I’ve been in this doctoring game for some time but I’d never seen a patient like this one. She explained that she’d been through three other physicians before me and that I had been highly recommended by someone in her Bible study group. Her name was Tiffany R. and she lived in a small community by the name of Stepford, California.

“Why come to me?”, I asked, more than a little curious as to the answer. “The others, they’re all tired. I wore them out”, she replied. Her smile was genuine, it seemed. But those eyes, I’ll never forget those eyes. They were blue but god, there was a great deal of pain in there. You could just tell that she’d been through so much and was trying hard to make the best of a very difficult situation. My heart went out to her.

I didn’t realize the full extent of the hell on earth she was enduring until her third visit. I was on the phone trying to give my wife some good news. You see, I had entered a best ball golf tournament and as luck would have it our team squeaked out the lowest score. The reception was quite patchy wherever my wife was at the time and I nodded to Tiffany to take a seat in my office. The third time trying to get through was a charm but I had to yell out quite loudly, “HONEY, WE WON THE GAME!”. What happened next was the stuff that nightmares are made of.

As soon as Tiffany R. heard those words a glazed look came over her face and she started unbuttoning her blouse. I sat there, my jaw, as they say, dropped open and I was speechless. “That’s wonderful”, she uttered, without a hint of emotion. She lay down on the floor and spread her legs open. “I’m ready now”, she said, and I noticed a single tear running down her cheek. I quickly took off my coat and covered her up. “TIFFANY! TIFFANY!” That finally broke the spell. She cried for 45 minutes as I held her in my arms. “Make it stop, make it stop”, she said over and over again as she clutched her knees and rocked her body back and forth.

What kind of bastard would do this? I never saw her again. My guess is her husband discovered what happened and sent her off to someone else. I checked her contact info but her cell number had been changed. I think about her quite a bit. How she gathers the strength to get up every day, waiting, wondering how and when she’ll be ‘triggered’ by that beast of a man…

TO THE GAME!

RAVENS/BOLTS:

I just hope I can get back in time from a family obligation to see most of this. Should be a good one.

My trigger word is ‘shenanigans’.