Mr Crystal and the Austrian Dungeon

The light shone right in my eyes when it suddenly came on, like the dazzle of headlights on a night time country lane.

'Here, put these on' she said, and handed me a pair of unfashionable sun glasses. 'Now sit back and relax' said the efficient, matter-of-fact man. It was my dentist, Mr Crystal. I trust him and he has always been very reliable. He has pictures of his family and Manchester United in his office, and plays music while he works on my teeth. My thoughts start to drift as I sit back and relax. The Americans call their surgeries their office, and to be fair my 'surgery' looks more like an office than a surgery, so I'm going to call mine an office from now on.

Something slips under my top lip on the right and he turns away. I'm not yet sure what he's going to do today. One of my fillings had fallen out a few weeks ago, a temporary filling had also fallen out and I was expecting another temporary filling, but really I hadn't thought it through. 'It tastes like chewing gum' I say. 'It's bubble gum flavoured surface anaesthetic' he replies, while fiddling with something just out of my eye line. It's difficult to be witty with your dentists isn't it? The situation just isn't set up for it. But I feel like I need something to lighten the occasion, for the word anaesthetic can only mean one thing. An injection. An injection and lots of drilling and things. Nothing funny comes to mind anyway, just a flash back to the Austrian cellar when last I had needles and drills and wires. Then I remember and smile.

'So relax, just a little prick' I smile and recognise his joke. I try to relax. In the dentists chair is rather like being in one of those spy movies when the hero is drugged and is being interrogated. Things are happening off camera and voices and noises just add to the sense of fear, uncertainty and surrealism.

'Before you go home you must have your hev you jaw stabilized' the Austrian faxmax surgeon had said on the morning when my ambulance was due to pick me up. My mind had gone back to when I had my skiing accident about two years ago. I had been laid up in an Innsbruck University Institute for facio-maxillary surgery for 11 days following my skiing accident and it was nearly time to go home. I had survived on a diet of soup and mash potato. Actually the mash potato was a luxury I'd only managed in the last two days. This was the ward of mashed up faces, and mine was one of them.

Eventually a rather overly happy-go-lucky person arrived on the ward with a trolley. 'Benett?' he said, 'you will come wiz me'. He was evidently proud of his English. I got on the trolley. 'Ve must go down stairz in ze lift'. My ward was on the fourth floor. We descend six floors and appear in a dark corridor. My companion presses a switch and the set lights up. In my mind I can hear the sort of film music that says 'something bad is going to happen'. I'm pushed into a small room and the door closes behind me. 'You vill vait here'.

I am in a mini operating theatre. There a sink, draws and cupboards, and instruments on a trolley. It is quiet, eerily quiet.

Suddenly from behind me there is a clang of activity and someone walks in. It is a middle grade faxmax person I guess. He presents himself to me, stands straight, almost clicking his heels. He explains in accented English what the purpose of the meeting is. Basically he wants to wire my jaw so that elastic bands can be attached to stop my jaw wobbling on the journey back. Oh joy. He turns away to put on a gown and mask while muttering in German to an attractive person in a nurses uniform. 'Is that a whip she's carrying?' No can't be. He puts his gloves on with his back towards me, then turns with his hands up. The operating theatre light is behind him making his shape into a silhouette and I swear the music of psycho strikes up.

'You hef hed injections before, ya?'. 'I guess' and nod meekly. 'Ve need to give you just four'. Four! That bloody woman that skied into me, I'll kill her.

My interrogator is clearly proud of his English. As he cheerfully administers the anaesthetic he tells me how much he likes England and how often he goes and of course, noticing I'm from Manchester, how impressed he is with the efficiency of Man U. There is little chance for me to engage in a conversation since my mouth is stretched open for most of the time. I make do with nodding occasionally, trying to think of other things and wondering when the wiring is going to start, and actually what the wiring actually means, actually. I have to remember to relax my muscles. I'm sweating under my arms and myheart is racing.

Then he gets some pliers and a length of wire. The psycho music starts up again. He turns to me again. The light at his back. His be-gowned and masked face a dark shadow, pliers and wire glistening. The shape advances towards me, clasping the pliers and pointing them at me. He leans over my helpless body. I can't move my arms. They feel as though they're strapped to the chair. I try to move away. Oh my God, I'm paralysed. The music reaches a crescendo.

And stops abruptly.

'You like Iron Maiden? I often go to England to see zem. It rreely rrocks dozn it?'....

Did I say surreal?

Since then I've never been scared of injections or the Dentist