A dignified ending

Dad had a mate call him tonight, just as we'd served up a pizza.
'Dave! How are you mate?'
' ..... '
'Oh dear. Clove oil, you say? Well, I don't know. Have you tried the 24 hour pharmacy?'
' ... '
'That's ridiculous. I don't think the supermarket would have clove oil either.'

It was about seven o'clock. I went to his go-to medical cabinet and had a rummage. I knew I'd seen a few Bonjela tubes in there, back when the babies were teething. Fancy, a dread toothache at night and no one selling clove oil in town.

'Have you tried packing the tooth with tobacco?' I heard Dad say. 'I know that works.'
' ... '
'Oh! Oh dear. Well I don't know if we've got anything for that.'

Then I found the motherlode: TOOTH-ESE FOR DENTAL EMERGENCY. The old cardboard box looked from the era of laudanum or pink pills for pale people. I raced back to the phone where Dad was wrapping up his commiserations. Dad threw aside the Bonjela, put on his glasses and said, 'Wait Dave, we might have something here. Now let's see. Yes, 19 percent clove oil. The rest is Benzocain.'
Crikey,' I thought, that would go beautiful on my breakfast.

Dave said that if he couldn't get clove oil at the shop, he'd drop in on his way home.
'Poor man,' I said when Dad was back by the fire, pizza balanced on his lap. 'Toothaches are the worst.'
'He's an interesting one,' said Dad. 'He's a spiritual sort, like a Buddhist but not.  He doesn't like harming animals or seeing them suffer. Well none of us do, but once he took a rabbit home that had been hit by a car, nursed it back to health and now it lives with him in the house.'

I was wondering where he was going.
'You see, his goldfish is really sick. It's dying. Apparently if you rub clove oil on a fish it just ... passes away gently. So he was out and about tonight looking for some clove oil to euthanase his fish.'