The Green Notebook
Aurelio has been a dental nurse for nine years, and for seven of them he has kept a small green notebook in the top drawer of the desk at the practice on Grand Avenue. It isn't the appointment system. The system knows who is coming on Thursday. The notebook knows who books and then cancels.
A name goes in when somebody cancels twice. A name is crossed out when that person is actually sitting in the chair — not when they book, not when they promise on the phone, only then. Most names get crossed out inside a year.
One name had been in the notebook for four years. It belonged to a man who drove the school bus, and Aurelio saw the bus go past the window most mornings. Eleven appointments. Eleven cancellations, usually the evening before, always very politely.
Aurelio had tried the ordinary things first. He had sent the reminders. He had explained, gently, that a small filling costs less than a bad week. None of it worked, so he stopped talking about teeth altogether.
Instead he offered the man the first appointment of the day, when the waiting room is still empty. Then he offered something even smaller: come in, look at the room, sit in the chair for a minute, and go home again. No treatment, nothing signed. He could book the real appointment afterwards, or not.
The man came on a Tuesday in February, at ten past eight, with his bus keys still in his hand. He sat down. Aurelio talked about the bus route and the roadworks on the hill. After four minutes the dentist asked if she could just look, and he said she could.
It was one filling. Aurelio watched the clock, because he always watches the clock. Eleven minutes.
“That's the whole thing?” the man asked at the door, with his coat over his arm.
“That's the whole thing,” Aurelio said.
He took the green notebook out of the drawer and crossed the name out. Then, next to it, he wrote the number — eleven minutes — and put the notebook back. Four years in the drawer. Eleven minutes in the chair. He didn't write anything else, and he didn't say anything about it to the man, who was already halfway down the stairs.