TAKEN

Otolaryngologists are scrambling after what authorities are calling “a sound like a distinct pulse, but of glass shattering,” inflicted upon many Salt Lake City residents on an otherwise normal Wednesday. The Ear, Nose, and Throat Center(ENT) has deployed all specialists to handle the suddenly-flooded requests for care.

Many victims didn’t know what had struck them when shortly after 9pm there were several reports of hearing loss across the Salt Lake Valley after Fox 13’s weekend news anchor, Nineveh Dinha, announced she is engaged to be married to a man that is not the men that heard the news.

“It was like a hurricane, sort of,” said Roger Etcher, father of three. “Like, first I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, and I guess that was like the calm of the storm, then a huge shattering that overtook my ability to hear anything. I haven’t been this scared since Blair Witch 2 came out.”

Etcher insisted multiple times that he is happily married, and that he “kind of followed [Dinha’s] career,” since she is “like the cream of the crop of news people.” A Sweden-born Assyrian, Dinha has won the Salt Lake City-based City Weekly’s “Best TV News Hottie” in all five years of the category’s reputable existence. Asked if he thought any of her coworkers were talented, the part-time veterinarian paused for a few dozen seconds before thinking of a name. “Runge? Is he still there? I think so, right? Runge Time? Or that ‘World in a Minute’ voice — also pretty good.”

Although too early to determine exactly what the shattering noise was, experts are pointing to the phenomenon “Adjustment Disorder With Mixed Disturbance of Emotions and Conduct,” also known as a broken — or, in this case, irreconcilably-shattered — heart.

“You see this type of thing when the seasons change, or in mid-February,” Said Dr. Drumkins of the ENT. “Sometimes, when BYU strings together a decent season, inevitable heartbreak is certain. But this, this engagement? This is wholly devoid of comparison.”

Valley-wide wives are said to be simultaneously relieved and angered. “Well, Colton [Wesson, a victim of the event] never really paid much attention to me or listened all that much at home. Now I am worried he will have a decent excuse to blame it on this time. I’m just not sure how he will be able to preside over the ward now that he is in this kind of state.”

“Her name is pretty close to the word ‘heaven’ scrambled. I like my eggs scrambled. Now I feel like my heart is scrambled,” said a weakly-poetic and distraught Flannigan Oerpter, who quickly took to the streets with a makeshift sign reading “JUST SAY… NO!!!”

“I think people thought I was talking about drugs, but heck no, I was talking about Nineveh. I mean, my school reunion is in two years, I was really hoping to meet her before then.” Oerpter, a third-generation phlebotomist, said he had not yet contacted the Edward R. Murrow award-winner for Spot News, but if he were ever to run into her that he is, “pretty sure I would know something cool to say to hit things off.”

As of press time, the soon-to-be-former Ms. Dinha has yet to cave to the overwhelming pressure/desire of her legions of fans to remain single, as the weekend newscast anchor’s ring shines ominously like an iceberg ahead of each of the tormented fans’ paths on which they float their collective boats.