Yesterday was a day to forget. I woke up early as usual, but I was thrilled that I didn’t have to work. Instead I wrote for four hours, went for a walk and went for a swim before my two o’clock dental appointment. It was my first visit to this dentist whose name I didn’t know. The office was a mile away from my apartment, so I walked there in the blazing heat, making sure I got there early because I had to fill out a ton of paperwork.

Well, they gave me the paperwork at about 1:45 p.m. I expected to see the dentist in fifteen minutes, so I went as fast as I could. Four other people waited in the waiting room.

2:00 p.m.

I finished the form and handed it off to the unhappy receptionist. The same people were sitting in the waiting room as before. It wasn’t like a fancy dentist’s office that I’d been to. It was rundown, felt more like an urgent care. It was a bad sign when more than two people were waiting before me. It was also a bad sign when there was a television mounted on the ceiling, showing daytime TV. General Hospital came on. I hadn’t watched that show in decades.

2:15 p.m.

I figured, what the hell. There’s nothing to do today. I have all the patience in the world. A patient came out of the actual dentist’s office and waited in the waiting room again. That was another bad sign. What else were they waiting for?

2:30 p.m.

More people showed up. An old couple. A middle-aged man who also had to fill out a form. The body count was then eight people and growing. A young woman was celebrating her birthday on General Hospital, and then it cut to a dramatic scene between a man and a woman. The man looked out of shape. He didn’t belong on a soap opera. The woman wasn’t that attractive either. More people came out of the back and waited in the waiting room. Body count: ten people. My patience was wearing thin.

2:45 p.m.

Body count: back down to eight. People who were there before me were called in to see whoever the dentist was in that old office. I had the feeling I would be waiting there all afternoon and was tempted to leave.

2:55 p.m.

The young woman on General Hospital finished her birthday celebration by blowing out the candles on the cake. And one of her guy friends announced he was running for mayor. He would restore justice back to the city. The dramatic scene between the man and the woman reached its dénouement when the woman left his apartment, and he stared into his glass of gin (or was it vodka?) some clear fluid. Ah. So he was an alcoholic. Fade out. Credits rolled. I was about to leave.

3:00 p.m.

The same amount of people were in the waiting room. The old couple lost their patience, so the old lady limped up to the receptionist desk to ask what was taking so long. I tried to listen in but couldn’t hear what the receptionist was saying.

3:15 p.m.

The Kelly Clarkson Show had already begun after General Hospital. Man, did she lose a lot of weight. I didn’t know. It went to show how much daytime TV I watched. She brought out a country singer, and they had a banal conversation. I texted my mother. Should I just get up and leave? I never heard back from her.

3:30 p.m.

I was shaking my knee, ready to lose my mind in there.

“Ben?”

It was a miracle. I grabbed my backpack and hurried towards the nurse before she would change her mind.

She took me through the back to an X-ray room where they did that annoying thing and placed that uncomfortable rubber piece in different angles in my mouth and took pictures.

3:45 p.m.

The back of the dentist’s office resembled the dungeon in the film Hostel. Except I didn’t hear a leaking pipe. It was a mistake choosing this dentist. We all make mistakes. The nurse led me to a dentist chair in a room where there were no barriers for other patients. I walked past a woman who looked as if she was suffering through a root canal: a lot of drilling with a pair of shades over her eyes. I sat in the dentist’s chair. The nurse asked me questions such as if I was feeling any discomfort.

“Just gum irritation but nothing to be alarmed about.”

The nurse typed into a computer.

“The dentist will be with you shortly,” she said before she walked away.

I knew what “shortly” meant in there.

4:00 p.m.

I remained lying in the chair, staring out a window where the blinds were crooked. Only a rundown dentist’s office would have something like that. I couldn’t see them but I listened to a nurse or someone shouting in a foreign language at one of the patients. Man, did I make a mistake coming there.

4:15 p.m.

The dentist stepped in. Finally, after my appointment was at 2:00 p.m., but I didn’t complain. She looked at my X-rays and checked my mouth. She never asked what I did for a living, which was a first. She wore glasses with a protective plastic shield and a surgical mask. Maybe that Hostel movie wasn’t too far off.

”Open wide, please, “ she said.

She started that game where the nurse came in and the dentist started spouting off numbers two, three, four… Four, two, two, two, three, three, four, four, three, three, two…

Anxiety mounted as I knew not what those numbers meant.

After the numbers game, she left me alone in there again.

4:30 p.m.

The dentist returned with her assistant. I could barely understand her because of her accent and the surgical mask, but it sounded to me as if she said filling replacement. Damn it.

”You have receding gums,” she said.

She made me hold a mirror while she opened my mouth and showed me a tooth where the gum receded so far back that I could see my root. It was hideous. I wished she wouldn’t have shown me. I had no choice in the matter but to accept the filling replacement. I never even got a cleaning after waiting in there for two and a half hours. Her assistant handed me a financial breakdown of what I would spend. Two hundred and fifteen dollars spent on the filling replacement after insurance. Could be much worse. But I would have to go back there, and I had to set a new appointment for three weeks later. At least I knew what to expect.