“Oh, sorry!” Gigi flusters at this with her big puppy dog eyes and frantically goes through the records on her tablet. How am I supposed to yell at Dr. Derrick when Gigi’s around? The woman has apologized to me ten times in the past minute.
He then turns on an overhead lamp that assaults my eyesight. “Sorry, we’re working on dimming that,” he says, handing me a pair of goggles.
“Your wedding—” I manage to squeeze out before Gigi inserts a suction tube in my mouth with a small “Sorry!”
The rest of my words get muffled when Dr. Derrick switches on the drill.
“Were you talking about your last appointment?” he shouts above the noise.
I try answering him, but it sounds a lot more like “Mmmmrrrrrpppphhh.”
Gigi then informs him that my last cleaning was eighteen months ago.
“Eighteen months?!” Dr. Derrick’s eyes bulge out of their sockets. Evidently, he’s more pressed about my gum healththan anything wedding-related. “Is our reminder system not working? Maybe our patients aren’t receiving their alerts.” He instructs Gigi to take notes and focuses back on me. “Anything you want us to address first?”
I pull out the suction tube before I speak.
“Can you not marry my mom?”
He opens his mouth to respond, then realizes that Gigi is still in the room with us. She’s paying close attention to her tablet. “Sorry, sir, should I note that under the patient’s medical history?”
Dr. Derrick dismisses Gigi and tells her to attend to checking the clinic’s reminder system first. Once we’re alone in the cubicle, Dr. Derrick shuts off the lamp and lowers his face mask.
“I feel like I owe you a conversation.”
“Please,” I start to beg. “Just focus on hating me and how much it’d suck to have me as a stepdaughter.”
His forehead scrunches when he listens to me. “I don’t hate you.”
“Of course you do.”
He immediately denies it. “That’s not true.”
“You don’t need to protect me.”
“I’m not protecting you; I’m telling you the truth.”
“So tell me the truth that you hate me.”
“But that’s not the truth,” Dr. Derrick still insists.
I rest my head back on the dentist chair. Why did Ma have to pick a guy that’s so difficult?!
“Beth and I already talked last night about calling off the wedding.”
… What?
He waits for me to sit up and fidgets with his striped purple tie as he explains, “She told me that she wasn’t ready to getmarried again. When we proposed to each other, I already told her that we can always have that conversation.”
The day Dr. Derrick asked her was, admittedly, the happiest I had seen Ma in years. Of course, I don’t tellhimthat.
“What do you mean you proposed to each other?”
Dr. Derrick sighs and places his hands on his lap. “Your mom and I had a mutual proposal,” he says.
I look at him, confused. “Who went down on one knee?”
“We were both sitting down,” he says, smiling. “Beth wanted to make sure we were able to hear each other clearly, discuss the logistics, the practical side of things. Also, I have really weak knees.”
