Leave Me Alone Mama!
Nov 9, 2022 17:25:10 GMT -5
Post by Radrook Admin on Nov 9, 2022 17:25:10 GMT -5
Leave Me Alone Mama!
By Radrook
Camacho Cardosa, was never one to pay much attention to his teeth. In fact, he only became aware of them whenever he needed to chew. In other words, to him, they were merely appendages that were used as the need arose, and nothing more. Of course, for every phenomenon there is a reason, and this phenomenon was no exception. The reason in this instance, was Camacho’s morbid terror of doctor Jose Torquato de La Vega, DDS, the only dentist available in his mountain village of Verdugo, and within a five-hundred-mile range in the state of Asuncion. You see, Doctor Torquato had been the first dentist that Camacho had ever gone to, and that had been ten long years ago when he was only seven.
Yet, Camacho had never forgotten the blood, the pain, the sound of that voraciously-humming, insatiable drill, as well as the screaming in agony and the hot tears of desperation. So no more dentists for Camacho. Not as long as he could help it.
Of course, as is common in small societies, where everyone knows everyone else, such unusual things do not go unnoticed and quickly tend to become common gossip. So some villagers would whisper to one another as he passed, while others would call out:
"Hey Camacho? When are you going to get those green teeth cleaned?" as he furiously pedaled by on his dilapidated bicycle.
"Mañana!" meaning tomorrow, would always be his hasty answer."
"Hey Camacho? When are you going to get those cavities filled?
"Mañana!"
But of course, he knew that mañana, tomorrow, would never come, just as they knew that his mouth was a veritable disaster-zone with gingivitis, running rampant. Yet, Camacho seemed oblivious to it all. As long as he could ride his bike and watch his soccer games on TV, it really didn't matter. What did matter, was evading doctor Jose Torquato De La Vega and his infamous drill. In fact, not even the arrival of beautifully sensuous and curvaceous Conchita Salazar Del Carmen as an assistant to the good doctor, was enough to get him to go.
Not that he wasn't as bedazzled by Conchita’s generous curves, as all the other heterosexual, young men in his village were. Of course he was. Only that his bedazzlement could not supersede the sheer terror he felt at just thinking about Doctor Torquato hovering over him with his dark, beady, malevolent, bloodshot eyes, and that maniacal smile he still remembered from his first encounter. So until Dr. Torquato died, or cows flew, he would just hunker down and wait. Naturally, his attitude caused great parental concern.
“With those teeth in that condition, you are not going to find a wife mijo!” his elderly mother would repeat about ten times a day. Camacho would respond only once, and that was just before bedtime when he'd calmly always say:
"Leave me alone mama!" and that was that.
Come morning, he knew the drill.
"You are not going to find a wife with your teeth in that horrible condtion, mijo!" and he would respond in the same way. “Leave me alone mama!”
Year after year it had continued, until one day, as he was watching a soccer game on TV, and his mother was out shopping at the village market, it happened. You see, Camacho had been absent-mindedly gnawing on some left-over fried fish, you know, the kind of fish that seem to be ninety-nine percent bones and only one percent meat, and that are always threatening to lance into your palate or gums. Well, Camacho’s soccer team was about to score, but the goalie made an impossible leap and intercepted the ball with his forehead. Simultaneously, Camacho bit down too hard without having probed for espinas [bones] with his tongue, as he had been doing all along, and a thin sliver got wedged between first and second bicuspids.
"Madre de Dios!" he screamed above the bedlam of the soccer game announcer, as the horribly sharp pain from his already-mangled gums excruciated exquisitely throughout his whole jaw.
It is moments such as these, my dear reader, that force a total reevaluation of a person’s prevalent perspectives, and Camacho was no exception. Having been blinded to everything else but the pain, he bolted out the door, unchained his rusted bike from the wooden fence, opened the gate, hopped on, and away he went furiously pedaling up the dirt road towards Dr. Torquato’s office located three miles away next to a rookery by the side of a dirt road on a steep hill.
In his agony-imposed delirium, he could hear the familiar villager taunts about his teeth, but this time, he only responded by spitting blood to the gasps and horror of the village señoritas, who quickly looked the other away. It had rained the previous night. and the wheels were losing traction in some places causing the bike to wobble. But Camacho’s pain was such, that he quickly-almost supernaturally by some accounts, regained his balance and continued pedaling frenetically on his trajectory.
Of course, he didn’t mean to disturb the portly Señora Catalina Figueroa,who was purportedly half blind, and who allegedly had no idea he was heading toward her at race-horse-galloping speed. She was used to having the local drivers stop to let her cross the road, whereupon she would make the sign of the cross in their general direction and bestow the accustomed benedictions. It had become a local tradition, and Catalina Figueroa felt honored to be part of it.
Well, this time, as usual, she heard the sound of an approaching vehicle and assumed that whoever was driving had to know who she was. Catalina Figueroa, the woman who always had the right of way in this mountain community. And if not, then she would teach the ignoramus the tradition.
So she continued undisturbed. But so did Camacho who was pedaling full-fury, with eyes half-shut, and seeing only the general outline of both dirt rode and adjacent lush vegetation scenery. So he was almost on top of her before he realized what was about to happen. Exactly at that moment, stout Señora Catalina Figueroa, figured out the same thing.
He swerved left toward an embankment and a shallow ditch, and simultaneously, she executed a glorious broad jump from the middle of the rode to safety, thus covering a distance that would have made an Olympic broad-jumper eat his heart out.
The ones who saw it say she covered fifteen feet. Others claim it was more like ten. In any case, for an elderly and obese woman whom all had thought just barely able to walk, it was tantamount to a miracle. The truth was, of course, that the only miracle involved was a shot of terror-induced adrenaline.
As for Camacho, he slid sideways, shimmied the front wheel several times, serpentined, recovered, and continued without nary losing a pedaling-tempo. Of course, he could hear a few imprecations that Senora Figueroa was hurling his way, but they made no impression past the barrier of agony that was pounding every corroded tooth he had purposefully left unattended for the previous ten years. Neither did his brief: “Sorry Señora Figueroa!" prevent the honorable, matronly damsel from vehemently responding with:
“Tu madre! Hijo de puta! Dios quiera que te destripe un camion!"
Which loosely translated means:
“Your damned mother! You son of a harlot. May God wish that you get disemboweled by a truck."
But soon, she was out of ear-shot, and Camacho could finally see the doctor’s whitewashed office peaking its dilapidated balcony around the next bend right next to the rookery. Once there, he encountered Conchita Salazar Del Carmen in all her voluptuous glory. Not that he could see her clearly through the pain, though, but the little he saw, was definitely more than enough to get his heart pounding at the beat of La Bamba.
Anyway, she tenderly ushered him in immediately as an emergency case, and hastily took down the required information. Then she went to this little back room where doctor Torquato seemed to be hunched over eying some x-rays. Camacho was still nursing his swollen jaw, but he could still hear well enough what was going on.
"But you’re a married man, doctor," he heard Conchita say in a barely concealed whisper.
"I can get a divorce!" Dr, Torquato responded effusively.
"But that is a sin!"
"We can do penance. Say a several Hail-Mary’s. Go to a few confessions." Dr. Torquato responded in an emotionally tremulous voice accompanied by heavy breathing..
"But I have told you before, I cannot!" Camacho heard Conchita plead.
"I can make it worth your while!"
"What do you mean by that?" Conchita said, forgetting to whisper.
"That I can make it either worth your while, or not worth your while," Dr Torquato said in a cold, threatening tone.
Camacho got a glimpse of him as he briefly left Conchita alone in the Xray room. He wasn’t the same as he’d been ten years before. Now, he sported a very prominent pot-belly, his once thick and wavy jet-black, hair was white, he wore thick tinted bifocal eyeglasses, and was obviously very rapidly going bald. No wonder Conchita didn’t--
"Mr. Camacho, the doctor will see you now.” Conchita said. She had obviously been crying since her mascara was smeared, but Camacho tried not to stare in order to spare her the embarrassment.
Nursing his throbbing jaw in the palm of his right hand, Camacho followed her into the small room, and took a seat beneath the bright light as she prepared the area for whatever it was that Dr. Torquato had in mind. He figured that whatever it was, it couldn’t be worse than the pain he was going through, or could it? The pain had subsided a little bit, and Camacho was beginning to realize exactly where he was, and to wonder what the hell he was doing there.
"The doctor will be right with you!" Conchita said with a sentimental sniffle, and a slight pouting of her pink,lipsticked lips, which caused Camacho forget all of his troubles for just that one blessed moment when he imagined those soft pink lips upon his own painful swollen ones. In fact, he was sure that just one tender, loving touch from those lips was all that he needed to be cured, and to be able to return home as brand as new!
"Your name is Conchita right?" he heard himself say nervously before she could leave.
"Yes, how do you know?" she responded gazing at him with her large, innocent, angelic hazel eyes.
"Well, it says so on the name-tag on your blouse," he managed to slur through his pain.
She, in return, gave him a picaresque long, sideward glance. Then she giggled. Oh my gawd ! How she giggled! That was the mother of all giggles, Camacho could swear. Like the chime of angelical bells that accompanied Father Pedro Verdacia's choir.
Then, as if aware of his overflowing admiration, she majestically swerved one full magnificently, glorious hip, and went to procure the sanitized instruments that Dr. Torquato would need for whatever it was Dr. Torquato had in mind for today. Funny how that gruesome idea had interrupted Camacho’s deep, mesmerized admiration for Conchita's round rump, and curvaceous legs that seemed to want to sinuously escape the confines of her grasping, skin-tight, white dental-assistant uniform, and wrap themselves all over Camacho’s sweat-soaked body.
"Senorita Conchita!" the doctor growled from whatever depths it was that he was choosing to lurk at that particular moment. Then Camacho remembered his teeth. Oh! No! What would Conchita think about him when he opened his fetid mouth and she observed that national disaster zone? Then suddenly:
"Conchita!"
"Yes doctor, I will be with you-"
"Come here at once, carajo! Are you deaf?"
"Excuse me señor. I will be right back"' she said and walked out on what Camacho was sure was a cloud sent from heaven by the Virgin Of Guadalupe Hidalgo herself.
"Why are you taking so long with this particular patient? Ehhhh?” he heard Dr. Torquato whisper. But in the confines of his ridiculously tiny office that whisper carried to Camacho’s ears. Not that he wasn’t straining with might and main to hear. But that he didn’t really need to.
"I am not taking longer than usual”
"You like him don’t you? Eh Conchita?"
"He is just a patient"
"Because he is young eh? Doesn’t have a pot-belly like me. Has a full head of hair?"
"What I do with my life is my own business." Camacho heard her say.
"Very well Conchita. Very well! You are dismissed early today."
"But the patient-"
"I will take good care of your precious patient, mija!"
"But what about the suction, doctor?"
"He is in good hands! You just go home for today and we can talk about this tomorrow. Andale! mi amor. Andale!"
Camacho watched apprehensively as Conchita prepared to leave. But before she left, she looked at him exactly like Camacho’s little sister had looked at her pet puppy before it had been castrated in cold blood. A look of anguish mixed with horror and total resignation to the inevitable. But before Camacho could react:
“So what have we here?” Dr. Torquato asked rhetorically as he entered the room leading with his pate and pot belly. Not necessarily in that order since they seemed to take turns in assuming the ambulatory lead.
“Sayyyy.” he suddenly paused, “Don’t I know you, muchacho?” he said in a strong sing-song, southern, Mexican accent, as he leaned over bringing his wide indigenous tanned face, and alcohol- tainted breath a few merciful inches away from his.
“Yes, doctor, ten years ago," Camacho responded nervously.
“Ah yes! Yes! I do remember you now. You was that excessive bleeder who filled my office with his squeaky screaming and had to be put under. So what is the problem today? A fish-bone stuck deep into the gums between some teeth, it says here?''
Before Camacho could answer, Dr. Torquato suddenly slapped some glittering sharp instruments on the white plastic tray, causing a few to go tumbling noisily to the floor. Camacho noticed how some resembled miniature wrenches, while others were picks tapered to a fine, curved point.
Then, momentarily turning his unusually-broad back for a man of his short stature, and glancing now and then over his right shoulder with a malicious smile, he began preparing a syringe in order to inject the double dosage of nova Cain that would make swallowing difficult for Camacho.
"Conchita! Conchita! Conchita!” Torquato repeated slowly with a leering look on his wide brown face, as he raised the syringe above his head and pumped syringe several times.
"I’m OK doctor. I can come back tomorrow!” Camacho heard himself say, as he attempted to rise from his seat. But the doctor, who had been anticipating the attempt to flee, quickly slapped the palm of his hand on Camacho’s narrow chest, and forced him back down.
"And what is wrong with today and right now? Pendejo?"
"Nothing doctor! Nothing at all. I just feel that_
"Feel? Ha! I know exactly how you feel, cabron," The doctor chuckled in a high-pitched voice.
"I’m in pain!" Camacho pleaded.
"Oh, really?" the doctor said suspiciously squinting one dark-brown eye as if he had been scrutinizing the very essence of Camacho’s very soul.
"Yeass doctor, you see-"
"Do I see? You say? Yes! I see. I see quite clearly! In fact, I see much more than most people imagine I see, carnal!" the doctor uttered in a tremulous voice and sneering lips.
"You see doctor, I was eating-"
"Eating? Ahhh! Yes! Of course! You were eating! And talking about eating, what do you think about my new assistant Conchita, my young patient in so much pain? Attractive, now, isn’t she?"
"Yes, Doctor Torquato but -"
"She is so attractive, that your pain doesn’t even matter any more, does it, carnal?"
"I can come back tomorrow doctor."
Camacho lurched forward from the seat just as the good doctor lunged for his jaw with the hypodermic, but only managed to novocaine his own hand. Camacho had seen it all in his eyes, the malice, the stealth, the feverish, meticulous preparation, and he wasn’t about to hang around waiting for the rest. Having novocained his own hand, Torquato chicken-strutted and kangaroo hopped around yelling:
"Aiiiii! hi! hi! hi! Coño! “Hijo de puta!“ Meanwhile, Camacho, had shot out the office into the small waiting room, and had dislodged the flimsy front-door from its rusted hinges using the top of his head as a battering ram. Then after stumbling around blindly in front of the building for a few moments, he got his bearings and was off on his bicycle on a cloud of dust and flying gravel which showered the good Doctor as he emerged from his office waving a clenched fist.
“I will get you for this!” Camacho heard Dr. Torquato shouting.
“Even if it takes me fifty years! You will pay!"
These words, and the image of the hypodermic syringe in the doctor’ s hand, lent Camacho all the motivation he needed to crest the hill and take the turn on the mountain’s road edge with the agility of a circus acrobat. Some villagers say that they witnessed a great cloud of dust in the distance as he pedaled. They also claim to have seen the venerable Catalina Figueroa returning from her trip to the town market. They also heard her scream.
“May God have a truck disembowel you!” as Camacho almost ran her over again, forcing her to discard her groceries and make another broad jump across the road. Approx. seventeen feet they say-more or less.
Once home, Camacho headed straight for the living room couch, sat down with some ice on his jaw and resumed watching the soccer game.
“You are not going to find a wife with your teeth in that condition mijo!" his mother said from the kitchen.
"But don’t worry mijo, I just made an appointment with Doctor Torquato on the phone, and he said he will see you tomorrow morning at eleven.”
“Nooo! Por favor!” Camacho yelled.
“Leave me alone mama!”
Yet, Camacho had never forgotten the blood, the pain, the sound of that voraciously-humming, insatiable drill, as well as the screaming in agony and the hot tears of desperation. So no more dentists for Camacho. Not as long as he could help it.
Of course, as is common in small societies, where everyone knows everyone else, such unusual things do not go unnoticed and quickly tend to become common gossip. So some villagers would whisper to one another as he passed, while others would call out:
"Hey Camacho? When are you going to get those green teeth cleaned?" as he furiously pedaled by on his dilapidated bicycle.
"Mañana!" meaning tomorrow, would always be his hasty answer."
"Hey Camacho? When are you going to get those cavities filled?
"Mañana!"
But of course, he knew that mañana, tomorrow, would never come, just as they knew that his mouth was a veritable disaster-zone with gingivitis, running rampant. Yet, Camacho seemed oblivious to it all. As long as he could ride his bike and watch his soccer games on TV, it really didn't matter. What did matter, was evading doctor Jose Torquato De La Vega and his infamous drill. In fact, not even the arrival of beautifully sensuous and curvaceous Conchita Salazar Del Carmen as an assistant to the good doctor, was enough to get him to go.
Not that he wasn't as bedazzled by Conchita’s generous curves, as all the other heterosexual, young men in his village were. Of course he was. Only that his bedazzlement could not supersede the sheer terror he felt at just thinking about Doctor Torquato hovering over him with his dark, beady, malevolent, bloodshot eyes, and that maniacal smile he still remembered from his first encounter. So until Dr. Torquato died, or cows flew, he would just hunker down and wait. Naturally, his attitude caused great parental concern.
“With those teeth in that condition, you are not going to find a wife mijo!” his elderly mother would repeat about ten times a day. Camacho would respond only once, and that was just before bedtime when he'd calmly always say:
"Leave me alone mama!" and that was that.
Come morning, he knew the drill.
"You are not going to find a wife with your teeth in that horrible condtion, mijo!" and he would respond in the same way. “Leave me alone mama!”
Year after year it had continued, until one day, as he was watching a soccer game on TV, and his mother was out shopping at the village market, it happened. You see, Camacho had been absent-mindedly gnawing on some left-over fried fish, you know, the kind of fish that seem to be ninety-nine percent bones and only one percent meat, and that are always threatening to lance into your palate or gums. Well, Camacho’s soccer team was about to score, but the goalie made an impossible leap and intercepted the ball with his forehead. Simultaneously, Camacho bit down too hard without having probed for espinas [bones] with his tongue, as he had been doing all along, and a thin sliver got wedged between first and second bicuspids.
"Madre de Dios!" he screamed above the bedlam of the soccer game announcer, as the horribly sharp pain from his already-mangled gums excruciated exquisitely throughout his whole jaw.
It is moments such as these, my dear reader, that force a total reevaluation of a person’s prevalent perspectives, and Camacho was no exception. Having been blinded to everything else but the pain, he bolted out the door, unchained his rusted bike from the wooden fence, opened the gate, hopped on, and away he went furiously pedaling up the dirt road towards Dr. Torquato’s office located three miles away next to a rookery by the side of a dirt road on a steep hill.
In his agony-imposed delirium, he could hear the familiar villager taunts about his teeth, but this time, he only responded by spitting blood to the gasps and horror of the village señoritas, who quickly looked the other away. It had rained the previous night. and the wheels were losing traction in some places causing the bike to wobble. But Camacho’s pain was such, that he quickly-almost supernaturally by some accounts, regained his balance and continued pedaling frenetically on his trajectory.
Of course, he didn’t mean to disturb the portly Señora Catalina Figueroa,who was purportedly half blind, and who allegedly had no idea he was heading toward her at race-horse-galloping speed. She was used to having the local drivers stop to let her cross the road, whereupon she would make the sign of the cross in their general direction and bestow the accustomed benedictions. It had become a local tradition, and Catalina Figueroa felt honored to be part of it.
Well, this time, as usual, she heard the sound of an approaching vehicle and assumed that whoever was driving had to know who she was. Catalina Figueroa, the woman who always had the right of way in this mountain community. And if not, then she would teach the ignoramus the tradition.
So she continued undisturbed. But so did Camacho who was pedaling full-fury, with eyes half-shut, and seeing only the general outline of both dirt rode and adjacent lush vegetation scenery. So he was almost on top of her before he realized what was about to happen. Exactly at that moment, stout Señora Catalina Figueroa, figured out the same thing.
He swerved left toward an embankment and a shallow ditch, and simultaneously, she executed a glorious broad jump from the middle of the rode to safety, thus covering a distance that would have made an Olympic broad-jumper eat his heart out.
The ones who saw it say she covered fifteen feet. Others claim it was more like ten. In any case, for an elderly and obese woman whom all had thought just barely able to walk, it was tantamount to a miracle. The truth was, of course, that the only miracle involved was a shot of terror-induced adrenaline.
As for Camacho, he slid sideways, shimmied the front wheel several times, serpentined, recovered, and continued without nary losing a pedaling-tempo. Of course, he could hear a few imprecations that Senora Figueroa was hurling his way, but they made no impression past the barrier of agony that was pounding every corroded tooth he had purposefully left unattended for the previous ten years. Neither did his brief: “Sorry Señora Figueroa!" prevent the honorable, matronly damsel from vehemently responding with:
“Tu madre! Hijo de puta! Dios quiera que te destripe un camion!"
Which loosely translated means:
“Your damned mother! You son of a harlot. May God wish that you get disemboweled by a truck."
But soon, she was out of ear-shot, and Camacho could finally see the doctor’s whitewashed office peaking its dilapidated balcony around the next bend right next to the rookery. Once there, he encountered Conchita Salazar Del Carmen in all her voluptuous glory. Not that he could see her clearly through the pain, though, but the little he saw, was definitely more than enough to get his heart pounding at the beat of La Bamba.
Anyway, she tenderly ushered him in immediately as an emergency case, and hastily took down the required information. Then she went to this little back room where doctor Torquato seemed to be hunched over eying some x-rays. Camacho was still nursing his swollen jaw, but he could still hear well enough what was going on.
"But you’re a married man, doctor," he heard Conchita say in a barely concealed whisper.
"I can get a divorce!" Dr, Torquato responded effusively.
"But that is a sin!"
"We can do penance. Say a several Hail-Mary’s. Go to a few confessions." Dr. Torquato responded in an emotionally tremulous voice accompanied by heavy breathing..
"But I have told you before, I cannot!" Camacho heard Conchita plead.
"I can make it worth your while!"
"What do you mean by that?" Conchita said, forgetting to whisper.
"That I can make it either worth your while, or not worth your while," Dr Torquato said in a cold, threatening tone.
Camacho got a glimpse of him as he briefly left Conchita alone in the Xray room. He wasn’t the same as he’d been ten years before. Now, he sported a very prominent pot-belly, his once thick and wavy jet-black, hair was white, he wore thick tinted bifocal eyeglasses, and was obviously very rapidly going bald. No wonder Conchita didn’t--
"Mr. Camacho, the doctor will see you now.” Conchita said. She had obviously been crying since her mascara was smeared, but Camacho tried not to stare in order to spare her the embarrassment.
Nursing his throbbing jaw in the palm of his right hand, Camacho followed her into the small room, and took a seat beneath the bright light as she prepared the area for whatever it was that Dr. Torquato had in mind. He figured that whatever it was, it couldn’t be worse than the pain he was going through, or could it? The pain had subsided a little bit, and Camacho was beginning to realize exactly where he was, and to wonder what the hell he was doing there.
"The doctor will be right with you!" Conchita said with a sentimental sniffle, and a slight pouting of her pink,lipsticked lips, which caused Camacho forget all of his troubles for just that one blessed moment when he imagined those soft pink lips upon his own painful swollen ones. In fact, he was sure that just one tender, loving touch from those lips was all that he needed to be cured, and to be able to return home as brand as new!
"Your name is Conchita right?" he heard himself say nervously before she could leave.
"Yes, how do you know?" she responded gazing at him with her large, innocent, angelic hazel eyes.
"Well, it says so on the name-tag on your blouse," he managed to slur through his pain.
She, in return, gave him a picaresque long, sideward glance. Then she giggled. Oh my gawd ! How she giggled! That was the mother of all giggles, Camacho could swear. Like the chime of angelical bells that accompanied Father Pedro Verdacia's choir.
Then, as if aware of his overflowing admiration, she majestically swerved one full magnificently, glorious hip, and went to procure the sanitized instruments that Dr. Torquato would need for whatever it was Dr. Torquato had in mind for today. Funny how that gruesome idea had interrupted Camacho’s deep, mesmerized admiration for Conchita's round rump, and curvaceous legs that seemed to want to sinuously escape the confines of her grasping, skin-tight, white dental-assistant uniform, and wrap themselves all over Camacho’s sweat-soaked body.
"Senorita Conchita!" the doctor growled from whatever depths it was that he was choosing to lurk at that particular moment. Then Camacho remembered his teeth. Oh! No! What would Conchita think about him when he opened his fetid mouth and she observed that national disaster zone? Then suddenly:
"Conchita!"
"Yes doctor, I will be with you-"
"Come here at once, carajo! Are you deaf?"
"Excuse me señor. I will be right back"' she said and walked out on what Camacho was sure was a cloud sent from heaven by the Virgin Of Guadalupe Hidalgo herself.
"Why are you taking so long with this particular patient? Ehhhh?” he heard Dr. Torquato whisper. But in the confines of his ridiculously tiny office that whisper carried to Camacho’s ears. Not that he wasn’t straining with might and main to hear. But that he didn’t really need to.
"I am not taking longer than usual”
"You like him don’t you? Eh Conchita?"
"He is just a patient"
"Because he is young eh? Doesn’t have a pot-belly like me. Has a full head of hair?"
"What I do with my life is my own business." Camacho heard her say.
"Very well Conchita. Very well! You are dismissed early today."
"But the patient-"
"I will take good care of your precious patient, mija!"
"But what about the suction, doctor?"
"He is in good hands! You just go home for today and we can talk about this tomorrow. Andale! mi amor. Andale!"
Camacho watched apprehensively as Conchita prepared to leave. But before she left, she looked at him exactly like Camacho’s little sister had looked at her pet puppy before it had been castrated in cold blood. A look of anguish mixed with horror and total resignation to the inevitable. But before Camacho could react:
“So what have we here?” Dr. Torquato asked rhetorically as he entered the room leading with his pate and pot belly. Not necessarily in that order since they seemed to take turns in assuming the ambulatory lead.
“Sayyyy.” he suddenly paused, “Don’t I know you, muchacho?” he said in a strong sing-song, southern, Mexican accent, as he leaned over bringing his wide indigenous tanned face, and alcohol- tainted breath a few merciful inches away from his.
“Yes, doctor, ten years ago," Camacho responded nervously.
“Ah yes! Yes! I do remember you now. You was that excessive bleeder who filled my office with his squeaky screaming and had to be put under. So what is the problem today? A fish-bone stuck deep into the gums between some teeth, it says here?''
Before Camacho could answer, Dr. Torquato suddenly slapped some glittering sharp instruments on the white plastic tray, causing a few to go tumbling noisily to the floor. Camacho noticed how some resembled miniature wrenches, while others were picks tapered to a fine, curved point.
Then, momentarily turning his unusually-broad back for a man of his short stature, and glancing now and then over his right shoulder with a malicious smile, he began preparing a syringe in order to inject the double dosage of nova Cain that would make swallowing difficult for Camacho.
"Conchita! Conchita! Conchita!” Torquato repeated slowly with a leering look on his wide brown face, as he raised the syringe above his head and pumped syringe several times.
"I’m OK doctor. I can come back tomorrow!” Camacho heard himself say, as he attempted to rise from his seat. But the doctor, who had been anticipating the attempt to flee, quickly slapped the palm of his hand on Camacho’s narrow chest, and forced him back down.
"And what is wrong with today and right now? Pendejo?"
"Nothing doctor! Nothing at all. I just feel that_
"Feel? Ha! I know exactly how you feel, cabron," The doctor chuckled in a high-pitched voice.
"I’m in pain!" Camacho pleaded.
"Oh, really?" the doctor said suspiciously squinting one dark-brown eye as if he had been scrutinizing the very essence of Camacho’s very soul.
"Yeass doctor, you see-"
"Do I see? You say? Yes! I see. I see quite clearly! In fact, I see much more than most people imagine I see, carnal!" the doctor uttered in a tremulous voice and sneering lips.
"You see doctor, I was eating-"
"Eating? Ahhh! Yes! Of course! You were eating! And talking about eating, what do you think about my new assistant Conchita, my young patient in so much pain? Attractive, now, isn’t she?"
"Yes, Doctor Torquato but -"
"She is so attractive, that your pain doesn’t even matter any more, does it, carnal?"
"I can come back tomorrow doctor."
Camacho lurched forward from the seat just as the good doctor lunged for his jaw with the hypodermic, but only managed to novocaine his own hand. Camacho had seen it all in his eyes, the malice, the stealth, the feverish, meticulous preparation, and he wasn’t about to hang around waiting for the rest. Having novocained his own hand, Torquato chicken-strutted and kangaroo hopped around yelling:
"Aiiiii! hi! hi! hi! Coño! “Hijo de puta!“ Meanwhile, Camacho, had shot out the office into the small waiting room, and had dislodged the flimsy front-door from its rusted hinges using the top of his head as a battering ram. Then after stumbling around blindly in front of the building for a few moments, he got his bearings and was off on his bicycle on a cloud of dust and flying gravel which showered the good Doctor as he emerged from his office waving a clenched fist.
“I will get you for this!” Camacho heard Dr. Torquato shouting.
“Even if it takes me fifty years! You will pay!"
These words, and the image of the hypodermic syringe in the doctor’ s hand, lent Camacho all the motivation he needed to crest the hill and take the turn on the mountain’s road edge with the agility of a circus acrobat. Some villagers say that they witnessed a great cloud of dust in the distance as he pedaled. They also claim to have seen the venerable Catalina Figueroa returning from her trip to the town market. They also heard her scream.
“May God have a truck disembowel you!” as Camacho almost ran her over again, forcing her to discard her groceries and make another broad jump across the road. Approx. seventeen feet they say-more or less.
Once home, Camacho headed straight for the living room couch, sat down with some ice on his jaw and resumed watching the soccer game.
“You are not going to find a wife with your teeth in that condition mijo!" his mother said from the kitchen.
"But don’t worry mijo, I just made an appointment with Doctor Torquato on the phone, and he said he will see you tomorrow morning at eleven.”
“Nooo! Por favor!” Camacho yelled.
“Leave me alone mama!”
Comments:
Lillian Kazmierczak10/21/2021 That was funny and sad at the same time. Well done Radrook! I enjoyed that story on why you should brush three times a day!Reply
Radrook10/22/2021 Thanks for the feedback. Much appreciated. True, care of our choppers will avoid us getting sent to the meat grinder. : > )