, from which extended a ribbed metal tube with a tiny rotating steel saw. When he flicked it on, the noise was so great that he had to shout. ‘You see, the main part of the tooth is made of a substance called dentine, but below the gumline it becomes bone-like cement, which is softer …’

He missed the next part as the saw entered his mouth and connected with tooth enamel. One of the pipes wedged between his lower incisors was spraying water onto the operating zone, while another was noisily sucking up saliva. His mouth had become a hardhat area. Suddenly something wet and warm began to pour down his throat. Matthews turned off the saw and hastily withdrew it. ‘Shit,’ he said loudly, ‘that’s my fault, not watching what I was doing.’ He reached behind him and grabbed up a wad of tissue, which he stuffed into Thurlow’s mouth and padded at the operation site, only to withdraw it red, filled and dripping. ‘Sorry about that, I was busy thinking about what I fancied for tea tonight.’ Now there seemed to be something lodged in Thurlow’s oesophagus. Through the anaesthetic he began to experience a stinging sensation. Bile rose in his throat as he started to gag.

‘Wait, wait, I know what that is.’ Matthews reached in his gloved hand and withdrew something, throwing it onto the tray. ‘You’ve been a brave boy. A hundred years ago this would have been a horribly painful experience, performed without an anaesthetic, but thanks to modern techniques I’ll have you finished in just a few more hours. Ha ha. Just kidding.’

He reached back to the tray and produced another steel frame, this one constructed like the filament wire in a lightbulb. Carefully unscrewing it, he arranged the contraption at the side of his patient’s mouth. Thurlow was starting to feel less calm. Perhaps the valium was wearing off. Suppose his sensations returned in the middle of the drilling? Yes, he could definitely feel his jaw now. A dull pain had begun to throb at the base of his nose. The dentist was stirring something in a small plastic dish when he saw Thurlow shifting in his chair.

‘Looks like I didn’t give you a large enough dose,’ he said, concerned. He removed the plastic cap from another syringe and jabbed it into Thurlow’s arm.

‘There,’ he said, cheerfully depressing the plunger. ‘Drug cocktail happy hour! You want a little umbrella in this one?’ Thurlow stared back at him with narrowed eyes, unamused. Matthews grew serious. ‘Don’t worry, when you wake up I’ll have finished. I think you’ve been through enough for one day, so I’m giving you a temporary filling for now, and we’ll do that root canal on your next appointment.’

As he began to spoon the cement into Thurlow’s mouth on the end of a rubber spatula, Thurlow felt himself drifting off into an ethereal state of semi-wakefulness.

While he floated in this hazy dream-state, his imagination unfettered itself, strange visions uncoiling before him in rolling prisms of light. The humming of the dentist became a distant litany, a warm and familiar soundtrack, like the work-song of a seamstress. Colours and scents bled into one another, jasmine and disinfectant. He was home and safe, a child again. Finally these half-formed memories were replaced by the growing clarity of the present, and he realised that he was surfacing back to reality.

‘Oh good,’ said Matthews as his eyes flickered open. ‘Back in the land of the living. For a minute I thought I’d overdosed you. Ha ha. We’re just waiting for the last bit to dry.’ He reached into Thurlow’s mouth and probed around with a steel scraper, scratching away the last of the filler. Thurlow suddenly became aware of the restraining strap fixed across his lap, holding him in place. How long had that been there?

‘You know, we had a nasty case of “tooth squeeze” in here last week, ever hear of that? Of course, you can’t answer with all this junk in your mouth, can you? He was an airline pilot. His plane depressurised, and it turned out he had an air bubble trapped beneath a filling. When the cabin atmosphere decreased, the air expanded. His tooth literally blew up in his mouth. Bits were embedded in his tongue. What a mess.’ Matthews peered into his mouth, one eye screwed tight. ‘It happens to deep sea divers, too, only their teeth implode. And I’ve seen worse. There was one patient, a kid who rollerskated face-first into a drinking fountain …’ Mercifully, he lost his train of thought. ‘Well, that last batch seems to have done the trick.’

The sensation was slowly returning to Thurlow’s mouth. Something was very sore, very sore indeed. He raised his hands, hoping to see if he could locate the source of the pain, but Matthews swatted them down. ‘Don’t touch anything for a while. You must give it a chance to set. I still have some finishing off to do.’ The pain was increasing with every passing second. It was starting to hurt very badly, far worse than when he had arrived for treatment. Something had gone wrong, he was sure of it. He could only breathe through his nose, and then with difficulty. He tried to speak, but no sound came out. When he tried to pull himself upright, Matthews’ arm came around the chair and pushed him back down. Now the dentist stepped fully into his view. Thurlow gasped.

It looked as if someone had exploded a blood transfusion bag in front of him. He was dripping crimson from head to foot. It was splashed across his chest and stomach, draining from his plastic apron to form a spreading pool between his feet. The white tiled floor was slick with blood. Streaks marred the walls in sweeping arcs, like rampant nosebleeds. Thurlow’s head reeled back against the rest. What in God’s name had happened? Pain and panic overwhelmed him as his hands clawed the air and he fought to stand, chromatic sparkles scattering before his eyes as the remnants of the drug affected his vision.

‘You shouldn’t be up and about yet,’ said Matthews. ‘I’ve not finished.’

‘You’re no dentist,’ Thurlow tried to say, the white-hot knives shrieking through his brain, but his words came out as a series of hysterical rasps.

The dentist seemed to understand him. ‘You’re right, I’m no dentist.’ He shrugged, his hands held out. So sue me. ‘I always wanted to be one but I couldn’t get my certificate. I can’t pass exams. I get angry too easily. Still, it’s a vocation with me, a calling. I know what I’m doing is right. I’m simply ahead of my time. Nearly finished.’

He thrust his hand into his patient’s mouth and made a tightening motion. A starburst of pain detonated between Thurlow’s eyes. The dentist held his head back against the rest while he pulled at something. There was a ting of metal, and he extracted a twisted spring. On one end a small silver screw was embedded in a bloody scrap of bright red gum.

‘You don’t need this bit,’ said Matthews jovially. He picked up a Phillips screwdriver and inserted it in Thurlow’s mouth, happily ratcheting away, as if he was fixing a car. ‘I like to think of this as homeopathic medicine,’ said the dentist, ‘except that I’m more of an artist. I went to art school but I didn’t pass the exam because – you guessed it –’ he nodded his head dumbly, silly old me, ‘I got angry again. They took me out of circulation for a while.’ He removed the screwdriver and peered inside, smiling. ‘Still, every now and again I get to try out a few of my ideas. I go to a particular area and search through the Yellow Pages, then I visit all the private dentists they list. Sometimes I find one with a vacant operating room, and then I just wait for custom. I look the part, you see, white coat, smart tie, good speaking voice. And I keep the door locked while I work. No one ever tries to stop me, and nothing would ever come out in the papers if they did, because private dentists are too scared of losing their customers. You’d never think it could be that simple, would you?’

He went to the desk beside the operating chair and detached a large circular mirror. ‘But let’s face it, when was the last time you asked to see a dentist’s credentials? It’s not like the police. Let’s see how you turned out.’

Thurlow could barely breathe through the ever-increasing pain, but as the dentist tilted the mirror in his direction, the next sight that met his eyes almost threw him into a faint.

‘Good, isn’t it?’ said Matthews. ‘Art in dentistry.’

Thurlow’s face was unrecognisable. His lips had been cut and peeled back in fleshy strips, then pinned to his cheeks with steel pins. Most of his teeth had been filed into angular shapes, some pointed, others merely slanting. His upper gums had been opened to expose the pale bone beneath. A number of screws had been driven into his flayed jaw, and were attached to cables. The last two inches of his tongue – the lump he had felt in his throat – were missing completely. He watched as the leaking stump jerked obscenely back and forth like a severed reptile. Around his mouth a contraption of polished steel had been fitted to function as an insane brace, a complex network of wires and springs, cogs and filaments. The skin beneath his eyes had turned black with the pummelling his mouth had taken.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ whispered Matthews. ‘It’s special, but not spectacular. You haven’t seen the best bit yet. It’s not merely art, it’s – kinetic dental futurism. Watch.’

Matthews reached up and turned a silver handle on the left of Thurlow’s jaw. The springs and wires pulled taut. The cogs turned. Thurlow’s mouth grimaced and winked, the flaps of his lips contorting back and forth as his face was twisted into a series of wide-mouthed grins and tight, sour frowns. On a separate spring, the end of his tongue flickered in and out of his own ear. The pain was unbearable. Fresh wounds tore in his gums and cheeks as the mechanism yanked his mouth into an absurd rictus of a laugh. Matthews released his grip on the silver handle and smiled, pleased with himself.

‘Is there somebody in there?’ The receptionist was calling through the door.

‘This stuff won’t catch on for years yet,’ said the dentist, ignoring the rattling doorknob behind him. He tilted the mirror from side to side before Thurlow’s horrified face. Finally, he set the mirror down and released the restraining strap from the operating couch. Blinkered by the heavy steel contraption that had been screwed into his jaw, Thurlow was barely able to stand. As he tipped his head forward the weight pulled him further, and blood began to pour from his mouth. He wanted to scream, but he knew it would hurt too much to pull open his mouth without the help of the contraption. The receptionist began to bang on the door.

‘Don’t worry,’ said the dentist with a reassuring smile. ‘It’ll seem strange at first, but you’ll gradually get used to it. I’m sure they all do eventually.’ He turned around and looked out of the window. ‘That’s the beauty of these old buildings; there’s always a fire escape.’ He unclipped the security catch on the casement and pushed it open, raising his legs and sliding them through the gap. Blood smeared from his saturated trousers onto the white sill. ‘I nearly forgot,’ he called back as Thurlow blundered blindly into the door, spraying it with his blood. ‘Whatever you do – for God’s sake – don’t forget to floss.’

His laughter echoed hard in Thurlow’s ears as a descending crimson mist replaced his tortured sight.

Norman Wisdom
And
The Angel Of Death