Diary fragment · 2 min read ·
Notes From a Dentist's Surgery
A dentist in a Murrow surgery keeps a diary of the patients who come in complaining of toothache that X-rays cannot find, and the single tooth she extracts each night from a patient who was never admitted.
- dated: The first three weeks of the winter term
- narrator: Dr Leah Stone, dentist
- reliability: reliable
Monday. Full list of six, nothing unusual. A child with a cracked molar, a retired bus driver with three abscesses, a young man with a sensitive crown who did not want to be told how much it would cost. Filled, polished, sent home with the usual leaflets.
Tuesday. A woman came in complaining of pain in her lower left jaw, a deep throbbing that kept her awake. Radiographs clear. Gums healthy. No cavities, no infection, no trace of any dental pathology at all. I told her so. She said it hurt more than ever, and that it had started when she moved into her flat on Tern Street. I offered a referral to the hospital. She said she would think about it.
Wednesday. Another patient with the same complaint, same side, same description, and the same flat on Tern Street. Two in two days, from the same building. I checked the register. Neither had been in the surgery before.
Thursday. A man came in at half past nine at night, quite calm, saying he had toothache. I was about to leave. I let him sit in the chair and looked at the X-ray and it was blank. I put the lamp on his mouth and there was nothing to see. But he kept touching the lower left molar with his tongue, and his eyes, when I asked him about it, went very far away.
Friday. I could not sleep. At two in the morning I went back down to the surgery to check the day book and found a patient already in the chair, the man from Thursday. He was asleep. His mouth was open. There was an extraction forceps lying on the tray beside him, and I did not put it there.
I looked into his mouth. The molar was gone. The socket was clean and closed over, healed as though the tooth had been out for years. In the tray beside the forceps there was a small white tooth, perfect and dry, with a root still attached.
I did not touch it. I went back to my flat and sat by the window and wrote this down.
Saturday. The surgery is closed on Saturdays. I went in anyway. The day book had an entry for the Friday night appointment, in my handwriting, and beside the name, in the same hand, a note: *Extraction, lower left, as requested. No charge.*
I do not remember writing that.
Sunday. I am going to speak to the hospital tomorrow. I am going to tell them about the flat on Tern Street. But I have found, on my desk this morning, a letter with my name on it in careful type, saying that my own lower left molar has been booked for removal, and that the appointment is for tonight, at two.