CALLADITA TE VES MAS BONITA...
Rodney whispered “I feel numb.”
A bit of saliva slid from the corner of la boca onto his chin. He didn’t try to slop it up with the tongue. I believed him.
The senior dentist, Dr. Pendergast, said “great.”
I went for it. I attacked the posterior molars. It was an ugly looking mouth: decrepit with decades of snuff and nicotine and bacteria thriving in a cesspool that hadn’t suffered much in the way of routine cleanings.
Dr. Pendergast had one eye shut while he watched me perform. I’d known him my whole life and trusted that he could see all he needed to with that one watchdog while the other rested. He sat behind the patient’s head to keep himself obfuscated and let me have my moment in the sun.
“Here goes,” I said while I pried.
Rodney tried to buck but Pendergast had him pinned.
Rodney’s eyes registered sheer terror. We knew he had a mercury phobia. In fact, to remind ourselves, we wrote it on the whiteboard in purple marker in the back of the room. We all understood that maximum exposure came exactly when the worn silver piece was lifted out of the cavity it had occupied. This is the kind of case where sedation dentistry would make sense, but Pendergast isn’t a believer.
The hygienist, Camille, sucked Rodney’s saliva with her sucking machine and stroked Rodney’s hairy forearm with a sexual rhythm that seemed to soothe him. When he was calmer, she quickly cracked the window to allow the naturally occurring toxins to float invisibly before us, released and recaptured by Mother Earth. As opposed to our lungs. Or probably in conjunction with our lungs, but don’t tell Rodney. Then she made a real show of it for the patient and snapped a fan on to aid the flow. If nothing else, it would help with the sweats he was enduring.
Dr. Pendergast might be old, but he’s still figuring the best way to make a buck. You’d have thought it would be me telling him about the SMART certification. But, hell no, it was all him, researching away on his iPad. “SMART – Safe Mercury Amalgam Removal Technique, memorize that one, kid, we’re gonna strike a new demographic,” he told me last summer over Jack and Cokes. He had it promptly added to all marketing materials. He’d also had cameras installed so we could get 3-D imaging with CAD software for crowns, veneers and molds, mapping how best to drill and fit. I’d say I have a lot to learn from him, yet.
This latest craze with the mercury had Rodney riled up. He came pounding on the door last week saying he’d sought out a mercury-free dentist and wanted the silver amalgam safely removed, STAT.
That day we first saw him, he wore a black leather vest with nothing underneath it save one continuous tattoo with a hairy overlay, whose patterns I didn’t have the nerve to study. He spoke at a breakneck pace, panting:
“I’ve been considering the implications in my life as I suffer from severe bruxism and believe the vapor leaking into my lungs from the mercury being pounded every night by this masseter,” he stopped to touch his thick jaw bone, “is causing hell in all manner of soft tissue in my system, specifically these lungs,” his hand sought his chest, “in the form of bioaccumulation. I’m pissing a metallic alloy, which I’ve had tested, brought a chart with the numbers to prove it.” He threw down a sad piece of paper, wrinkled and stained. It was as if he’d read our website, memorized it and came in to spit it out back at us.
Dr. Pendergast’s good eye lit up like a lightbulb but his voice remained steadfast. “Certainly, why don’t you have a seat and we can take a look.” He winked my way with the twinkle only brought on by dollars coming through the door. Rodney’s mouth was a hell of a jackpot it turned out. “Indeed, I see many silver fillings with margins that are corroded. We may have to go digging for gold underneath the silver, too, clean you up before we re-dress it, so to speak! Rodney, you’ve come to the right place,” the old man crooned.
Rodney, being an unusual case, had a total of 37 silver fillings – many of them tiny. A few crateresque. All in all, a multitude of silver amalgam we could dig out and replace with composite. Cha-ching.
“Rodney, you’re doing great – we’re going to wrap it up at four replacements for today and we’ll see you back here next week to continue.” I patted his hand. He squeezed me back with a crushing grip. I laughed and said, “You’ve been a trooper.” And unlocked myself from him. Rodney grunted, his eyes closed. Camille stuck around in the room fiddling with the bib he wore now saturated with a mix of sweat and saliva.
Dr. Pendergast and I shut the door behind us. “She’ll probably blow him,” I said when we were out of earshot.
“He deserves it, kid. Let him enjoy. What do we care?” Pendergast slapped my back. “You did a helluva job in there. You’ll be doing the next round, too. I can step in for the third. And so on. Let him feel that he’s all we have. Show him the love. Isn’t that what you millennials talk about?”
I winked in collusion.