NPR three minute story

The nurse left work at five o’clock. The doors of the prison clicking behind her as the slight flush of the sunrise backlit lumps of frosted sod in the empty fields. She passed the day shift; no one spoke. Two fluorescent lights flickered a duet. She clocked out and turned her keys over to the control center. The coffee sloshed in the nurse’s empty belly, bitter fumes creeping up her throat as she burped. Her car smelled stale, like her ex-husband’s sweat. The nurse watched the heat slowly eat away at the thin layer of frost on the windshield. She was too tired to use the scraper. Her dull wipers chipped away the ice leaving a gray smear in their wake. Two small holes spread slowly across the glass above her dashboard as the defrost warmed up.
She thought about the inmate’s mouth. Sometime after 3:30 he rolled off the top bunk; supposedly fighting off a nightmare, or maybe his roommate. He knocked out one of his maxillary central incisors. Poor boy, bad luck all around. The nurse put his tooth in some saline. As the inmate rinsed his mouth she said in soothing tones, “Don’t worry, I’ll call the dentist before the end of my shift. He can swing by tomorrow and put it back, easy as you please.” She patted his back as he spit. Within twenty-four hours the gaping hole in the inmate’s gums would reject the tooth as a foreign object.
Under her aluminum carport she could see one light shining from her bedroom, the rest of the small square windows made a short black row across the front of her trailer. She sniffed and looked up at the pink sky clear and cold before unlocking her door.
She needed a hot shower. The smell of the prison, a mix of cheap tobacco, state soap, and microwave popcorn lingered on her skin. Sitting on the toilet contemplating the stubble on her kneecaps, she thought, “I should shave.” Once it got cold her motivation to engage in rituals of personal hygiene diminished. She washed her hands and stared at her teeth, the way they were married to her pink gums, planted in her skull. Her tongue played across their flat wet surfaces. It darted between the small gap on the left and then over to her crooked bicuspid. Each tooth was covered in a fine layer of gritty moss. Her bottom teeth overlapped slightly. They were yellow; brown stains bloomed between them. It was the coffee. The lonely green toothbrush was covered in a fine white film and ragged on the edges from chewing. She often contemplated her complexion while brushing, sometimes stopping to pick a pimple—drawing blood, all the while her jaws working over the bristles of her brush. The sweatshirt and flannel pajamas hung loyally on the doorknob. They smelled sour like her towel. She picked up her uniform, and rooted around in the pockets. Moving across the hall to her bedroom she sat on the edge of the unmade bed and clicked off the tiny lamp. Morning was starting to shine through the single window into the small room. She held the vial, fished from her uniform, up to the light and shook it like a snow globe. There, swirling at the bottom trailing a wisp of bloody pulp, was the inmate’s naked tooth. She put the vial on her nightstand next to the lamp. It rolled a little but stopped. The flat pillow beneath her head was musty and damp. The nurse reached for the vial once more and grinned.