A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

“He not hurt you,” he murmured across to me confidentially. “Odder dantist say he very good, you no feel notting at all when he drill.”

I showed my gratitude by offering him a cigarette. Misery loves company.

With that, Steve Standish came in from the back, buttoning his white jacket. The moment he saw me professional etiquette was thrown to the winds. “Well, well, Rodge, so it’s finally come to this, has it? I knew I’d get you sooner or later!” And so on and so on.

I gave a weak grin and tried to act nonchalant. Finally he said in oh, the most casual manner, “Come on in, Rodge, and let’s have a look at you.”

I suddenly discovered myself to be far more considerate of others than I had hitherto suspected. “This — er, man was here ahead of me, Steve.” Anything to gain five minutes’ time.

He glanced at his other patient, carelessly but by no means unkindly or disdainfully. “Yes, but you’ve got to get down to your office — he probably has the day off. You in a hurry?” he asked.

“Thass all right, I no mine, I got no work,” the man answered affably.

“No, Steve, I insist,” I said.

“Okay, if that’s the way you feel about it,” he answered genially. “Be right with you.” And he ushered the other patient inside ahead of him. I saw him wink at the man as he did so, but at the moment I didn’t much care what he thought of my courage. No man is a hero to his dentist.

And not long afterwards I was to wonder if that little attack of “cold feet” hadn’t been the luckiest thing that ever happened to me.

Steve closed his office door after him, but the partition between the two rooms had evidently been put in long after everything else in the place. It was paper-thin and only reached three-quarters of the way up; every sound that came from the other side was perfectly audible to me where I sat, fidgeting and straining my ears for indications of anguish. But first of all there was a little matter of routine to be gone through. “I guess I’ll have to take your name and pedigree myself,” Steve’s voice boomed out jovially. “It’s my assistant’s day off.”

“Amato Saltone, plizz.”

“And where do you live, Amato?” Steve had a way with these people. Not patronizing, just forthright and friendly.

“Two twanny Thirr Avenue. If you plizz, mista.”

There was a slight pause. I pictured Steve jotting down the information on a card and filing it away. Then he got down to business. “Now what seems to be the trouble?”

The man had evidently adjusted himself in the chair, meanwhile. Presumably he simply held his mouth open and let Steve find out for himself, because it was again Steve who spoke: “This one?” I visualized him plying his mirror now and maybe playing around with one of those sharp little things that look like crocheting needles. All at once his voice had become impatient, indignant even. “What do you call that thing you’ve got in there? I never saw a filling like it in my life. Looks like the Boulder Dam! Who put it in for you — some bricklayer?”

“Docata Jones, Feefatty-nine Stree,” the man said.

“Never heard of him. He send you here to me?” Steve asked sharply. “You’d think he’d have decency enough to clean up his own messes! I suppose there wasn’t enough in it for him. Well, that headstone you’ve got in there is going to come out first of all, and you just pay me whatever you can afford as we go along. I’d be ashamed to let a man walk out of my office with a botched-up job like that in his mouth!” He sounded bitter about it.

The next thing that came to my ears was the faint whirring of the electric drill, sounding not much louder than if there had been a fly buzzing around the room over my head.

I heard Steve speak just once more, and what he said was the immemorial question of the dentist, “Hurting you much?” The man groaned in answer, but it was a most peculiar groan. Even at the instant of hearing it it struck me that there was something different about it. It sounded so hollow and faraway, as though it had come from the very depths of his being, and broke off so suddenly at the end.

He didn’t make another sound after that. But whatever it was it had taken more than a mere twinge of pain to make him groan like that. Or was it just my own overwrought nerves that made me imagine it?

An instant later I knew I had been right. Steve’s voice told me that something out of the ordinary had happened just then. “Here, hold your head up so I can get at you,” he said. At first jokingly, and then — “Here! Here! What’s the matter with you?” Alarm crept in. “Wake up, will you? Wake up!” Alarm turned into panic. “Rodge!” he called out to me.

But I was on my feet already and half across the waiting room, my own trivial fears a thing of the past. He threw the door open before I got to it and looked out at me. His face was white. “This fellow — something’s happened to him, he’s turning cold here in the chair and I can’t bring him to!”