Toast
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“Are you even going to wait for me?” Dr. Laney shouted, his voice echoing above the floor cleaner.
I turned around and waited for him in front of the huge clock in the hall. It was just past 7:30. “I hope I didn’t disappoint,” I said and he waved his hands dismissively.
“Fuck that,” he said. “I’m proud of you – I thought you handled that awkward ending very professionally.”
“I don’t know,” I said and walked down the steps to the door with him. “But thanks for coming anyway – I had much better visions in my head about how this was supposed to turn out.”
“Were you planning to tell them all the gory details of your seventeen year struggle in the five minutes you had allotted?’ he asked.
“A little too ambitious, huh?” I said.
“Maybe a pinch,” he said and patted me on the back. We went through the front door and down the steps. There was a stiff, northwesterly wind whipping down Church Street and the New Haven Green looked barren save for a small crowd of brave souls singing carols in front of an overly blue-green Christmas tree. “You want a ride?” he asked as we approached his car.
“Yeah, thanks,” I said and climbed into his navy Camry. I thought perhaps I should offer to buy him dinner or ask him if he wanted to see my apartment but I figured that was probably pushing professional boundaries to the limit. We drove down Chapel Street in silence and hooked a right onto Orange. “Welcome to the neighborhood,” I said.
I pointed over towards the right and he pulled over across from the closed Ninth Square Market.  There was a couple embracing outside of Foster’s Restaurant and another woman, a tiny Hispanic grandmother who lived across the hall, walking her schnauzer.
“You take care,” Dr. Laney said and shook my hand. “I’ll see you next week.”
*          *          *
I left my parents’ house from convalescing for a week after the surgery and returned to my apartment in New Haven. I hadn’t thought I’d miss my second story view of the back parking lot, chain link fence and the three birch trees in the courtyard. Especially when compared to my folks’ house with the beach and those songbirds, but it felt good to be back.
I started having spasms in my mouth after another week that felt as if my upper teeth were being torn out of my face. People had trouble understanding me. When I saw the surgeon about it, he said that was the splint shifting inside the mouth and that it probably had food particles that caused the discomfort.  “I highly recommend not speaking at all,” he said.
“What do I do for the next six weeks?” I said, shocked.
“You’re a writer,” Dr. Scottelli said. “Just take a vow of silence and do your thing.”