Fixing Lost Causes

The front door is open. There was time to turn the alarms off, but even so the front door to the office is open like a gap between teeth. Inside there is sobbing, gasping, doors opening and slamming. I walk inside, though it takes me a moment. A dental offices offer no pleasure for a magician, and little to use. There is pain here: the waiting for it, the reality of it. Sometimes, rarely, relief.

But mostly there is pain, the kind that even the worst magicians would use as a ward. Wealth sings in the air, laughing it’s cruel laughs. The self-made wards about the place are braces made of barbed wire. It has no god, though most businesses produce one. I suspect the gods borne from such places end their own existences, though I’ve never looked into it.

I find the dentist sitting in a chair, mirror in a shaking hand. Jabbing at his gums with their freezing drugs. Tears are streaking down his face as I cough. He stands, tries to talk, but his entire face is close to numb. It has done nothing for the pain in his teeth.

“The freezing won’t stop that kind of pain: I’m afraid it’s a lost cause.”

The dentist doesn’t heard me. I could speak in a tone I have that can’t be ignored, thread magic into the words and I still doubt he’d hear anything right now beyond pain. If it’s just pain at all anymore.

I reach out, find the bindings that were made, and undo each one. He collapses into the seat after, gasping. I take the numbness out of him along with as much of the memory of pain as I can; I store both for use in the future. It is one of the easiest magics I have ever done: his need and desire mesh perfectly with mine.

“Who – who?” he gets out as sanity surfaces from the agonies.

I let out a sigh. “You had a patient earlier. A boy was with her.”

He nods. People remember Jay. In the way of remembering miracles – both the bad kind and the good, though Jay is entirely unaware of that.

“Charlie wasn’t hurting before she came in. And she was hurting after.”

“But that’s normal after a cleaning and –.”

“I know. She knows. But she was grumpy about it, and Jay heard her. And decided you needed to know what that pain was like so that you wouldn’t hurt anyone ever again. Jay isn’t human: it takes a lot for him to feel anything like a tootheache. But he managed it, and then he gave you that same amount of pain because he thought it was the proper amount for a tooth ache.”

The dentist opens his mouth. Closes it. His perfect teeth have lost a certain gleam.

“It’s best not to think about it too hard. And the next time you’re asked to make sure someone isn’t hurt at all, you might want to do so.”

He manages a jerky nod.

I turn and walk back outside. I send some of the numbness to Jay, who has one tooth still aching from whatever he tried to eat that hurt his teeth. I close the door, study the building and wait.

The dentist comes out in a hurry, eyes like broken teeth. I did my best. Sometimes it’s not enough.

“Stop.” He stops dead at the command. I walk over, study his bulging jacket. “Not everything has to be a lost cause: you can keep your business, not flee into the night. Forget.”

It’s hard, to make someone forget meeting Jay even if they want to. I push, hard, invoke a Power that will ask a price for such aid later. The memory fades. The madness dims. The dentist heads back inside, replaces everything he was going to steal to start a new life elsewhere.

I walk back toward the motel Charlie, Jay and I are staying at. The dentist pulls over a couple of minutes later, asks if I need a lift. He doesn’t remember me, but he pays the gift forward just a little without knowing. I ask about his job, and there is nothing save normalcy in his voice when he talks about the office, his staff, the time it took to make the business.

He lets me off at the motel and I head into the suite to tell Charlie that Jay is never, ever going with either of us to any appointment again.