Chapter Six

For the next few days, Beth felt mired in her own misery, especially as she felt she’d brought it all on herself. Her teeth ached as she’d expected for the first 24 hours or so, but it was on the second day that the combination of all those expansion screw-turns delivered real pain as Beth’s teeth started to be pushed in all kinds of new directions. To her great credit, in the first week Beth had managed to keep her braces in for almost as long as Dr. Kate had asked for, even though it had meant that she had hardly left the little house in all that time. The facemask however had laid unused, and very unloved, on the dressing table save for a couple of hours one evening.

Jess took the approach of kindly support, with a steady supply of tea, soup and mushy food, but she knew that would have to develop into tough love if Beth was ever going to learn to live with her braces.

“Come on, you…”, Jess insisted on the next Saturday morning, “… we’re going out. There might even be lunch and a glass of wine in it for you!”

At first reluctantly, but soon with the realisation that the rest of world probably didn’t care about Beth’s face full of braces, she agreed to a walk in the nearby nature park, a pub lunch, and if she passed those tests, a supermarket shop too. She guided the pair of bulky acrylic structures into her mouth and pushed hard to snap-fit the mass of curled wires around her teeth. Her natural reactions to the braces kicked in straight away, and a choking mass of saliva collected at the back of Beth’s mouth, making her gag noisily.

The tranquillity of the rural outdoors was very welcome for Beth, and there were so few people about that a couple of awkward smiles was as embarrassing as human interaction got. She got to take her twin blocks out to eat in the pub too and she noticed that since it was almost a week since she’d had them fitted, they slid back over her teeth quite easily when the girls came to leave. The shopping trip earned her one or two long glances from the curious public but all in all she’d felt it was a successful day of confidence re-building.

That evening, whilst Jess cooked, Beth used her new resolve and went upstairs to fit on her facemask. A soft tear still gathered as she pulled her cheeks back to snap the heavy elastic bands on her twin block hooks, then stretched them tightly to loop over the horizontal bar of the facemask. The strength of the force was immediate, and as she stared at her own ridiculous image in the mirror, she allowed that tear to fully form and make its slow, damp journey down Beth’s face, tracing the shadow on her cheek cast by the metal bar she looked through.

Jess’s cooking and a bottle of Chablis as a treat helped restore some joy, and Beth made it through the rest of the evening in only minor discomfort and a new-found readiness to make the most of her treatment. After three fortifying glasses, she even let Jess help by turning the six expanders using the little key which Dr. Kate had given her. She even played along with Jess’s plan to play quiz games, just to be able to practice speaking and getting her dreadful lisp under control.

Although Beth was finding all her speech difficult, she was having major struggles with certain letters. The blocks between her teeth stopped her from forming an S sound properly, and not being able to move her tongue around freely meant every T, D and K was slurred and airy.

The next few weeks passed slowly, with Beth not yet finding the confidence to resume dating or interviewing for jobs, not long ago her two main life goals. She tried to keep up with Dr. Kate’s demands of filling her mouth with the twin blocks for 23 hours every day, and strapping on the monstrous facemask for 18 of those, but always seemed to fall short. Eventually, her check up appointment came, and Beth nervously drove over to the orthodontic clinic for a third time.

Chapter Seven

Beth went into the building to be greeted by both Lexi and Holly again. The girls both beamed welcomingly with their very different dentition being all the more striking; Holly with her gleaming teeth in perfect alignment, and Lexi with her crowded overbite forcing her front teeth forwards but, Beth thought, looking no less pretty than her sister. Beth managed an awkward smile in return, since she thought she’d better turn up to her appointment wearing at least her twin blocks, despite how lax she’d been at wearing them over the last week or two.

“I’m so sorry, they’re running a little late today”, Holly told Beth.

“Yeah, Mum had one poor victim in there for hours this morning!”, rebellious Lexi chimed in, adding a cheeky wink in a mostly unsuccessful attempt to reassure Beth that she was at least half-joking.

“Have a seat anyway, and I’ll bring you a drink while you wait”, Holly offered. Beth sat in the small waiting area and fidgeted restlessly in anticipation. Holly, being aware of her unease, brought hot tea and a glass of water and took a moment to sit beside Beth. Beth noticed for the first time as Holly moved from behind her desk how elegantly attractive she was, perhaps 5’9” tall and dressed in a summery floral jumpsuit with cute leather sandals.

“How are you finding it so far?”, Holly asked, though the answer was obvious. Beth simply sighed noisily and met Holly’s eye contact, unable to quite find the words to describe her simultaneous excitement at actually starting treatment and the miserable disappointment at how incredibly hard she was finding wearing the braces. Holly again seemed to read Beth’s feelings exactly.

“Even I found my treatment tough, and I’d grown up knowing Mum was a brilliant orthodontist”, Holly confided.

“Really? Did you have to wear anything as bad as these?”, Beth asked.

“Not exactly like that, but I had all sorts of appliances to sort my teeth out. Mum had tried to get us both to get fitted for braces when we were 9 or 10 but neither of us would do it. Finally, a few years later, Lex and I decided to do it together. I stuck it out until I was 17 but Lex only lasted 6 months!”

“Wow, it really worked though!”, Beth exclaimed. “What was it like?”

Holly went on: “The first one was a massive thing, all in this heavy red plastic with wires all over my top teeth which used to stick out all over the place. Mum called it a Bionator, I think. The idea was to get my bottom jaw to grow forwards and stop my front teeth getting any worse. I only had to keep it in at home and overnight but I remember how horrible it was to try and talk with it in, so I feel your pain with those blocks, Beth.”

“So that lasted a year or so, then I had an expander glued in on my top teeth for about the same time. That was pretty rough too, I must say, especially when I had to activate it and it started making little gaps all over my top teeth. Mum also had me wear a cervical headgear at night for a few months to keep pulling my top teeth back and fix my overbite. That was definitely the worst bit, but again it was just at night, though you can bet I never got a night off when I was at home!”

“Lastly, when that was all done, I got the usual fixed braces on by tops and bottoms. They were actually alright to live with, though I was always sore after check-ups and adjustments. To be honest, they straightened up my smile in a year and a half, but Mum being the perfectionist she is, didn’t want me to have them off until every last detail was perfect. That took about the same amount of time again, so I had them for just under three years in all! I’m grateful now of course, but it was a long slog at the time, especially being a teenage girl in school and college even though I didn’t personally mind the look of them.”

“So yeah – five years in the making, these are!”, Holly joked and again flashed her faultness smile at Beth.

Beth was amazed at Holly’s resilience in having such a long treatment time, but the results certainly spoke for themselves, she thought. It was also reassuring to hear that whilst Dr. Kate was undoubtedly a ruthless obsessive for perfection, she might not quite be the cruel sadist that Beth had feared after her initial braces fitting. Whilst Holly returned to her work, Beth continued to wait for another ten minutes until dental assistant Hannah came to lead her through to the treatment room.

Beth felt her heart pounding as she followed Hannah into the room and got settled into Kate’s treatment chair. Dr. Kate made simple pleasantries and got to work straight away, pulling her surgical mask on, reclining a nervously fidgeting Beth, and preparing an array of metallic inspection tools.