"Oh my gosh, Grace, you just have to get your teeth checked at this new dentistry clinic! It's so amazing! It takes five minutes, it's cheap and it's sooo thorough! You'll never forgive yourself if you don't go!"
They were right about the last part. Nobody at her work would shut up about the damn place. A whole week of this badgering had followed her, which was weird because nobody ever badgered her this much about anything at work. Eventually she had relented and decided to go.
Pfft. She was just being paranoid. It was cheap, and there didn't seem to be anything in the small print. Or any small print at all for that matter. She certainly wasn't going to be dragged into a timeshare scam or anything like that.
So this is the place. Looks like they bought one of the cheapest buildings in town. An old factory right next to another old factory. The heavy wooden door to the building creaked as she opened it and a female voice rang out.
"Welcome to Yin & Yu dentistry! How may I help you?"
Grace gave the receptionist her details and sat down. Her appointment was in...five minutes? But there were a lot of people in the waiting room considering how badly late she was.
I heard it was busy and fast, but I didn't imagine it to be like this...
"Emily?"
Grace turned around to catch a glimpse of an extremely tall woman. A young college student on the other side of the room stood up and walked over to her, and then something...unusual happened.
"Look into my eyes, and smile Emily."
Do dentists usually say that?
"You've done well. Come with me."
Nobody else seemed to have noticed that little exchange. Or at least thought it was weird. Most of the other patients seemed to be sort of...vacant.
"Grace?"
Shit. Now it was her turn.
"Oh yes, um...hi."
"This is your first time with us, correct?"
Nervously Grace looked up from the dentist's name badge, which simply said Ti, and gave her some eye contact.
"Yes, I've heard lots of good reviews haha...!"
"It's a pleasure to meet you! We get a lot of nervous people coming here for their first time and they all leave great reviews! You'll love how quick and painless it is..."
Great. Quick. Painless. Come with me.
Grace hadn't been paying attention. Okay, maybe her eyes were a bit distracting when combined with her voice. The clinic looked perfectly normal, if not a little small but the warehouse was massive, yet they only seemed to be serving 3-4 people at a time?
"What's in the rest of this warehouse, if you don't mind me asking?
"Oh, don't worry about that, that's just storage space. We have a basement too, if you can believe it!"
Grace claimed slowly into the dental chair as Ti started listing off medical conditions. There were so many of them, it was actually kind of absurd. Heart failure, liver failure, spleen failure, chronoxis...
"Excuse me, isn't there some other way..."
Then Ti switched on the dental light. Fucking hell it was bright and it wasn't the colour she expected either, it was red. The light was so bright and bold it actually stopped her thinking straight. What was Ti holding? Was that a scalpel? Maybe asking Ti to repeat herself was a good option...
"I...I'm sorry Ti did you just say something? I must have...missed it..."
"You don't have any allergies do you? Have you ever had heart..."
At that point Grace just started zoning out as Ti went through the entire list all over again. Any normal human would have done that in her situation it was perfectly normal. Just lie back, and let the red light render her completely unable to think.
