Toothache
Britton Andrews



Hey there, Doctor Walters, it’s Howard. Howard Fenton. I know my appointment’s not till Thursday, but, oh man, I’m having an issue. The whole right backside of my mouth, I don’t know if it’s an abscess or what, but my whole right side of my face is real hot. And, my whole top of my head, I mean, it’s just like it’s about to pop. I can’t sleep. I can’t lay down. I can’t do anything. My tooth is killin’ me. I don’t know if it’s an abscess or what’s goin’ on, but I mean I cannot do anything. So could you please give me a call as soon as possible? Thanks, Doc. I really need some help.

* * *

Howard was in so much pain he couldn’t make ice right.

Bev gave him some Percocets, called him in sick, and left for the nail salon. 

He spent the day at home, wrapping ice in a towel and slamming it against his jaw while he tried to watch the TV and waited for the Doc to call back. The phone rang once all morning, but it was just Bev checking on him. “Fine except for my head feeling like a damn firebomb. Unnecessary phone ringing don’t help shit.”

She hung up fast and hard, and he pictured one of those inch-long, glittery, plastic nails snapping off and tearing the real one with it. He hated those things. Couldn’t figure how she got through the day with them. She said she had to wear them to display for clients. He always snorted at that. “Clients? You ain’t exactly a lawyer, Bev.”

Afternoon wore on and the pills stopped what little work they’d been doing. The TV was no help, either. The game shows were so much racket they made the pain worse. The soaps were such snoozers they made the day longer. More waiting. More hurting. More wondering why that damned Doc wouldn’t call back.

Howard hurt too much to notice lunch had passed. His head was so full of dynamite, he couldn’t have figured out putting peanut butter on bread anyway. He could feel the hunger languishing somewhere underneath it all, though. Hunger fed the anger. 

He picked up the phone to call the Doc again, but couldn’t remember the numbers. Even if he could, the pain was bulging out to his right eye such that he couldn’t read the little digits on the keypad. He slammed the receiver down so hard it gave a single ring before shards of grey plastic splashed outward and to the floor. That little ring was such a clamor to him that he cursed it, sending his ice cubes tumbling out.

He went to refill his towel, but the ice trays were empty. He cursed and grabbed one. Turned around in what Bev called their little “single-ass” kitchen, tried to hold it under the faucet. An M-80 exploded in his jaw, threw sparks of pain up through his skull, made him drop the tray. He hollered out a string of hellfire and punched his knuckles bloody on the Formica countertop. Spun around, tore all six Blue Ribbons out the fridge.

* * *

Bev came home to find him fire-truck red and trembling with his cheek against the wall, surrounded by empties. She rushed to him, gasped. “Damn, Howie! You okay?”

He turned his face around to reveal the softball bulge in his cheek and a bleeding hole below his temple with flecks of paint stuck to it, a spider web of cracks in the wall converging on a dent shaped like his brow. His breaths like violent snores going in and tornadoes going out.

“Oh, baby! What happened?” She dropped down and pawed at him. “Howie? Talk to me, baby.”
Howard set his jaw tight, spit an order through his front teeth.

* * *

Bev’s brakes squealed like they were whistling death and her wood-paneled wagon stopped beside the white, tooth-shaped sign. Howard flung his door open, somehow stayed upright as he stumbled sideways to the front of the little redbrick office. Shouldered through the glass door and into the waiting room with his eyes closed and his right hand clutching his jaw.

Howard heard a girly voice whisper harshly, “I thought you locked the door!” A man’s voice came back, “Is that my job?”

He forced an eye open to see Debbie, the pink-haired receptionist, sitting on the fake leather sofa and pulling on a pink scrub top. Doc Walters tucked his shirt into his khakis. It felt like one of those giant Tremors snakes was trying to push out through the top of Howard’s skull and the Creamsicle walls were like vomit in his eyes. It was all he could do to stand upright, breathing his heavy storm, holding his bleeding glare on them.

“Howard?” Doc asked. “That you?” He was a little fella with slick hair and a gold pinky ring, a wedding band on the opposite ring finger. He was better at hiding his reaction to a horrible sight than poor, horny Debbie was.

“Why ain’t you called me back?” Howard’s voice came from somewhere in the back of the pain. It crawled out and clawed its way across the coffee table that separated him from them. The table was covered in Highlights magazines and cavity pamphlets that were held down with a brass paperweight shaped like a perfect set of teeth.

Doc responded with a question, but specific words couldn’t get into Howard’s head anymore. The pain now hummed, an electric fence that only allowed the vague notion of human sounds through.

“I called this morning!”

The whole world was muffled and red. The pain was a film over his eyes now. It was a thousand pounds and falling on the top of his head and bleeding into his eyes. He reached out to hold himself up, but he fell to his knees.

“I called you!” he cried upwards to Doc. After that, he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t get words past his teeth. But there were thoughts working their way through that expanding thickness, that blob of pain with the volcano center: how much it hurt, how Doc didn’t call him back. He thought about his message, sure that he had conveyed his pain. He thought about Doc taking his pecker out for a flamingo instead of checking in on him. He reached out for a grip on anything. Anything to squeeze and crush. To channel the pain into squeezing. The pain now crushing him, no longer expanding, but pulling everything into its center. Collapsing his skull. Crushing.

He felt a hand on his back and he gripped and spun. He felt something strong in his hand and sensed something to crush before him. He gripped and he hammered and he crushed.

* * *

Howard heard bells ringing and something shook his leg. The pain was dull and heavy, a constant wave of concrete churning through his head. Her screaming wasn’t helping, either. He felt the outline of teeth under his thumb. They felt flawless and strong and he wondered if Doc had fixed him.

He reached for the commotion in his pocket and came out with his cell phone. Something on his hand smelled like copper and it dripped onto the phone. He flipped the phone open to stop its ringing and held it up to his left ear, but couldn’t speak.

“Hello? Is this Howard? Howard… Fenton?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Oh, good. Hi. My name is Alvin Miller. You don’t know me, but I just got a message from you on my phone. I think it was meant for a doctor, or a dentist or something, though. And I just thought I should let you know you called the wrong number.”

Something twitched by Howard’s feet. A large shape that smelled like his Uncle Jack’s cologne.

“Howard?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Oh, thought I lost you. Well. Sure sounded like you were in some right good pain. Sorry to hear that. I hope you’re feeling better. And just wanted to make sure you knew you’d called my phone by accident.”

There was a whimpering behind him and the storm of his breathing.
​
“Hello? Howard?”

About the Author:
Britton Andrews is a writer from Virginia. He earned his MFA from Western Washington University. He currently lives and writes in Louisiana.
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