"Robble Robble"

When I was a surgical intern in the early 90s I rotated through the Emergency Department at St. Vincent’s Hospital. I was working one particularly quiet Friday night without the characteristic gunshots, stab wounds, and pedestrian struck motor vehicle accidents when a demented old woman was brought in from her nursing home after falling from her bed. She was left unattended in her stretcher after she underwent a series of x rays. One of those x-rays showed that both her hips were fractured.

My senior resident told me to take care of her after I saw the man in the gynecology room. I thought I misunderstood him and asked him to repeat what he said.

“You heard me,” he sighed as he threw the man’s paperwork at me.

Puzzled, I began to walk to the back of emergency department where the GYN room and my male patient were located.

I was flipping through his chart, confused by the written reason for his visit.

Foreign body, it said. And I began to understand.

As I was walking past the rows of unoccupied stretchers, a strange sound caught my attention and I stopped and looked to my left.

There lay the demented old woman, completely naked and exposed, spread eagle with her legs thrown over the bedrails despite her hip fractures, masturbating and making sounds like the Hamburglar.

“Robble robble,” she said. “Robble robble,” over and over.

I stood there, frozen with my mouth agape, staring but not completely comprehending what I was seeing.

“Robble robble.”

I was staring much too long.

“Robble robble.”

I really needed to stop staring, I thought. This isn’t the highway and this isn’t an accident.

“Robble …”

The next robble was interrupted by my senior resident slapping the back of my head.

“Showtime’s over,” he said as he threw a blanket over our exhibitionist. “Go see your patient.”

I shook my head to clear my vision and my brain and hurried to the back room where Gary S. awaited.

“I was bored and I got a little carried away,” he explained. “And then, well…it just got stuck in there.”

“What got stuck in there?” I asked as he shrugged and gave me a little grin.

The x ray of his belly confused me at first but then Gary told me what I was seeing.

He fashioned a homemade vibrator out of a Silly Putty egg, two toothbrush holders, a motor and some batteries all held together with some aggressive duct taping. He was so proud of his invention that he decided to shove the whole 18 inches up his ass where it remained, safely tucked deep in his intestine, the egg tip vibrating against his spleen.

His placement in the gynecology room was prescient, directed by the triage nurse who had clearly seen this type of thing before.

After explaining my plans for extraction, I thought about the potential risks and gowned up, gloved up, and threw on eye protection and a face shield. Gary eagerly stripped down to nothing and threw his feet in the stirrups, wiggled his butt to the edge of the exam table and threw his hands behind his head.

This was clearly not his first time. And he was hyperventilating with anticipation.

Gingerly I inserted my gloved finger into his rectum, deeper and deeper until I could touch the bottom of his homemade toy.

Gary moaned.

A second finger followed in an attempt to grab the foreign object, but to no avail.

A third finger followed, Gary moaned louder, but my fingers found no purchase.

This is taking too long, I thought. Fuck it.

And I shoved my whole hand up there and grabbed the bottom of the vibrator.

Gary was moaning and slapping the sides of the exam table as I slowly pulled out the vibrator. He was so loud a few nurses came in to see what the hell was going on. The vibrator was halfway out when Gary started to gyrate and moan louder. Mortified, I started to pull the vibrator out faster. I needed this to be over.

Unfortunately, I started pulling too quickly. Later, I would figure out that this created a vacuum which, together with my lubricated latex glove, made it impossible to hold on to the smooth plastic.

And with only inches to go, the entire thing slipped out of my hand and back up into Gary, who arched his off the table and cried out as he had an orgasm.

With me standing there. And with half a dozen nurses watching.

Horrified, I tore off my protective equipment and stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind me.

After quickly washing up I sat in one of the stretcher bays and pulled the curtains so as to wallow in my shame in isolation. I buried my face in my hands and closed my eyes, listening to my deep breaths in the eerily quiet emergency department.

And then I heard it.

“Robble robble.”