very nice chapters!

Chapter 22

Jenny


Nate has an appointment with his orthodontist, and I decide to go with him, maybe I have the chance to show the mouthguard to her. She’s a nice woman, tall, thin, blonde and looks around 35 years old. Dr. Williams tightens Frank’s braces, after that Frank introduces me. Immediately she asks me to seat in the torture chair, asks why don’t I wear braces, that I have an overbite, that I haven't worn my retainers, which is true and I finally show her the mouthguard and she confirms my suspicion, it was what damaged my teeth and when she asks if I want to start I say I want to think but agree to make the impressions.
When I saw the impressions, I could see that my lower teeth were behind my upper teeth. It was no surprise why I was having trouble when chewing. But at the same time, I don’t want to wear braces although I don’t think I have another choice.

“Can I talk to Frank, Dr. Williams?”

“Sure.”

When Dr. Williams leaves, I sit next to Frank, who is with his head down and I know he is in pain, we hug, and I start sobbing. It’s not fair. What have I done for that man to destroy my life like this? We need to know how Dr. Gonzalez snuck into the hospital and fitted the expander. And I have to decide if I go on and resume wearing braces or I keep on having trouble eating and with these gaps near my canines.
On the first day I woke up at home I took a good look in my teeth and noticed gaps between my canines and my bicuspids, exactly where the expander fitted in the hospital was split.

“Frank, what do you think? I don’t want to wear braces again, but I can’t continue with my mouth like this. And I’m afraid of having a panic attack for having my mouth full of something.”

“Jen, baby, it’th up to you. Tell her you don’t feel comfortable with acrylic appliantheth. Dr. Williamth taketh our opinionth into conthideration, maybe she thuggethtth thomething you feel comfortable with. And you can count on me. I’m trapped in thethe brathes for three yearth I gueth. If you want to, we can go through thith together.”

“So, you want me to wear them?”

“I jutht thaid that whatever you choothe I’m with you. When I thaw how my teeth were I dethided that I wanted to finish the treatment becauthe after all I’ve been through, I can’t let Dr.Rogerth win. But now it’th your turn to dethide, whatever you want, I’m here, with you.”

I guess Frank is right. It’s my decision and whatever I choose, I have Frank by my side. Frank... In three years with his breathtaking smile. Frank, who had a wonderful smile even when he was wearing those ugly bands. Frank, who is brave enough to continue with everything after living years in an orthodontic hell...

“Do you help me? Are you okay even if I have to wear headgear? And expander? And talk with a heavy lisp?”

“Theriouthly, Jenny? Look at me. Lithten to me. Do you think I’m not okay with headgear and lithps? I thought you didn’t like me to wear headgear when I’m with you, but am I thith dithguthting? Ith that it? And you feel embarrathed by my listhp?”

What did I say. When I look at him I don’t see his headgear, I don’t listen to his lisp. And now he thinks I’m embarrassed by him.

“No, baby, no. I’m sorry. I didn’t know how to express myself. I don’t feel embarrassed by you, nor disgusted, I’m just insecure. Will you help me? If I start wearing braces?”

“Yeth. Let’th call Dr. Williamth?”

Frank goes to the door Dr. Williams entered and knocks, she’s back a few minutes later.

“I’m here. So, Jenny. Let’s start?”

I have been adding the chapters to TheArchive as they have been posted.

It is interesting to see where the story has taken us so far and I am interested in seeing where it is going. Keep adding more to the story.

Braceface2015
The Archive2018

Chapter 23

Jenny

She asks me to sit and open my mouth, while she does a deep cleaning, she explains me how she works.

“Jenny, here you are the one who will tell how your treatment will be, I will use my knowledge to give you what you want. Of course, you will have to make choices because we can’t have everything but in the end of the day, you call the shots, mostly. So, tell me. It can be an easy treatment, that is painless, I try to work only with removable appliances so that it’s easier for you to deal with them. A fast one hurts but gives the fastest results, a cheap one with cheaper material, fewer adjustments or a regular that’s, well, the usual, the one the parents usually choose for their children. What do you want to know? About the time, the price, the appliances used, the results?”

“The time and the results mostly.”

“First of all, neither of you are eligible for invisalign. I’m going to use Frank’s case to explain how each one would be, since your case is not exactly like his but will take the same amount of time. The easy approach would take about 15 years and the results will never be what you expect, personally, I don’t like this easy mode so I’d recommend another professional, if this is the chosen treatment, it is with fixed or removable appliances hardly ever tightened, almost invisible and easy-to-use. The other approaches have the best results but the cheap would take about 8 years because sometimes they break, or the supplier don’t deliver the orders, or they take a long time to arrive and we sometimes have to wait for auctions or sales, to buy these cheaper materials, this is not what I recommend as well, one boy who chose this approach found a note inside the strap of his headgear asking for help with the words “we are forced to work against our will, please help us and notify human rights” and since then I refuse working with these materials, I only told you this exists because I have to show you all the options. The regular takes between 5 and 7 years, depending on his compliance and the fast mode takes about 3 years but it’s the most expensive and you have to be strong to bear the pain and discomfort.”

“I… I don’t feel comfortable wearing removable appliances, the mouthguard, for example, I panicked when I felt it in my mouth. And I want it to be fast.”

“Are you sure? I guess you’ve noticed that Frank’s treatment is not being easy.”

“We will help each other.” I tell Dr. Williams looking at Frank.

“It’s too bad you don’t want anything made of acrylic; twin blocks would be great for us. But that’s okay, let’s start. I’ll check with the lab to see if we can start now.”

Dr. Williams leaves and Frank holds my hands.

“I wish I could kith you.”

“So, kiss me.”

“But the headgear…”

“You know I don’t mind.”

We start kissing with his facebow in the way and suddenly Dr. Williams says that things may become more difficult and I know I won’t like to know what my next three years hold.

“Jenny, we will start today but I need you to come tomorrow to install some other appliances.”

“Can’t we wait and start next week?”

“As I told Frank, you’d better start as fast as we can, I want you to start today. The spacers will hurt but tomorrow we start with your lower expander and the other things. I still have to study your case.”

I’m frightened. I’ve already had an expander and I hated it, but I lay down again, Frank had worse than I did, I just need to be brave. I open my mouth and in less than 30 minutes I have brackets in all my teeth and spacers between some lower teeth.

“Great! We won’t need spacers on your upper molars, I’ll just install the bands and we’ll be almost done… Jenny, a bite plate would be great for you. The acrylic part is small, do you want to see how it is?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

She gives me something pink with metal arms ending in rings, she asked me if I would like to try it on and I agree. I hear a click and feel something behind my upper teeth. It’s big but doesn’t cover the roof of my mouth entirely, just the front and the lateral. She tells me it’s difficult in the beginning but I’ll get used to, she explained that although it’s removable I should wear it all the time, taking it out just for cleaning and that I must eat with it on. She teaches me how to put in on and take it off and it’s easy, it’s like a retainer but only behind my front teeth and it’s held firmly on my second bicuspids. Dr. Williams says that we’re almost done but she wants to see me tomorrow to install some other appliances.

“Okay, Jenny, now, I want you to pay attention to this: you chose the fast mode which means you must comply. It’s going to hurt but by tomorrow I need to know if this amount of force is the right one or else it will hurt you or damage the appliance I will install tomorrow, so I need you to be wearing it for 18 hours. It’s 5 pm, our appointment is tomorrow at 10 am. I’ll put on your headgear, but you are not allowed to remove it until tomorrow. Do you think you can do it?”

I can’t believe it. Headgear again. Me wearing headgear and Frank will see it. I can feel my heart start beating faster but then I feel Frank is holding my hand, making me understand he will be by my side. I open my eyes and see him, his beautiful gray eyes I love so much, the metal arms coming out of his mouth, the big neck strap and I know that I can do it because I have him. Dr. Williams gives me two Advils and a glass of water, I take them, open my mouth, and in a few minutes I’m ready to leave.

 We leave and I’m ashamed, I feel all eyes are on me. My father will see me wearing braces again and I’ll have to explain what happened.

“How are you feeling, babe?”

“I’m worried. My father will thee me wearing bratheth again and I’ll have to exshplain about the mouthguard that wathent a mouthguard…”

I have this lisp now, and the headgear. I can’t believe I agreed to all these contraptions.
 
“If you want me to, I’ll be there to help you.”

“I don’t know, I don’t want you to thee me with thith ugly headgear, I feel tho ugly and ridiculouth. I underthtand if you want to break up with me. Who would love being with thomeone with all thith metal? And I hate thith bite plate. I thound pathetic. I look like a lother.

“We have exthactly the same brathes, Jenny, maybe you should break up with me for the thame reathon. If you don’t want to go on let’th go back and you athk her to remove your brathes…”

“No, I’m jutht nervouth”

We arrive at my building and Frank is very quiet, I don’t want to say anything. I open the door, leave and close the door but Frank doesn’t. He calls me and I think he wants a kiss before going home, I lean over the car window but when I see him, he has his eyes full of tears.

“Jenny, I can thee it now. You are free to dethide if you want to go on with thith or not. I wanted to go on becauthe I want, one day, to thmile not being ashamed of my thmile, to show mythelf that even thuffering all I’ve thuffered, in the end, I won. But I finally knew what you thought about me all thith time… You don’t need to pity me and be with thith ridiculouth ugly lother you think I am. It will dethtroy me, but Jenny, good-bye.”

Chapter 25

Jenny

John finishes me and goes away. In a few minutes I have to go to Dr. Williams, and it makes me think about Frank. He didn’t understand. He thought I was talking about him, but I wasn’t. My father didn’t say anything, he just asked if I was sure about wearing braces again because I needed to be sure that was what I wanted because I can’t be unpleasant to other people because of my decisions and I know he’s talking about Frank. I need to find a way to apologize. Flowers maybe?
My father said he wanted to go with me and he even asked if Dr. Williams works with older clients because he is thinking about doing something about his teeth, my father never smiles in pictures because his teeth are very crooked. We arrive early, sit in the waiting room. An older woman and a little girl leave Dr. Williams’s room, the woman with big metal brackets, an Interlandi with pink straps and the little girl looking like Elsa with the mouth full of light blue plastic with glitter from where metal whiskers come out to meet light blue straps very shiny once the straps are also full of glitter at the same time as an old man arrives wearing a facemask. As soon as mother and daughter go away, Dr. Williams asks me to come in.
It’s not good. Not good at all. Dr. Williams wanted me to wear the twin blocks but I don’t feel comfortable with acrylic appliances so there’s no way to fix this overbite without headgear, like Frank’s, just a cervical neck strap but she wants me to wear it for at least 18 hours a day and now I also have a Herbst and I hated it. It’s very big and even with my mouth closed you can see it’s full of something and I think I look like a hamster hiding its food. Dr. Williams tells me to rinse my mouth with warm salt water about four times a day and taught me what to do if it disengages and that if I want, I can put cotton rolls in my mouth to sleep better but that I must wear the headgear for at least 12 hours this first day. She told me that my cheeks will be sore, and it will take about a week for me to adapt. About the bite plate, the good news is that she gave up on it, she said that I wasn’t wearing it as I should but now with the Herbst appliance it wouldn’t be necessary, My father asks me to go home by myself, he will take some time discussing his treatment.
I’m so sad. I wanted to have Frank by my side but he’s not and it’s all my fault. The headgear makes my molars hurt like hell, the Herbst makes my mouth full of metal and it makes these annoying noises whenever I eat, speak, yawn. It has what she called a transpalatal arch on the top and lower expander. The lower expander is so thick that is very noticeable. It is irritating to clean; food gets stuck, I wouldn’t say I have a lisp, but you can tell that I’m with lots of things inside my mouth because my speech is slurred. And the pain… God, everything aches, I’m taking lots of painkillers.
It’s been two months. Two months sending flowers but all of them Nate threw away and I don’t know if Frank saw them, or my notes, letters. I’ve sent an email, but John replied saying he was the responsible for Frank’s emails. I tried to call but it was disconnected. All the 300 times I tried. My father decided to sell his house in the other city and bought a house with lots of bedrooms, swimming pool, a big garden, he’s still deciding if he will start his treatment or not but I’m still in my apartment. Living by myself again, helping my father with our new marketing agency.
Today I have an appointment with Dr. Williams, and she mentioned that Frank is coming today for an adjustment before he travels. She tightens my braces, says everything’s doing great and faster than she thought it would be and I leave. In the waiting room there’s a blonde girl, very beautiful, a beautiful smile with little clear brackets while I have this metal mouth, that squeaks all the time I open or close my mouth, and this ugly headgear that I wear almost all the time, because I want things to be fast. I want to see Frank so badly that I wait in the car. Nate brought him so maybe if I wait I can give Frank a ride and talk to him. He looks great, his headgear shining, it suits him, different from mine that makes me uglier. His body is great, he looks happy while I am destroyed. Thirty minutes later he opens the door, the beautiful blonde comes out and him after her. It kills me and I leave, heartbroken.
My father calls with the latest information about Dr. Gonzalez/ Rogers. He was involved in a car crash five months ago. Maybe that’s why he hasn’t looked for Frank after installing the rake.

Chapter 26

Frank

Two months. Two months that she forgot that I exist, which is not surprising at all since she thinks I’m this ugly, disgusting loser. She has never called, which means everything was a lie. That amazing week we were together, all lies.
In the first two days I was too drunk to think. The next two days I was hungover Then I came back to my life. Work, work work. I started going to the gym and girls hit on me now. A lot. But I still feel devastated. She forgot about me, so why can’t I forget about her? Nate doesn’t know about her as well, neither does John. Nothing in her social media, I’ve been talking to Paul, but he doesn’t say anything, I just know he moved to a house and opened a new marketing agency here.
I made a new friend, Jacob. I was waiting for my turn with Dr. Williams and this boy arrived, wearing such impressive braces that when I saw him I thought for a second that Dr. Rogers was the responsible for that but at the end of the day, he was just one of the crazy people who chose Dr. Williams’s fast treatment which means wearing many appliances combined to achieve results faster. He arrived early and his appointment is after mine. When I talked to him he was puzzled at first and said that nobody talked to him, after a few minutes, Dr. William’s assistant said she was not feeling well and rescheduled our appointments, so I offered him a ride and told him my story.
We became friends, sometimes he goes to my house to play video games. He had a severe underbite and a heart condition so it’s not safe to have the surgery, he might never come back from the anesthesia, so the treatment is his only chance to fix his bite. He wears a tandem appliance with lower tongue crib attached to the bottom part and an expander attached to the upper part, a big protraction facemask to bring his upper teeth forward, lower facebow attached to cervical neckstrap to pull his lower teeth backward. He started with Dr. Williams at 17 and decided for the fast mode to fix everything before going to college but it wasn’t possible, now that he is 19 and started college, Dr. Williams was nice letting him not use the facemask and the headgear at least during his classes and just because his treatment is working.
He’s the only person I talk about Jenny because Nate can’t even hear her name. Jake had a girlfriend in high school. They started dating in their first year; while she was traveling during Christmas holidays, he started with the braces at 15 years old, during his first treatment, that didn’t work. After he started the treatment with Dr. Williams, the ex-girlfriend started dating his best friend while he had to stop playing basketball because of the braces, so he understands more about being heartbroken plus it was him who showed me that Jenny probably wasn’t talking about me because maybe she was being self-conscious and insecure about wearing braces again. I wanted to call her many times but I wanted her to be the first to give in, but she never called, never showed up, she never talked to Nate, not that he would talk to her.
My parents are traveling to renew their vows and surprisingly they invited me, I called Dr. Williams and told her about the trip, trying to convince her to reduce the headgear time because I want to ski. Nate’s parents are going with us, but Nate won’t, he wants to stay with John. Dr. Williams asked me when the trip is, that is in two weeks and she wants to see me today.
Nate takes me to the clinic because John borrowed my car to make Nate a surprise and I had to lie that it was in the car wash. I arrive and almost immediately Dr. Williams calls me in, but it hurts getting in her room, I smell perfume and it's like Jenny’s. About the trip, I told her that I want to ski, and we discussed some appliances and I guess a Herbst appliance is a good choice, but she still wants me to wear the headgear for at least 12 hours. She made the impressions to make the appliance and asked me to come tomorrow. When I leave, there’s a blonde girl wearing a combination headgear near the door and I run to open it for her, I’m a gentleman after all. Nate is late, the blonde girl offers me a ride and I give her the directions to my place, she invites herself for a drink and we go to a restaurant but we only drink, she had her braces tightened and got her headgear and I don’t feel like eating, in the restaurant she sees that all eyes are on us, I reply that she just has to get used to and that it’s not so bad. We have one drink she takes me home and leaves.

Chapter 28

Jenny

After seeing Frank, I gave up on my appointment and went to my father’s house, I need to talk to someone. I get there and my father is with the private investigator he hired and said he was going to call me. It’s about what he discovered in his investigation. My father asks the investigator to have dinner with us.
Dr. Rogers/Gonzalez was found in a mental institution. He lost part of his brain in the car accident, the same that distorted my ex-stepmother’s face and broke her hip and leg in several places. He is delusional and says the aliens are going to abduct him and the only way he can be saved is with metal or else he will float. He said the crazy man is always covered in aluminum foil and the doctors told our investigator that when he saw one of the nurses wearing braces he ran after her because he wanted to steal the woman’s braces to save himself from the aliens, so they fit him bands, double headgear and a facemask. He lost the ability to swallow and everyone can see him drooling around. The doctors are considering fitting orthopedic braces to keep him calm.
Dad's ex-wife, Sherry,  now works at a small grocery store and hides from the world. She knew about my accident while visiting the director of the hospital with whom she was having an affair. I was being examined and everything was fine, I’d gotten away just with some bruises, but the timing was terrible.
Sherry saw me arriving at the hospital and while they were examining me, Sherry, who was leaving when she saw me being led to the emergency room, came back to the director’s office, telling him how I made her suffer, how evil I was, that my father used to abuse the poor woman, who had to run away from that hell, without money nor clothes, she just wanted compensation. She wanted payback for all the suffering and tried to convince her lover to keep me in the hospital and give the money my father would pay to her, as a reward. The director, in love with the woman, agreed to teach them a lesson, then she suggested him to keep me there for a long time and it would work as long as the director himself took care of me.
That’s how they kept me sleeping, the exams were fake so there was no way anyone would discover her coma was induced. A few months before my accident, Sherry talked Gonzalez into making a mouthguard that caused bite problems so that he had more clients and that’s what Gonzalez did. Dressed as a nurse she took my impressions and Gonzalez made it, but he didn’t know to whom it was. She gave the mouthguard to the hospital director, who told my father that I needed it and he also turned the key every day for six months. He even made a fake card, to mislead Frank or dad.
One day, Sherry traveled with Gonzalez for a weekend away and they crashed the car, both drunk, coming back from a party. The director never knew why Sherry never returned from her trip and after a while, he started bringing me back. Sherry told the private investigator that she never liked me, that’s why she did all she did, but now she’s ugly, poor and with her scarred face and the leg several inches shorter than the other makes it difficult for her to walk without feeling lots of pain. At least she has a job and struggles to pay the rent in a shabby trailer. That’s why we had to pay her fifty grand in cash for her to tell the truth.

Wow, great job!