Whoops - time flies! Thanks for the feedback as always.
Chapter Four
Hannah led me down the corridor and into a treatment room on the left. The room was light, spacious, and private with just one chair, not like those bustling open-plan clinics Beth had seen on American Youtube channels. There was light classical music playing in the background – Rachmaninoff she thought it might be.
A second woman in scrubs had her back to door as she arranged trays of various implements on the sideboard. She quickly turned and greeted Beth warmly.
“Welcome, Beth. It’s wonderful to have you here. I’m Dr. Kate and it’ll be mine and Hannah’s pleasure to look after you. I guess you already met the twins?”
“Yes, thank you. It took me a while to realise they were actually twins, I must say”, explained Beth.
“I know! At least they’re easy to tell apart now. And of course, it’s so convenient for me having my own daughters work with me.”
“Wait… the girls are your daughters?”, Beth asked, stunned that she’d missed that genetic resemblance too.
“That’s right”, Dr. Kate continued. “Lexi’s is here full time. She’s our little rebel, and I like to keep my eye on her”, she said, jokingly. “And Holly just pops in when she has time between other jobs. They recently turned 21 so Holly at least is back off to university to do her Masters quite soon. Anyway, enough about me. Let’s have a look at you, Beth. Hop up and get yourself comfortable in the chair, and Hannah will prepare you for the exam”.
Beth settled herself into the chair and Hannah reclined it towards her. Hannah started with a thorough clean of Beth’s teeth, and there followed an hour of Dr. Kate’s examinations. She physically examined Beth’s mouth, took a series of X-Rays, and then photographs with Hannah stretching Beth’s lips and cheeks using metal retractors. Finally, impression trays were filled with alginate, which Hannah guided between Beth’s lips and pushed hard against her top and bottom teeth. All this time, Dr. Kate didn’t say a lot but wrote pages of notes and made a lot of barely audible tutting noises which Beth found particularly unsettling.
“OK, Beth”, she finally said, as she sat by the treatment chair and removed her mask. “There’s a quite a lot going on in there, and some of it quite difficult to deal with. Luckily that’s what I do best.” Dr. Kate reeled off her overwhelming list of observations.
“Obviously your biggest issue is your underbite. That’s going to cause you endless problems later in life if we don’t fix that. You’ve ended up with an open bite too, and your molars are sitting a lot lower that your other teeth. You probably know your top jaw is too narrow for your teeth to sit straight but your lower arch is also a bad shape. And all the crowding we can see in your front teeth is really just a result of all that other stuff.”
“Now normally, I’d be referring you straight for surgery, but I see from your forms that you don’t want that, is that right?”
“Er, yeah”, Beth replied timidly, quickly worried about what she’d got herself in to. “No surgery please”.
“Alright, I’m sure I’ll think of something”, continued Dr. Kate, more reassuringly. “But you have to know there are no quick fixes for issues like yours. And I need commitment from you to make it work, and to keep up my perfect results record.”
Beth’s mind darted back to her conversation with Holly, and she couldn’t help herself asking the obvious question. “Dr. Kate? Where did Holly get her braces treatment?”
Dr. Kate looked like it was a strange question to ask, and I guess to her it was. “I did it myself, obviously”, she answered with a confused tone. “But Holly did exactly as she was told, of course.”
She continued, quickly changing the subject back to Beth: “I need to work out your treatment plan, Beth. I don’t feel you have a lot of options here, so I suggest you make your next appointment with the girls for three weeks’ time, and we just get on with it. I think there’s something we can try that isn’t too invasive.”
Beth nodded, meekly. “And what if it doesn’t work?”, she asked, concerned.
“Don’t you worry”, said the doctor. “I always get my results!”