The Joker’s Testimony — #014
Unfiled Addendum
Anon leans forward in the dark, voice flat.
Anon: Why does the VA make you ride two buses, three Ubers, and half a prayer just to get poked for ten percent?
Joker:
Laughs sharp, head tilted.
Because misery is the funniest kind of efficiency. They don’t want to heal you — they want to measure how much it costs you to beg. Every mile, every Uber charge, every sigh in traffic… that’s the real exam, sweetheart. Not the stethoscope. Not the clipboard. The system is the doctor, and the diagnosis is: “Will he crawl back even if we break his knees?”
Anon: So you’re saying it’s deliberate?
Joker: Oh, darling — deliberate is too polite. It’s theater. Bureaucratic burlesque. They dress it up in words like “accessibility” and “compassionate care” while they bill the taxman and watch you squirm in rush-hour traffic. The joke isn’t that they don’t know it costs you a hundred bucks. The joke is they do know… and they’re betting you’ll eat it, because silence is cheaper than justice.