Oxygen

“What do you think about the X-rays, Dr Smith?”

Dr Zoya Khan asked him, over the phone.

“I think we should remove that tooth, especially since she has been complaining about its pain for so long. It just needs to come out.”

“No, I do not foresee any complications with this procedure,” he added, before hanging up.

Text message:

Zoya: I scheduled your procedure with one of the best oral surgeons in the area. The appointment has been made for exactly two weeks from now, at 8:00 a.m. Make sure you show up on time, don’t eat or drink anything four hours before the procedure. You will be just fine, trust me. There is no reason to be nervous.

“Hi, I would like to see Dr Smith to talk to him before my procedure,” Zareena said to the secretary over the phone. “We are so sorry, but he is booked solid each day of the week. We even have him working through his lunch. Why don’t you come in a little earlier on the day of the appointment?” Zareena agreed.
________________________________________________________________________

Zareena’s father sat beside her on her bed. “I can take you to your appointment.”
“Thanks, Abu, that would be great.”
“Don’t worry, this seems like a routine procedure, and it has been bothering you for some time. Certainly, this is a wise choice.”
“Yes, you are right.”

The night before the procedure, Zareena came downstairs and chewed on half a loaf of bread, sliced tomatoes, and parmesan cheese.       “It is just a tooth, Zareena, get some sleep, you will be juuuust fine,” her mother said.

Zareena made her way upstairs into her comfortable bed but was unable to sleep as the strong winds crashed against her bedroom windows. The night erupted in a noisy storm, as blood poured profusely between her.

While approximately 7,000 miles away, ghastlier winds targeted innocent bystanders, with heavy shelling and explosions of countless missile attacks causing an outpouring of bleeding veins in dead bodies, while enormous dust clouds captured the desert sky scattering darkness upon an entire city.

Zareena woke up at 6 a.m. to the reckless wind that blew outside her bedroom window. Recalling that her sister had said not to drink anything before the procedure, she did so anyway. She washed her face with lukewarm water, brushed her teeth, and got dressed. She put on fitted black jeans and threw on a sweater. She took her tincture of rose-hip oil and dabbed it around her bare chest. She looked at herself in the mirror, her skin glowing, her black, thick hair tousled. She thought back to the last time she had met Dr Smith who had told her that she was ‘a pretty little thing’ whose presence in his office ‘added sparks’ to a boring day.

On the one hand, his remarks had angered her, making her feel like the objectified, brown woman. Yet, on the other hand, his comments fed her craving for a man’s attention, enabling a kind of femininity within her that she both loved and hated.

When Zareena walked downstairs, she saw her father dressed and eating breakfast. Zareena sat on the steps waiting in front of the door. The rain poured, the wind blew, crashing against the house. Zareena gazed out of the glass door, waiting as she would at an airport before a flight.

“Ready?” her father asked, putting on his coat.

“Ready.” In the car, Zareena inserted her headphones and listened to NPR, as they drove through the dark, desolate streets of the early morning.

“The United States, along with Great Britain and France, bombed Syria last night, hitting three targets all related to what the United States believes is Syria’s chemical weapons program,” the commentator said.

“This war in Syria sounds strikingly similar to the narrative that was used in Iraq doesn’t it Abu?”

“Yes, it certainly does.”

“The United Nations and Arab League have estimated that the total death toll since the start of the war has been around 400,000, of which over 500 have been children,” the commentator continued. Zareena turned off the radio and looked through The Independent, where she saw an image of a little boy wearing an oxygen mask.

Zareena turned off her phone.
________________________________________________________________________

They arrived at the office. A solid structure made out of red bricks sat on top of the hill, overlooking the entire city. Although it was the beginning of spring, snow continued to fall and the wind howled like a werewolf, pushing Zareena and her father through the entrance doors.

“Please have a seat over there,” the secretary said. The room reminded Zareena of a fancy ski lodge, with its wooden interior, sleek leather couches, and Pottery Barn style décor. The room faced a shiny black, flat screen T.V. and a remote-controlled fireplace that was next to a fully stocked Keurig machine.

“Hi, are you Zaa-Riiin-a?” said a woman with the kind of freakish smile one would see if a circus clown was doing a crest-whitening commercial, with skin that looked too taut to be real, and orange enough to resemble Donald Trump; a woman with bleach blonde hair that had been hair-sprayed to a stiff perfection.

“You will come with me. Everything you need to know will be on the blue sheet that we will give you after the procedure,” she said smiling. “You can leave all of your belongings right here.”

Zareena looked at her father. “Ok, Abu. I will see you in a bit.”

She followed the nurse down the long hall into a fluorescently-lighted room with a mint green leather chair that was waiting for her arrival.

“Go ahead and lay down. Let me take your glasses.” the nurse said while she turned on a machine that sounded like a humidifier.

“I am going to place this mask on you. Just inhale and exhale like you normally would. Just relax into it…breeeeeathe deeply.”

Zareena pressed her head deeper into the cushion of the chair, her eyes slowly closing. As she breathed into the mask, her fingertips tingled, while her legs began to feel unattached to the rest of her body.

“Yoo-hoo are you ok over there?” Zareena heard the voice of the nurse and giggled. A few minutes later, Zareena began to move her head from side to side. Her eyes fluttered and her hands dangled off the armrest.

“Ok…I am going turn this down from a 5 to a 3,” the nurse said, dialling the knob to the left.

Zareena bent her neck further back, her chest moving up and down. The images of war-ravaged children flashed before her eyes. She swung her hand to her mouth and ripped the mask off her face.

“I am not doing this!” She exclaimed.

“Ok…Ok…! We need to get the doctor in here!”

The doctor emerged. Zareena could see the foggy shadow of his tall, burly silhouette.

“I don’t know if I can do this.”

A momentary silence filled the room with the weight of toxic fumes.

“There is nothing to be afraid of. But I will tell you this, I won’t be rescheduling this, not after the effort I made to get you here.”

“Well, it’s not my fault I feel afraid. Don’t you understand? I need ten minutes to myself.”

The nurse stood behind her frantically unwrapping plastic packages.

“I will be back in exactly ten minutes,” the doctor said.

“I am sorry. I just don’t know that this procedure is necessary…I am just not convinced that this pain will be worth it,” Zareena said to the nurse.

“Well, it has been causing you pain. If you don’t get it out, it will get infected.”

“Well, I just, I just don’t know that I can do this.”

“Oh, you can. You can do this.”

Ten minutes later, the doctor re-entered the room.

“Ok, I will do this. But, I do not want that gas mask on my face.”

“Open your mouth nice and wide,” he said, inserting his hand in her mouth. Zareena watched his large, rough hands move in and out of her mouth, her hands clenched, her body frozen. From the corner of her eye, she could see the nurse’s leg covered in navy blue pants. Images of her sweating hands grabbing her leg flashed before her eyes.

“That’s it, that’s the girl,” the doctor said, inserting his big hands in her delicate mouth. The residue of her chiselled tooth flickered like sawdust in the air. The nurse held her head still, with her hands covered in red acrylic nails, the tips of which pressed down on the sides of her brown temples.

“Now, I am going to just stitch this up,” the doctor said, taking a long, black string and weaving it in and out of her.

“That’s it, the procedure is all done!” he said.

“That’s it? It’s over?” Zareena said springing up in the seat.

“Good job, kiddo,” he said taking out his fist and bumping it against hers. As she walked out of the room, she saw her bloody tooth lying on the white paper towel.

The doctor stopped her in the dark corridor, where he stood at the entrance of a room with a manilla envelope in his hands. “Everything you need to take is in this envelope right here. Take all of these today and your pain will be completely gone. It will be as if nothing ever happened.”

Zareena left the surgical room and arrived in the waiting room. The room was completely full now. It seemed as if each seat held the body of a white man wearing a camouflaged jacket and a baseball hat. The channel of the television had been switched from CNN to Fox. The reporter said, “The United States has successfully conquered the Islamic jihadists.”

Zareena’s father walked toward her and placed his hands on her shoulders. “Were you able to hear my screams?” Zareena asked.

“The procedure will be three hundred dollars,” the woman at the checkout desk said. “I thought my insurance would have covered this,” Zareena whispered to her father as he took out his wallet.

“Do I need to schedule a follow-up appointment?” Zareena asked. “No, there will be no need for that.”

Zareena grabbed her coat and followed her father out of the office. Outside, the wind gushed harder, with a thin layer of snow covering the ground. Her father opened her side of the door. When he got in the driver’s seat, he did not insert his keys. Zareena silently stared out the window. Her father did the same.
________________________________________________________________________
When they arrived home, Zareena called her sister.

“I just hated that mask. All I could see was the image of war. The Syrian war, the Holocaust, the gas chambers of war…” but before she could finish, her sister interrupted.

“Ok, you are so crazy. Of course, someone like you would make those comparisons! It is not the oral surgeon’s job to help you with your trauma, or the trauma of the world. You know time is money in this world. Why can’t you just act like a grown-up and carry on in the world as normal people do?”
_______________________________________________________________________

Zareena sat in front of the bay window in the kitchen with her cat next to her. The wind had stopped swirling, the snow had settled crisply onto sharp edges of green blades of grass. The sky was clear with white, puffy clouds fully settled within it.

Zareena’s father stood next to her slicing a soft pear with a sharp bladed knife. “These are for you,” he said, placing the plate in front of her.

But Zareena was unable to eat them. Instead, she looked on at a world that stood still before her.