Its 3am. I'm walking, no stomping up and down the street in front of my apartment building with an ice pack on my face. I've been awake for hours, shit, days. This fucking abscessed tooth feels like it's splitting my head in half. I can feel how much my face is swollen and despite the ice the whole right side of my face feels like its on fire. I wonder a little fearfully about what kind of poisonous toxins are being released into my body.

I can't sleep but I have to be to my crappy job at 8am. I need sleep. I'm pissed. My crappy job as a receiving clerk pays just above minimum wage and offers no insurance, the boss says they can't afford it. I guess it costs too much money for him and his wife to drive those Escalades and live in that big house in the pictures on his office wall. I'm barely able to pay the few bills I have and keep food on the table and a roof over our heads. I'm pacing outside so I don't wake up my wife and kid, they both have school tomorrow. My kid is just starting the first grade and my wife is going to the community college to become a nurse so we can better our lives.

Advil, Ambesol. Not doing much good. In addition to being concerned about the toxins being released into my body from the abscess I'm afraid of what the Advil might be doing to me.  I have no idea how many I've taken, in my desperation to relieve the pain I've lost track. If I could just relieve the pressure I might be able to sleep. This has been going on for three days now. I went to the emergency room at St Francis but it turns out they are a privately held hospital and they don't have to take "indigent" patients so they sent me away. I didn't know what "indigent" meant so when I got home I looked it up in my sons dictionary. Man that pissed me off even more than the tooth. "Experiencing want or need" I can deal with, I am that at the moment but then the dictionary goes on to say "A needy or destitute person". Fuck you.

At St Francis they told me to go to city hospital they take indigents and uninsured. City is on the other side of town, at least an hour's bus ride. Problem is I'm flat broke until payday and that's still a week away. I asked my supervisor at work if he could lend me a few bucks until payday, he said no and walked away. We already cashed in all the coins from our coin jar so we could do laundry and send my son to his first day of school in clean clothes. I have no family, I was an only child and my folks died when I was a teen. My wife grew up in an orphanage so she and I are totally on our own. It's tough, I had to drop out of school in the 9th grade to start taking care of myself, and my parents didn't leave me any money because what little money they did have was eaten up by medical bills. At least my wife has a high school diploma so she was able to start college courses right away I have to get my GED first.

We have a plan though, first my wife'll get her nursing degree and then when she's graduated and working I'll get my GED and go to college. I want to be an engineer. I'm good with my hands and have a knack for figuring out how things work. My wife can't work and go to school at the same time because she has a learning disability and has to work twice as hard to get the grades she needs to continue on in school. I can't take a second job because I have to watch our son while she studies. So that leaves us living on the meager earnings from my shipping job. Sometimes I stand in the doorway down the hall, I can see her bent over her books at the kitchen table working so hard to learn and my heart just fills with love for her. I wish I could fix her disability so it would be easier and I pray I do the right things to support her.

Back in the house I slip in the bed gently so as not to wake my wife up. I lay there for a while trying to sleep. My head hurts so bad. It's hard to imagine that one silly little tooth could cause so much pain. My head is throbbing with the pressure. With each beat of my heart it feels like my whole head pulsates. If I could just relieve the pressure. I get an idea, quietly I get up, go to the hall closet and get the longest needle in the sewing kit. Looking at it I realize that the eye end is still pretty sharp for putting any pressure on so I go to the garage and get a pair of pliers.

Quietly I close the bathroom door and turn on the light. I look at myself in the mirror. This is fucking crazy but I look at how swollen my face is plus it's now 3:30 am and I am desperate for sleep. I open my mouth, tilt my head back, I know just where I have to go, right next to the tooth that broke a couple years ago. I put the needle in the pliers and start to try to ram it in between the broken tooth and the one next to it. Shit, piss, motherfuck, does that hurt!

I quickly pull the needle out. How the fuck am I going to do this? I see the Ambesol bottle. I grab it, remove the lid and pour about half of the bottle in my mouth and swish it around the right side of my mouth for about a minute. My mouth is feeling numb. I load the needle into the pliers, my hands are shaking a little, put the needle in between my teeth and push again. Shit man, it still hurts just the same. The Ambesol did no good. I take the needle out of my mouth and lean on the sink with both hands, head hanging. I'm not sure if I can do this. Then my face starts to throb again, it seems the throbs are harder and more painful than ever.

Slowly I raise my head and look at myself in the mirror. There are tears in the corner of my eyes. My desperation for the pain to end is overwhelming. I just need it to not be bad enough to not let me sleep. It seems I'm looking into my own soul. You can do this I say to myself in the mirror. I lean my head back, put the needle in between the teeth again and I push, hard. The blood and pus start to flow immediately. I pull the needle out and set it and the pliers on the sink. I spit out a bunch of blood and pus. I push on my face where the swelling is and can feel the swollen area deflate as it empties into my mouth. The pain of the pressure relieves almost immediately.

After I clean up I put some gauze in between my cheek and gum and hold it against the inside of my teeth with my tongue. Quietly I slip back into bed, the pain greatly reduced. As I lay there exhausted, wondering at the crazy assed thing I just did I drift off.