Dewey Fairchild, Parent Problem Solver

by Lorri Horn

  Seraphina filled her notebook with a bunch of useless information about how the hygienist went into the dentistry profession because of how she’d had a toothache as a child.

  When she finally got to go in and at least observe Dewey’s dad, he was filling the tooth of some old guy Seraphina had met in the waiting room earlier. He had arrived an hour early for his appointment because he didn’t like to run late. He was a short little man, and his feet hardly reached the end of the chair. He looked like a duck in his little, green suit, with his big bill open wide and his feet fanned out on the chair.

  “Seraphina! Lovely to see you and your teeth today!” cried Dewey’s dad.

  “Thank you, Dr. Fairchild,” she blushed and smiled.

  “Oh, don’t be silly. Call me Don. You’re Dewey’s friend! I’ll bet your teeth are in immaculate condition. Let us have a looksee.”

  She smiled from across the room where she sat on a little round stool.

  “Oh, very nice!” he replied, and went back to his drilling as she took more notes in her book.

  Meanwhile, two doors down, Colin’s mouth wasn’t quite as impressive as Seraphina’s, and this undercover operation was about to take an unfortunate turn for the worse.

  “I don’t like the look of that lateral incisor. I’ll get a quick picture of it, but we probably need to fill it,” said Dr. Bernard cheerfully.

  Colin’s mind quickly swam up from under the sea.

  “Um. What? Today?”

  “Sure. Today’s as good a day as any, and I don’t want that small hole that’s growing to swallow your head.”

  Colin gulped.

  “I’ll just check in with your dad, and we’ll get started.”

  Colin’s dad stuck his head in the room.

  “You doing OK, son?”

  Colin nodded yes, though he was far from sure about that at all.

  “Great. Well, you’re in great hands, but this may take a bit. You good with me going back to work?”

  Colin, who couldn’t answer, just kept staring at his dad as he spoke.

  “I ran into your friend Seraphina. Did you know she’s here doing something for school? Anyway, she said they could drive you home. So I’ll check you out and meet you back home. I can work from home actually, so when you get there I’ll be waiting, but I really didn’t plan on this day, and I’ve got to get back to some calls. You good with that, son?”

  Well, Seraphina seemed to have it all worked out, didn’t she? he thought. Everything except that big drill about to put a hole in my head!

  He gave his dad a thumbs-up for him to leave, relieved that at least part of the plan was falling into place. He closed his eyes for a moment, wishing he were the one gathering information for “career day.”

  Then, before he knew what happened, little cardboard pieces were stuck in his mouth for x-rays, and they were prepping him for Novocain—not to fill the tooth, but to pull it right out!

  “You see here, Colin?” said Dr. Bernard holding up the x-ray to the light over Colin’s head. “Right here is your tooth. And this right here is the handy work of a Snickers. As I told your dad, no point in filling a hole that big. Eat more carrots and apples, and brush and floss better, so your teeth stay in your head, and the only hole in your mouth is your mouth.”

  And with that, he rubbed some bitter tasting numbing gel on the inside of Colin’s cheek and went to work on him. Colin tried to distract himself by picturing Dr. Bernard removing one of those ten-foot-long narwhal tusks.

  “Yooouusjh ttrrruuuyyyy thssss . . . drrrroooolllllll.”

  He’d wanted to tell Dr. Bernard he should try this out on a narwhal sometime, but the words didn’t come. His mouthful of gauze made it impossible for him to talk. How was he going to ask him questions now and do his undercover work for Dewey?

  There was what felt like a few tugs in his mouth, and then Dr. Bernard put down his little pliers on the table near Colin’s face and slid it away.

  “You’re all done, son. Nothing in your mouth now but good, clean, healthy teeth. Bite down gently now on this piece of gauze. That’s it. Let the Novocain wear off before you attempt to eat so you don’t bite your tongue or lip. You’ll be numb for a bit. Sit here a few minutes, and we’ll set you free,” and out walked Dr. Bernard, patting Colin on the head as he headed for his next unsuspecting mouth.

  What? There wasn’t any gauze packing his mouth? But his mouth felt full. He picked up the little mirror on the tray and looked. Other than the hole where the tooth used to be, his mouth appeared the same, but when he tried to move it, nothing followed his command. He tried to smile. Nope. Pucker his lips. Oops. Drool. He poked at his lip gently. It felt like raw chicken. Weird.

  Seraphina glanced in the room and saw that they had trouble. Big trouble. This mission appeared doomed before it had taken off. Dewey would be so disappointed in them. But what could she do?

  “What happened?” she cried.

  “I bldon’t blknow!” Colin tried to say but his lips and tongue were thick and numb.

  “I bl-ink—” but then he just drooled, and Seraphina jumped in and said, “Please! Don’t try to talk!” She handed him a tissue. “Let me think.”

  She gazed out the window and felt like a total failure. After all Dewey had done for her, they were going to lose him to Alaska because they couldn’t handle one stupid assignment. She had totally failed in getting any information out of Dewey’s dad. He didn’t have time to talk with her at all! Colin had been totally useless gathering any information.

  Then, out of nowhere, Seraphina suddenly had an idea. And out of sheer desperation, she ran with it.

  “May I use your restroom?” she asked the woman at the front desk.

  Seraphina snuck off behind the bathroom into one of the patient rooms. And then another, and finally a third. There, she found what definitely looked to her like the fuse box. She opened the little metal door, and it looked just like the one they had at home. It was a bunch of light switches, some labeled and others not.

  There was no time to read the labels, and besides, she felt too nervous. She looked over her shoulder, took a deep breath, and flipped each and every switch the other direction, praying she wouldn’t die of an electrical shock or blow up the building or something.

  Flip, flip—she could hear people starting to make a commotion now. It was working. The lights went off in the room she stood in. She just kept flipping as fast as she could. The switches were stiff and hard to flip and little dents formed in her fingertips, but she did them all. She closed the door and looked around for something to slide in front of it. There wasn’t anything tall enough though, so she peered around the corner into the room next to her and saw a bookcase.

  Too heavy. And too obvious, anyway. Oh! The plant! It was the perfect height. But it was too heavy. Too much time had passed. She slipped into the bathroom and closed the door which turned out to be a big mistake because it was pitch black in there as soon as the door closed.

  “Ack!” she cried out. It wasn’t logical, but something inside of her panicked that the door could now be locked, and she’d be stuck in the dark bathroom alone.

  She put both hands out in front of her and felt for the door and the handle. To her great relief, it turned in her hand. She looked both ways and headed back out to Colin, using some of the natural light that crept through a few of the office windows to guide her.

  Colin had been sitting in the chair, waiting for his tongue to stop feeling like a brick, when the power had gone down.

  Naww. Couldn’t be, he had thought.

  But it was. Seraphina quietly came in and startled him when she touched his shoulder from behind the dentist chair.

  “Now, Mr. Truly Drooly,” she whispered, “you’ve got to pull yourself together. We have to divide up and just listen—listen to anything that we might overhear that could be helpful
to Dewey. ’Cause, so far, all we’ve got are excessively clean teeth and your cow tongue, and somehow I don’t think we’re going to impress Dewey much with that. You can handle listening right now, can’t you?”

  Colin looked hurt, but nodded and slid out of his chair.

  “You go stake out the front staff area to see what they’re talking about. I’ll go see what the doctors have to say. We’ve probably got a good thirty minutes until they realize that I tripped the switches, if you help me move this plant over there in front of the fuse box.

  “We won’t try to leave together. When you can talk without biting your cheek, we’ll compare notes later. Good?”

  They slipped into the hallway, and Seraphina pointed to Colin where the plant needed to go. Evidently though, Colin’s tongue must have really felt longer than usual because he tripped on it and went flying down the hallway—that or he tripped on his own feet. Whatever the cause, the fall made a huge noise, and Seraphina ran to catch up to him and slid him into a patient room and closed the door behind them.

  She looked down at him, put her finger in front of her mouth to signal that he should only talk under penalty of death just as they heard people coming down the hall to see what the commotion was all about.

  “I think it came from over here,” someone said.

  “Quick,” whispered Seraphina. “In here!” She opened what looked like a small storage closet. “Don’t make a sound,” she mouthed.

  She could hear the sound of heels walking down the hallway and voices getting closer.

  Sitting still wasn’t one of Colin’s best skills, though, and within a minute he’d found a box filled with toys to refill the gumball dispenser, and he began opening up the little plastic bubbles to see what prizes were in each one.

  “Haven’t you caused enough problems, already?” She glared at him.

  “But blook!” he smiled, “blere’s a ‘Bly BLittle Blony’ and a blittle blinature diver.”

  The door opened to the room they were in and Colin shut up.

  “I think everyone has gone,” said one voice.

  “We’ll have to bill the ones who didn’t check out, I guess. Want to fill up the dispenser while we’re here?” said another, and both kids stiffened and tried to flatten themselves as thin as possible by sucking in their breath.

  The knob on the closet door started to turn.

  “Nah. Let’s do that tomorrow. We get a reprieve today. Let’s go have lunch!”

  The hand let go of the knob, and the voices began to fade as they walked away.

  Colin and Seraphina exhaled.

  Seraphina stuck her head out into the room. The coast looked clear. She yanked the toy out of Colin’s hand and threw it back into the box.

  “Come on,” she motioned him out of the storage closet and held her finger up to her mouth again for good measure.

  “Easy, turbo,” she cautioned as they moved the plant slowly down the hallway into the room with the fuse box. “Right there. Good. OK, you know what to do now, right?”

  Colin nodded, and they each set out on their way, tiptoeing down the hallway.

  In fact, they got a good deal longer than thirty minutes’ worth of eavesdropping. The office manager had panicked, canceled the rest of the patients for the day, and the staff enjoyed a good long lunch before everyone went home. Colin and Seraphina each got an earful of all sorts of gossip—some of which they each felt sure would help Dewey at least get headed in the right direction.