I felt the change in the room before I understood the phrase.
My skin tightened, the back of my neck turned cold, and suddenly the buzzing of the lamp above the armchair sounded too loud.
Daniel let out a dry, forced laugh.
—It’s a toothache, doctor, not a crime scene.
Dr. Harris did not smile.
He didn’t even try to soften the blow.
“We’ll know when I see the license plate,” he replied.
At that moment Lily returned, pale, with enormous eyes, and something inside me rearranged itself with a silent violence: my daughter seemed to want to disappear from her own body every time Daniel spoke.
Why hadn’t I wanted to see that before?
The x-ray took less than three minutes.
The screen lit up next to the doctor’s desk, and the four of us stared at the bluish image of Lily’s childlike jaw as if there could be something more than a cavity hidden there.
And yes, he hid it.
The doctor pointed with the cursor to an area next to the root of the molar.
“There’s a crack,” he said. “It’s not an ordinary cavity. It’s an impact injury.”
My brain understood the words, but refused for a second to connect them with my daughter, with her morning school uniform, with her badly done braids and her unicorn drawings.
Impact.
In the mouth.
“Impact?” I repeated.
The doctor nodded without taking his eyes off the screen.
—Yes. Someone or something hit the tooth hard. It didn’t fracture completely, but enough to make it hurt like this when chewing.
I looked at Lily.
He lowered his head immediately.
“Did you fall?” I asked, feeling my throat getting tighter and tighter. “Did you hurt yourself playing, my love?”
She did not answer.
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