BooksBarbecue
Back Bad Apples
Chapters (65)
  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
  65. Acknowledgements

I close my eyes tight shut. It feels like his drills and instruments are probing so deep into my jaw they may come out inside my throat or through my chin. The noises and sensations and vibrations are exacerbated.

The light levels change in the room.

I snap my eyes open.

But he’s just adjusting his anglepoise lamp.

He washes his gloved hands again and says, ‘I think this will be a fine result.’

I turn my ankles to try to loosen the duct tape. I pull my wrists up and down. Twist my hips. Arch my back. No progress.

‘Nurse, could you give the patient some water, please.’

Julia moves the suction pump around inside my mouth vacuuming up debris and saliva. She squeezes drops of water from her hamster-drink bottle and I swallow them. Everything tastes wrong. Blood mixed with banana-flavour antiseptic liquid. And the tooth feels so hollow, like there’s a draught inside it. Like the wind blows over it and down inside the cavity.

Little Dan. I should be babysitting him right now. Watching Back to the Future or Ghostbusters or ET. Any one of dad’s old movies that I still watch from time to time because he loved them. I still laugh at the same scenes he laughed at. The same lame jokes. I cry where he cried. I can still feel him behind me on the sofa when I get to the end of ET. His hand on my shoulder. My hand on his hand. Him telling me it’s not sad, it’s happy, through his own tears.

‘In normal circumstances,’ says Tobias, enunciating clearly with his lips. ‘I’d wait a week…’ I can’t decipher his next few words, and then he says, ‘Start filling in a few minutes.’

I wriggle my wrists. I twist my forearms. The duct tape is loosening a little but it doesn’t help me. Just millimetres. It’d take me days to work these loose. Weeks.

And then I feel something digging into the underside of my wrist.

Hurting me.

Scratching me.

It’s a paperclip.

It’s the paperclip I used that night to pick Ragnar Falk’s lock.

59

‘Do you mind if I photograph your tooth? We dentists need your approval these days.’

I nod.

Because I want him to focus on my mouth. Not my right hand. Take as many photos as you like.