Lost: The Remains - chapter three

Lost: THE REMAINS
A "Lost" fan fiction.
By "Coby Clark Craft"
[Randall Hugh Crawford
as Napoleon Park]
Chapter Three
“He’s A Dentist”
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There's not much to say about Dr. Hamil Ranjimurtha. Well, there's not much I can say. He's a dentist.

Oh, you hear things. Maybe he stole the money to come to America from New Delhi. Maybe he wrote rich kids painkiller scripts for simple teeth cleanings. Maybe he's practicing with a suspended license. Maybe there's more going on in the cabin than just four men taking turns comforting Jenny - maybe they comfort her two or three at a time, or comfort each other. Or maybe it's all idle gossip. People talk.

They say that unless a professional interrogator, such as certain members of the Iraqi Republican guard I could mention, tortures you the worst pain you will ever endure is a bad toothache.

I do not know if this is true. I have never been shot or stabbed or cut worse than a nasty paper cut. I have not been a fight since I was nine years old. I have never been beaten or whipped and certainly not tortured. I have never had a broken bone, just a "minor fracture," though that was bad enough. But I have had a toothache and I did not like it.

Dr. Ranjimurtha has spared several of us severe pain by extracting broken or badly decayed or abscessed teeth. In a world without drugstores, toothpaste or Listerine, he showed us how to clean our teeth, what we could use to make a mild dentifrice, how to wax a common thread to use as floss. When a stand of something quite like sugarcane was discovered, he warned us not to chew on it.
When Chef Raezynski held classes to teach us what wild foods growing on the island we could safely eat, Dr. Ranjimurtha gave a guest lecture on which of those we could safely chew on and which we should first boil or grind between stones. In short, he helped us avoid dental problems, in effect trying to put himself out of business.

And as I will get to later, in the chapters dedicated to them, he saved Fay's life and brought Wallice the fisher into our fold.

Fortyish, plumpish but not overly fat. Brown skinned, dark-eyed, with deep set eyes over heavy, dark bags. A slight Indian accent, but not comically so. Helpful, friendly, but reserved. There when he is needed though you hope you never will need his services.

Those 19th century cartoons and Our Gang Comedy clichés of a man with a swollen jaw and a napkin wrapped around his face tying a string to a door and slamming it to pull a rotten tooth are not true. It's takes a man with strong shoulders and arms, a steady hand and clean pliers to pull a tooth. And to have it done without Novocain or nitrous oxide or even alcohol is very painful. But unlike a toothache that just keeps throbbing and getting worse, it is a pain that goes away. On this island, pain often goes away surprisingly quickly.

If living sleeplessly with the piercing pain of a horrible toothache could drive a person to thoughts of suicide, then Dr. Ranjimurtha has saved several lives while he has been here. He is a good man.

I do not have much else to say about Dr. Ranjimurtha.