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This was the single most humiliating thing Babe had ever had to do. Worse that the time he was six and had sat on a toilet without noticing the seat was up and had slipped and got stuck. His sister had gone out and yelled to his dad so loud that the whole street could hear that Babe was stuck in a toilet. This however was something else since he could not really use the excuse of being a stupid kid anymore.
Honestly, he would have rather danced Macarena in the middle of a mall with his ass bare and a dead flamingo on his head. Surely his parents would have died from embarrassment, and his grandma would have turned in her grave if they had known the reason he was currently standing at ER front desk with a triage nurse in front of him and pissed off Bill breathing down his neck. The nurse was young and pretty, and Babe prayed for every saint he could think of that she would not do any examinations. Let it be some old, bored and half senile doctor who would forget him and his issue as soon as he was out of the door.
"Your name, age and date of birth, please", the nurse asked. Babe tried to answer in a voice so low that the nurse could hear him, but not anyone else in the room.
"Edward Heffron, with two Fs, age 17. Born May 16..."
The nurse (in her nametag read Renee) wrote the information on a computer and barely looked at him. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad after all.
"And what is the problem you are having?"
Fuck.
"Um, you see, it's like a...um...I have this thing...in...You know..."
Bill swore and stepped next to him.
"For fuck's sake. The kid has somethin' stuck inside his ass."
The nurse looked up at that, well not so much at Babe than Bill.
"Are you his guardian?"
"No, I'm his cousin. I babysit him 'til his parents come back."
Babe shoved him away.
"Fuck you, Bill. No way in hell you're my babysitter. You're no more than six years older anyway."
"Monsieur Heffron", the nurse interrupted them, "if you please. So you have a foreign object inside your rectum? Do you have any pains or has there been bleeding from the anus?"
If the nurse was at all disgusted or amused, she did not show it. Still Babe's face felt like a volcano was under it, and he was sure his skin was visibly far redder than his hair at the moment.
"It hurts here", Babe showed the area on his lower abdomen, "and my ass too, but no blood as far as I could tell. It just hurts, and I don't think I can really go to toilet, you know."
Bill gave a long-suffering sigh and went to lean against a wall. Small relief at least, Babe thought. The nurse took his temperature. Babe tried not to roll his eyes. Really? He had stuff stuck in his ass and they took his temperature?
"Are you on any medication?"
"No."
"Do you have previous health problems?"
"Sometimes my hands and fingers curl under like this and lock-up. Hurts like hell. My doctor said it might be onset of some Dubai-tree contradiction, or somethin'."
The nurse seemed to have no idea what he was saying.
"Pardon, mon petit chou, what was the name of your condition?"
"I can't remember", Babe exclaimed and turned to Bill in his desperation. At this rate whole waiting area would know what his reason of being here was. God, why these things always happened to him?
"Dupuytren's contracture", Bill told them and came back to the desk. Nurse wrote it down, but Babe doubted it would be any importance. The nurse gave him some documents.
"Sign here, please, and wait there. Doctor will call you by the name. We don't have many patients at the moment so it shouldn't be too long."
When Babe and Bill had gone to the waiting area, Renee was cornered by her colleague Ralph Spina and a new nurse student Eugene Roe.
"Hey, Renee", Ralph spoke in low voice, a rather poor attempt of secrecy, "that kid just now. What's he here for?"
Renee rolled her eyes and turned the computer screen towards them. Ralph looked at it and gave a quiet shout of triumph.
"I knew it! Told you, Gene, it was rectal foreign body. Here, the biting snotnose is all yours, mate."
"You boys are impossible", Renee said, as slightly ashamed looking Eugene went to take care of the said small patient. Maybe she should have told them not to make bets on patients' conditions. Fortunately, next patient came in, and she did not have to hear how exactly Ralph had been able to recognize Heffron's condition. She could very well live without knowing.
****
As he and Bill waited for a doctor Babe was sure whole ER knew by now why he was here. He couldn't even sit down and his feet started to grow tired. His life was miserable.
"How you keep gettin' your sorry ass in these situations, I'll never understand. Jesus Christ", Bill said and glowered at him from the plastic chair near him.
"You get yourself in so much trouble I swear to God someday you'll end up here with your head in a goddamn plastic bag."
Babe prayed earth would swallow him. It was mortifying enough to be here in the first place, but to have Bill here with him made it ten times worse.
"Please, don't tell my parents about this", Babe said his voice as low as possible.
Bill gave him an eye.
"Like I'd be that kind of an asshole. Besides ain't no way in hell I wanna explain this kind of thing to your mama."
For that Babe was eternally grateful.
"Doesn't Don's brother work here? Archie", he asked, having just now realized which hospital they were in. He hoped that Don's brother wasn't on duty and would never see his medical records.
Bill laughed, the bastard.
"Yeah, he does. Hah! Would be pretty awkward to have him as your doc."
Babe wanted to strangle him. He knew he should have just walked here and not told anyone. So what if it was 5:30 in the morning and he'd have had to walk about 20 miles.
"Heffron", a doctor called, and all Babe's earlier hopes of him being old, selectively blind and half senile were crushed. The man was definitely not old, maybe under thirty years old, and was good-looking to make things worse. He was tall and had brown curly hair, blue eyes, and a face like one of those Greek statues'.
They went into one of the examination rooms. Bill sat on a chair in a hallway to wait. The room was plain, painted light green and had more machines with tubes than anyone would think to fear.
"Good morning. I am Dr. Meehan. And you have a little problem we call rectal foreign body, right?"
It sounded absurdly normal and clinical when the doctor said it. That and the term sounded considerably less humiliating than saying he had something stuck in his ass. But the situation was still a nightmare.
"Yeah."
"Would you like to tell me what the object in question is?"
It was not really a question. Babe wanted to die. And he was certain he would if anyone ever got to know about this. He glanced around the room and came to stare his shoes. He was sure Bill could hear them through the door. Dr. Meehan looked at him.
"I can assure you that whatever it is, I won't be surprised. In ER, we have seen it all."
"It's a carrot", Babe blurted to get it over with. And not even one of those baby carrots.
Dr. Meehan nodded.
"Okay. Trust me; it's among the more common things. And how did it end up there?"
"Well... I was, I mean, I tried..."
Like earlier at the front desk, he couldn't get the words out. Just thinking about it was bad enough, but to admit out loud he had tried to have sex with a frigging carrot was too much. How in the hell that could be made to not sound totally idiotic?
"Was it for sexual stimulation, perhaps?"
... Apparently that's how. Now he felt foolish and bit prude on top of everything.
"Yeah."
"And the act was voluntary?"
"Yeah."
"Did you put a condom on it?"
"No."
"All right then. I'm going to take a quick look, and then we take an x-ray, to see how far it is and if there are any loose pieces. Take off your pants and lean on the bed, please."
This was not a situation Babe had ever wanted to hear those words.
In the end Babe learned that it was indeed survivable to have vegetable stuck in one's asshole, go to ER and have hot male doctor to remove it. Dr. Meehan had looked at the x-ray picture and actually showed it to Babe. Then, as Babe was lying on an examination table in very embarrassing position, he had given him an injection of some muscle relaxing and anesthetic drug and started to work. It was over in less than half an hour. Babe was given instructions and advice to use proper sex toys from now on and to not push them in too deep.
So as they walked back to Bill's red Panda, Babe was still very much alive. His anus was starting to feel sore, but at least it was empty now. Bill was still nagging at him, but that was nothing new. Babe had survived humiliating procedure, his parents were none the wiser, and he hadn't seen Don's brother. It could have been much worse.