This doctor was completely different from all the others that Natalya Filippovna had seen before. Well, not completely different – human like anyone else, but different in type from the doctor of Natalya’s imagination. Natalya had expected the most distinguished orthodontist in the whole of Estonia or definitely in the whole of Tallinn to be at least as respectable-looking as the previous one: a grey-haired or perhaps balding gentleman, probably older than him, perhaps bespectacled, and definitely a man… You couldn’t tell whether Estonians were men or women from their surnames, unlike Russians. Of course she could have puzzled it out using the doctor’s first name, but Estonians’ first names were a real mix: Teet was a man’s name, Reet a woman’s… It was the same with Elo and Eno: one of them was a man’s name and the other a woman’s, but which was which? And sometimes they were married to each other. Teet and Reet! The Estonians are gender-neutral and no mistake. Yet the orthodontist was a small, young woman like a baby bird. Even her hair was fair, short and fluffy – just like a baby bird! As for her age… well, to be honest she didn’t look old enough to be a doctor, at least not the kind of doctor who could be the best in Tallinn let alone the whole of Estonia. Going by her age she could have been Natalya Filippovna’s daughter; Natalya’s baby, the one she’d miscarried that time, would probably have been about the same age. Not that a child of hers would be a doctor, mind.
On the other hand, thinking about it, this doctor had made her nest in the city centre where the rent was really expensive. And there was a light, spacious waiting room with soft divans and chairs and plenty of beautiful magazines flush with glossy photographs that she would have been happy to pore over, about health and food and gardens… Not that a single one of them was in Russian mind you, but pictures like that needed no explanation… And she had to fund it all from her work as a doctor – so she couldn’t be a bad doctor… So when she sat her daughter in her chair and looked into her mouth, it was like a goldsmith getting down to work. She said that the panoramic X-ray they’d brought with them was useful, but that it was not enough on its own, and they would have to take another in profile… Anyhow, the doctor picked up some callipers for measurement and set to work on her daughter’s mouth.
Natalya Filippovna had taken her daughter to several doctors in her time, but none of them had been able to explain a thing. She’d finally found one who said that the only thing they could do was wait. When Sofia was eighteen she could have an operation to carefully break her jaw and then widen it somehow. Natalya Filippovna found the idea so horrific that she stopped visiting doctors altogether. This doctor had a model of the jaw that she snapped open and shut to show how someone’s bite should be and what Sofia’s was like. Only now did it dawn on Natalya Filippovna why all the doctors had asked her daughter to close her mouth: it was because everything in there was in the wrong place. It wasn’t just the upper and lower front teeth that wouldn’t bite together, it was her molars too, and this caused tension in the jaw joints to the extent that they were becoming or had already become deformed, exactly how badly Natalya couldn’t remember, so great was the shock. What she did remember, though, was that if nothing was done then the joints would become stiff in around fifteen years’ time and she would no longer be able to open her mouth. She’d only be able to drink from a small beaker and as for eating, well, she’d only be able to put thin slices of food into her mouth…
Natalya Filippovna tried to argue that she’d never seen anyone who couldn’t open their mouth, and the doctor did not bridle at her argument; she merely explained that such people were definitely around, it was just that we didn’t notice that they talked with their mouths half-closed…
“What language was she speaking?” Natalya asked her daughter as they made their way home.
“Estonian,” said Sofia. “You spoke in Russian but she replied in Estonian.”
“And I understood everything?”
“Of course,” said Sofia, “she made things clear as crystal!”
But Natalya had the feeling that the reason she’d understood was that what the doctor had had to say was so horrendous, she would have understood her even if she’d been speaking Chinese.
How could it? How? How could it be like this? Natalya Filippovna asked herself over and over again. How could it be that in fifteen years’ time Sofia would no longer be able to open her mouth, and if they hadn’t seen this doctor, this orthodontist with the PhD, that’s how it would have been, and that’s how it could still be, if she were unable to find enough money to pay for the braces, because apparently the powers that be had decided that children’s braces would no longer be funded – children’s dental treatment was free of course, but parents had to pay for braces themselves because “malocclusion” – a poor bite – was a cosmetic defect. This was exactly what the health insurance people said, and it was just what Natalya Filippovna had herself thought until now, but how could it be a cosmetic defect, if the person affected wouldn’t be able to open their mouth in fifteen years? How could the sickness insurance system be so stupid? The stupidity of it brought tears to her eyes.
Natalya Filippovna cried. She was depressed and the insurance system appeared to be a monstrous iron machine, while Sofia was so fragile and helpless. The machine was threatening to imprison Sofia inside her own jaws.
“Don’t cry, Mum,” said Sofia, stroking her. “If you can’t afford the braces then I’ll earn the money myself, I’ll get a job in the summer…”
“Right, and just where are you going to get that kind of job?”
And then they started discussing how to find the money. It wasn’t completely impossible, because the money didn’t have to be paid all in one go: the doctor had even given her a schedule – a treatment schedule setting out all the costs, and had even comforted her herself with the fact that there was no need to pay for everything at once, the treatments lasted eighteen months… Or actually, a bit longer, because first they would have to extract Sofia’s wisdom teeth, but that would be done for free by her usual dentist… After that, there would just be some spacers – costing 350 kroons – and in the second week X-rays, impressions and tests – they cost 1,400 – which was manageable… But then came the appliance, the first appliance as the list said, and that cost 6,400 kroons in one go. Then there would be the adjustments – in just six months she would have to come up with 9,800 to make ends meet. And with another 19,000 kroons in the following six months, and six months after that another 9,000 kroons, making a total of 36,800 kroons. Natalya Filippovna found it hard to imagine that kind of money, but spreading it across eighteen months she saw that it meant 1,800 a month and each month she had 2,000 to spare. If she was lucky she earned 5,000 a month – but reckoning on 4,500 would mean there would be 2,500 spare a month, 3,000 if she was lucky. From that sum you’d have to subtract the cost of the flat, food, clothes, everything else – paintbrushes, textbooks, paper, pencils, perhaps aspirin or more expensive medicine – after that there would be 1,000 left over, 1,500 if she was lucky… So what did that give? 30 kroons a day, in the best case 50… For both of them! “We couldn’t even afford to eat with that,” Natalya Filippovna again felt her throat tightening.