Hap Gerrish

The dental chair reclines and I nuzzle my head against the headrest as the paper bib scuffs my chin, its metallic ball chain still cold around my neck. The only sounds: Paul Harvey sharing “the rest of the story” from somewhere in the ceiling, water swirling in the porcelain bowl beside me, and Dr. Gerrish humming his little tunes--each of them merry as the man himself. I’ve known Harold T. “Hap” Gerrish, D.M.D., since age 2 and have only ever seen joy in his eyes. For a dentist, he’s remarkably easy to like. Too, he inspires (in me, anyway) an unusually high level of trust. Some people fear dentists for the pain they cause. Suffer enough of it, though, and you learn to trust. Deeply. 

    Hap greets me with a handshake and makes small talk, asking about my parents, my schooling, the skiing at Squaw. Then he turns to his workstation and, apropos of nothing, reels off a limerick.

On the chest of a barmaid at Yale

Were tattooed the prices of ale

And on her behind, for the sake of the blind

Was the same information in braille

I chuckle and look around the room. Straight ahead: the fireplace of what had once been the foyer of this old farmhouse. To its left: three plastic horses standing in a row upon the windowsill. They’ve stood there for as long as I can remember, just as the framed 1957 Saturday Evening Post Cover has hung on the wall for as long as I can remember. The print shows a young boy sitting in his dentist's chair, looking extremely apprehensive. Compared to me, this young man has little to worry about; I can almost guarantee it.  

     Dr. Gerrish reaches above his head to aim the lamp at my face. I squint against the brightness.

     “Open,” he says.

     I open.

    He pokes around my mouth with his dental pic and a mirror for a few seconds, then twirls the pick in his fingers and taps a molar with its end. He reaches for his spray gun and shoots air at the tooth.  “That hurt?”

    “Hurt” is an understatement, but I won’t admit it. “You got my attention,” I tell him. 

    Dr. Gerrish resumes humming and reaches for my chart. He lifts a corner of my x-ray and reviews the handwritten notes beneath it. “Okay, young fella. Let's do number thirty and thirty-one today, the molars right here,” he says, touching his fingers to his lower right jaw. “They're both critical...”  He tosses the chart onto his workstation and looks me in the eye.  “...and they're probably gonna hurt like hell. But they've got to be done.”

    “You're the boss.”

    The old dentist grins and I see his teeth, off-white from age and nicotine but perfect in every other way. “You're tough,” he assures me, “you can take it.”  He knows, as I do, that I have little choice in the matter.  

     For most people, having a cavity filled is a trying experience under the best of circumstances. I, though, have never enjoyed the best of circumstances. In fact, I’m likely one of the most unfortunate patients—perhaps the most unfortunate patient—in Hap Gerrish's decades-long career. Years earlier, my mother had told the dentist (wrongly, I will someday learn) that I’m allergic to the “caine” family of anesthetics. The result: Dr. Gerrish fills my cavities “au naturale.” Most dentists would refuse the work for fear of a lawsuit or making a mistake on a writhing patient. Not Hap.

    The dentist sets up his tray table while I seek a spot on the ceiling on which to focus while he drills. Fixing my eyes on a singular point will help keep my body still. It’s a skill I taught myself and have had ample opportunity to hone. You see, Dr. Gerrish has been working on my teeth for months.

     The previous fall, my orthodontist removed my braces to discover more than three dozen cavities. Poor oral hygiene and a steady diet of candy, Coca-Cola, and sugar-ladened cereal, had taken their toll. Still just thirteen years of age, my teeth were literally rotting in their sockets. I’ve been sitting in this chair once a week ever since.

     The dentist lifts his drill from its holder, gives it a couple of quick revs, and turns to me.

    “Ready?”

    “As ready as I'm gonna get.”

    “Hang on tight,” he says, still smiling.  “Open.”

    I open and he leans in, his face fading into the shadow of the dental lamp above his head. Bright light reflects off the corner his gold rim glasses. The drill begins its haunting whir, and I clutch the armrests so hard that my hands hurt, but it helps distract me from the pain I know is coming.

    The drill bit, sharp and pointed, pushes against my rotted tooth and bits of enamel spray against my cheek and tongue. The radius bones of my arms push against my skin as I tighten my grip on the chair, steeling myself against the hurt, which I know will only get worse. Suddenly, I smell the smoke—from burning enamel and dentin—as it rises from my mouth and into my nostrils. Dr. Gerrish's drill provides water to reduce the frictional heat between tooth and drill bit, but it’s not enough to prevent the smoke and its horrifying smell. It’s like smelling my own cremation. I feel the pointed pressure of the drill against my molar as Hap grinds part of it away. The pain spikes and begins to consume me, and my neck muscles tighten like piano strings as I try to stay still.

      The drill stops.  “Rinse,” says Hap.  I pick up the small plastic cup with trembling fingers and take a sip. The dentist, drill in hand and still smiling, stands at the ready. “Swish it around,” he says. I swish, then spit into the white ceramic bowl and watch my tooth fragments, in shades of white and brown, catch the flow of water and circle toward the drain. I lift the bib to my face and wipe my mouth, and as I sit back, my hands instinctively grip the chair again. Hard.

    “This one is almost finished,” he says. 

    “Easy for you to say,” I tell him, trying for levity.

    Hap's smile turns sympathetic.  “I'm going as fast as I can for you, I promise.”  Then he says, “Open,” and the drill resumes its whir.

    I shut my eyes and the afterimage of Dr. Gerrish's lamp burns in my private darkness. The dentist bores deep into the dentin above the root and nerve. The pain is immediate and jarring. There's more of that awful smell, more debris splattering inside my mouth, and the hurt is so great that I worry about whether the chair's headrest can withstand my pushing against it. At least I'm staying still. That's the important part. I open my eyes and see tiny drops of water spraying out of my mouth and onto the lenses of the doctor’s glasses. The drill bit draws closer to a nerve and the pain crosses a new threshold. I wonder if this moment will ever end. The roots, nerves and blood vessels of my molar are nearly exposed to atmosphere, nearly exposed to Dr. Gerrish's tungsten carbide drill bit. Please let him be almost finished, I think. Worse than the smoke or the pain: I feel vulnerable. I’m naked in the cold, stumbling on lake ice with bare feet, trying to find my way home. I'm scared.

    “Go ahead and rinse.”

    I drink the pale green minty water and spit bits of tooth and blood. Then I lay my head back in dentist’s chair. 

     “Alright, Trav,” he says, still smiling, “One more and we'll be done for today.”