And I sat back in the chair, mute with misgivings, while he happily trotted over to his tool-box singing "It won't be a stylish marriage" and pulled out an ugly-looking forceps.
"All ready?" he said, jacking back the chair, and brandishing the instrument of torture. I nodded, feeling as if I had gone pale to the roots of my hair.
But the tooth came out fast, in one big, vivid flash of pain and left me spitting a lot of green and red business into that little blue whispering whirlpool by the side of the dentist's chair.
"Oh, goodness," said Dr. McTaggart, "I don't like that very much, I must say."
I walked wearily back to school, reflecting that it was not really so terrible after all to have a tooth pulled out without novocain. However, instead of getting better, I got worse. By evening, I was really ill, and that night--that sleepless night--was spent in a fog of sick confusedness and general pain. The next morning they took my temperature and put me to bed in the sick-room, where I eventually got to sleep.
That did not make me any better. And I soon gathered in a vague way that our matron, Miss Harrison, was worried about me, and communicated her worries to the Headmaster, in whose own house this particular sick-room was.
Then the in-school doctor came around. And he went away again, returning with Dr. McTaggart who, this time, did not sing.
And I heard them agreeing that I was getting to be too full of gangrene for my own good. They decided to lance a big hole in my gum, and see if they could not drain the pocket of infection there and so, having given me a little ether, they went ahead. I awoke with my mouth full of filth, both doctors urging me to hurry up and get rid of it.
When they had gone, I lay back in bed and closed my eyes and thought, "I have blood-poisoning."
And then my mind went back to the sore foot I had developed in Germany. Well, I would tell them about it when they came back the next time.
Sick, weary, half-asleep, I felt the throbbing of the wound in my mouth. Blood poisoning.
The room was very quiet. It was rather dark, too. And as I lay in bed, in my weariness and pain and disgust, I felt for a moment the shadow of another visitor pass into the room.
It was death, that came to stand by my bed.
I kept my eyes closed, more out of apathy than anything else. But anyway, there was no need to open one's eyes to see the visitor, to see death. Death is someone you see very clearly with eyes in the center of your heart: eyes that see not by reacting to light, but by reacting to a kind of a chill from within the marrow of your own life.
And, with those eyes, those interior eyes, open upon that coldness, I lay half asleep and looked at the visitor, death.
What did I think? All I remember was that I was filled with a deep and tremendous apathy. I felt so sick and disgusted that I did not very much care whether I died or lived. Perhaps death did not come very close to me, or give me a good look at the nearness of his coldness and darkness, or I would have been more afraid.
But at any rate, I lay there in a kind of torpor and said, "Come on, I don't care." Then I fell asleep.
A common belief says that, when you're experiencing death or near death, your life flashes before your eyes. I'm not sure if that is true or not. The closest I've ever come to shuffling off this mortal coil was when I was about 13 years old and ended up in a diabetic ketoacidosis coma in the hospital. I fell asleep on the couch in my family's living room with what I thought was the flu and woke up in intensive care, with a whole lot of people around me, looking grim and hopeless. When I opened my eyes, they started firing questions at me like "What's your name?" and "What day of the week is it?" and "Do you know where you are?" and "Can you count to five?" I felt like I was on some weird TV quiz show called Black Plague Jeopardy.
My life didn't pass before my eyes. At least, I don't remember it passing before my eyes. All I remember is being really tired. And wanting a glass of chocolate milk. That's it.
This evening, however, after work, I think I had a near death experience.
When my wife and I were on our honeymoon in Hawaii, a friend took us to a little place called Waiola Shave Ice in Waikiki. There, for the first time in my life, I partook in traditional Hawaiian shave ice. I don't remember the flavor I had, but I know it was tropical and sweet and revelatory. I had never had anything like it. When I've thought about our honeymoon over the years, I always return to that moment. (My memories of trips and vacations are usually centered on food.)
Now, a new business has literally popped up in the city where I work. Run by a family from Oahu, it's called Aloha Ice, and it sells traditional Hawaiian shave ice. When my wife and I went there today, we stood in line for about ten minutes, and then bought a couple medium shave ices. I chose dragon fruit. My wife got lychee. Each were as big as a baby's head, and they brought me back to that afternoon in Waikiki. Palm trees. Heat. The Pacific Ocean only a mile or so away. And my wife and I newly married and ravenous for each other.
My life passed before my eyes in one miraculous spoonful after another, right down to the ice cream at the bottom of the dish. It was delicious with nostalgia for a simpler, happier time in my life.
And for that, Saint Marty gives thanks.
