From The 2016 Edition of The Waldorf Literary Review: Cavity
The puppy was dead. She just knew he couldn’t be resting. Cati had been sitting in the dentist chair staring out the window. The window was an attempt to provide a source of distraction from the buzz of the drills, but Cati wasn’t subdued by the view of pine trees dusted in white.
White walls surrounded her. Meant to look sterile, to Cati, they just looked boring. A grinning man hung framed on the wall, eyes the color of the blue rubber ball she played with on the playground, teeth the same color as the snow outside. The wheeled cart holding the dental tools stood to the left of her chair. Cati wondered what the names of each one were. There was one with a needle-like tip that glittered and scared her. And was that a corkscrew like the one her mother used to open wine with at dinner?
She knew the puppy was dead. She had been looking at the smooth grey fur, partially covered by snow, for nearly ten minutes. The only movement she had seen was the snow whirling. She could just make out his triangular ears, plastered flat against his skull. His eyes were closed, the tiny slits laced with ice. One little paw protruded from the drift building around him. His hind end was obscured from view, covered in snow. She wondered if his tail had frozen, falling off. Maybe a squirrel had stolen it and now nibbled the skin hidden in a warm drey.
The temperatures the past few days had been skin-stripping cold. Nothing above fifteen degrees. A puppy so tiny would never survive.
She didn’t know what to say to the people whirling around her. How did the hygienist with thick rimmed, red glasses and short, burnt-red hair not see the figure disappearing in the snow? What about the dentist? His job was to see details: tiny cracks in enamel destined for cavity invasion, red-rimmed gums inviting gingivitis to take up residency, or a speck of black on gums signaling an impending infection. How did he not see the tiny figure being eaten up by winter?
Cati tilted back. Her curls rolled down her shoulders, pooling on the seat beneath her head. She opened her mouth as the dentist rolled his chair close. Her back molar had been screaming for a week. She felt the dentist’s sky-blue scrub press against the knuckles of her right hand. The latex smell from his rubber gloves drifted over her, mixing with the Old Spice she could still see wet on his neck. The glaring light overhead blurred her vision. She blinked. All she could think about was the puppy.
“Open your mouth a little wider.”
Cati stretched her jaw wide. She pictured the ground outside opening, engulfing the puppy. The circle of life. The puppy was born, ate food, grew, his fur speckled grey, his eyes clouded, his heart stopped, and he was placed in a hole in the earth. But this puppy was young. He hadn’t had the time to complete a full cycle.
“Are you okay?”
She tried to respond, nearly gagging on the water now being shot into her mouth. Cati nodded her head, yes.
The buzz of the drill vibrated in her eardrums. No wonder he hadn’t heard the puppy’s whimper. The noise in the room was like a construction zone: jack-hammers, hand-drills, saws, and shovels all scraping, hissing, and murmuring at the same time, a symphony of uncontrolled noise. Cati’s ears dripped with the sounds. The poor puppy’s cries for warmth had been blotted out. She thought she could still hear him. She knew the whine wasn’t his because she had seen him dead outside the window. Her eyes watered.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
The corner of Cati’s mouth drooped, and a small dribble of spit crawled out. She tried to slurp it back in, but her muscles refused to cooperate. A flash of the puppy crawling, his muscles immobilized by the frigid fingers of winter, creeped into the room. She couldn’t speak. She nodded her head, yes.
Goosebumps were popping up on Cati’s skin. Why didn’t they turn the heat up? She moved her hands to cover some of her bare skin. Was it cold? Her eyes focused on the ceiling tiles above her. She tried to find the pattern in the tiny holes in each one. She was having trouble focusing. She wished they would tip her chair back up so she could see the puppy. She knew he was dead, but she wanted to look at him again. Her hands shook against his white coat.
“Okay, all finished.”
The doctor drifted out of sight, leaving Cati to begin her recovery. Cati’s chair began to rise. She blinked, trying to focus against the glare of the snow outside the window. Her eyes felt sticky. How long had he been digging around in her mouth? She searched for the puppy. The drift covered him; all that remained was a lump in the snow resembling a stark tombstone. Tears slithered down her cheeks as she turned to the hygienist.
“Doctor, you should come in here.”
The blue scrubs moved into the room and bent down to look Cati directly in the eye.
“Are you in pain?”
Cati drooled. Her lips refused to form words. She shook her head, no. She pointed to the drift outside the window. The moment felt slow as everyone turned their eyes toward the world outside the sterile room. The doctor slowly moved toward the window with a look of confusion in his eyes. How did he not see the puppy?
“I’m not sure what you want me to look at.”
Cati motioned for paper and pen. The hygienist returned a moment later, handing Cati a stack of sticky notes shaped like a molar. She slowly wrote in uneven, loopy letters, “dead puppy” across the center of the molar. The doctor looked at her with a twinkle in his eye.
“You better take the gas off of her.”
The hygienist slid the clear tube from around Cati’s ears, removing the tiny nozzles from her nostrils. Cati blinked again, staring at the hose now hanging on a silver hook above her chair.
“Go get her mother.”
Audrey Sparks