I am thirty years old now, but I still clearly remember that evil doctor I encountered as a child at Shanxi Children's Hospital. (I am a chinese)
At the time, I was little—probably under ten. Because of digestive issues, my parents had taken me to see a specialist. The specialist clinic area on the mezzanine floor of Shanxi Children's Hospital was a bright, spacious hall with more than a dozen consultation rooms, all fitted with frosted glass doors. Perhaps because there were so many patients, children and parents of both genders crowded right up to the doors of the exam rooms.
The little girl ahead of me in line looked about eight years old. She was very thin, and her pants were pulled so tight they made her seem even smaller. She told the doctor her stomach hurt. He had her lie down on the nearby examination bed, pressed on her abdomen, and declared that she needed an enema because of constipation.
I had just gone through an enema myself two days earlier. My mother had held me down while a female nurse inserted the tube, so my face instantly flushed red. I felt so sorry for the little girl, thinking she was about to suffer. But what happened to her turned out to be far worse than what I had endured.
The doctor told her mother to go pay the fee, then casually pulled a large glass syringe out of his drawer, attached a soft tube and nozzle, and smeared it with Vaseline—twice. For a small child, that syringe looked as thick as an arm. It was terrifying.
“I’m going to give you an enema.”
Shockingly, he didn’t ask the other patients to leave. After preparing the solution at the sink by the door, he walked straight to the bed.
“Pull your pants down to your knees and lie on your stomach. You, hold her buttocks open,” the doctor said, apparently to her father. Even as a child, I tried to be polite and never turned around to look.
After the enema was finished, the doctor told her father to take her to the bathroom. When it was my turn, I was so scared of getting the same treatment that I deliberately didn’t mention my stomach pain.
A little while later, her parents brought her back to the consultation room. I finally caught a glimpse of half her face. She kept her head down, her ears burning crimson. She didn’t know where to put her hands. The doctor stood up again—he was going to give her a second enema.
I still didn’t turn around. This time he made her kneel on the bed with her bottom raised high and her chest pressed against the mattress. Oh my God, it was exactly the same humiliating position I had been forced into, except back then only my mother and the nurse had been in the room with me.
“Aiya, this little girl can’t even clean herself properly. Look, there’s still poop on her.”
“I told you to let your mom help you in the bathroom, but you refused. Now you’ve embarrassed yourself, haven’t you?” That was her father’s voice.
The boy next to me was also staring at the bed. He raised one hand to his face and made a “shame, shame” gesture.
Then I heard the sound of several pieces of toilet paper being tossed into the wastebasket, followed by another long enema that seemed to last five whole minutes. Afterward, the doctor told her mother to rub the girl’s belly.
She must have felt even more ashamed this time—not only because of the strange, exposed position, but also because everyone could see the mess on her bottom.
My “politeness” had its limits. I finally turned my head, but by then her father had already pulled her pants back up. Her face was flushed deep red, and her eyes were glistening with tears. What terrified me most was that two other men—probably fathers of other patients—had somehow wandered over and were standing right beside the bed. Several grown men were chuckling in a low, unsettling way. To my young ears, that laughter sounded both creepy and lecherous. Had they been watching the entire time?
I can’t help thinking that those men must have seen the little girl’s private parts and anus. Why didn’t her parents stop them? Did they simply assume a child had no sense of shame?
Now I’m thirty and at the age where I could become a mother myself. That childhood enema experience was truly frightening. I sincerely hope the next generation never has to carry such psychological scars.