Mr. Hale, eighty-four, pulled a folded medical report out of his jacket and touched the side of his jaw again before he read it.
Richard, he said to his son, you call yourself the real doctor. Let me tell you about the flosser.
In March, Mr. Hale said, I went in for a routine cleaning, and the hygienist found a little white spot under my tongue that everyone else had missed. She would not let it go. She begged me to get it biopsied. It was cancer. Caught that early, they got all of it. The surgeon who did my knee did not catch it. The orthopedic surgeon at this table did not catch it. A dental hygienist with a little mirror caught it, and she saved my life.
The table had gone very quiet. Gina had set down the hard-boiled eggs.
Richard called her the family flosser, and the family flosser found the cancer that would have killed his own father.
Mr. Hale said he had driven up from Philadelphia that morning specifically because he could not listen to his son belittle Gina one more Easter, not after what she had done for him.
I am Ginas mother. She passed the eggs and said happy Easter, Uncle Rich, and took the joke, because a woman who caught a cancer three doctors missed does not need a surgeon to tell her what she is worth. Richard looked at his father touching his own jaw, and he set his mimosa down, and he did not call himself the real doctor again that day.