In Her Way (15 page)

20

The Dental Office of Doom

"Okay, sir. So for this procedure we're probably best off giving you some nitrous oxide."

He gives me a frowny shake of his head, so I hold up the biggest, scariest tooth pliers I could find in the supply closet. That stops him.

"Trust me. It's just better for everyone."

He nods. "Okay." Then he checks his watch. "How long vill that take?" This one has more of a Russian accent than the other, or maybe it's just the fact that he had two teeth knocked out of his mouth. I can't quite tell.

I tip my head to the side. "Oh, it shouldn't take more than an hour for the whole procedure. Why? Is there somewhere you need to be?" I keep my voice sickly sweet to make sure I don't let the anger seep in, but I'm just about giving my self a stomachache.

"Yes, hurry if you can."

I give him a nod and a disgusting wink before I push the buttons on the chair to recline him and get the gas ready. I take a quick moment to set my business owner/certificated dentist/rule following self at rest, and justify the could-be-considered-malpractice-ness of what I'm about to do with the fact that this is self defense, man. These guys have already done who knows what to Andrew, attacked Em's hair, and intend to do even worse to Kaylee. Dental license or not, they are not going to get away with hurting any more people I care about, not if I can help it.

My nervousness must be bunching up in my brain, pushing all logic, thought, and even years of training out of there because I begin acting like a cartoon dentist. I hum a little song while I set everything up, roll around like a child in my chair when I need to get things, and smile all big whenever he looks over at me. I'm seriously thousands of children's nightmare right now.

But apparently those cartoon dentists still got things done, because I have the guy nice and happy on the nitrous oxide a short while later. I keep the nose mask and the gas on but I increase the oxygen input and start looking in his mouth to "examine" the area. Really I just want to make sure he's missing two teeth, not just the one. Which he is. This is definitely our guy.

Sure as sure now, I start stuffing the cotton in his mouth.

"Yep! This is to keep your mouth nice and wide. It also keeps it fairly dry so we don't have to worry about too much spit." Big dentist smile.

Loopy, drugged, cotton-mouthed smile back.

I look behind me where Em and Kaylee keep tiptoeing across the hall. I have to give it to them, they're being super quiet. I just hope whatever they're doing will actually catch this guy's large curly-headed friend.

After a wiggle of my fingers and a quick deep breath, I get the Lidocaine ready and start shooting the guy's gums full of the stuff. I don't really think this will help, but I need to keep up the illusion that I'm actually going to do this for a bit longer to buy Em and Kaylee some time.

Buzz Cut is super happy at this point. His eyes roll around and are squeezed up into a perma-smile. I keep pretending like I'm doing something in his mouth, inspecting the teeth around the holes in his mouth, with my left hand. With my right, I reach behind me and grab a spool of floss I started before I sat down. One of many.

I stop my inspecting for a second to hold it down as I gently and carefully wrap it around his arm and the arm of the dental chair. Over and over and over and over again.

He doesn't seem to notice. I shove some more cotton in his mouth. The man looks like a freaking taxidermy victim and all I want to do is burst out in a giggle fit, but I hold it in until the spool runs out and I quickly tie the ends together. And double knot them.

"I'm going to move to the other side to see if I can get better leverage for the procedure." I lie, scooting my chair around and pulling my tray with me.

The poor man just makes a sound akin to the adults from Peanuts talking and I have to turn away so he doesn't see me laugh. At least I know now that he can't really talk. That's a plus.

I pull the same gig with his left arm, flossing the thing to the chair while I repeat, "Almost time for that tooth" whenever he starts to fidget. When I'm almost done, he starts moving like he's going to sit up, but I simply readjust the light on him, blind him a bit, and he settles down.

"Here," I say, having a great idea. "Why don't I give you some glasses for that." I pull out the sunglasses we give patients to deal with the spotlight. This will make it even easier to tie down his legs and body.

Unfortunately, it's a lot harder to put sunglasses on someone other than yourself. I poke him in the eye three times and get it stuck in his ear for a few seconds before I can get them settled on his face. They wobble and don't quite fit because of the nitrous oxide nose-mask, but I hope they block at least a little of his vision. I take a second to turn the gas down. In school they told us too much of the stuff can cause a patient to puke and I don't really want to add that to my list of things-that-aren't-going-my-way today.

"Just a few more... things." I doubt he's listening to me anymore, so I sneak down to the lower part of the chair and start floss-tying his damn mobster legs to the leg rest. It's a larger circumference than his arms and the arm rests, so I have to tie the floss at the beginning and the end. All of which I do with a cringe plastered on my face and one eye keeping watch.

Movement in the hall catches my attention. The girls have created some sort of floss-spider-web-entrapment that I hope to goodness works how they think it will. I look back to the spool of the stuff I hold in my hand and realize that I'm running with the exact same kind of who-knows-if-this-will-work ridiculous plan and have no room to criticize their creation. People in floss houses should not -- um -- throw floss?

My almost-tied-up-mobster tries to speak, pulling me back to my job.

"Just a few more preparations." I smile toward his face, unsure if he can see me and give him a pat on the chest. I turn the gas completely off, but leave the funny looking nose mask on him mainly because it obstructs his view and I'm going to need as much help as I can get for what I plan to do next. I crouch behind him and start wrapping floss tight around his upper body.

Yeah, he feels this part.

He starts to squirm, but can't do much because of the massive amounts of floss I've got pinning his limbs to this dental chair. And while floss may be small, it sure doesn't give, which leaves him stuck right where I need him to be. I also imagine he's feeling pretty loopy at this point, so any fight in him isn't up to his regular par, a fact that I'm super grateful for at this moment as I keep wrapping the floss around and around his body.

When I'm done, I stand and look over him. You actually can't tell there's anything keeping him there from far away, but I stick my fingers under the restraints and give each a satisfied tug. Then I remove his nose mask so I can have the laughing gas ready for our next victim.

Buzz Cut wiggles a bit, makes some unintelligible noises, and sighs. I give him a narrow-eyed nod.

"Yeah. That's right. You stay put."

I can see him moving his mouth around, trying to get the copious amounts of cotton I shoved in there loose, but it doesn't seem to be working. Again, he gives up and settles back into the happy delusional state I’m sure the nitrous keeps pulling him back to.

My guy taken care of, I scurry out into the hall to help the girls. My feet screech to a (hopefully quiet) halt as I almost run into the floss trap. Em and Kaylee stand on the other side, waving their hands for me to stop.

I motion to the mess in front of me. Em points at the light they've positioned down the hall from the second exam room and swivels her hand. Kaylee pretends to be blinded by it and mimes tripping over the floss. Then Em, who I hadn't realized was gone for a second, reappears holding every lead x-ray vest we own and shows how she'll throw them onto him. Kaylee points to her wrist where a ton of pre-unfurled floss is. She gestures to show how she will use it to tie him up (or at least, that's what I get from the movements she's making).

I bite my lip as I watch their plan, nodding as I think of how I can help. Then I hold up a finger, tiptoe back into my office and grab the stun gun Daddy gave me before we opened. I shrug just-in-case shoulders at the girls, who mimic me and nod their heads, too.

Once Em and Kaylee are hidden, I stand behind the wall with my hand on the rotating neck of the lamp.

Then I poke my head out. So does Em and then Kaylee. I furrow my brow, point to the door that leads to the waiting room, and mouth, "How do we get him back here?" with probably more gestures than I need.

The girls cringe in response. Em looks up at the ceiling and Kaylee looks down at the carpet, both focused and grim. I don't even have time to think of any ideas of my own because I hear a spitting, coughing, gagging behind me in the first exam room.

Peering around the corner, I see the ends of the cotton I stuffed in Buzz Cut's mouth pop out and onto his chest. I move to go put it back, but stop. This could be our solution. I look down at the floor, take a deep breath, and wait for what I know is coming.

After a few seconds, the guy cries out. Sure it's slightly slurred and mostly unintelligible, but it's loud. He tries to sit up and when he can't he cries out louder. Luckily it comes out as mushy as the first. (I can't have this guy warning his buddy with anything specific.)

That seems to do it. I hear movement in the waiting room. Curly yells out, "Greg? What's going on back there?"

I get back into my position, turn on the stun gun like Daddy showed me, and peek out from behind the wall.

"Hey!" He stands at the door for a second. I can see his body outline on the other side of the frosted glass as he tries to look down the hall. Then he opens the door.

Em and Kaylee watch me. I nod to them and disappear for just a second before I hear his footsteps come pounding down my way. He's fast, thankfully, and doesn't seem to be slowing (meaning he hasn't seen the floss trap yet). I pop out and shine the lamp on full strength right into his eyes.

His arms fly up to cover his face and he stumbles forward. The floss tangles up his booted feet and he begins to tip over. It feels like the slow-motion-part-of-a-movie as I watch Em jump out of the supply closet and swing the lead aprons onto his back. He wheezes, as they seem to knock the air out of his lungs. Em lets her body continue forward and lands on his legs, pinning them down as he crashes to the floor finally.

Then Kaylee flies out from the lounge, hopping onto his back. I rush forward and do my part to pin down his head and arms as he starts to gain his senses and wiggle around.

Kaylee's fast, but he's fighting back. She looks up at me and I nod, placing the stun gun onto the hand I have pinned down. He screams as I press the button and his arm goes limp enough for Kaylee to pull it behind his back. I stun the other arm and she grabs it as well. Then her hands fly, whirring around and around as she transfers the floss from her wrist to binding his.

Em's already working on his legs, winding floss tight around his ankles. Once Kaylee's done with Curly's hands, she repositions and sits on his upper back, flattening him back onto the ground. She nods to me and I go grab the nitrous oxide, wheeling the little cart behind me as I return.

It takes us a few minutes and a good amount of trial and error, but we get the guy flipped onto his side. After that it's a few more minutes of holding his face still enough for me to get the mask over his nose. But soon his brown glaring eyes start to lose some of their tightness and anger as the gas makes its way into his body.

My fingers stay on the controls, closely monitoring how much he's getting. Once he's had a few minutes, I turn it off and we sit him up against the wall.

Then we collapse onto the floor once he's set and we can tell he's not trying to move anymore. For a few moments all I can hear is us panting and all I can see is my view of our captives from where my head is pressed against the carpet.

But even though I feel like I could pass out, now that adrenaline has stopped coursing through my body, Kaylee's up again, grabbing more things from the supply closet.

"Whatcha getting?" Em sits up and wipes her hair out of her sweaty face; it sticks out weird from the moisture.

"These." She walks out holding the heavy-duty rubber tubing we keep on stock for water pick hoses.

We sit up and help her wrap these guys up so much they're definitely not going anywhere.

21

Giggling Men Tell No Tales

We stand and watch them with our hands on our hips and our heads tipped to the side.

"So..." Kaylee drops her chin to her chest.

"Yeah..." Em lets her head fall back.

"Holy crap. What have we done?" I lift my hands to my face and press my fingers into my temples. "We just tied up, stunned, and sedated members of the Russian mob." Saying it out loud makes it even scarier.

Em puts a hand on my arm. "We had to. They attacked me and they've already hurt Andrew."

I shake my head. "We were just supposed to be opening a business. Then all this stuff got in the way. Now we're going to be on the news because we're going to jail." I back up until I'm leaning against the wall. I let it catch me as I slide down and sit in a puddle on the floor.

Em watches me with furrowed brows and a look of helplessness that makes shivers run up and down my arms. The short-sighted, tunnel-vision, task-master me comes bowling forward and makes me want to run around in circles and yell, "Undo! Undo! Undo!"

Then I see Kaylee. Her face, still a little smudged with black mascara from her earlier crying-over-Andrew, starts to crumple. She presses her lips together and looks up at the ceiling. "I'm --" Quivery voice. "This is --" More shaking than an earthquake. "Sorry..." Sobbing. Running down the hall toward the front of the office.

"Kaylee! Wait, I didn't mean --"

But I don't get to finish my apology because she's forgotten about the floss and even though Curly smashed the trap up pretty good with his large thrashy feet, there's still enough left to trip the heck out of poor Kaylee as she runs through the mess.

The flop that follows could hit some huge numbers on YouTube, but I don't laugh. The only affect it has on me is that any of those self-serving way-too-focused Jules thoughts get knocked out right along with Kaylee's breath as she meets the floor.

Em rushes forward with me and we're both making ouch faces as we help her up. I watch her, hoping I haven't made her feel too upset, but when she scrambles up into a sitting position, she's smiling. Laughing even.

"Dammit!" she yells and hits the floor.

Em and I can't help but join in on the laughter. A small giggle behind us stops us for a second. We all look back and Curly's eyes are pulled into a smile. I guess the gas has gotten to him now, too. This makes us laugh even harder and after a few minutes, we're finally up off the floor.

Daddy and Mama's words from earlier flit through my mind. I need to quit looking at things as obstacles and see them as opportunities. These men are in our control right now and they know where Andrew is. We need to use this to our advantage.

I walk over to Curly, squat, and lean toward him. After a quick slap on the cheek, he's looking up at me, albeit in a swoony, not very focused way.

"Hey, you!" I give him another quick slap for good measure. "Where you keeping that Marshal? Huh? Where'd you take him?" I narrow my eyes and wait.

Curly looks at me for a second and then breaks into another fit of giggles.

Great.

I look to Em for help. She steps forward and says, "You've gotta know taking a US Marshal is going to get you a lot of time in jail, buddy. You. Not your boss." Em pauses. "If you tell us where he is, we can get you a reduced sentence in exchange."

I nod, realizing once again how smart Em is and how lucky we are to have her with us.

But even all of Em's smart words and making-sense cannot elicit more than giggles from Curly.

So we go into the exam room and try asking questions of Buzz Cut instead. While he's a little farther out of the gas, he responds exactly the same way, giggles. We look at each other and shrug our shoulders.

"The gas seemed like a good idea, at first." I look down at the floor.

"It was a good idea." Kaylee steps forward and places a hand on my shoulder. "Guys like these wouldn't give up any information unless they'd had something in them anyway."

I nod. "Okay, so if they aren't going to talk. Um... Em, check their pockets." I snap my fingers and hide a sly smile.

She glares at me for a second. Em had an unfortunate party experience during our first year of college that involved way too much tequila and her shoving her hands into boy's pockets on dares.

But this is life or death and she knows we could use her expertise, so she walks over to Curly, straddles him where he sits against the wall and moves her body side to side as she seems to make a plan in her head. Curly watches her, but his head wobbles and he can't seem to focus on one thing for too long. Soon he lets his chin drop back to his chest.

Em makes her move, leveraging her arm against his tied-up body and maneuvering her fingers into his pants pocket. Unfortunately, when her hand comes back out, it's just as empty as when it when in. She frowns before sticking her hand into his other pocket, yielding the same results. It only takes a few seconds after than for her to squeeze her fingers into every one of his front pockets, pants and jacket alike. From his front jacket pocket, she pulls a key that looks like it belongs to a rental car and a cell phone.

Em shrugs. "So there's this..."

"Let's flip him." Kaylee walks over and motions to his back pockets.

We lean down to help her. From his back pockets, Em pulls out a worn, brown leather wallet. Kaylee claps her hands like a kid on Easter who just found
all
the candy-filled eggs.

"I'll do the other one," she says as she jets off into the exam room where Buzz Cut is tied and returns a minute later with his wallet. "This was all he had."

Looking through the loot, I have no idea what we might possibly do with the phone, so we put it on the counter in the lounge and move on to the wallets. Inside those we find a few IDs (which may or may not be these guys’ actual names). We find credit cards, buy-ten-get-one-free burrito cards, and some cash.

And then, in Curly's wallet, we find a hotel key card.

Em holds it up like it's a piece of treasure. We gasp and stare at it.

"Where's it from?" I ask, leaning forward.

Em flips it over. It says Days Inn on the other side.

All of our eyebrows lift in unison. I don't know exactly what is going through the other girls' minds at this point, but I can tell you mine is focused on getting our butts to that hotel as quickly as possible.

"Let's go," I say.

The girls nod. We take one last look at our floss-prisoners before we skedaddle out of the office and into the parking lot.

Kaylee holds out the rental car key and says, "Let's take their car, that way they won't be able to go anywhere if they get out."

I nod and follow her to the large black sedan, shivering at the thought of those two getting loose. Kaylee throws Em the keys, so she gets behind the wheel. I slip into the passenger seat and Kaylee sits in the back, her shoulders scrunched up in anticipation.

Once Em pulls out onto the main road, Kaylee asks, "So how are we going to find out which room this key goes to?"

I look back at her. Dammit, I hadn't even thought about that. "Oh, right. Um...."

"I already have a plan, ladies." Em's voice is syrupy and low.

I look at her, surprised by the confidence backing her words since I have no idea where to start.

She looks into the rear view mirror. "Kaylee, you already look like you had a hard night last night, no offense."

Kaylee tips her head to the side and then gives me a little nod.

"So we're going to pretend like it's your room key and you drank so much that you can't remember what room you were in. We've only met you and are just trying to help-a-girl-out, so we don't have any idea either. The clerk will swipe it and tell us." Em takes her hands off the wheel long enough to create a ta-dah flourish and then she holds on tight again as she takes the sedan around a corner and adds, "Hopefully."

"Okay," Kaylee says the word slowly and with a growing smile.

"Okay!" I add, feeling like this might actually work.

For the rest of the ride across town, we lean forward and fidget, showing our nerves in different ways. Em taps on the steering wheel, my leg bounces up and down, and Kaylee makes a humming noise that neither Em nor I seem to have the guts to ask her to stop making.

Finally, we pull into the Days Inn & Suites. We park up front, by the office, and get out.

"Okay. Act. Drunk." Em shoots a look at Kaylee who hops out of the car before she remembers our plan.

Kaylee immediately flops onto the car, leaning her weight against the door. Her hand moves to her face as if she has a headache and can't stand the sun. Her legs falter under her so much I rush over to help her walk.

"Wow, you're good at this," I say.

She shoots me a wink under her hand-acting-as-a-visor.

We help her stagger into the office. A pimply young man is working the main counter, looking like an add for a summer job catalog. He looks up when he hears the door ding and his face immediately scrunches in worry.

"Is everything okay? Can I help?" He rushes forward like he might come out from behind the large wooden half-wall that makes up the front desk.

We hold our hands-that-aren't-holding-Kaylee out to stop him. "Oh, no. She's fine, just a little... under the weather." I pause and make a draining-an-imaginary-bottle drinking sign.

The high-school-er nods. "Oh. Oh!" His eyebrows furrow and he watches us.

"We actually don't know her," Em chimes in. "But we were at the same party and thought we'd help her get home safely. All we could find in her wallet was this." Em slaps the card on the desk as we reach it and lean Kaylee's weight forward. The girl is groaning now, which seems to make the front desk kid even more nervous and flustered.

"We don't know which room it's for, though. Can you tell us that? We tried to get it outta her, but...." Em lifts Kaylee's chin so the kid can see her smeared makeup and fake inebriation and then lets her head drop.

"Absolutely! Oh sure!" He hops a bit, seemingly glad to be some help in fixing the situation. Or maybe just glad that soon she'll be out of his lobby and his bosses won't be able to pin anything on him. Regardless, he swipes the key card off the countertop and runs it over to a machine behind him. He looks at the screen and lets out a little "hmmm" before running it through again.

"Did it come up with anything?" I ask as I stop my fingers from drumming on the desk.

"Yeah, it's just -- well, it goes to one of our suites, but there's -- I haven't --" He uses the card to scratch his temple.

Em and I lean forward and raise our eyebrows as we wait for him to finish, but he doesn't. I even feel Kaylee propping herself up a bit so she can see what this kid is going to do next.

He meets our questioning stares and perks up a bit, almost like he forgot we were there. "Er -- it's just -- there are a few gentlemen staying there. I haven't seen a woman...." He shakes his head.

My heart starts pounding in my ears and there's a hot, metallic taste in my mouth. My feet start to inch back, wanting to run away. We're caught. He knows this isn't her room.

"Look, Dude." Em's words interrupt my freak-out. "We were really just trying to be nice. I don't know anything about this girl except that she seemed to need a helping hand. Can you just tell us which room so we can drop her off where she belongs and go on with our day?"

I feel like clapping. Em! Keeping a cool head in such a situation! Maybe Kaylee and I should've filled this girl in on our troubles sooner. Maybe we wouldn't be in the position we’re in if we had.

The kid rumples his chin and nods. "Oh, yeah -- sure, you -- they're in suite one. Second floor and all the way to the right.

"Thanks!" Em snatches the key card back from him and we lug Kaylee's dead-weight toward the elevator.