Saving Ryan's Privates

I am at Raghav’s house on a Sunday evening. We are waiting for Ryan to join us. The doorbell rings. I and Raghav open the door together. Ryan is standing there. He flashes his trademark grin - equine except for the accompanying neigh. And suddenly his expression changes, he is trying hard to focus, his eyeballs are drifting upwards into his eyelids, his head lazily nods off to one side and Ryan is folding up and descending slowly to the ground. For a moment I and Raghav are wondering what is happening. But we quickly recover and catch Ryan before he hits the ground.

We pick him up, carry him into the house and splash some water on his face. He gets up. I say ‘What happened da?’ He says ‘I don’t know. For a moment I had this terrible pain in my groin and felt like I was dizzy and reeling.’ I asked him how he felt now and Ryan says ‘Ok, there is no pain now.’ 

 

Since it was Sunday evening and Ryan was not in pain now, we decide to go to the hospital the following day. St. Johns Hospital was nearby and Raghav had a friend who worked at the hospital. Next morning I took Ryan to the hospital. We go in and meet Raghav’s friend who gets us through the queues quickly and to the right Doctor. The Doctor asks Ryan to take off his pants for an examination. I slip out and seat myself in the waiting room. From where I am sitting I can see into the Doctor’s room. The Doctor seems to be bending over and examining Ryan’s privates. While doing it, he pauses as if he remembered something and steps out. Meanwhile Ryan is sitting there, exposed to the elements – as it were. In a minute, the Doctor returns with three other white-coated figures. The Doctor points out specific areas with a pointer and the white-coated figures nod understandingly. I think they were trainees and the Doctor was introducing them to a case. Ryan later confirmed that he was ignoring all of them and studying the ceiling fan. It couldn’t have been funnier - four white-coated figures examining Ryan’s privates with a pointer and nodding intelligently on a Monday morning. I bit my lip to hold back from laughing. I was attending to a friend and this was a Hospital.

 

Finally, the Doctor declares that Ryan needs a scan. We walk down the corridor, up the stairs and down another corridor to the Lab. At the Lab, Ryan hands over the slip the Doctor gave him. The nurse at the door asks him to wait. All along he refuses to make eye contact with me and tries hard to look unembarrassed.

 

We wait for a while and then the nurse comes out and announces, loud enough to carry to the end of the corridor, ‘Ryan D’Souza … scrotal scan.’ The Hippocratic Oath evidently does not apply to Nurses. Ryan puts up his hand to signal that he is the one, lowers his head, walks up to the entrance of the Lab and disappears behind the door. The way he walks reminds me of the way you would sneak out of the office toilet after attending to an untimely and unexpected big job in the middle of the day while stubbornly refusing to acknowledge your co-worker at the washbasin – termed the ‘Walk of Shame’ in some circles. At this stage, I cannot and do not want to hold on any longer. I laugh my guts out. People in the waiting area are staring at me. It wasn’t Hospital decorum. But we were talking scrotum!

 

After a while, Ryan sheepishly walks out of the Lab with the report in hand. The Doctor studies the report and says ‘There does not seem to be any problem. It could have been stress. Have you been working long hours?’ Ryan says ‘Yes’. The Doctor prescribes a week’s rest. Ryan is puzzled. He can’t make the connection. What has stress got to do with his privates? I hold back from telling him that I read in a health magazine that stress affects the weakest part of the body. I said good bye to Ryan and went home.

 

Every time for the next few years, when we all met up – usually over a beer, we would recount the story to bouts of belly-aching laughter. And the story has imaginary dimensions to it – maybe the Doctor brought in the interns only so they could have a big laugh about it over lunch recounting the look on Ryan’s face during the examination, maybe the Nurse yelled out his name only so she could see how red Ryan would turn.

 

This was all some years ago. In case you are wondering, I am happy to let you know that Ryan is now happily married and has just been blessed with a baby boy.