After walking around Jungang-dong for ten minutes, I found a place that looked the most like a dental clinic.
[Deep Blue]
Next to the English words, a sign saying “great white shark skull” was displayed in front of the dental clinic. Just the teeth and head alone looked to be three meters long. On top of that, each great white shark tooth was the size of a thumb. When I went inside, there were several photographs on the walls that appeared to be of great white sharks.
I stared back for a few seconds at the shark glaring with its pure white eyes, then turned my head away. Looking at the interior, it seemed perfectly designed to make dentistry—already not exactly known for inspiring affection—feel even more distant from people.
I didn’t know who had made it, but just as I was solidifying the thought that I’d have to discreetly take down a few of the photos, the unit chair caught my eye and my eyes went wide. Wow. This thing was completely state-of-the-art. It was the one where you could take X-rays right from the chair. All the instruments were brand new.
I began frantically checking to see if the basic equipment was there. As I was looking over the new mouth mirrors, probes, tweezers, suction, spoons, high-speed handpiece, low-speed handpiece, and whether the unit chair was functioning, a blonde woman knocked twice on a section of the wall. Then that part of the wall opened by itself, revealing a storage space. There were trays, injectors, clamps, and the like.
After thanking her, I went around punching each wall, and along with bruises, I was able to confirm the presence of mouth gags, forceps, tissue forceps, and blades. Other walls held bands, pin cutters, wires, bone files, crown grippers, needles, and so on—clearly all brand new, but shoved in at random as if no thought had been given to workflow, or still unopened and placed in the cabinets box and all. I tore open boxes in a frenzy, and more boxes, and more boxes.
“They said you should pick up lidocaine, the local anesthetic, from the first floor of the hospital.”
She had been watching for a while as I tore open every kind of box by hand, pulled out trays, and wandered around asking where the scissors were. When she said that, I snapped back to my senses. I must have gone insane under the pressure of opening tomorrow.
“Hello. I’m Park Muhyeon, the dentist who arrived today.”
“Hello. I’m Elliott Brown. Please call me Elliott. You look very busy.”
“They told me we’re opening tomorrow.”
I said that while inwardly terrified, wondering if she was already a patient who had barged in. Elliott held out what seemed to be coffee she had bought for me. I set down the tweezers in my hand—I hadn’t been able to find the scissors, so I’d been scoring boxes open with the tweezers—and took the coffee. The smell made me feel reborn.
“Thank you.”
Seeing me clutch the hot coffee with hands trembling from nerves, as if trying to share in its warmth, Elliott spoke as though comforting me.
“Calm down, doctor. You have one patient scheduled for tomorrow afternoon.”
“One? ……One? I heard a thousand people work here. It’s your first opening, and there’s one? Even though it’s free?”
In my head, I had been imagining the people staying at the undersea base charging toward the dental clinic like enraged wild boars, kicking and punching one another while demanding to be seen first, causing chaos to avoid standing in line.
“I can’t see the details, but I doubt it’s very urgent. Since it’s the first treatment after the dental clinic opens, that must be the bravest person in the undersea base. Hmm…… There are about five hundred people in the Fourth Undersea Base, about a hundred in the Third, about a hundred in the Second, about a hundred in the First, and around a hundred fifty on the artificial island, so roughly a thousand sounds right.”
“……I expected at least twenty to thirty people a day.”
“Today is Sunday, so as of next week, you have exactly twenty reservations. Don’t worry too much.”
At those words, I sank limply to the floor. It felt as if all the strength and passion had drained from my body. By simple calculation, that was about four people a day. With the immediate pressure at least slightly lifted, I sipped at the coffee Elliott had given me.
“Everyone in the undersea base knows the dental clinic isn’t prepared. So once the early adopters visit the clinic and people find out they didn’t die, they’ll start making reservations. Right about now, people are probably imagining you’ll yank out perfectly healthy teeth by the handful, treat them without anesthesia, or slap their cheeks with your fist to knock out their wisdom teeth.”
“That’s a relief. I can accommodate expectations of that level according to each patient’s personal preference.”
At my joke, Elliott laughed for the first time. She was a complete beauty when she smiled. Her exposed teeth were white and even.
“I conduct psychological counseling here. Anyone who comes to the undersea base for the first time is required to receive counseling. Right now…… it doesn’t look like you’ll have time.”
Elliott trailed off as she looked at the unopened boxes and medical instruments scattered everywhere. Afraid she might suggest doing it immediately, I quickly set a time.
“Would it be all right if I contacted you around Wednesday? I should have some breathing room by then.”
I hoped I would have some breathing room.
“Good luck.”
Leaving those words behind, Elliott disappeared like the wind. First, I found and gathered only the things essential for treatment, then did a bit of organizing. When I searched through all the drawers, I found small shark skulls that could be placed on the consultation desk as well. I’d like to meet the person who did the interior design here. Looking at the shark photos on the walls only put me in a bad mood. It was already dark and gloomy because we were under the sea, and the photos of white-eyed sharks against the backdrop of dark water only deepened that gloom, so I took every one of them down from the walls.
By the time I had finished the coffee Elliott gave me, I had barely managed to put together a treatment room that wouldn’t get me criticized if the dental clinic opened. To be precise, dust was flying around. But it wasn’t as if I could open a window three thousand meters below the sea. I prayed that the undersea base’s ventilation system was excellent. If a professor from dental school had seen it, they would have fainted.
I hadn’t done much, but five hours had already passed since I arrived. I realized I hadn’t eaten anything since getting off the helicopter except for a piece of bread I’d received out of goodwill, and, hungry, I left the dental clinic.
The restaurant in Jungang-dong was buffet-style, and the food was quite good. There was rice and kimchi, and surprisingly, even neobiani made from soy meat, chive dumplings, vegetarian sushi, and a fair variety of sandwiches. There were also different kinds of soup. I had heard this was a place where employees from eight countries gathered, but I’d assumed the food would be poor because it was under the sea. It was unexpected.
After piling food onto my plate and eating in a daze, I introduced myself to everyone I met as the new dentist. I met so many people that hardly anyone actually remained in my memory. After asking countless people for directions and arriving at Room 38 in Baekho-dong, I found my suitcase sitting properly inside the room, all alone. The fact that my suitcase had found its place properly became a silent comfort to me that day. I should buy Kang Sujeong some snacks later to thank her. Ah. Yu Geumi’s bread, too, and Elliott’s coffee.
I gathered my shower items and toothbrush supplies and headed to the shower room I had noticed before coming to the lodging. The shower room had quite a lot of stalls, each a single-person room you entered one at a time and locked from the inside. The doors were translucent, so you could tell whether someone was inside or not. I tasted a bit of the water coming out; it was slippery, but it wasn’t seawater. How many tons of water did they say the undersea base produced through seawater desalination? I had only skimmed the base explanation, so I couldn’t remember. Only after washing and drying my hair did I return to my room.
When I opened the electronic pad Priya had given me and entered the undersea base program, the dental clinic’s name was [Deep Blue]. When I selected Deep Blue, explanations appeared that even I, the dentist working there, hadn’t known. It said that Deep Blue in the Fourth Undersea Base was a dental clinic named after a famous great white shark.
……As far as I knew, the greatest number of shark attacks on humans were committed by great whites, so I wondered whether they had really named the dental clinic this way in order to attract patients.
Its teeth were apparently about three to six centimeters long, and it would swim up from below, shoot vertically upward, and tear into its prey. From the description, it practically sounded like it flew out of the water to attack. It was also highly intelligent and could bite a human body in half with a single mouthful. ……If all the explanations were true, then if I ever encountered one, I’d simply have to die. I gave up on running combat simulations between myself and a great white shark in my head and continued reading.
Great white sharks had about three thousand teeth, and their pyramid-shaped serrated teeth, arranged in three rows, were immediately replaced by healthy ones if they fell out or broke during hunting. I read three more times the explanation saying that, for the dental health of those staying at the undersea base, the clinic had been named after Deep Blue, a great white shark with an enormous body and jaws and teeth powerful enough to hunt whales.
Once I had practically memorized the entire passage, I knew I would at least be able to open my mouth if patients asked questions like, “Why is the dental clinic called Deep Blue?” or “What is that enormous shark skull in front of the clinic?” If it were me, I would have named it something simple, like Great White Dental Clinic or Shark Dental Clinic. Maybe it was because foreigners had named it. Deep Blue. Just hearing it made me think of dark navy water and a sinking, melancholy feeling. If it were me, for the sake of the people coming to the dentist, I would have named it Light Blue. ……I don’t know. Maybe the people here are familiar with great white sharks.
When I entered the reservation page, the patient coming tomorrow was one person, just as Elliott had said. Yu Geumi. Reason for visit: molar cavity. ……Now I understood why Yu Geumi had acted as though there was no need to worry about a dentist who didn’t even know where his own dental clinic was. The patient seemed generous toward a newly arrived dentist who didn’t even know where his treatment room was. I let out a sigh of relief.
The program itself was simple. I could move a reservation time to another date, or press a confirmation button next to the patient’s name on the reserved date to send them an alert. I sent Yu Geumi an alert confirming that I had received the reservation request. I was curious how the alert I sent would appear on patients’ electronic pads. There were two or three reservations per day on other dates as well, but after glancing at a few names, I turned off the pad. I’d be seeing plenty of them later anyway.
I took clothes out of my suitcase and began organizing them little by little, then pulled out the family photo I had wrapped deep inside the innermost layer of clothing. These days, almost everyone kept photos digitally, but if you left them in a photo gallery like that, you hardly ever looked at them. Only by printing them out and placing them somewhere beside you could you at least glance at them once or twice a day. In the past, I hadn’t understood why adults printed family photos and put them on their desks, beside their beds, on their walls, or in their wallets. ……I had wanted to keep not understanding.
The undersea base trembled faintly from time to time. I fell asleep instantly in the new bed.