Part 4: Eric
"It's really important to me, dear," Elizabeth said as they pulled into the parking lot. "You mean, it's important to Mother," Eric said.
"Exactly," she said, winking at him. "If she's going to pay for our wedding, we're going to have to keep her satisfied. And that means feeding her that sort of bullshit. She's also going to ask about grandkids, so be prepared for that."
She looked across the parking lot at the dentist's office. "So, did you ever find out what happened with Dr. Golden?" she asked.
"No, all I got was the message on her website, that she'd left her practice to explore new business opportunities," he replied. "Hopefully this new guy'll be just as good."
"Well, let's go see," Elizabeth said, unbuckling herself. They walked over to the dentist's office and opened the front door.
"Oh hiiiiiii!" the receptionist greeted them, her pornographic breasts bouncing up and down. "Like, welcome to Dr. Joseph's office! I'm Crystal! What's your names?"
"Um," Eric said. "Um, Eric Desjardins and Elizabeth Schulman."
Crystal took on a look of intense concentration. "I type real good," she said, then stuck her tongue out of the side of her mouth, and tap-tap-tapped away at the keyboard.
That left the room silent, and, therefore, awkward. Elizabeth wasn't quite glaring at him, but she was Not Happy. He would've pointed out that she'd suggested this place, but that probably wouldn't've helped. Instead, he very carefully did not watch Crystal as she typed in their names.
"Ohhh, here we are!" Crystal said. She peered at something on the monitor, then smiled at Eric and Elizabeth. "Dr. Joseph says you should both go right on in. Eric is in room 8 and Lizzie, you're in room 2."
Elizabeth's eyes narrowed, and she opened her mouth, probably to start yelling at this bimbo for calling her Lizzie, but Eric forestalled her by laying a hand on her shoulder. "Don't bother with her. She's not worth the time," he whispered into her ear.
Reluctantly, Elizabeth nodded, and they walked through the door that led to the actual office area. Maybe the hygienists were a bit more intelligent than the receptionist.
Their hopes, however, were dashed when they saw the hygienist waiting for Elizabeth in room 2. "Oh hiiiii!" said a Chinese bimbo. "You must be Lizzie! I'm Ming, and I'll be your hygiene lady today!"
Eric laid a hand on her shoulder and just said, "Patience." They shared a smile, and then he strolled down the hall to room 8. It was the last room on the right side, and another hygienist was waiting at the entrance to it. And she was also a bimbo.
"Oh hiiiii!" the bimbo hygienist said. "You, like, must be Eric! It's, like, rilly nice to meet you! I'm Noor!" Eric blinked. He'd thought she looked Arabic, based on his experience in the Middle East, but none of the women there had been nearly as shapely. Or as uncovered.
Noor guided him into the chair, a big white smile plastered on her face. Her long black hair cascaded from her shoulders as she started chattering about nothing in particular. It was almost hypnotic, the way she talked. It made Eric feel like he was slipping into a trance, a trance that carried him through all of Noor's poking and prodding in his mouth.
When he came to again, there was a brown-haired man looking down from behind the chair. The man smiled down at him and said, "I'm Dr. Joseph. Feel a bit more relaxed now?"
"Very," replied Eric. It was, oddly enough, quite true. He did feel refreshed, for no apparent reason. It wasn't as if he'd felt like shit, or something, but he felt ready to take on the world now.
"So, got any plans, Eric?" Dr. Joseph asked, shuffling some papers.
"Oh, nothing much," Eric replied. "My fiancΓ©e's mother is coming to town in a few days." He made a face, and Dr. Joseph chuckled. "I know the feeling," he said, taking up a tool from the tray.
For a few seconds, he just poked around in Eric's mouth, then set it down on the tray again. "You seem to have a very nice set of teeth, Eric. But I do need to talk to you about something.
"Your fiancΓ©e Elizabeth is going to need to come back three days from now, and she'll need to go under general for us to deal with her problem. If you could be available to pick her up, that would probably work best for all of us." He frowned. "Is that going to pose any sort of problem?"
Eric thought for a minute, running through his schedule. "I think I can get time off then. What time do I need to be here?"
"Her appointment is at 11 am, and she should be done by 12:30," Dr. Joseph said. "I don't know what arrangements you need to make, but you should be here by then."
That might be a problem, Eric thought. Since his accident last week, he'd been sharing a car with Elizabeth. That had worked out fairly well for work, since they both worked in the same building. But that meant he would need to come with her to, at the very least, drop her off.
"Well, thanks for letting me know, Doc," Eric said, standing up from the chair. He shook the dentist's hand, finding the strength of his own grip to be a bit surprising. Noor just giggled and waved coyly at him.
As he walked down the hall towards the front of the office, Elizabeth was waiting for him at her room. She smiled ruefully at him. "I thought I had good teeth," she said, taking him by the arm, "but Dr. Joseph said something went wrong with a couple of my molars when I was a little kid." She shrugged. "You can hardly blame me for that."
Eric hugged his wife-to-be and said, "I couldn't blame you for anything, dear." They breezed past Crystal with a minimum of awkwardness, and out into the parking lot. He gave Elizabeth a kiss on the cheek and said, "I've got all the time in the world for you."
"Awww, honey, you're so sweet when you get like this," Elizabeth said, wrapping her arms tight around Eric's chest. She giggled, and Eric hugged her back, again.
Three days later
The sun had risen just above the trees behind Dr. Joseph's office when Eric and Elizabeth arrived in the parking lot. Elizabeth, who had never been a morning person, was still yawning and stretching, trying to manage without coffee. Dr. Joseph had stipulated that, saying that it would interfere with the anaesthesia.
So, of course, Eric had stopped at a coffee shop on the way over.
He'd always been bright and chipper in the mornings, so he didn't really need it, but it tasted nice. And besides, he deserved a little treat, what with how his exercising had been going.