Wisdom and Teeth

Just before we started our sophomore year in college, my twin sister Samantha and I had to have our wisdom teeth out. We approached this event with some trepidation, having suffered for years under a sadistic orthodontist. I was most worried about whether the swelling would go down before went  back to school; I just didn’t want to appear back on campus looking like a chipmunk. But my sister had another worry: she had convinced herself , for reasons unknown, that she was going to die under the general anaethesia. Maybe it was reading the lengthy waiver, or maybe it was the briefing the nurse gave us in the pre-op appointment, but my poor twin was completely terrified that she would never wake up after the procedure. My parents reassured her as best they could, to no avail.

When the day of our surgery came, Samantha was a wreck. Our mom, annoyed both my sister’s needless anxiety and at having to be responsible for us for an entire day when we were nearly twenty years old  (this was way before helicopter parents) brought a huge stack of mail to the oral surgeon’s office and decamped in the corner of the waiting room to go through it. My sister hunched in the chair, biting her nails.

“You’re going to be fine,” I whispered. “Nothing’s going to happen! I promise.”

“I just have a bad feeling,” she said. “I know something’s going to go wrong.”

She was nearly in tears. When the nurse came out and called her name—“Samantha?” I jumped up instead; I had to show my sister we were going to be ok.

“I’ll go first,” I told the nurse, who was a little annoyed, but, looking at my sister, who was staring, wide-eyed  and anxious, she relented and let me come in first. I looked back at Samantha as I walked into the back: Don’t worry, I mouthed.

I got in the dentist’s chair, endured the unpleasant shots in the mouth and the IV, and waited to fall asleep. My teeth turned out to be a little more difficult than they intended, and the surgery took well over an hour. I woke up alone in the treatment room, with no idea how long I had been asleep;   my head was foggy and confused.  My first thought was of Samantha, sitting terrified in the waiting room, not knowing if I was ok.  I have to tell her, I thought. I have to tell her I didn’t die. .

I looked around, disoriented, not even sure I was in the same room as before. I was reclined on my back, the sliding instrument tray, now holding stacks of gauze,  at my shoulder.  I pushed the tray away and sat up, fuzzily, feeling as if I was underwater. I had to intercept my sister before they brought  her in!  Now! I swung my feet to the floor. Which way was the waiting room? I got to my feet, my vision a little blurred, and reached for the door. It took several tries to connect with the door handle, but I managed.   I opened the door to an empty hallway. I remembered, vaguely, where the waiting room was, and started walking. No one was around to stop me. I passed a bathroom and an empty treatment room, and then the receptionist, who was on the phone and didn’t see me. I reached the door to the waiting room and pulled it open.

During my surgery, the waiting room had filled with other patients. My mom was still in the corner, reading a gardening catalogue. My sister was still sitting hunched in an orange plastic chair, staring at the floor. I opened my mouth to tell my sister not to worry. What came out of my mouth, however,  sounded like anguished groan of a wounded sasquatch: GGRRNNNRRGH!!

My sister looked up, and her jaw dropped at the sight of me: my wild, unfocused eyes, the blood smeared on my blue paper bib, and the bloody pink drool running down both sides of my face as I tried to talk through sixteen stitches and the baseball-sized wad of gauze shoved in my mouth. I tried again: UMMMRRRGGHHH! Why couldn’t I speak? I waved both arms in frustration, adding to the Sasquatch effect, and lurched closer to my sister. Samantha screamed at the top of her lungs.

It was then I registered the looks of terror on everyone in the waiting room, and realized that perhaps, this had not been such a good idea. Small children gazed at me in rapt horror. Mothers tried to cover their eyes. My mom dropped her gardening catalogue and stood up, gasping. The receptionist hurried out from the behind the desk, followed by the nurse who had come to check on me and found me, alarmingly, gone.They each took one of my elbows and guided me gently back to my chair, hissing in my ear: “You shouldn’t be awake yet!” “You’re scaring everyone to death!” Another nurse rushed out to reassure everyone in the waiting room.

They  steered me back into my chair, followed by the surgeon, who came running into check on me.

“She woke up a whole half hour early,” the nurse whispered.

 Apparently, I slept for another hour.  My sister’s procedure, despite her now even more ramped up terror, went perfectly fine. A few hours later, our mom brought us home and put us in bed with popsicles and Percocet. I did have to go back to school looking like a chipmunk, and spent a miserable three days in my dorm hiding and eating cold soup out of a can. My sister, whose college went back a little later, got to convalesce at home.

Despite this  incident, my sister became a doctor. She sometimes tells nervous patients the story about how her sister tried to make her feel better, only to have it backfire in the worst way possible. It always makes them laugh.