Blink
By
BRADLEY CONVISSAR
This book is a work of fiction.
All characters, events and situations in this book
are purely fictional and any resemblance to real
people or events is purely coincidental.
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Copyright 2011 Bradley Convissar
Cover design by Bradley Convissar
The cover photo is a derivative of the photo “eyball” by Budzlife at Flickr, used under Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License
https://www.flickr.com/photos/budslife/2853070450/
The background is “Dirty Grunge Background by happykanppy, 2011 used under license from Shutterstock.com”
In his twenty-five years of practicing dentistry, fifty-year-old Brian Mallory had never been freaked out at work. Anxious (while placing his first implant) sure, nervous (while trying to extract several root tips close to the maxillary sinus) definitely, and yes, even scared (while trying to cut out an impacted wisdom tooth, a procedure he had no business even attempting because of the difficulty and his own lack of experience), but he had never felt freaked out.
Until today.
And to think that the object of his current distress was something as simple, as innocuous, as a cheap piece of jewelry. A tongue ring, to be exact, the offensive bead resting comfortably within the mouth of the young female patient currently sitting in his chair.
“Time for a break, Amy,” Brian said as he applied gentle pressure to the small circular pedal under his foot, allowing the dental chair and its occupant to rotate into an upright position. “Take a rinse,” he added, then watched the young woman as she swished a cupful of water in her mouth before spitting it unceremoniously into the small bowl next to her. Brian’s eyes lingered on her profile- her high cheekbones, the graceful sweep of her of her nose, the corners of her expressive eyes- longer than what many would have considered to be professionally appropriate. But it wasn’t with the lecherous eye of a sixty year old man watching half-naked eighteen year old girls bounce around on MTV that he eyed the young woman. It was with a certain amount of pride. Though he was not the girl’s parent, or even a teacher, only her dentist, he had watched her grow from a nervous, shy child into an ambitious young adult over the past sixteen years.
Of course, he had watched many of his patients grow from toddlers into adults over the decades; that was part of owning a family practice. Hell, he had been doing this for so long that he was now seeing the children of patients who had been children themselves when their parents brought them in for their first check-up. All of the children he had watched mature over the years occupied a certain space in his heart, but Amy Gladwell… she demanded a small section all her own. After all, Brian believed that the girl may not even be alive today if it weren’t for his intervention.
Well, truth be told, she may not have died- probably wouldn’t have died- but her life could very well have wandered down a truly tragic path, one that surely would have altered her future for the worse if not for his involvement.
It was just after Amy had turned fourteen, and Brian was doing a routine exam after the hygienist completed her cleaning. Everything looked normal, and he almost missed the subtle pathology on the tongue side of her upper incisors. But as he swept the mirror along the arch, adjusting the overhead light for better illumination, he saw it: the faint pitting of the enamel that was the tell-tale sign of acid erosion, a phenomenon resulting either from sucking on lemons or another highly acidic food regularly or, more likely considering Amy’s gender and age, bulimia.
Brian had said nothing to Amy; she was a minor and it wasn’t his responsibility to approach her directly. But he mentioned his suspicions to her parents in the waiting room afterwards while she was in the bathroom, half expecting George and Elizabeth Gladwell to be angry with him for even suggesting that their precious daughter had something wrong with her. But instead, they shared a worried look between them, and Brian knew at that moment that the two suspected something but had been waiting for more evidence before confronting their daughter. And he had just handed them the proverbial smoking gun: a professional opinion. They thanked him for his observations and left with Amy.
When Elizabeth returned three months later for her exam and cleaning, she told Brian that Amy was seeing a psychologist for help with her bulimia. And when Amy returned three months after that for her own six month recall, she gave him a hug and thanked him for helping her. He asked her with what, and she smiled at him slyly.
“So your parents told you that I tattled on you?” he had asked.
“They didn’t rat you out. But I knew they suspected, and when they talked to me later that night, the timing seemed a little too coincidental. I knew you had said something to them.”
“I had to,” he had said.
“I know you did.” And she had hugged him again.
Amy, she was a very smart, very perceptive girl.
Seeing Amy always reminded him of one of the hidden joys of being a dentist. He had first seen her when she was three years old, over sixteen years ago, and had watched her grow from a toddler owning a spattering of tiny white teeth, to an awkward pre-teen with adult teeth erupting in the most distressing of places, to a shy teenager with a mouth full of braces she was ashamed of, to now, a beautiful, confident nineteen year old in her sophomore year of college. And who knew if she would have made it to this point without him.
“So how’s school going?” Brian asked Amy as she wiped her face with the yellow napkin around her neck. “I hear UCLA is beautiful.”
“Good,” she said. “Weather down in Southern California is much better than it is here. All sun, no snow.”
“Thinking about relocating once you finish school?” Brian asked as he began to lower her once again.
“Maybe,” she admitted as the chair began to creep down and back. “But as much as I like the warm weather, I do miss the seasons. Shorts at Thanksgiving seem so unnatural. And the people there… well, you know what they say about the Southern California scene. It’s all true.”
Brian hoped she stayed around, though he would never admit this aloud. Yet another creepy thing a dentist could mention to his patient. He simply thought it would be cool, one day, to treat Amy’s children.
“Pick a major yet?” he asked.
“Nah. I have another couple of months to think about it. Leaning towards going pre-med, but we’ll see. I’ll see how I feel after my anatomy class.”
“Good deal,” Brian said. He adjusted the light, slid his loupes (the special glasses he used for magnification) back over his eyes and leaned slightly over her again. “Okay, open wide.”
Brian didn’t usually do cleanings in his office (that was what God had created hygienists for), but a particularly nasty stomach bug had thinned both his and his hygienist’s schedules that day, as well as robbed him of his hygienist’s services (Shirley was home watching it come out both ends, Kathy at the front desk had cheerfully told him that morning). Instead of canceling what remained of the hygiene schedule and twiddling his thumbs during his own down time, he had integrated the two schedules into one. Just because he didn’t do cleanings regularly didn’t mean he didn’t know how to. Or wasn’t good at it.
He went around Amy’s mouth, pulling off little collections of plaque here and there and stripping small pieces of tarter from behind her bottom front teeth in silence, listening to the local news that was playing on a small television mounted on the wall.
/> And doing everything he could to not look at Amy’s tongue ring.
“You know,” he said, “the number one cause, after sports accidents, for broken teeth in your age group is tongue rings.” He didn’t know if this was actually true, but it sounded good. “You really should think about getting rid of yours before you break something.”
“Thanks for your concern, Dr. Brian,” she said (it was a rare patient who actually called him Dr. Mallory; it was always Brian or Dr. Brian), “but I think I’ll be keeping it. I’m careful not to bite on it. And I’ve grown quite attached to the little guy.”
A sudden peculiar coldness danced up Brian’s spine at this comment. What an odd thing to say it, he thought, the words echoing around in his head for a moment. But he quickly shrugged away both the bizarre comment and the unsettling sensation. Teenage girls were a strange breed of animal, prone to strange trends and behaviors. He had raised two girls and knew well the idiosyncrasies of the gender and age.
Ten minutes later, as Brian finished up with the cleaning, he said, “You know, you’re a big girl so I’m not going to lecture you, but you know you need floss at least once a day. I know you’ve never had a cavity or gum issue in your