Dental Dilemma

John Avery Whittaker slips through a closing elevator door on his way to the dentist, having cracked a filling the night before, and finds Jean Forbes riding up to the same fourth floor office. When Whit mentions how kind Dr. Frank Graves was to squeeze him in without an appointment, Jean laughs and says that after what her family put the poor man through last week, Dr. Graves deserves a medal. Whit cannot imagine it was that bad. Jean tells him the story.

It begins at the Forbes breakfast table, where Bob cheerfully refuses to have an opinion about toast, Jean threatens to bring home an order pad and a waitress cap, and young Emily keeps disappearing into the bathroom to watch her last loose tooth wobble in the mirror. She will not pull it herself, and she will not let her father pull it either. She wants Dr. Graves to do it. The tooth settles the argument by falling out on its own the moment the family bows to pray. Later that day the Forbeses run into Dr. Graves himself, and Emily proudly shows off the gap and announces that she is coming to see him tomorrow. Her big brother Mark has an appointment right after hers, and he is far less thrilled about it.

That evening Mark finds Emily brushing her teeth and decides to have some fun. Swearing her to secrecy, he tells her that their parents and Dr. Graves have agreed to pull out all of her teeth, that it will be the worst pain in the world, that there will be a shot meant for horses and a giant pair of pliers, and that he has to come along to give blood. If she breathes a word to Mom and Dad, he warns, she will end up in the hospital. Emily believes every bit of it. She goes to bed frightened, insists nothing is wrong, and begs not to go, while her puzzled parents feel her forehead and pray over her.

At the office the next afternoon, Dr. Graves sings his way through Emily's checkup and notices that his bravest little patient has gone quiet and will not give him her crocodile smile. Gently, he coaxes the whole story out of her, and when he hears it he is not amused. Emily's brother, he says, has told her a big, big story and tried to make her afraid of a friend. Then he asks whether she would like to help him give Mark a small taste of his own medicine.

Emily most certainly would. Out in the waiting room, Dr. Graves informs Mark that there is no time for his exam because his sister needs a pint of blood immediately, that he should never have used those pliers, and that the nurse is fetching the horse needle. By the time Mark is squirming in the chair, Emily bursts in as Nurse Forbes to crow that they fooled him, and the terrifying needle turns out to be nothing but a water squirter. The laughter settles, and Dr. Graves tells Mark plainly why the joke was not a harmless one: it made Emily afraid of a friend, it made her lie to parents who only wanted to help, and it cost her an entire day lost to dread. Mark apologizes, Emily forgives him at once and offers to hold his hand, and then Mark discovers that he still has to climb into the chair and smile big like a crocodile.

Back in the elevator, Whit admits that Jean has won her point and that Frank Graves has earned his medal. He has only one question left: how come Dr. Graves never asks him to smile big like a crocodile?