At this point, I’m awake and active, though ranking somewhat lower than slime mold on the sentience scale. I’m relatively certain that I slept last night – there’s a six hour hole in my evening, and I didn’t wake up covered in blood. Though you can’t prove it to me by any method that requires measurement of restedness, ’cause I ain’t got none.
Sleep was thankfully inevitable, after a couple of nights nearly devoid of it due to my wife’s suffering. The dentist appointment in the morning was not very encouraging, in fact it was fairly alarming. She needed oral surgery, and she needed it right now. Under a crown, one of the roots of a root-canaled tooth had fractured, and there was severe infection, reaching out to surrounding roots. The expanse of the infection was why no pain medication was having any effect at all.
Quite, quite good, incidentally.
So I spent most of the late afternoon, into the evening, sitting in the waiting room. I read Osamu Tezuka’s Ode to Kirihito in its entirety – and it is not a thin book – and started on another. My emergency throwdown book was DC Showcase Presents The Brave and the Bold Vol. 3, which is early 1970’s Batman team-ups, but after the intense and complex Kirihito, the novelty of seeing Batman exclaim, “Right on!” failed to satisfy. Eventually, about a thousand dollars later, they released her to my care.
One of the first questions she asked me, while waiting for the elevator, was, “Could you hear me out in the waiting room?” “Um, no…” “Good.”
As much of the infection as possible was removed, of course, and a bone graft inserted. Apparently he had shot the area full of anesthetic before she left, with a caution that after it wore off, quote, “Katy bar the door,” unquote, a phrase which has never made any damn sense to me, but I’m not an M.D. Took her home, spent another 40 minutes at the pharmacy, went home to cook a late dinner for myself and The Boy. The patient was satisfied with only a Smoothie.
Oh, Katy bar the door, indeed. Vicodin still wasn’t doing much good for her mouth, but eventually she did get to sleep. She didn’t have much choice, by that point. I doubt she’d slept more than a few hours the entire weekend. She seemed better this morning, but still inclined to mass murder if she only felt better. I left her int he company of Vicodin, two different antibiotics, and a prescription mouthwash.
Me? I’m trying like hell to stay awake and get my story on the Fall Faculty Art Show edited. I’ll probably absent myself a bit early to go home and hopefully sleep before I go pick up The Boy from school. The story’s in pretty good shape, needing only my open and close and some B-roll over the interviews. And graphics. And a music bed. And…
Aw, crap, I’m never getting home.
"That's him, officer! That's the one!"
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