User Teddybear is currently writing a story in the Braces Forum called "Relax a Little", and put up a poll, asking how the story should continue. One of the options in the poll (clearly a very tongue-in-cheek option) was "Sarah sets the place on fire, races away in her car and continues her life on a desert island"
I don't think Teddybear had any intentions of ever using that idea, but the idea definitely appealed to me. So, here is a slightly different Sarah from the one in Teddybear's story, but she is still very scared of going to the ortho!
Her life up in flames?
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Sarah set up her first business at the age of 12: whilst she was helped by her parents (who had their own businesses), she did 99% of the actual work herself: needless to say, it was very successful. By the age of 16, she had set up several other businesses, which she had either sold on, they were being managed by someone she could trust, or they had just 'run their course' and had closed. Sarah was just one of those people who seemed to know how to make a business work, as well as select good people to help run the businesses.
After finishing her A-levels, she decided that going to university would be a waste of her time: she already knew how to run a business (or two!), and could just pay for any specific training courses she needed, to improve her skillset.
Sarah loved flying: she started lessons as young as she could, so at 14, flew solo at 16, and got her full pilot's license a week after she was 17. At 18 she bought her first plane with cash she alone had saved up, which she occasionally used to fly paying customers around. She also started training to be able to fly a jet.
By the time she was 21, not only was she a licensed jet pilot, she had set up yet another company: she had leased an executive jet, and with a small team of pilots and other support staff, ran a charter business, charging rich people large amounts of money to fly them around. She thoroughly enjoyed the flying, and the business brought in a good amount of profit. By the age of 25 she purchased her own (second hand) jet aircraft, and by the time she was thirty, she owned 8 small jets, and quite a team running a very successful charter business.
As the years passed, she developed new businesses, helped staff set up their own businesses, and sold off some of her businesses. Whilst no longer working full time flying, she would still fly regularly: it was actually good fun as a well-off business woman, to meet and fly other rich business men / women around.
Now in her mid 30's, Sarah owned several businesses, most of which were run by very competent teams, so she was actively involved with just 2 of the companies, plus the jet charter business, for which she was still actively on the piloting rota.
Whilst on the ground, Sarah could get a bit stressed by work, but once flying one of her planes, the stress just went. Yes, piloting an aircraft has a different sort of stress to it, but she was ok with that, and when they were flying up above the clouds, she was in a really good place.
As you can probably appreciate, Sarah enjoyed a challenge, and last year she set herself a new challenge: get a boyfriend. Of course, she succeeded! Like her, he was a businessman, rather good looking, and at the time of writing, they have been together almost 6 months.
So what does Sarah look like? Well, she's 5ft 9ins tall, which is above average, still quite slim, always dresses well. Generally she was pretty good looking and tidy, which is what you'd probably expect from a successful woman.
Except for one thing.
Her teeth.
They were NOT her best point.
The problem was simple: whilst she could fly aircraft, jump out of an aircraft wearing a parachute, and things like that, there were 4 relatively simple things that scared her sh*tless:
- Spiders: she HATED them!
- Snakes: quite understandable.
- The idea of being in prison: the concept of not being able to 'walk freely' really scared her.
- Dentists! (and thus, by association, orthodontists): who knows why?
Her fear of the dentist was quite irrational. As a young child she had gone to the dentist without any issues, but as she moved into her teens, for some unknown reason she developed a fear of going to the dentist. Her parents had to coax her to go for her check-ups. Which meant that the idea of needing braces was never even mentioned.
The good news is that, whilst she hasn't been to the dentist for some time, she looks after her teeth well, and her teeth are in good condition. Just a bit crooked. Ok, maybe more than 'just a bit'.
Her boyfriend has no problems with dentists, and even had extensive ortho work done as a kid, so he found it really hard to understand why Sarah had a problem. For the first few months of their relationship, he didn't even mention her teeth, but as they got to know each other, he did raise the subject. Sarah quite understood what he was saying, but she explained about her fear of dentists, so he suggested that he could go with her if she wanted. Nothing actually happened, but every so often, he would bring it up again.
"Tell you what, why don't I book an appointment with an orthodontist: I hear there one locally who is very used to dealing with nervous patients. All it will be is her looking at your mouth, then having a chat."
Sarah tried to say no, but he wouldn't take no for an answer. "Look, Sarah, you're a grown woman, you can manage this. Hell, if you can parachute from an aircraft - which I hasten to add is something I do NOT actually want to do myself! - then letting someone look at your mouth and have a chat should be a walk in the park."
Reluctantly Sarah agreed. Thomas, her boyfriend, made an appointment, and it was put in Sarah's diary. On the day of her appointment, Sarah had made sure she had an important meeting in the morning: she needed to be distracted from what was going to happen in the afternoon.
After lunch, Thomas arrived, to take them both to see the orthodontist. He drove Sarah's car slowly and gently, hoping to keep Sarah's stress levels as low as possible, meaning that she was reasonably relaxed when the got there. It was as he parked the car that Sarah started to panic: she had seen the sign out the front! 'Relaxing Orthodontics Ltd'. The words 'Relaxing' and 'Ltd' were ok, it was the word in between them: 'Orthodontics'.
Thomas took her hand. "Close your eyes a moment, and a few gentle but deep breaths" he suggested. It did seem to help Sarah. Luckily Thomas had guessed this would happen, so they had arrived several minutes early. "Ok, just imagine this is a business meeting, like the hundreds of other business meetings you've had. They never scare you, do they?"
"Yeah, But I'm usually in control in the meeting..."
"So, be in control today!". Thomas held Sarah's hand as they went into the building. Luckily, it didn't feel anything like a dentist's place, this felt like a nice, fairly new, upmarket office, which helped Sarah a lot. The waiting room was also very pleasant, it felt more like a living room than a waiting room.
"Good afternoon" said a pleasant voice, belonging to a girl likely in her 20's, and dressed smart casually. The important thing was that she WASN'T wearing a 'lab coat, or anything similar.
However, less than a minute later Sarah's stress levels went up about ten notches: there was no mistaking that this room looked very much like a dentist's surgery, with a big treatment chair, the light above, and the small sink to the side. Yes, it was very modern, very spacious, but it still screamed out 'dentist'!
"Hi, nice to meet you both, I'm John Davies, come and take a seat." The seats he took them to were comfortable lounge-style chairs. "So, you must be Thomas, and you are Sarah: I understand that you'd like me to take a look at your teeth, to see if there's something we can do to make them look a bit better". The word 'teeth' took Sarah's stress levels up again.
"Y-y-y-yes" said Sarah rather nervously. This was NOT Sarah. Sarah is one of the most confident people around. John could see that Sarah was rather nervous, so tried to talk using words that wouldn't make things worse. However, he really needed to get Sarah into the treatment chair, so he could take a good look at her teeth, take some pictures and some moulds.
Thomas went with Sarah as she sat in the chair, then held her hand, rubbing it gently to try and relax her - sadly the effect was pretty minimal, and Thomas could see from the look on her face that Sarah was petrified. He stood up and leaned over Sarah, putting his hands on her cheeks. "It's ok, I'm here, and nothing nasty is going to happen!", then he gave her a gentle kiss on her lips. That did seem to help reduce her stress levels - a tiny bit. He sat down again.
"I'll try and keep think as short as I can, but I really need to fit this thing: it's a 'lip retractor', it's just there to hold your lips wide open so I can see into your mouth better. As he fitted the lip retractor, Thomas could feel Sarah's hand nervously shaking: he realised that this needed to be over as soon as possible, for Sarah's sake.
Whilst very nervous, Sarah seemed to cope surprisingly well with the lip retractor in her mouth, and while John looked in her mouth, then took pictures.
Then things went down hill fast: John needed to take impressions of her teeth. John got the impression material for her top teeth into Sarah's mouth, and had managed to push it in place, when Sarah started to panic: the line had been crossed whereby she was no longer in control. John realised that Thomas seemed to be able to help Sarah, so left him to say and do things to help keep Sarah as calm as possible.
"Don't worry, Sarah, this gunge only takes a minute or two to go solid, then they can take it out. Close your eyes, I guess you have your tongue in your throat already so you're breathing through your nose, so just take long slow breaths." He also stood up, so Sarah could actually see him, and he held both of her hands. She managed to cope until John took the impression from her mouth - just.
"I'm sorry, I'm going to have to take a break...." said Sarah. She got out of the chair, and went to her handbag, where she took out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.
Ah, yes, I forgot to tell you that, didn't I? Sarah tends to smoke when she gets very stressed. "I'm afaid you can't smoke in here, but why don't you go with Michelle, she can take yout out to the balcony...". Sarah went out, and smoked most of the cigarette, then returned: she needed somewhere to put the cigarette, so stubbed it out on a thick piece of cardboard that was in the rubbish bin in the corner, and dropped the 'dead' cigarette into the bin.
"You ok?" asked Thomas.
"No, but I'm feeling a lot better than I was!" replied Sarah.
"Well, the good news is that, from my experience, having a mould taken of your lower teeth is ten times easier than what you just did - honest!"
Taking the second mould was indeed a lot better for Sarah, and John had just removed it from Sarah's mouth, when he noticed something: the rubbish bin in the corner was on fire!
"Quick, everyone out of the building!" said John. Sarah grabbed her handbag, and followed Thomas out of the building. The fire in the bin very quickly got larger, and set fire to some coats on the adjacent coat hook. Within minutes the whole office was starting to catch fire. By the time the Fire Brigade arrived, the building was well on fire.
"Quick" said Sarah, "Get in the car.."
"What??" replied Thomas.
"Just get in the car!". Once in the car, Sarah drove off pretty fast, wanting to get away as quickly as possible. "Call Wilson Jet Charter" she said to the car phone system.
"Hello, Wilson Jet Charter, how can I help you today?"
"It's Sarah here, is 'WILS' there, and ready to fly?" she asked. I should explain: G-WILS was the tail number of one of the smaller jets she owned: it had 6 seats at the back, and could be flown by one or two pilots. It, and a couple of the other aircraft were not due to be used today.
"Yes, it is"
"Good, who else is there today, flight crew?"
"Brian's here..."
"Ask him to go and get it ready, and tell him to get it filled up to full". Normally when you flew an aircraft, you would put in 'just enough' fuel for the flight (plus extra for safety) to keep the aircraft weight down, to reduce the running costs, but today Sarah didn't care.
"You sure on that?"
"Yes, just do it, will you!" barked Sarah.
"Certainly ma'am!"
"Ok, what's going on?" asked Thomas.
"I'm flying out of the country!"
"What?
?"
"Look, I started that fire back there with my cigarette. I can't do anything about that, but tehre is absolutely NO WAY I am going to be put into a cell for even one minute! You think dentists freak me out, you wouldn't want to see how I am when I'm 'locked up' in ANY way."
"Come on Sarah, you'll be ok..."
"No, I won't, I'm getting out of here...."
"So where you planning on going? I mean, they'll find you eventually, and they can just extradite you from wherever you go."
"Not the place I'm thinking of!" she replied.
It was a 15 minute drive to the airport, and on the way, Thomas tried to talk her out of doing such a mad thing, but Sarah was adamant: she was leaving the country.
At the airport, she drove through the card-controlled barrier, and parked next to the office.
"If you have your passport with you, you're welcome to join me"
"Of course I don't... you telling me you have yours with you?"
"Of course, I never know if I need to go somewhere at short notice. Ok, look Thomas, I'll be in touch as soon as I get there. Take the car..."
Sarah went into the office, and quickly filed a minimal flight plan, which she would change once she was in the air. Brian had powered up the aircraft, and it was being refuelled.
"Oh, Sarah, what's going on?" asked Brian.
"I need to get out of the country, quickly!"
"Ok...... and why would you need to do that?" he asked
"Because I just set fire to a building! Look, you're not going to talk me out of this.... I'll go by myself, so no-one else needs to be involved"
"I can come with you if you like..."
"No, just me. And don't worry, I'll fly carefully, I don't have a death wish, I just don't want to be put in prison....".
With the plane fully fuelled, Sarah went out, started the engines, and contacted the tower. Luckily it was a relatively small airport, and not too busy, so she was able to negotiate a take-off slot just a few minutes later. Within 5 minutes she was airborne.
As the plane climbed through 10,000 feet about 15 minutes later, Sarah finally relaxed: she was in her safe place!
