The Diving Bell And The Dentist
DECEMBER 4, 2009
Although Deborah’s ghetto health insurance plan includes bare-bones dental coverage, there is a very short list of providers for her to choose from. One of them is a dental school where young student dentists tentatively wiggle novocain needles into her gums before crudely scratching and scraping her teeth with all the precision of cavemen exploring newly discovered uses for chipped slate.
Yesterday was Deborah’s fourth appointment. The first time all the student dentist did was poke and prod her mouth for a few minutes before scheduling her for four subsequent cleanings. Four cleanings sounded absurd to me, but they are students after all, and if a sucker walks in willing to open her mouth to unskilled labor, they need to milk her for all she’s worth. Her second appointment — the first of the cleanings — was devoted solely to her upper left teeth, denying her the satisfaction of running her tongue over a full set of freshly-buffed choppers, leaving her only to obsessively lick just a handful of hard-to-reach ones.
The second of her cleanings, designed to finish off her top row of teeth, was a fizzling disappointment when, after waiting for a couple of hours, she was turned away due to a bureaucratic foul-up.
“@!!&*!!@#!!”
Her mouth was only one quarter clean at that point; the filth that came out of it was no surprise.
“Want to come with me?” Deborah asked, as she headed once again to offer up her mouth for protracted student experiments.
Having been to five doctor appointments, a CAT scan, and an emergency room visit all within the past two and a half weeks, I wasn’t keen on sitting in another waiting room. “Sorry, kid, you’re on your own.”
“No problem.”
But I did ride the subway into Manhattan with her and wandered the city, broke and fancy free.
I browsed my favorite bookstore, Shakespeare and Co., which is always a mistake when I’m broke. After being followed by a sales associate suspicious of my sling, I impulsively (compulsively) splurged a couple of bucks I couldn’t spare on two books. (A neurosis, bordering on OCD, I can never buy just one book.)
I bought The Alcoholics by Jim Thompson for Deborah, who has read every one of the fifty-plus noir novels she already owns at least three or four times each and will probably read this one in the blink of an eye. And speaking of blinking an eye, I finally bought The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby after being fascinated by it for years, and referencing it in this blog countless times. (And no, I haven’t seen the movie, either.)
I put off reading The Diving Bell and The Butterfly because, in addition to being fascinating, I find the whole concept of Locked In Syndrome terrifying, but I have to say, reading it with a broken arm appears to be good “things could be worse” therapy.
Elsewhere, a battalion of cripples forms the bulk of the inmates. Survivors of sport, of the highway, and of every possible and imaginable kind of domestic accident, these patients remain at Berck for as long as it takes to get their shattered limbs working again. I call them “tourists.”
People have been asking me how I manage to write these long posts with just my left hand, but reading a book written by a guy who could only blink a single eye makes it feel easy-breezy. Of course, I’ve also been practicing.
Although we didn’t make plans to meet, Deborah got out of her appointment at the same time I finished aimlessly wandering, and we met by chance at the bus stop. I gave her the Jim Thompson book and she gave me her best Novocain smile.
“When’s your next appointment?” I asked.
“I haven’t made one yet. I have no intention of going back anytime soon,” she said.
“The first set of teeth will be due for another cleaning by the time you get around to the last set.”
Okay, never mind what I said about typing with my left hand, I’m getting sloppy and fixing my typos is getting tiresome so I’m just going to leave this raggedy, non-cohesive post right here — where is, as is.
Good night and good luck.
