Adele’s pulse dropped to eighteen in the surgeon’s chair: the anesthesiologist had overcompensated (Adele’s hair is red). She never knew, except in nightmares.

“I wanted to keep the teeth,” she tells the doctor a week later. Her cheeks are finally receding.

“They were impacted,” the doctor replies, “the roots were wrapped around your jaw. There were only dust and fragments left. We had to use a tiny jackhammer to get them out. Pow!”

But the explanation doesn’t ease her dreams. How did it happen, and why, she wonders. What madness is there, hidden in her body, to teach bone to tangle?