My ten-year-old daughter said she had a toothache, so I planned to take her to the dentist.-olweny
And yes, he hid it.
The doctor pointed with the cursor to an area next to the root of the molar.
“There’s a crack,” he said. “It’s not an ordinary cavity. It’s an impact injury.”
My brain understood the words, but refused for a second to connect them with my daughter, with her morning school uniform, with her badly done braids and her unicorn drawings.
Impact.
In the mouth.
“Impact?” I repeated.
The doctor nodded without taking his eyes off the screen.
—Yes. Someone or something hit the tooth hard. It didn’t fracture completely, but enough to make it hurt like this when chewing.
I looked at Lily.
He lowered his head immediately.
“Did you fall?” I asked, feeling my throat getting tighter and tighter. “Did you hurt yourself playing, my love?”
She did not answer.
She barely shrank back in the armchair and looked at Daniel again.
That was the real blow.
Not the x-ray.
Not the crack.
The gaze.
The look of a little girl calculating whether she can tell the truth in front of the man who is accompanying her to a dentist with too much insistence.
Daniel spoke before she did.
“It was probably at school,” he said quickly. “He always comes home with bruises, you know how kids are.”
Dr. Harris turned slowly towards him.
“I don’t know, sir,” he said. “But I do know that the injury isn’t consistent with chewing something hard or with an old, ignored ailment. It was a blow.”
Lily began to cry silently.
Not with a scandal.
Worse.
With quiet tears sliding down her face while she kept her mouth closed as if even crying could get her into trouble.
