Like pulling teeth

 The tufted leather chairs were more comfortable than they looked, though I found myself fidgeting as I sat in one of them waiting for news. I didn't know how long this would take and I didn't want to ask.

My firstborn child, who is more of a newly minted adult-ling, had been escorted by a nurse inside one of the interior rooms of the dental office in order to have all four of her wisdom teeth surgically removed.

I had been in offices like this before. Rooms, tucked between rooms that looked like a midcentury maze of medical fortitude. Find your way to check out and win a prize.

Behind a sliding glass window, the reception staff pretended not to notice as I hopped around the waiting room, pawing through periodicals without purpose and inspecting the wall hangings with an intensity I had to invent.

Could they tell I was nervous?

Probably.

I didn't feel nervous.

I had lived through the pulling of teeth ... eight to be exact. The same number my daughter would be down once this day is done.

But I was nervous. How could I not be?

I couldn't wave away the parade of potential complications surgery presents: from the dangers of anesthesia to who-knows-what-all-else could go wrong when they are trying to yank four perfectly good enamel bones out of your jaw.

"Will I have swelling?" She had asked on the drive.

Probably.

"Will there be bruising?"

Maybe. You never know.

I started to tell her about the two black-and-blue stripes that showed up unannounced a few days after my surgery and that traveled along both sides of my jaw and down my throat, but she bowed her head and held up her hand.

"That's fine. I don't need a graphic accounting ...”

Her voice trailed off and she looked at me between sharp, narrow eyelids: "Nor does my brother."

He wanted to be there. Not so much out of concern or for moral support, but to film any drug-fueled shenanigans the procedure may produce.

"People coming down from dental procedures practically fuel YouTube."

Being out of control worried her some.

She didn't want a thousand or one thumbs-up emojis stomping around her digital footprint for all eternity. 

"I was lucky. Back in the horse-and-buggy days of my youth, we didn't have videos that could haunt a person forever. The worst I suffered was waking up with the feeling that anything was possible ... even scheduling a follow-up appointment for a day that, had I been anesthesia-sober would have been terribly inconvenient. Luckily, my mom was there to reschedule more wisely."

Of course, things had changed. There would be a follow-up phone call instead of an office visit. If all was well, all would BE well.

Which is what I was hoping when a smiling nurse in scrubs opened the door to escort me back to the recovery area. "She's doing fine. She just has a lot of questions that she's not going to remember we have already answered.