chapter twelve

And in the gloom of the office, Alice unlocked and then opened the frosted glass door and pushed it to find the files and dental x-rays of thousands of teeth spread about the floor looking like so many sheets of paper and thinly filmed dental x-rays spread across the floor of a dentists office not yet opened for the day. It was 7.30am and it would take hours, days to get these rearranged again. She whistled through her teeth a thin, disgusted whine. If anyone wanted their proper dental x-rays, they may not have them. An 86 year old man with dentures may be getting the records of a first tooth cleaning of a seven year old. Maybe he would be young again. Maybe this is the secret of immortality, Alice thought, teeth. Teeth were the soothsayers of age and experience. While you are young, they are there and then fall out when you gain a few years, baby teeth and then you get ‘wisdom’ teeth and then you eventually lose those adult teeth for prosthetics and then hey maybe they get ground down continually? where did it all end, Alice didn’t know, but she knew that she had a hell of a mess to deal with. The thin films slipped through her hands. Damn and not even any coffee brewing, she thought miserably. She scooped a huge stack of x-rays into her arms and deposited them onto her desk. The coffee had to be started or she would never be able to face the day. But something drew her attention away from the promise of light and sweet. She walked to the front door and stooped to pick up an errant x-ray. All the others had been near the filing cabinets, but this one had strayed from its brothers, maybe in someones arms. Damn kids, she thought, they’ll steal just about anything for kicks nowadays. to think that she would be re-filing all of this mess was one thing, but another thing entirely to believe that someone had made off with a pile of x-rays. Why Doctor Christos would had have to subject everyone to more blind rays while weighted beneath the ole lead apron. She lifted this one and absent-mindedly looked at it through the sun that was filtering through the still closed blinds behind her desk. Henry G. Timamann. Oh yeah, she mused, that guy, that little man with the jet black hair and the stooped posture. 70 if a day, but had the healthiest teeth. Not one cavity and never a thought about Polident because they were all his. Wasn’t he due in soon for a cleaning and check up? Her clerical and office managing skills kicked into overdrive and her mind saw a mental time clock and scheduling list of the day’s patients and responsibilities. Yes, he was due in today. Today. Isn’t that funny?