The Beautiful Game

Chapter Twenty Five - Lou

One of the things that no one prepares you for when you start work in the emergency room, is how many things people are willing to shove up their butt.

I'm not judgemental, but as I gawp at the x-ray of an eggplant, fully inserted into a person's asshole, my mind runs wild. The textbooks hadn't mentioned the sheer capabilities of a human rectum.

The textbooks hadn't mentioned the majority of things I'd witnessed this past week; to be completely honest, I felt as though I'd been living underneath a gigantic rock before I witnessed the on-goings of the ER. I still felt so naïve and wide eyed and all I'd done was follow the doctors around and tried not to forget how to speak when they asked questions, expecting answers.

Simmons hadn't been messing around when he said it was going to be a learning experience; it was an incredible team, the doctors and nurses were a well oiled machine, effective despite the chaos. I'd never heard so many different alarms or sirens, they blasted through the department and people just ran in one way or another.

Thankfully I wasn't alone in my fear or incompetence; there were three other Michigan students on this placement, and we moved like a small flock of penguins, wearing borrowed ill-fitting scrubs, waddling after our guardians, too junior to be left alone and desperately trying to not get in the way.

"Once an object of this particular shape, has passed the anal verge, it has the tendency to scoot further away." Tim, the senior radiologist, explains with a completely straight face. In this moment, I can't decide what's more impressive: the size of the eggplant or the fact that Tim wasn't cracking up.

"You're acting like you've never seen this before." A low, deep voice speaks beside me, I startle and snap my mouth shut, looking over my right shoulder to find an extremely attractive man, in dark blue scrubs, smiling at me. Even in the reduced light of the x-ray viewing room, his handsomeness was obvious. An inch taller than me, with black hair cut short at the sides and slightly longer and gelled at the top, his smile wide and easy. I couldn't quite make out the colour of his eyes, but they were fixed on mine, and I was still staring. He blinks a couple of times and I realise I haven't responded yet.

"Funnily enough, no." I keep my voice low, Tim was still talking at the front of the room, stood beneath the x-ray films.

"It's not the first time he's done this you know, last time it was an avocado." I put my focus on Tim's face as he talks, trying not to laugh and disrupt the group.

"I think I'm going to decline his invitation to dinner." The handsome stranger coughs into his hand to disguise his laugh in the stuffy, quiet viewing room.

He grins at me before moving towards the front, I simply watch in confusion as he moves to stand beside Tim, who welcomes him by shaking his hand.

"In some cases, smaller items will leave the body naturally, with or without the help of prescription laxatives or enemas." The brunette student, Maggie, in front of me makes furious notes in her notepad as Tim speaks, whereas I just watch as Tim gestures to the dark haired man in scrubs. "Or, in more difficult cases, there'll be a referral to surgeons. This is Luke Jennings, one of our brilliant surgical interns who's agreed to speak with you."

The man in the dark blue scrubs was surgical, of course. Luke Jennings. An internship lasted a couple of years, I'd have placed him around his mid to late twenties. It explained his body language, the easy confidence and perfect posture.

"Thanks Tim. Not all referrals are as clear cut as our friend here." He gestures towards the film, the giant eggplant staring back at us on the screen. "Patient's may choose not to disclose that they've inserted a foreign body, they may simply present with abdominal pain or nausea and leave us to figure it out. This can be extremely dangerous and sometimes emergency surgeries are required, where blood loss and gastrointestinal perforation can be a real serious concern. He's going to be going under the knife this afternoon and you're all welcome in the viewing gallery."