The Doctor Is In

There was no Grace in the late afternoon. The ordinarily green, groomed lawns were typically filled with the laughter of children. Not to say the little ones were absent from expressing their imaginations in play, but instead the yards were in disarray. For she wasn't to be seen. The afternoon just wasn't the same. No energetic wave. No smile. Not even a story from the adventures of her youth, as she usually provided just after exiting her car. The neighborhood had grown accustomed to her car turning the corner just three houses from her driveway and thereby illuminating faces like sunshine in spring. But she was late. It was dark. The sun had set on another autumn evening. The streets were vacant, but there was vacancy in her heart for those she missed. However, all the children were summoned by the twilight which just passed before she walked home from the nearest bus stop. A streetlamp flickered until it reached its full illumination.

There was Grace. The other passengers on the bus had never seen this new face. The interior lights flashed on as the bus driver exclaimed his disgruntled opinion about his employer and wondered how the lights worked after their lengthy disorder. The typical non-conversational atmosphere was broken by the first person who mirrored the silent salutation of her smile. The surrounding passengers were enthralled by the tale of the Great Physician -- a story she often relayed to new people in her travels. It gave them something they usually had not experienced.

She made her way up the path toward the front door of a beautiful multi-gable home situated on the left of a sleepy cul-de-sac. The motion sensor of the front porch did not trigger the light. She trembled for what was to come. She pushed away her fear and fumbled for her keys. She sighed with her head cocked back to seek relief, she took a deep breath which exhaled into a prayer. The porch light flooded her vision which restored the smile in her heart. Just as she crossed the threshold, a darkness challenged her resolve. A hidden front of heated verbal assaults and icy secrets in constant retreat, lay in wait. 

The air was stale -- not a scent of any culinary preparation. Despite her fatigue, she offered to anyone in ear shot, "What shall I make for dinner?"

"Go ahead, make my day." Her husband swore at her with his usual fiery finesse while flipping channels with a grimace locked on his face, like that of Clint Eastwood. He had been out of work for years, but it hadn't taken long for him to labour his hand toward the bottle. One, already emptied and filled with cigarettes, now displayed on the end table next to his recliner. He sunk in the dank room. Once used to entertain friends and family, it was now his lair -- his dungeon.

She dared not ask the status of her vehicle's replacement -- the one her husband loaned to a so-called friend who was equal in inebriation to his own. Instead, she asked her husband, "Where's Crystal?"

"Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer," he half-fired another heated metaphor reflecting the current programming. The rest of his superlatives riddled down the front of his t-shirt. 

"Drake. I calmly asked a simple question. May I please receive a civil --"

"Say 'hello' to my little friend!" He violently interrupted as he swung the back of his clenched claw in the direction of her face. He missed his intended target as he was barely able to rise from the cage which had trapped his mind as well as his heart. Concerned the same disease had seized her daughter, she gazed from the edge of the room down the hallway. Her daughter leered in returned. 

"... you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!" Her daughter was an astute apprentice of her father in the art of profanity. The darkness already soaked into her wardrobe, her hair and around her eyes, which reflected her opinion of the world around her, and overall. "Houston, we have a problem," she exclaimed. There was no turning back from these words. They both cried. Each of their tears reflected differently. The adolescent's tears instantly chilled.

"May I have my cigarettes please, nurse ..." Drake loved to fire that insult at his wife. It was one of his ways to make himself feel he was better than her. She was a doctor -- a well-respected psychologist. He once held a high office. Now, in a crazed state he stumbled out of his chair -- just as he had fallen from the chambers of court -- toward the study adjacent from where the three stood. With his blurred vision he examined the plethora of framed diplomas and scholastic achievements. He hurled an empty bottle into the room. He missed again. His words were true in aim, but not entirely in content. Law had failed him, and he failed the Law. He falsely accused his wife of healing others over her own family. She knew he exchanged the word caring, as his tongue tripped over his teeth. Her expression betrayed her heart.

The charge and response did not go unnoticed by their daughter. "Exactly. There's no way to win." Crystal's opinion of her dysfunctional family ranked at DEFCON 2. This was no game. Like her father, her poison was not only the bottle. But another escape route existed. Undiscovered. Her room was always locked – as was her heart. Negotiating at this point seemed futile. 

There was Grace. She remembered the story, the gift of the Great Physician she recently relayed to those on the bus earlier. Those who would listen. Listen, and hear. The story of dire importance amid an explosive environment. The same story she told to her family in the past, years gone by. The same story her mother passed down. But not everyone receives this story as a gift. The gift of healing. The gift of peace. "What you want is temporary. What you need is permanent. But it takes time," she pleaded. "I'm not a magician," she cried. It was the most she was able to say without interruption in a long time. Nonetheless, as she began to add, "Please allow --" her words were met with frigid ferocity.

"What we’ve got here is failure to communicate," he slandered her good name.

Crystal outperformed her father and invented her own style of profanity. In cracked vulgarity she haphazardly stung her mother's heart with an icy response as she stormed back in the direction of her room, "Strangelove, or Strange! Will someone call a doctor!"

There was Grace. In a house with two others, she stood alone. Her tears fell short to warm the heart of her daughter. Her husband plastered to the wall in seared rage. She turned and faced the light streaming from under the back door. She softly whispered as she wept, "The Doctor is in."