“Damn it!” cursed Stanley to himself as he rubbed his throbbing left jaw and resolutely stuffed the unopened vial back into his pocket.
Desperate to escape from his agony, he attempted to refocus his thoughts on his work. He sat up straight in his chair, and turned up the volume gain to his headphones a full notch. The distinctive whining crack of fracturing sea ice met his ears, and he closed his eyes in an attempt to visualize the monumental forces at work on the surface to create such a racket.
Unfortunately at about this same moment an excruciating, piercing spasm of pain flared up the left side of his jaw leaving him trembling in pure agony. It was then he realized that he had had enough.
Roth reached out for the nearby intercom handset and made two quick calls. The first one sent his replacement. Seaman Lester Warren, scrambling from his bunk. The second call pulled Pharmacist Mate Charles Krommer away from a poker game that he had been in the midst of.
“I don’t give a damn if you are on a hot streak, Krommer,” the desperate sonar technician said forcefully. “As God is my witness, you’re going to do something about this friggin’ tooth right now!”
Stanley Roth had to wait for his breathless replacement to arrive before storming off to meet the perplexed pharmacist mate in the Defiance’s sickbay.
This infrequently patronized portion of the ship contained a complete operating theater, including a dental chair. Though any number of complicated surgeries could be performed here, the crew of 107 physically fit young men rarely came down with anything more serious than a cold or the flu, so the pharmacist’s mate’s main responsibility was to monitor the radiation badges each crewman wore to insure that his exposure was kept to a minimum.
“Now are you certain you want to go through with this. Roth?” quizzed Charles Krommer as he changed into his gown and scrubbed up.
“I’m warning you, I’m not a licensed jaw breaker.”
“Of course, I’m positive!” Roth retorted passionately. “I’m telling you, Charlie, this tooth of mine is just killing me. I’ve got to do something drastic or I’m going to go stark raving bonkers!”
Quick to sense the extent of his patient’s upset, the medic attempted to calm the senior sonar technician by adopting his best chair side manner.
“Easy does it, Stan. Just settle down into the chair and relax. Though I’ve never actually extracted a tooth before, I’ve seen it done in the clinic a number of times and it didn’t look all that difficult. So just hang in there, buddy, and check out the scenery while I make a quick consultation.”
Stanley Roth took a series of deep breaths, and following the medic’s advice let his stare wander to the series of cutouts taped to the wall before him. Starting on Miss January, he attempted to lose himself in the buxom, sensuous centerfolds that had been put up to give a whole new dimension to the field of dentistry.
With the sonar technician thusly occupied. Pharmacist Mate Charles Krommer nervously picked up a manual entitled, The U.S. Navy Guide to Emergency Dental Surgery. The St. Louis native had expectations of becoming a full-fledged M.D. one day in the future.
His plan was to enroll in premedical studies at St. Louis University, where he also hoped to attend med school. To finance such an expensive endeavor, he’d enlisted in the Navy’s college plan.
After completing basic in San Diego, Krommer had been accepted into the Fleet medical program. He completed an intensive six-month course in which he learned a full range of skills including first aid, pharmacology, radiology, and elemental surgical techniques.
For an entire week, he worked as an assistant in a dental clinic, where he acquired knowledge of such basics as treating an abscess and how to temporarily fill a cavity. Yet actually taking out a tooth was a whole different ball game, and he couldn’t keep his hand from shaking slightly as he turned to the chapter marked, “Extraction.”
With the help of a fold-out diagram of the mouth, he identified the suspect tooth as being the lower left mandibular first bicuspid. He breathed a sigh of relief upon noting that this particular tooth had only a single root, and decided since it was slightly loose already, it shouldn’t be that difficult to remove. On the next page he found a list of the items he would need to facilitate his efforts. They included Xylocaine, a dental syringe and needle, a straight elevator to remove the gum from the bone around the tooth, a lower universal anterior forceps, and a dozen or more four-by-four cotton sponges. Only when he was armed with these items did he turn his attention back to his patient.
“Well Stanley, here it goes. I want you to open wide and turn your head slightly to the right.”
The sonar technician willfully obeyed these simple instructions, and Charles Krommer initiated step number one — the administration of the anesthetic.
With the syringe, he proceeded to inject that portion of the gum that surrounded the tooth. As a kid, needles had always scared the dickens out of the pharmacist’s mate, and he found himself more frightened than his patient as he carried out this far from pleasant task.
A wide, relieved smile turned the corners of the medic’s mouth as he pulled the empty syringe out and his patient awkwardly mumbled.
“Hey, Charlie, it finally stopped hurting!”
A bit more confidently, Krommer proceeded, according to the manual, to take the straight elevator and remove the gingival tissue from the tooth. He then utilized the lower anterior universal forceps, clamping it securely to the tooth. Taking a deep breath, he yanked on the forceps with a slight rotating upward movement, and, unbelievably, the tooth came right out of its socket! Before he could cry out in triumph, the blood started flowing. Here the cotton gauze sponges came into play. After instructing his patient to bite down on them, Krommer waited. In approximately five minutes the bleeding would stop, hopefully. Only then would his first venture into the fascinating world of oral surgery be completed.
Back in the sound shack. Seaman Lester Warren was completely oblivious to the historic operation that had just been concluded in the Defiance’s sick bay. Though his prayers were certainly with Petty Officer Roth, he had no time to let his thoughts wander. For the myriad of wondrous sounds that were currently streaming into the headphones were unlike any he had ever heard before. The Texan was able to identify the distinctive crackling cries of shrimp, the tremulous, vibrating barks of several species of seal, and the high-pitched clicks and mournful moans of a herd of passing narwhal.
Since this was only Warren’s second Arctic cruise, many of these noises were still new to him. Under Stanley Roth’s expert guidance, his last patrol in these waters had been a great learning experience, and today Lester readily applied his knowledge during his colleague’s conspicuous absence.
By and far the dominant noise presently passing through the sub’s hydrophones was the grinding, fracturing sound of the ice topside. This raucous racket was an overriding presence and was unique in its intensity. Try as he could, Lester had a difficult time visualizing what this sea of constantly shifting ice must look like. Back home in San Antonio, Texas, the winters were fairly mild. An ice storm occasionally paid them a visit, but this was definitely an exception to the norm. During his entire childhood, he could only remember it snowing a handful of times. Yet in each instance, he’d been one of the first kids out in the powdery white precipitation, making a snowman or having a snowball fight.
Lester was looking forward to the moment when the Defiance would surface in an open lead in the ice. At that time he planned to ask the XO for permission to go topside and check out this winter wonderland with his own eyes. Perhaps if he got lucky, he might even get a glimpse of a polar bear or a real live Eskimo! Then he’d certainly have something special to share with the folks back home during his next leave.