The Magic Touch
1 The Office
Chase looked out to the lake from the bedroom window. The early morning sun made the rippling surface of the lake throw up sparkles as if the lake was bubbling in golden waters. He looked across the bed at Amelia and was amazed that after so many years she still looked the same as when they had first met at the medical school. She had remained single and enjoyed the company of many wealthy men that she had met in Chicago where she lived. He and Amelia were into each other physically and were friends who over the years had continued to have periodic trysts. They never went to the same place twice and this time they were in the Finger Lakes area of Pennsylvania staying in a boutique hotel. They had been enjoying doing a little fishing, some hiking but mostly staying in and enjoying each other.
Today he would be going back to Cincinnati to his loving wife and two kids. He loved his kids. His wife was a great facilitator of their social life. They thought he was attending a dentist retreat focused on dental implant techniques.
He smiled as he thought about the fact that it was half right, he had talked business with Amelia who was one of his partners in his dental implant money “enhancement” program and he was a dentist at a retreat.
He thought back on how he had arrived at this point in his career. He had graduated from dental school, attended specialty training in doing implants, worked for a few years in someone else’s practiced and then the opportunity to take over the practice of a retiring dentist surfaced.
Having his own practice was when he had started to make some decent money, but it had taken some innovative steps to start making good to great money. Amelia, who worked for an insurance company in the role of approving insurance reimbursements was one of the key players that had aided that transition. Her handling of the claims from his office allowed him to make claims that were higher than the normal compensation and getting them consistently approved for reimbursement.
It was his tax season and after returning home from his “Dental Convention,” Chase focused on getting the paperwork for his taxes prepared. He leaned back in his chair, turned his chair away from the computer and looked out the window. It was after ten in the evening, and the yard lighting illuminated the drive up the long hill from the road to the house. He could just make out the roses that at this time of night appeared as black blooms in the circular rose garden at the center of circular driveway.
The perimeter lighting on his putting green just to the left of the window made the flag planted in the hole seem to be signaling someone in the dark. His nearest neighbor was a least half a mile away and he smiled at his imagination.
He looked back to the computer screen directly in front of him. He hated tax season. He had chosen his tax year to end in June. This kept his tax preparer from being bogged down by the taxes of the common people and able to focus on his account only. He kept the information the accountant worked with simple and “clean.”
He personally thought that the taxes were far too high, the deductions he was able to generate and to claim was never as much as he wanted them to be. He had no intentions of making large contributions to any charity to reduce his taxes. He wanted all the money he generated to go into his own pocket. He found it easier to adjust his income and to redirect his cash flow out of the country to make his taxes amount to what he felt it should be.
He was making sure all the numbers that he was submitting in his dental office’s income and expense form was what his accountant asked for and that it all added up the way he desired.
His recent tryst with Amelia was listed in his computer as a business meeting to discuss the proper way to submit claim forms. He never let his accountant see any of the details of which he was unsure. He did not want an outsider to know too much.
He figured he should be pleased that his dental practice was making a fortune and even after taxes he was well into the top one percent of income in the country. This was only the reported money. What went offshore was almost ten times what his office cash flow amounted to.
As a dentist with a well populated practice, he would have made good money without doing much else, but he wanted more than just a good income. He wanted much more, and he had found a way of getting what he wanted.
Making a fortune was possible because he had two friends in the right places.
One supplying inexpensive implants and one supplying unquestioned expense approval.
Amelia had gone to work for an insurance company and was in charge of accepting insurance claims. She personally managed the claims from his practice. She didn’t have to do anything illegal. She just had to authorize full payment for the claims his practice sent in. The expense claims always claimed the highest charges that he could make. He smiled when he thought about the fact that he had a good imagination and his patients all had special needs that cost a significant amount. They were never charged the amount that he claimed so they were not alarmed about the costs he claimed. They paid twenty percent of the bills they saw.
She had her Chicago social circle that included powerful people that ran the lucrative drug trade. He was not sure what her involvement was in that social circle and had no intensions of finding out. He made it a point not to meet her in Chicago. He did not need to get entangled in that trade or with the people she associated with. He was sure that she was providing some sort of service that was also enriching her.
He was happily married, had two kids, and lived in the most exclusive village just to the east of Cincinnati. His wife was from one of the areas old wealthy families. She provided the social connections that allowed him to rub shoulders with the area elite. She also handled the kids and made sure they were in the best schools. She seemed to be clueless as to his personal dealings and he made sure to keep it that way. What made it a good association was that she had her own wealth which kept them from having money issues.
Their kids were both ready to graduate from high school in the next two years. They were bound for college. He hoped they would get a scholarship, but they had agreed that they would make sure that the kids did not end up in debt because of the cost of tuition. Paying for their tuition was no issue and represented only a drip in the bucket of the money he was generating.
The second person that made his scheme work was one of his buddies, Paul, who he had met when he was going to school to specialize in dental implants. He had gone to work for a supplier of dental implants.
He was the source of implants that cost a fraction of what the top-quality implants cost. The implants he supplied were made of less expensive materials and were imported from Guatemala or they were rejects from manufactures of the top implant producers. In both cases he figured that they would last long enough that if they failed the failure could always be blamed on time and some inappropriate action by the person that had the implant.
He just needed the implants to be impossible to trace back to their source.
The billing paperwork Paul sent in for insurance reimbursement was ten times more than what they actually cost to purchase.
The three of them, Amelia, Paul, and he had agreed to split the money that they made equally. This had made all three of them wealthy, able to afford many luxuries and had bonded them together.
Every tax season he shared his accounting numbers with them. It was the one time of the year that they met in person. They would agree to the location, meet there and then spent a couple of days splurging and enjoying themselves. They would spend time enjoying drinks by the pool of some top end hotel, do a little gambling if that was available and partake of the top meals.
Amelia spent one night with each of them. She said she did so because they were sharing everything equally and she thought she should too.
It had been ten wonderful years of getting together. Ten years where each of their fortunes went up by millions of dollars.
This year they were to meet in Miami. He was looking forward to relaxing on the beach and taking in the view of all the young ladies strutting by.
He focused back on the numbers in the spreadsheet showing on the computer screen. He did not want some accountant finding any chinks in the way he inflated the cost of the implants. The paperwork he submitted always supported the numbers and there was nothing for the accountant to question.
Paul provided an invoice for the inflated cost of the implant. This kept his office accounts simple and clean. Even if someone reviewed the paperwork, there was nothing to find.
This also meant that Amelia did not have anything to hide as she evaluated the insurance claims his office submitted to her insurance company. The only thing she did was to accept the claim as submitted. Her participation meant that a smooth cash flow was maintained.
The money from the insurance company was clean. He split the money, so the overcharge went equally to each of the three offshore accounts in their names.
They could each draw from them as needed to support the needs of the lifestyles each of them enjoyed. Each of them enjoyed a superior lifestyle based on the money that was generated.
The reimbursement to his office went into the office’s bank account and it matched what the accountant submitted in the tax paperwork.
He ran through the numbers in the income and expense report one more time. It was lengthy but clean. His accountant would be able to use it to generate all the tax forms and determine the taxes he would pay.
The next day he went to the office to interview a new desk clerk. His business was growing thanks to the personal advertising that Luna, the person who ran the office, had started doing on her own. He liked the fact that she had taken that approach on her own. He chose to reward her by giving her another good raise. He figured having another office worker to whom he paid the minimum wage would most likely pay off within the year.
She would be the second hire in one year. His first hire, Ezra, seemed to be working out well. He was a hard worker and handled the orders for the implant materials very efficiently. Next to Luna, he was the one that seemed to work the hardest.
Just as she did every morning, Luna parked her car, took a minute to unhook her phone from the charger and then put it in her purse. She was always the first to arrive, unlock the office and turn on all the lights. She knew that this was not something she got paid to do but she did it out of years of habit.
Once she got to the reception desk, she turned on the two computers. One was for logging the patients in and the other was for scheduling appointments as the patient was leaving. She had ended up with two computers when Dr. Mazerly, the dentist that had owned the practice when she first started, had brought in the second one from his home when he had bought a new computer for himself. She was glad that it was a one Dr. office. She had worked for Dr. Mazerly until he retired and sold his practice to Dr. Thornfield. Dr. Thornfield had slowly increased the number of patients, and the number of dental assistants. Two computers finally started to make more sense.
He had hired Zia and Fiona, dental hygienists who she suspected were lesbians, but she was not sure. She was sure that they had moved in together, went to lunch together and often held hands as they walked to their car. She knew each had their own car because they seemed to take turns driving
She figured that she should just ask them but that would take all the fun at wondering and watching. They did a great job, and patients liked them and that was all that mattered.
The most recent hire was Ezra Nightshade, a dental assistant that specialized in dental implants. He was a quiet individual that was very organized and efficient. Most of the time he ordered and organized the tooth implants, the ordering of the crowns and other implant materials. He was a serious individual who focused on doing a good job. He was focused on his work, kept everything organized and was helpful. She liked that.
She not only handled the patients, but at first, she had also managed any office improvements that Dr. Thornfield decided to make. She had almost quit because she felt overwhelmed. When she mentioned that to him, he apologized, gave her a raise, and said that she should hire a contractor to manage the details of the improvements, and she focus on managing the contractor.
Both the raise and how he then seemed to check with her with what he wanted to do with the office made her feel she had some say and had some control.
He had added the job of billing and payment to her role so at the end of each month she once again seemed to hit a limit.
She took it on herself to assign setting up appointments of the outgoing patients to each of the dental assistants. At first, they resisted but she showed them how it would actually work in their favor because they could do that as they were winding down while the patient was still in the dental chair.
Ezra was the newest of the group, but he had helped her often enough that she liked him the best. Whenever he was free, he would asked how he could help.
Emma and Bella would get together when they did not have a patient and chat with each other but seldom came to the front desk to see if there was something to do.
As the number of regular customers increased, her job started to overwhelm her once again. This time she went to Dr. Thornfield and suggested that they hire another front desk person.
After a half dozen interviews, she was able to make a hire recommendation, and he had hired that person.
Afterwards she felt that the office seemed to be running smoothly and that nothing more exciting was on the horizon.
2 The Victim
Darcy was kneeling working on her flower bed in front of her house. She had tried her hand at creating a colorful flower bed with a mix of flowers that would attract honeybees and hummingbirds. She felt great about the fact that she had been successful in attracting both. She was not sure she would win any awards for the design of the flower choices and arrangement, but she loved what she had accomplished.
She felt that her choices had added both color and made the flower bed seem to be an extension of a flowery meadow. She had a wide variety of flowers such as the lavender Bee Balm, the black eyed Susans, the blue borage which had a cucumber-like taste that she liked, the California poppies, the violet chives, the lavender Liatris that the bees seemed to love, the bright orange Marigold, and the purple, white, and yellow blooming pansy, the Lavendar which she used to cook into shortbread cookies.
She smiled as she thought about the fact that she visited her flower bed to get some of its rich rewards as much as the bees and the hummingbirds. It provided her a connection to nature that delighted her.
This morning, she was feeling the painful effect of having a new dental implant. She went into the house to look at it in the bathroom mirror.
She leaned in toward her the mirror. She pressed lightly with her index finger on the implant tooth that she had just recently had put in. It looked fine but something was not right. The pain was not too bad, but it was constant. She had arranged for an appointment later in the day to have it looked at. This was her second implant. The first one, which was a back molar, had given her no problem.
Her clear dark brown eyes looked at the wrinkle on each side of her mouth. She smiled and took in the few wrinkles due to the fact that she was always smiling.
“Who could complain about a smile wrinkle,” she thought.
There were a few wrinkles on the corner of her eyes that also appeared with the smile, but she thought they gave her character.
She brushed back her long hair that was now almost all grey with a few strands of black hair that created random streaks. She had accepted the loss of her beautiful black hair and had refused to dye it. She was proud to accept age for what it was. It was what it was, and she was aging gracefully and painlessly except for her new front tooth.
She was pleased that her slim brown eyebrows were still the same color they had always been. She thought that they provided a contrast to her hair, and they enhanced her looks.
A makeup minimalist she seldom used lipstick. She felt that her light pink lips were the right contrast to her almond-colored skin. Her parents had both contributed to her olive skin color. Her mother was of southern Italian heritage, and her father had been of Spanish heritage.
They both had passed on just two years ago. She missed them dearly but felt that they had lived long, good lives. They had lived out their entire lives on the farm where she had grown up
She turned her head both ways and felt that for a fifty-one-year-old she was still attractive. Her husband always made her feel good when he complimented her on her good looks.
The only thing that was not in as great a shape as she wished were her teeth. On the farm the well water did not have the fluoride that city water had. She had few cavities, but she had several teeth that had deteriorated faster than she had wished.
She had whitened her teeth and felt that had made a big difference as well. She didn’t spend money on makeup, but she had spent a small fortune on her teeth. She felt that keeping her teeth in good shape was critical to enjoying her later years.
She drove to the dentist to get her tooth looked at. When she got to the office, the time to get into the dentist chair came faster than she had thought it would.
Ironically, she always feared going to the dentist, but she always enjoyed the comfort of the dentist chair. It made her want to close her eyes and relax.
Dr. Thronfield entered, flashed his brilliant smile, and asked how she was feeling.
She put her finger on her tooth and explained the problem.
He nodded and said he would take a look at it.
He asked his assistant nurse to take a picture of the tooth. He then let her know he would be back shortly to have a look at the Xray.
The assistant, who she had never seen before, introduced himself as Ezra and said that he had been trained as an implant specialist. He asked her to bite down on the shield that would let the picture of her tooth be recorded.
She bit down on the gadget that he put in her mouth and closed her eyes. She heard a buzz and then she was asked to open her mouth.
A few moments later Dr. Thronfield returned and stood with his back to her as he looked at the picture of her tooth. He hummed and hawed a few times and then he turned to her and said that there wasn’t anything obviously wrong with the implant. He said that he was going to prescribe a pain killer and said that the pain should subside in a few days.
She nodded but, in her mind, she was thinking that she should say that she actually didn’t want the medicine and that the pain indicated to her that there was something wrong with the implant and his response was not what she had expected.
Before leaving the office, she stopped at the desk and made an appointment for two weeks out.
She had no plans to fill the prescription.
Instead, she called a friend and asked her if she had a dentist that she used and felt good enough about, to recommend him. When she got the name, she realized that it was a woman dentist. Once she had the name she called to see if she could get a second opinion about some pain, she was experiencing with a front tooth implant.
She got the appointment for that Friday.
By Friday she was ready. Ready to have the pain come to an end.
She was greeted by a young female dentist who introduced herself as, Dr. Whitlock. She inquired about the pain and then focused on looking at her teeth. After a few moments she asked if she could get a full picture of all of her teeth.
Darcy liked how thorough she was.
After the pictures were taken, she was asked to wait while Dr. Whitlock went to her office where she would take a close look at her entire mouth.
When she came back, she asked if the implant of the molar in the back had been done by a different dentist than the one who had done the front tooth.
Darcy said that it been done by a Dr. Goldens because it had to be done by a specialist. At that time, she had been a patient of Dr. Mazerly who had sold his practice toDr. Thronfeld who had recently done the front tooth since he did both general dentistry and implants.
Dr. Whitlock asked if she ever had any adverse effects from the back implant.
She said that she had none.
Dr. Whitlock nodded and said that the material of the front tooth was different from that of the back, and she suspected that the only way to end the pain was to remove the implant and examine it.
She explained that the pain would most likely end immediately on its removal. She said that she would recommend removing it immediately while she as in the office. Then a few days later she could put in a new implant. The same crown could be reused.
Darcy thought for a moment and asked what Dr. Whitlock planned to do with the implant.
Dr. Whitlock said that she planned to send it to get it examined to see what it was made of.
Darcy decided that if the pain was going to end with the removal of the implant, she was ready to do it.
She asked what the procedure would cost and was told that it would be close to two thousand dollars.
She realized that would deplete her entire dental insurance allowance, but she figured it would be worth it if it solved the pain issue.
After the numbing, the extraction was painless. She walked out with a gap in her front teeth.
When she greeted her husband, he asked what had happened to her beautiful smile and what she was sad about.
She explained what had happened.
He said she had done the right thing but that next time she should let him know she was experiencing pain.
She said that she would.
She took it easy for the next week. The pain was gone so she felt that she had done the right thing.
On her next visit to Dr Whitlock’s office, she got a new implant put in. It took less than thirty minutes to get the new implant. She learned that it would be three months to allow the implant to be solidly in place. That time was a month longer than Dr. Thronfield had taken.
Dr. Whitlock let her know that the crown was of a lower quality than ones she used but it would do for a short time. She recommended replacing it as well.
Darcy figured that she would let Dr. Whitlock order a new crown.
She commented that she was mad about the situation.
Dr. Whitlock nodded and said that she was also mad, but she was going to wait until she heard back from the expert at the lab she used before she did anything else. She suspected that the implant material was of inferior quality or not compatible with the human body.
Darcy thanked her and asked if she would take her on as a permanent patient.
That got a smile from Dr. Whitlock who said that she could use more patients and that when they went to the front desk, she would make sure that her receptionist put her on the office patient list.
Thank you for reading this far.