Theresa Lewis

One of my duties as a dental assistant was to teach our patients about good oral hygiene. I enjoyed this one-on-one aspect of my job and it was a good break from the physical strain of chair-side assisting. Our office was at the end of a long hallway in a building with eight other dentists.

One day, a university student called Ralph, who was six feet six inches tall and very, very skinny, phoned in and made his appointment. He was my first client of the day and I was well prepared and looking forward to doing my job.

Once our pleasantries were exchanged, I gave him a red dye tablet to chew with instructions not to swallow. The red dye was designed to show him where he had missed with his brushing and flossing. When he spit out the residue into the cuspidor, I handed him a large magnifying mirror to see the dye stained plaque on his teeth and gums.

As soon as Ralph looked in the mirror, he fainted. Out cold, dead to the world. Thank God, he was lying down on the dental reclining chaise at the time. It took me a few minutes, but I managed to get him back. I asked him what happened and he said he didn’t know. I gave him a glass of water and asked him if he was well enough to continue.  He said he was fine and didn’t know why he had fainted in the first place.

I handed the mirror to him again so we could continue. Again, as soon as he looked in the mirror, I lost him. This time, however, he kind of dribbled off the chair and was sliding onto the floor. I jumped behind him and grabbed onto the top of his beltless jeans and held on for dear life so he wouldn’t fall off the chair completely and hurt himself. His dead weight nearly tore my arms out of their sockets and it gave him the worst wedgie he had ever had. Finally he came around.

This time, I told him we would have to re-schedule his appointment because he was clearly in no condition to go through with that one. He agreed. He said every time he saw blood; it would cause him to faint. Even though I explained to him that it was only red dye on his teeth and not blood, the dye still seemed to have the same effect on him. He wanted to go outside and get some fresh air. I went with him to make sure that he was okay to leave.

It was a long walk down that hallway to the fresh air outside. We were almost at the end of the hallway when I noticed that Ralph appeared to be shrinking. At first, his legs seemed to buckle and he appeared to be going down straight, but suddenly he began to pitch forward. I had been walking down the hallway a little behind him, but when I saw I was about to lose him again, my first instinct was to protect his head and prevent him from crashing down face first onto the floor.

I lunged forward and grabbed him by his long shaggy hair to hold his head up. My lunge caused both of us to go crashing into the door of a dental surgery room where a dentist was working on a client. Their door flew open and banged against the wall. Luckily, that dentist’s client had her back to the open door. I still had Ralph by the hair to keep his head up. He was deathly white with his mouth open. He had red dye all over his teeth, lips and gums. Red dye drool was coming from his mouth.

I gently put Ralph’s head on the floor and ran back to drag his lifeless body by one leg back a few feet into the hallway so I could close the door. The dragging left a red dye trail from his saliva and lips on the white tile floor, but that was the least of my worries at that time.

He came around again and I managed to get him outside without further ado. I sat with him on the steps outside and asked him if had eaten breakfast that day and the answer was no, he hadn’t eaten for a couple of days. I ran back inside and fetched my lunch and sat with him until he finished every bite. He said he felt better after having eaten something. He still looked mighty pale to me, but that I knew was Ralph’s usual pasty color.

Before letting him go, I gave him a hug and asked him to call me to reschedule his appointment He assured me that he would, but I never heard from Ralph again.

The End