23 1 What’s your story? The doctor was bending over me. In his hand he held that long shiny steel instrument. He held it right in front of my face, and to this day I can still describe it perfectly. It was about the thickness and length of a pencil, and like most pencils it had a lot of sides to it. Toward the end, the metal became much thinner, and at the very end of the thin bit of metal there was a tiny blade set at an angle. The blade wasn’t more than a centimetre long, very small, very sharp and very shiny. ‘Open your mouth,’ the doctor said, speaking Norwegian. I refused. I thought he was going to do something to my teeth, and everything anyone had ever done to my teeth had been painful. ‘It won’t take two seconds,’ the doctor said. He spoke gently, and I was seduced by his voice. Like an ass, I opened my mouth. The tiny blade flashed in the bright light and disappeared into my mouth. It went high up into the roof of my mouth, and the hand that held the blade gave four or five very quick little twists and the next moment, out of my mouth into the basin came tumbling a whole mass of flesh and blood. I was too shocked and outraged to do anything but yelp. I was horrified by the huge red lumps that had fallen out of my mouth into the white basin and my first thought was that the doctor had cut out the whole of the middle of my head. ‘Those were your adenoids,’ I heard the doctor saying. I sat there gasping. The roof of my mouth seemed to be on fire. I grabbed my mother’s hand and held on to it tight. I couldn’t believe that anyone would do this to me. ‘Stay where you are,’ the doctor said. ‘You’ll be all right in a minute.’ Blood was still coming out of my mouth and dripping into the basin the nurse was holding. ‘Spit it all out,’ she said, ‘there’s a good boy.’ ‘You’ll be able to breathe much better through your nose after this,’ the doctor said. an angle – horn seduced – blekktur an ass – asni (í merkingunni heimskur) roof of the mouth – gómur a basin – vaskur to tumble – detta outraged – æfareiður to yelp – skrækja
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