The whirling vortex in my head wound down to a grinding stop, and I opened my eyes to slowly take a look around.
I was in a wide beige chair, arms at the sides tied tight with leather straps, legs restrained similarly, and a bright incandescent yellow light in my eyes that held the promise of pain; a throbbing, pulsing, pounding pain far more than any other thing about my situation could. Funnily enough, I was reminded of Deadpool, and Wolverine, and many such cinematic tropes, but this was real.
I could move my head, though it didn’t do me much good. I looked around to take in my surroundings, and found that I was in some sort of clinic or hospital, with an overwhelming stench of disinfectants and people rushing around outside a door with a boxed frosted glass window, wearing aprons and what not.
There was a man in a dirty stained white apron, wearing blue surgeon’s gloves and a mask over his mouth and nose, holding what seemed to be a syringe filled with God only knows what, waiting for me to regain my senses. He smiled at his assistant nearby, a nurse with an apathetic sneer, and weakly said, “Let the games begin…”.
He gestured at her, and she brought him a tray filled with drills, drill bits, surgical equipment, and a God-awful array of other things that were covered with a blue cloth.
I could sense the sadistic smile under the surgeon’s (doctor’s? masked mad man’s? Who knew?) mask as he advanced on me. He was about to impale me with that syringe, and there was nothing I could do about it. I screamed for all my might, but apparently, someone had turned off the volume. “Good, good, my boy. Open wide!”, he said, apparently enjoying my discomfort. I’d left my mouth open, in a rictus of imagined pain and horror, and he quickly crossed the distance to me and held my jaw with one hand, while plunging the needle into my upper gums with his other.
To say that I saw stars was the understatement of the century. I tried to whip around with my whole body, this way and that, but paralysis was setting in, and I could literally feel the numbness take hold of my senses and dull it down to a little afterthought. “I’m done for, I’ll never see my parents again, I’ll never get married, I’ll never play another game of cricket, etc.”, these were the thoughts running through my head. I was worried that he would extract my kidney and sell it, oddly enough, for an iPhone, I thought. “Shut up! What’s wrong with me??”, I thought. Here I was, being butchered and I was thinking about an iPhone. A gold coloured one. 128 GB, with the latest iOS updates.
In the meantime, the doctor/surgeon/mad-man-in-a-mask picked up a drill and started testing various drill bits in it, each pointed and threaded, sharp enough to split an atom if it so chose. The nurse took advantage of my paralysis and clamped my face with one of those contraptions you only expect Hannibal Lecter to use, except in this case, to keep my mouth open. I was thinking, “You idiots, you can’t take my kidney through my mouth!!! Bloody fools!”. The doctor smiled and slapped my on my left cheek, which was now swollen up. The drill bit, now whirring away in all its glory, inches from my nose, threatened to find oil and natural gas, within the depths of my mouth. British Petroleum would be proud of this drill. I closed my eyes, in fear. “Oh dear God, what horrible teeth you have. We’re going to do something about that eh?”, I heard. “Kidneys, my kidneys…”, I moaned.
And suddenly, just like that, I opened my eyes again. I was at the dentist’s. My father was at one corner of the room, laughing his guts out. The dental surgeon was giving me a strange smile. The nurse, looked on benevolently, with an unfathomable expression. “Seems like he’s out of anesthesia, Doctor. Shall I prep the mould for the impression?”. The doctor nodded gravely.
And then I remembered. Root canal surgery. A painful abscessed, swollen gum and tooth-ache. No kidneys. No iPhone.
Sadness, all around. My father still won’t tell me of my mutterings when I went under anesthesia, but he says he has never laughed so hard. I have resolved to never visit that dentist/crazy-fricking-psychopath-with-a-drill again.
Aigis Nalian 