Show Me
By HJ Dutton
From the waiting room, the dentist’s office glared a nauseating yellow. Cate swung her legs as she waited to be called. Next to her, Mom perused National Geographic. Its pages depicted blood-smeared Komodo dragons. Lips pursed, Cate looked away. Sights for grown-up eyes only.
“Cate Fernsby?” the receptionist called. To the desk she skipped. Behind the glass, the old woman beamed at her. She beamed back. “Would you like to schedule your next appointment now or after, dear?”
Cate looked back at Mom, who whispered the date. “December thirteenth, please and thank you.”
The woman nodded. “Could you pass me one of those pens?” she said, crooking a finger at the cup on the desk’s edge. She reached for one with her right hand. The one she used to reach into grown-ups’ minds. Sights, sounds, and thrills from their happiest moments, hers for the taking. When Cate handed the pen over, she brushed the woman’s fingers. Show me.
On nine occasions, Cate had bumped into others who shared her gift. Their brains batted her prying eyes away when she tried to peek inside. If the receptionist was among those few, she didn’t make herself known.
The woman pointed toward the hall. “Third room on your right. Dr. Sallow will be right over.” Dr. Harding – from whom she’d spied upon so many memories – retired last Fall. Today, she’d meet his replacement.
As Cate skipped down the hall, the images taken from the receptionist’s head swam through her own. On a coastline she stood, wind sweeping her hair, the sea sprawling before her. From beneath the waves bobbed a school of white shapes. Belugas, six in all. A boy, perhaps her grandson, waddled down the shore after them.
Eyes closed, she smiled as she slumped into room three’s chair. Beside her sat a tray flaunting a freakshow of hooks and needles. A man prowled past the chair, humming a botched tune. She winced as the flash of his glasses stabbed her eyes. “Dr. Sallow?” she asked.
“Dat’s wight wabbit,” he said, chuckling at his own impression. When she didn’t join in, he shrugged. “Had to try. Is it Kate with a C or a K?”
“With a C!” she chirped.
He wrestled a pair of gloves on. “I’m sure you’ve got more exciting adventures planned today, so I’ll get you and those pearly whites out the door as fast as I can.” With one hand he manhandled the overhead light. With the other he offered her a pair of glasses. As she took them, she touched his finger. Show me.
She stifled a gasp. A cinderblock wall illuminated under ancient lightbulbs. The squeal of a drill. And, somewhere, screams. Children's screams.
Cate’s stomach plummeted. Nausea crawled up her throat. Then an awful question: Is he like me? Does he know I saw?
Sallow loomed over the tool tray. From it he selected a mirror and a hook. Presenting the hook to her, he rotated it under the lamp. Its tip glared. “It’s blunter than it looks. Promise,” he said. From behind his mask, both cheeks rose and formed lines on his face. A smile, barely contained.
Cate opened her mouth, gulping back bile. With two fingers Sallow pulled her cheek back and stuck the mirror in. As she craned her watering eyes down, the hook followed. Frigid steel tapped and scraped against her molar as if tugging the nerves themselves. Back and forth it dragged, along the line between the brittle tooth and soft flesh. Even as Cate’s heart knocked against her ribs, she tried to stay as still as she could. She couldn’t cry. She couldn’t give him what he wanted.
Minutes ticked by. Every so often, he inched the hook under the thin gums ringing her teeth. Blood welled. Her mouth throbbed. When he reached the lower left molar, he paused. “Uh-oh, what do we have here?,” he said and tapped at the molar with his hook. She flinched. By the time he’d finished her lower crown, an iron tang had soaked into her tongue. Bitter saliva leaked over her bottom lip, dying the apron brownish-red. She clenched herself as he repeated the motions on her upper crown. When he reached her upper left molar, the hook stopped. Her eyes flicked up toward him. Sallow leaned in and squinted. His breath stung her nose.
Sallow hummed as he plucked something new off the tray. Above her he held his new toy. “Sorry, sweetheart, but this might sting a bit.”
A drill.
With a click, it screamed to life. Before he had his fun, Sallow plucked from the tray two wishbone-shaped pieces of plastic. He stuffed them between her jaws. They pinned her teeth in place. Like the hook before it, the drill’s tooth inched inside her mouth and crept toward her molar. Contact.
She clenched, straining the muscles in her neck till they throbbed. He grabbed one of her wrists to steady her. Under the drill’s touch, Cate lost sense of time. A few minutes might have trickled by. Or perhaps twenty by the time the drill stopped. It slid out of her mouth. Not a speck of blood. Adjusting the lamp, Sallow tilted her chin and peered at his work. Then he sighed. “Bad news, kiddo. You got cavities. Two of ‘em.”
Cate sagged into the seat. Maybe he’d lie to Mom, tell her he’d use simple anesthetic, then give Cate something stronger, something to put her under. Then she’d wake up down there, with the others.
As Sallow pecked away at a computer keyboard, she waited.
And waited.
And waited.
And then he sent her home. He poked and prodded at the cavity a few more times, then gave her one of those goodie bags full of floss and toothpaste she’d never use. The cavities were still in their incipient stage, he told Mom. With improved eating habits and hygiene, her daughter could reverse the decay on her own. Still he’d like to schedule an earlier return date so he could monitor the cavities.
In a few weeks’ time, maybe sooner, she’d be right back in that rubber chair so he could prod and poke and bleed her. He let her go just to bring her right back, like a cat letting a bird go just to see it struggle.
She followed Mom down the stairs. The whole way down, she glanced over her shoulder. She spotted nothing. Trembling, she caught up with Mom and gripped her hand. They passed a door with a sign that read: CUSTODIAL STAFF ONLY. Was there another set of stairs behind that door? One that spiraled into the Earth, toward a brick hell where drills spun and little girls screamed?
“What’s the matter, Catey?” Mom said, elbowing her.
Cate opened her mouth to tell. Then she pictured him, perched on the stairs above, hunched like an animal. Listening. “He hurt my mooouth!”
“Sounds like someone forgot to floss again.”
In the parking lot, they bumped into one of Mom’s friends. Cate didn’t touch the other woman’s hand.
