The Molar

von Marcus Krug

I got in a fight the first time I took Mindy out for a drink. Well, I should not have taken her out in the first place, anyway. It was bound to happen, and I knew it.

She was a girl from the office building across the street from my work place. Not particularly cute or something. More of a plain Jane than anything else. The first time I noticed her was in the canteen in our building. Not only people from my company had lunch there.

I was hunkering down on the floor, trying to pick up my wallet and was just about to get up, when she inattentively manoeuvred her food laden tray extremely hard into my somewhat prominent voice box.

Since the tray came to a sudden halt, a bowl of hot stew skidded towards me and spilled into my face, trickling down on my shirt. She was over caring and worried that she might have caused some permanent damage. I could not speak and breathing proved to be difficult, as well. So she made me lie down on a bench in the canteen and bent from my head somewhat awkwardly forward to clean my face and shirt thoroughly with napkins. After she had finished, I got up, gesturing that I was fine and left quickly.

After five minutes, I had just arrived back in the office, when my phone rang. The secretary said that a very distraught girl named Mindy wanted to say sorry. These calls continued to happen for the duration of an entire week, always around lunchtime. On a Friday I turned to jelly and answered the call. She invited me for a coffee after work.

Needless to say that the outcome of this endeavour was almost as disastrous as the stew episode.

When she picked up my cup from the counter and brought it over to the table, she was so excited that she squeezed the paper cup so much that the lid popped off and the hot coffee spilled all over me. Again. Thanks to her thoroughness I looked presentable after ten minutes of meticulous cleaning. Again.

She was all in tears about how sorry she felt. Since I did not want to see her crying, and to stop her from sobbing in public, I said without due consideration that next time I would invite her for a drink. This made her smile. Again.

One day the following week after work we went to a place called Pedro’s. They are known for good wines and they serve tapas, as well. It usually is a quiet place. But when we arrived, an obviously inebriated man came tumbling out of the front door. Still following the tottering guy with my eyes, and very curious about what had happened to him, I left all my gentlemanliness and Mindy behind and was the first one to enter the door … well, I did not see it coming, not in a million years … and then it hit me … like a wrecking ball.

It all happened like in the Matrix, the film I mean. Slow motion. I turned slowly. Very slowly. Although in slow motion, everything that happened to me seemed to happen much quicker. The first thing I saw after the initial punch was one of my molars – a big one, number thirty I suppose – spinning through the air with beads of blood orbiting around the big tooth and its four roots like little red satellites.

I immediately knew that it was one of my precious teeth, because I connected the throbbing pain and the unmistakeable taste of iron in my mouth with the molar pirouetting in mid-air, right in front of me.

It was all slow motion. But unlike in the film, I was not able to move any faster than my surroundings. It felt like skipping rope in a pool of thick honey.

The next time I clearly saw it coming, but could not do anything about the situation. The adrenaline was released in the same manner, painstakingly slow and in spurts. The stimulus-response chain seemed way too long. So, neither fight nor flight were even viable options.

But still, an angry man’s fist was closing in with a ferocity that even slowness could not diminish. Now the other side of my face absorbed the impact of the punch, submissively. I could even see the skin of my cheek sluggishly wobbling up before my left eye. I faltered, but somehow managed not to fall. Respond, however, I did not. Could not.

Punch number three – the last one I remember – came from behind, unexpectedly. In retrospect, it felt like a rubber mallet for a high striker coming down on the back of my head. While tipping over like a plank, one of the very last things I saw, was my precious big molar in a pool of its now liquefied red satellites in the corner close to the bar. My face and body made heavy contact with the ground before stretching out flat on the wooden floor. Then, remarkably quick, I drifted off into unconsciousness.

As soon as I regained consciousness again, I started feeling absolutely whacked. Mindy was hanging over me with a worried, but smiling face. A pink napkin in her hand, she was dabbing the remaining blood from my bruised and swollen face. Next to me a huge pile of more, but deep red, napkins had gathered.

A minute later, I turned to the corner of the bar where the big molar had been lying in a pool of blood, but it was gone. I asked Mindy if she had seen my molar, but she said that she had not. With an awkward smile on her flinching face, she said that the dentist could easily fix my molar problem and it would feel even better than before. I found that remark rather strange.

Then the paramedics came and heaved me onto a stretcher, carried me outside, put me in the back of an ambulance and drove off. The next day Mindy came to visit me in the hospital. Through a bouquet of flowers, she started to tell me the story of last night.

Apparently, three guys had a fight over the bill, when one of them walked out on the other two and left the restaurant. When I entered the dimly lit premises, shortly thereafter, the other two equally intoxicated men mistook me for the guy who had actually made a run and almost beat the living daylight out of me until they realised that I was not their lost friend.

After quite some time Mindy had eventually managed to put the flower bouquet laboriously in the big clay vase on the table close to the window. Her cleavage, all of a sudden, caught my attention. Her V-neck jumper framed something very familiar. But I was not sure if my vision was trying to trick me.

It turned out that Mindy was a dental hygienist, quite an expert on teeth herself, working for a dentist in the building across from my office. She said that even though there usually was a long waiting list, she already got me an appointment with her boss for next Wednesday to fix my molar problem.

As soon as Mindy realised that I was staring at her chest, her face started jerking again. And all of a sudden, she seemed to be in a hurry. Walking backwards towards the door, she waved good bye and left me alone with the flowers in the otherwise empty and clinically white room.

The day of the dentist’s appointment came quickly. I was lying on the chair and the doctor was getting ready for the treatment, when Mindy entered the room. With her she brought a big pack of napkins and sat down next to me, smiling.

The moment Mindy bent over me, stretching open my mouth for the doctor to work with the instruments, a skilfully self-made necklace came hanging out from Mindy’s white blouse. On it a spotless white object with a professionally drilled hole in it. Under the pain caused by the dental instruments, the doctor’s relentless hand and last but not least Mindy’s necklace, an intended scream regrettably drowned unheard in my own saliva, which was gathering in my mouth. I only could stare aghast at the thin silvery cord dangling around Mindy’s neck, holding my molar.