Thursday afternoon. I'm sitting in my office, surfing the web over lunch, and mechanically munching on a cup of chili purchased from the next-door grocery store deli. Suddenly, I feel something alarmingly unchili-like in texture between my teeth. It crunches; I stop chewing and search with my tongue. There are teensy crumbles of something hard all over my mouth. It is, I realize in the pit of my stomach, a familiar sensation.

Horror-stricken, I stand and walk slowly to my purse to withdraw a small compact. Holding it up to my face and staring into the mirror, I find that my worst fear is realized: the front of one of my back teeth is now crumbled and missing. No!

Flashback: Two years ago, Eric and I are driving home from dinner, and I feel the crumbling substance in my mouth for the first time. Checking the mirror, I find that the back of one of my back teeth is missing. It is not painful, but quite disconcerting. At home, I make a quick appointment with Eric's dental clinic; his own dentist is unavailable, so I schedule the appointment with the partner.

On the day of the appointment, I am told that I will need a crown. The hygienist prepares me, and the dentist gives me a shot of Novocain. Mind you, I have never been afraid of either dentists or their needles. I feel the small prick of pain and wait patiently for numbness.

It never arrives.

The dentist comes with a drill and begins to grind the tooth flat. Agony rips through my jaw, and I quickly motion for her to stop. She apologizes, gives me another shot, and we wait to try again. Once more, the grinding is exceedingly painful and I cry out. She calls for more drugs.

Five or six times, she injected me with Novocain without success. After a while I lost count; by the end, I was shaking uncontrollably and crying. I wanted to get up and run away. The tooth hadn't hurt before I entered the office, and now it was throbbing miserably. At last, throwing up her hands in defeat, the dentist went and got her partner. He came in with a needle twice as long as the others and jabbed it repeatedly into the roof of my mouth. At last, wonderful numbness; it extended over the entire right side of my face, leaving me unable to even breathe out of the right side of my nose. I was almost able to calm down. The first dentist finished the procedure as quickly as she could, putting the temporary crown on and telling me to come back in a few days.

That afternoon, when the medication wore off, I found myself plunged deeper into agony than I'd ever been. I sobbed and sobbed, burying my face deep into my hands to try to stop the throbbing. My grad school teachers excused me, and I went home and took many pain pills in an effort to control myself. That night, and for nights thereafter, I was unable to sleep on my right side for fear of brushing my cheek on the pillow.

When I returned to the dentist to complete the procedure, it took every bit of willpower I had to walk through the door. Once more the dentist gave me a shot of Novocain, and once more the pain remained with me. I had to close my eyes and pretend I was far, far away in order to keep from becoming hysterical. When she finally finished, I wiped the tears from my eyes, walked quickly out of the office, and never went back.

In those two years, I have not been back to the dentist. I still can't chew with that side of my mouth without pain, but I'd rather deal with that minor inconvenience than go back to have it fixed. I am now thoroughly and irrationally afraid of sitting in a dentist's chair - any dentist, for any reason.

And now my tooth is broken. I have to go back. Not to that dentist, certainly, but to any dentist, and I can't even think about that fact without my pulse racing and my breath catching in my throat. Perhaps I can delay it until after the baby comes, but I can't delay it forever. Oh, no...

I'm sure she didn't expect to see my leap out of my chair, fling my arms about my chest, and emit a short, quiet yelp of panic.

"Is it alive?" I managed to ask.

"Yep, it's flying around, very confused. The caretaker's trying to catch it now."

I closed my eyes and shuddered, long and hard. "Could you do me a favor? When he catches it, could you call out here and let me know? Because I'm not setting foot on that side of the building until it's gone." She agreed, and I went back to my work, thought much subdued. About fifteen minutes later, she came back over and told me, "It's dead."

Ooh, that does not make it better. Dead birds are just as awful, if not worse, than their live counterparts in my eyes. At least it was gone.

Fast-forward to the afternoon. I came back from lunch and headed toward my office. On the way, I passed a group of people surrounding a ladder in another office. They were all staring through a hole in the ceiling. I asked what was going on.

"There's something in the ceiling. Skunk, possum, something."

Nodding, I went and sat down in my office. I hadn't been there a minute when I heard something scrabbling across the ceiling directly over my head. I jumped with surprise, and then ducked out of the office. "It's in here, guys!"

"Yep, we know. It's another bird."

Well, I never moved so fast in my life. I grabbed my coat, my purse, and my tote bag and ran for the main library. "Let me know when it's gone, guys; I won't be back till then!"

They still hadn't caught it by the end of the day. Some were sure that there were actually two creatures in the ceiling, but the only one that mattered to me was the one with wings and a beak. It could have been a boa constrictor or a Black Widow spider and I would have been a happier camper. The clerks all laughed at me and sent me books with pictures of birds.

This morning, before I entered my office or even removed my coat, I went straight to the caretaker. "Is it gone?"

"Yes, sir, I found it dead this morning in one of the offices."

No, I didn't ask him which one. I don't want to know.

I pray I have my voice back by tomorrow. If not, then I hope Boss-Lady is willing to take my storytime for me; I can't face the idea of sitting in front of a group of children and trying to read aloud the way I am now. And sing? Oh, the humanity!