I could feel that the day was coming. I knew the day was coming since I had started that two year long series of humiliations called nursing school. All I could do was wait and dread and hope that it would be a wrinkled, papery, old man in suspenders who would be the one.

My first suppository.

Though I was mentally and, perhaps, visually a little thrown when the day shift nurse told me what I would have to do, I mustered up all of the professionalism that had been forced down my throat over the previous one year of nursing school. “Okay, I am ready to meet this rectum, I mean guy…” I thought; and then I entered that fateful room. On the bed I see a man. He was not exactly the frail, sick older man with a heart problem I had envisioned. He was definitely not the kind of man a student nurse, a woman of 25 wants to give her first ever suppository to.

The man sitting on the bed in room number 204 was a 29 year old, handsome black man with a large number of tattoos and a large number of even larger muscles. As my eyes widened, I remembered what I was there to do. I introduced myself to him and he to me. His drawl was recognizable, his voice low and rolling. I asked the patient- or the fantasy of every woman from Martha Stewart to Lil’ Kim- whatever, to lie on the bed on his side and (oh my god oh my god) pull his knees up to his chest. This extremely understanding guy obliged and assumed this extremely vulnerable position. I tiptoed up behind his behind, gulped and placed one of my gloved hands on his hip. With the touch of my hand the patient leapt from the bed with the speed of lightning and ran into the bathroom, screaming “Oh HELL no.” My face began to burn, my armpits began to drip, and I wanted to run from the room, not to mention out of the hospital and the school of nursing.

After the longest one minute I haven ever sweated through, the hot black man came back into the hospital room. “Sorry,” he said and re-assumed the position. I took a deep breath and another step toward the bed. When I placed my hand on his hip this time, I flinched. And for good reason, because my patient once again jumped from the bed, tripped on the remote control cord and ran into the bathroom yelling “oh my GOD!” This time, he came out right away shaking his head and walked back to the bed without looking at me. I knew the longer I waited, the more nervous each of us would become, so this time, I went right for the…target. I was able to place my hand on his hip, and although I could feel him tense his muscles through his hospital gown, he stayed where he was. I moved my hand south and began to expose the aim of my lubricated finger. When the separating began my very impatient patient yelled “Oh my GOD” and exploded from the bed and stumbled into the bathroom. Again. This time, embarrassment did not come to mind. Swear words did. “That is IT,” I thought, “I have GOT to
stick this thing in his ass.”

My red face had turned from embarrassment to anger and back to embarrassment by the time my very fit patient came out of the bathroom. “I am so sorry,” he said. I reminded him that he could do it to himself or that I could have a male nurse come into the room to perform the task. He then reminded me that those options made him way more uncomfortable and that he promised he would stay in bed this time. So we began again as we had so many times already: his knees to his chest, the gown removed, my hand on his hip. I could feel him tense and shaking beneath my fingers as I made my move. However, my determination was strong and my reflexes were quick. This time, the insertion was imminent. With one fast motion, a blur really, cheeks were separated, fingers were thrust, and a suppository was placed in a beautiful man’s rectum. Sigh.
When it was all over, I carefully peeled my gloves from my hands while my patient sat up in his bed. As I walked around the bed, his eyes shifted and his shoulders slumped while his dark face darkened with a blush. I moved quickly, trying not to slip on the sweat dripping from my brow. The tension in the room was palpable; it felt as though it was the morning after an embarrassing, drunken sexual display the previous night. Unable to meet eyes, I told him I would be back later to check on him. I instructed him on how to use the surgical scrub when he showered, which somehow felt a little dirty. Once on the outside of the room, I felt safe and was finally able to breathe. I leaned against the wall and picked up his chart knowing that somehow I would have to write down what I had just done to this man.