Open Wide

It sounded bad enough from the waiting room as the dentist dug out Lisa’s deeply impacted molar, piece by tiny piece. It was her first day out in years.

I knew Lisa when she was a children’s book illustrator and doing very well. That was before the agoraphobia kicked in and the work dried up. God knows what deeper psychosis had caused it. What must it be like to sit in that room, day in day out, year in year out, with your pills and your vodka, everything falling apart, dust and grime that made you cough and sneeze, and terrified to feel the fresh air and the sun upon your face. We literally had to drag her out to my car for that jolly trip to the dentist.

Back home, Lisa bawled through her butchered jaw, ‘I want a drink!’

‘You’ve had enough,’ Tom bawled back from somewhere. He hadn’t worked in years either.

They needed each other to yell at.