“We don’t.”

By seven o’clock Monday morning, the clinic waiting room smelled of pine cleaner and freshly brewed coffee.

Ben was already at the front desk, sliding thick paper charts into green plastic color-coded sleeves for the day’s first three root canal patients.

He pushed his wire-rimmed glasses up by the bridge with his thumb as I hung my coat on the brass wall peg.

“Did you get back from Sioux Falls without any car trouble?” he asked.