Major Restorative

Published on Fauxhouse by Ti 6/22/2024

It started hurting on a Thursday and you were in the dentist’s office by Monday, face swollen on one side. A balloon so close to popping you didn’t want to see what confetti would come out. Extraction was the best solution along with a round of antibiotics. You opted for the laughing gas for the fee of $465. The additional cost worth every penny in the way it pulled you from your aching tooth. The sounds of the surgical tools scraping and twisting your tooth just background noise to the classical piano music the exam room played.

“The pressure isn’t pain,” they remind you even though it's so closely related, the twist and push against nerves you never cared about until now. As soon as it’s out, you ask if you can keep it. You don’t know how they understand you with their fingers and plastic contraptions in your mouth, but they do and give it to you cleaned in a plastic pill holder.

In removing the tooth, you removed both the pain and something necessary. The face swelling just grief manifested. Gauze and ice pack your new accessories.

“We want a clot to happen,” the oral surgeon tells you this, as if it were a joint secret plan between the two of you. You nod, the sensations of the nitric oxide pulling away in slow timid waves. At home, you try not to suck. (Your mouth at least, you know personally sucking at life is already a given.) The pain is coming back now. Making itself known in small peaks. You do not realize you’re now haunted. The extracted cleaned wisdom tooth shifts in its small container. You don’t remember to notice.

It starts with tripping more often and bumping into walls. Routes that should be familiar cause you to double check your steps. You spend half the time walking to the grocery store looking at the sidewalk. Trying to key in on new obstacles. They look the same and you trip anyway on the last stretch of concrete. You land and scrap your hands. Small dew drops of blood sneak to the surface. You dab it with a tissue and continue your errand, hands stinging.

“It’s healing beautifully,” your oral surgeon says while marveling their work. The prodigy the soft tissue where your tooth once was. A success since the swelling reduced and the mouth pain was gone. You trip leaving the dentist office and your knee hits the sidewalk, skin fluttering into a bloody gash. As you apply a bandage over it, you repeat to yourself how this is a success. It’s a success. Over and over, both prayer and promise. Walking home you stumble two more times. The extraction was a success.

The scratches, cuts and bruises bloom over the next few weeks. You buy three boxes of Band-Aids and invest in a better first aid kit. You carry a travel size kit whenever you got out. Acquaintances take note of your increased clumsiness. At first, through gentle teasing, now uncomfortable concern. They don’t bother to glance your way, as if their eyes would only contribute to the crime scene your body’s become. A catalog of accidents no one wants to peruse through.

By the third month, you limit your outdoor excursions. Pushing your friends to visit you to not risk the threat of being outside, still remembering how the car almost hit you but didn’t because a kind stranger pulled you out of the way. The natural mundane dangers of the world are so much more potent for you. The oven that hasn’t been used in a week or two since you stopped trying to cook for yourself. The gas flame seemingly jumping towards your already battered flesh, the burn still fresh on your right forearm. You can sustain yourself through delivery apps. There’s lots of variety in the restaurants around here. Thai, Mexican, Caribbean, New American. Also, fast food and pizza if the craving’s there. You only feel relatively safe in your bedroom, specifically on your bed near your nightstand. You haven’t stubbed a toe, gotten a paper cut, banged your hand against the rough brick the bed sits up against. In that space, you can almost remember what living was like. You don’t remember the tooth though, still sitting in the first drawer of your nightstand, next to the half-used batteries and journal you promised you would actually keep up with this year, but stopped by the time February rolled around. No matter how hard the divinity in it rattles you don’t hear it above your own thoughts. You fall asleep and the blood from today’s accidental run in with the corner of the glass coffee table weeps into the bed sheets. The dark stain flaring under you like sunlight.

By month five, you’ve broken a few bones, gotten a concussion, and staved off an infection that almost took you with it. No one besides your mother has called you and even she doesn’t like to chat long for fear of agitating your multitude of injuries. At this point, pain occurs less from the removal of your normal day to day and more so from the weight of the absence of everyone you’ve ever known. You only exist within the safety of your bedroom and have made small journeys to retrieve your work laptop and some snacks to be in your room for as long as possible. You pay for someone to clean the apartment or at least used to until one of them accidentally spilled bleach on your foot. When you tell your mother of this incident she says, “Jesus, you can’t catch a break. Where’s your guardian angel? On vacation?” You find yourself wondering the same. Wondering why the universe is no longer looking out for you and is somehow on a mission to actively kill you. The only solace is in your bedroom. It is a small flicker of a feeling. A firefly tempo of being present then not, depending on where you are.

You don’t give this observation too much thought until you’re trying to reorganize your room, finding a permanent spot for your military grade medical kit you purchased from an EMT website a week ago. You open the drawer in your nightstand, something you haven’t checked in months. The handle feeling like an old friend. The motion of pulling the drawer smooth as paper.

Your eyes glaze over the untouched journal and dream diary, the spare batteries, and the spare pillowcase you forgot to return to the store months ago because you didn’t like the color. You’re holding it before you realize you’re seeing it. The small clear plastic container with the opaque white top screw lid. Smooth and warm as a closed mouth. You fear opening it, imagining the now likely scenario of cutting your fingers or twisting it just so as to shatter your knuckles. But you do it anyway because what left was there for you to do?

Lid removed; you are greeted by your wisdom tooth. You flush in recognition, the pale yellowing of the root, the discoloration of the previously exposed bone. The bumps and the grooves, the fraying residue of the flesh clinging on. You say aloud that you miss it because it’s true. The stability of it, the security of its shape.

It misses you too and it wants to be with you. It’s been trying to get your attention, but you’ve been preoccupied. You apologize as you caress your fingertips over the top of it. It’s softer than you thought it would be. It reminds you of a dove’s wing. You ask how you can make it up to it. How to restore this relationship. It feels larger in your palm now, its pulsing hot as an old church in summer. Let me be with you, it says everywhere and nowhere, echoing in your chest and bruises. Your open wounds ache. Your mouth waters. You don’t need to answer it. You already know the answer. You lean your head back, mouth like open gates, you allow it to plunge inside feeling like a hymn all the way down.

Your injuries heal with time. You leave your apartment more often, reconnect with friends and family. You go to the dentist for your regular checkup. “Everything’s looking great,” they say. But you know this already.

You can feel it in your gut.