The Experience Room Story 04 Pt. 07

"We had bought a three-d printer to go along with the scanner and he printed out several models of my mouth to learn how to use it. He was happy to play with the new machines and I often saw that he had a fascinated look on his face while he was working with the software. We had a storeroom full of old orthodontic supplies that we no longer had a use for but never got around to throwing out. He seemed particularly fascinated by the old banded braces."

"I kept wandering back to the storeroom and looking through the boxes, feeling scared each time as the memories came back to me of the accident and how it felt to wear braces afterwards. I know it seems strange for someone who works around them all the time to be scared of them, but it wasn't the modern braces that I was scared of. It was the memories that the look of the old braces brought back for me."

"I started to pick up the bands, play with them a little and then put them down again, eventually taking one of the models of my jaw back to the storeroom with me. It took me a while to realize it, but I had been testing the bands to see if I could find the right bands to fit around the teeth on the model. My husband wasn't aware of what I was doing. He was kept busy working with the software. Several times I found him using the old bands as a treatment option. The pictures of the finished treatment were really remarkable to see. The person on the screen looked so beautiful with their straight teeth smiling at me, the retainer wire running across them. I had never had a retainer since I never finished being treated."

"By the end of the first week, I had found all of the bands for the models. Over the weekend I was moody and finally told him to just leave me alone. At the beginning of the second week, he began making some of the devices using the three-d printer. He started with the static devices used to stabilize a bite and maintain a bite before treatment starts. Some of these I found interesting and I began to watch him making them. By the middle of the week, I was trying some of them to see how they fit and felt in my mouth. He always stopped what he was doing and watched me insert and remove them, then asked me what I thought about them. At first my answers were limited to one or two words, but as I became more comfortable with them in my mouth, I began to describe them in more detail."

"This went on all week, the number of devices increasing every day and becoming more complex. I had even allowed him to adjust a few of them while they were in my mouth. There seemed to be a common theme to all of this. They were all old-style devices, many of them using full-bands with brackets to anchor them. Another thing that I noticed was that he was hard most of the time I was around him with one of the devices in my mouth."

"Over the weekend, I pretty much just locked myself in the bedroom except to eat. I spent the whole weekend just thinking and finally came to a decision. Monday of the third week I told him to go to the office and start working on whatever he was doing. I had something that I needed to do first. I went out shopping for a special outfit, finally finding it at a theatrical costume store. It didn't have to fit perfectly, as I could have it altered later if what I had in mind worked. I had booked an appointment to have my hair done at the salon because there was no way that I could create the style that I wanted on my own. I had the shoe that I wanted and had attached it to my leg-brace already and was wearing it when I left the hair salon. I had to stop a few times to look at my reflection. With the metal leg-brace encasing my leg, I looked almost like I was hoping for."

"I would need my husbands help for the final part of the look. I went in through the back door and into the storeroom to retrieve the models that I had hidden there. I hesitantly crutched my way down the hall, my heel tapping against the tiles each time I took a step and the crutches and metal of my leg-brace creaking in between the taps. I stop in the doorway to the room that he is working in and wait as he turns to look at me. Before he can speak, I say, "I have an enormous favour to ask of you. I don't want you to ask me anything, just do what I want you to do. After you are all done, I want you just hold me until I can explain why I am doing this and what is going on with me." He just nods his agreement."

"I crutch down the hall to one of the treatment rooms and get into the chair, then set the models on the table beside it. I can tell that he really wants to ask me some questions, but won't break his promise to stay silent. Beside the models, I place a tube of modern temporary bonding glue that will cure using a blue light. With a quaver in my voice that is close to a sob, I say to him, "I want you to put these on my teeth, and I don't want you to stop until you are done no matter what I say and how long it takes. I want you to put my crutches out in the hall so that I am trapped in the chair until you finish. I will probably call you some nasty things, but don't pay attention to me. It will just be my fear talking." My darling husband nods at me, then places my crutches in the hall where I can see them. He knows that I always have to see where my crutches are, otherwise I panic."

"It takes him much of the afternoon to install and glue the bands around my teeth. He has to stop several times to hold me while I cry into his shoulder. He doesn't let me see what I look like, even when I yell at him. The only time that he asks me anything is when he needs to know what colour ligatures to use to hold in the archwire. He uses a very soft archwire and puts bends in it to match the position of my teeth so that there won't be any pressure on them and they won't move."

"When he is finally done, he brings the treatment chair almost to the upright position and slides me forward until he can sit behind me, then lifts me into his lap and wraps one arm around me, holding me to his chest. That is when he hands me the mirror and I get the first look at what I have done to myself. I begin to cry, great big sobs heaving from my body. I don't know how long I cried, but he held me the entire time until I was done and felt able to talk to him."

"I explained that some of the female employees had asked me why my teeth were so crooked, especially as I am married to an orthodontist who will do anything that I ask of him. It took me a while to get to the part about the memories coming back to me of what happened after the accident and why I had never had my teeth fixed because of that. When I began to explain about how he had been reacting to those pictures of me in the various treatment plans, he doesn't say anything, just turns me so that I am facing him with my braced leg on one side and my stump on the other and begins to kiss me. Every time I try to pull away from him, he just gently puts my lips against his mouth and begins to kiss me again."

"He does eventually let me lean back a little, but only enough that he can guide my hand between our bodies to his lap. When I feel how hard he is, I begin to smile really big, paying attention to how big the brackets feel behind my lips. "I think that you better take me home so that I can release some of the pressure in your pants, unless you can't wait that long and would rather do it here." We did make it home, but not before early in the morning."

"I was the first picture that he put on the wall. It shows me wearing the outfit that I picked out, with a few close-up shots of my face and mouth from different angles. That one is in our bedroom now and brings back great memories for both of us. I wore those metal bands for the entire remaining time of our vacation. He even convinced me to go out to eat at a fancy restaurant where nobody would know us. I wore the same outfit after it had been cleaned and altered and he went out and bought a suit from the same place. When we entered the restaurant, me in my wheelchair holding his hand, it looked as if we had stepped out of a fashion magazine from the time when banded braces were still a new thing. Two days after he placed the bands around my teeth, I had him change the archwire to a stiffer one and he begin treating me for real."

Before our employees returned to work, I went through the boxes in the back room and found these old-style large brackets. I would have liked to keep the bands on for my entire treatment, but decided that a more modern look was more appropriate."

I have been blinking at her, trying to fight off the drowsiness that I have been feeling for a while. When she sees that I am falling asleep, she excuses herself and leaves me alone in the room. It isn't long before I fall asleep.