The vocation of dental assistant is a fairly straightforward occupation. The qualified dentist interacts directly with the patient and achieves the accolades while the assistant lurks in the background, but actually does most of the real work. Behind the scenes, we do the setting up, cleaning, stocktaking, imaging and other miscellany. It's laborious, but not mentally taxing.
I never held career aspirations to work in oral health care, but after dropping out of college and falling in and out of insecure hospitality jobs, a suburban dental practice picked me up. Over the last few years I mastered the role and managed to keep the boss happy.
The dental practice was owned by Mr Baum. Most dentists insist on being called "doctor", but Mr Baum was old school and claimed that he didn't deserve the title since he wasn't actually a Doctor of Medicine. He was inching closer to retirement, and I think he planned to sell the practice on to another dentist, but he hadn't yet managed to close a deal.
The practice had three patient rooms, but we only ever used two of them. Mr Baum operated from one room, and the other was used by a rolling succession of graduate dentists. I'm not sure if it was the level of pay, the lack of interesting cases or better prospects elsewhere, but each new dentist only seemed to stay for about nine months.
Rosa was the other dental assistant. She was born in Colombia, but she had lived locally for most of her life. Her personality was a curious mix of the two cultures. At work she was formal, exacting and a perfectionist. Outside of the operating theatre she was much more relaxed, happy to drink and party and open to discuss her fantasies and sex life.
Although she was marginally younger than me, Rosa was the more experienced assistant, and she actually held a formal qualification. I assisted Mr Baum, and Rosa was assigned her to the junior dentists, presumably to transfer her knowledge to up-skill the new professionals.
Rosa and I worked a roster where we saw each other most days, but our respective dentists took Thursdays and Fridays off. Saturday mornings were always the busiest times with school children filling the appointments. Each week there would be one evening dedicated to moulding the mouth-guards, and we'd take it in turns to stay back and complete the job.
Across the health industry, safety equipment like goggles and face masks have been long-used measures but with the advent of COVID, dentistry was at the front-line of risk. You can imagine all those open mouths with contaminated air and saliva being constant threats to everybody's wellbeing.
Flimsy surgical masks had been the standard practice, but a revolution in protective equipment came about with COVID, and we all transitioned to the P95 style of air-tight face masks. Those are the ones that look like a rigid cup against your cheeks, with an air filter built into them, and a snug fit with a seal against the skin.
As essential services workers, our dentistry practice continued to operate right through the depths of the pandemic. The four of us working at the shop would be routinely tested, and even though we were supposed to keep masks secured right through the day, Rosa and I would take them off during our breaks, when we'd hang out, eat lunch and chat.
Rosa would always regale me with tales of her social life and in times before lock-down we would sometimes visit a nearby bar after work. She was a cut above me and I often found myself staring at her cute body and curvy butt, snugly encased in the tight white skirt of her uniform. She would tell me all about the guys she hooked up with and the fun times she had, and I continually wished that I could be part of her romantic life. In reality I had resigned myself to the fact that I would never make it to boyfriend status, so I decided to be the best friend possible and just enjoy the stories.
The banter started out a long time ago when Rosa brought a cold sausage for her lunch. As we chatted she steered the conversation to a successful hook-up that she'd orchestrated the previous weekend that resulted in her following a guy home to perform a blowjob. She momentarily gave an animated demonstration with the sausage and it was so hot that it occupied my mind for the rest of the day. I admitted that I loved to receive oral as well, but unfortunately I'd never managed many successful scores.
"You must get so distracted in theatre," mused Rosa. "A cute girl patient, under anaesthetic, mouth open wide. Aren't you tempted just to dip it in when the dentist is out of the room?" she giggled.
"That's so unethical!" I retorted. "But you know what I like even more?"
"I can guess," Rosa returned.
"I love
giving
oral," I confessed. "To girls. I love the taste, the feel, the look - the whole experience. It's just a shame that I can seem to land much of it."
"Oh wow! You'll make a catch for someone!" Rosa replied. "One day, you'll make a girl very happy with an attitude like that." Although the atmosphere felt charged and I could sense the tension between us, the conversation didn't lead to anything.
With the arrival of the pandemic and isolation measures, everyone's social life became much more subdued and there were fewer stories over lunch.
One particular day our conversation turned to extremely mundane subjects. "What do you think of these new masks?" she asked me after we'd transitioned to the new technologies. "Are you still able to get all your tasks done?"
"They seem OK," I replied. I wondered what she was getting at. The P95 masks made the air taste stale and made breathing a bit more claustrophobic, but actually the old surgical masks were far worse for fogging up goggles.
"I get distracted by the cavity and the filter," she admitted. "You
know
there's a mask there, but you can't feel it. Not like the old ones. So my tongue reaches out to check that it's there." She poked her tongue out in an exaggerated way and probed it around as if she was searching for something.
Instantly a tingle coursed through my body as I imagined that same tongue reaching out to touch me in a deep French kiss or maybe something even better like a long and sensual lick on my penis.
"I guess," I mused and thought about whether I did the same tongue action with my own mask. "Let me try." I slipped my mask over my head and I did my best to empty my mind. Almost straight away I felt my tongue pass through my lips to extend and feel out the boundaries of the mask. I had never thought about it, but my natural reaction was to lick the inside of the mask, and I realised that the tip of my tongue would home in on the filter inlet which sat just off-centre. I'm not sure why I did it. Instinct I guess. It was instantly habit-forming, like chewing on the end of a pen or biting fingernails.
"You are right!" I exclaimed. "I
do
lick it!"
"Doesn't it distract you?" asked Rosa.
"No, it's not distracting. But I had no idea that I was doing it," I admitted.
"Can I get something for you?" Rosa smiled cryptically.
"What?"
"Something to do with your mask. To make it -," she paused searching for the right word. "Interesting."
"Sure!" I replied. "What is it?"
"It'll be a surprise," she said with a broadening grin. "A good one. At least I
think
it will be good. Next week."
Lunchtime came to an end all too soon we returned to work in our respective rooms. I was keen to find out what the exciting mask was going to be. Everything was purchased online in the era of COVID, and with disrupted supplies, I was surprised that she could get her order delivered in just a week.
That night it was my turn to perform the mouth-guard duties. Mr Baum offered a customised mouth-guard service. He claimed that the services were provided by a specialist moulding service in the city, but in reality we did it all in the store. I'm not sure why he kept up the pretence with the customers.
The process was another straightforward activity that just took a bit of time and practice to get right. Firstly, the dentist takes a mould of the patient's upper bite with a special alginate mixture and then it gets labelled and put aside to process later. The patients always hate the casting part.
I take the female (that's what we call it) and put it in a special jig. Then I pour in a plaster mix to make a casting that looks like the patient's upper teeth and gums. We call that the male. It takes a while for the plaster to cure, but we have an autoclave to speed the process along.
Then we make the actual mouth guard itself. We size up the vinyl blank that's the right shape for the bite, warm it and press it into a "U" shaped holder. Then we put the cast on the top and press it down by hand. Next we pop it into a machine that looks like an air-fryer that raises the temperature to make the vinyl malleable and applies a vacuum to suck the guard onto the plaster so it's just the same shape as the patient's mouth. I cool it off, wash it down and it's ready for the paring stage.
The final vinyl substance is soft and flexible but if you slice an edge it can create a sharp corner, and that's
really
not good when it rubs against the gum line. So we have a special tool that looks something between a vegetable peeler and a safety razor but with a curve to it. We cut the bulk material down to size then run the paring blade across all the boundaries to create lovely smooth edges with no sharp corners. Job done! When the patient tests it out, the dental assistant is always on hand and if it doesn't quite fit right, we use the paring tool to cut it a little smaller until it feels comfortable.
During a single evening session we could create up to thirty mouth guards. In reality, we only ever did about four in any given week - maybe a few more early in the rugby preseason. We had a time allocation each week for doing the mouth guard duties, but we hardly ever need all the time allotted.
The week at work played out slowly, as everything did in the time of the pandemic. After another dull Sunday at home in isolation, I returned to work the following Monday with anticipation for the gift that Rosa had promised me. I had been thinking about what it might be, and concluded that she must have ordered a novelty mask that might be pink, or have a clown mouth image across the mouth or similar.
At lunchtime I sat with Rosa in the tea room and asked if my new mask had arrived.
"Not yet," she rebuffed. "Be patient."
We reverted to talking about this-and-that and work matters, and I tried hard to put my upcoming gift out of my mind.
On Wednesday night it was Rosa's turn to perform mouth-guard duties. We didn't see each other for the next couple of days, given our non-intersecting schedules. By the weekend I was keen to see my new mask, but the hectic Saturday influx of customers kept me busy until the end of the shift.
