Carissa hadn’t thought it through. The nature of the clientele, that is. When she had taken on the position of “receptionist for the radiology department,” it hadn’t occurred to her that the vast majority of people coming in and out of the facility would be, well, elderly. Therefore, infuriating. With their slowness, their questions, their unexpected ability to make loud, disgusting noises while they waited to have their insides captured by beams of radiation. To be told what was “wrong” with them (at least once they consulted with a doctor by taking the image to them for appraisal). Carissa would have been happy to give them the answer for free: “You’re old.”

She knew that might have sounded harsh/been reductive, but, fundamentally, it was the truth. The overarching reason why most of these “clients” had to come in. Otherwise, if it was ever a youthful person entering the place, it was for an exceptional condition, a rare circumstance. Something that a young person might never have seen coming—like arthritis. But, again, such scenarios were few and far between. Which meant Carissa was stuck, day in and day out, with this demented sea of gray. All of them ready to approach her with their perennially open mouths and a general look of disorientation. A look that Carissa was somehow supposed to wipe off their faces with her “impressive knowledgeability.” But, at the end of the day, she was little more than someone who collected cash. A toll taker. A pound of flesh gatherer.

And oh, how there were so many people that tried to sidestep giving of their flesh. Everyone had an excuse for not being “able” to pay. Even though the contingency for “using” these services was that you had to. One way or another. Either with a low copay now and a high expense later or a high expense now and a “reimbursement” of some sort later. Carissa didn’t care about the mechanics of it all—people’s finances and their insurance plans. All she cared about was collecting the amount that the computer spat out for her.

In this way, it was an easy job. Sure. Technically. The actual “functions” of it were nothing that Carissa couldn’t handle. It was the people themselves. The demographic they embodied that made most of them so insufferable. She also didn’t understand why the word “receptionist,” to them, seemed to mean “emotional punching bag.” Seemed to mean “yes, I’m here to be abused.” For it was a form of abuse to have to absorb all their clinging, corrosive energy. Christ, she would often think, do I look like a motherfucking therapist to them? Then again, Carissa knew she didn’t have to “look like” anything or anyone in order to be hounded by them. Any husk radiating (no radiology pun intended) a sense of life would do for a sounding board. Or, rather, a board for lodging complaints.

As it stood, Carissa had been at this for just barely six months and was starting to wonder how she could possibly make it to an entire year without blowing her brains out. The promise of money delivered into her account every two weeks, that was how. Only she was starting to wonder if she might find more peace as a homeless person. Something she found herself, regardless of whether it was “insensitive” or not, fantasizing about. What it would mean to just “dip out” of society and not be bothered anymore. With bills, jobs or the goddamn mask of civility she was forced to wear every day at this godforsaken radiology department.

She nearly snapped the day a certain “Mr. Jenkins”—as he kept calling himself when instructing her to double check the system for a mistake about his billing—wouldn’t stop harassing her. Hovering over her desk every five minutes when she told him she would get to it as soon as she had a free moment. Which she fucking didn’t. The various radiologists of the department—whether it was for CT scans, MRIs, ultrasounds, etc.—all insisted that she pack the calendar to the gills. Keep the wheels turning at all minutes of the day. This scarcely left her a moment to fulfill unscheduled requests like Mr. Jenkins’ intense need to prove he had been done wrong by Carissa’s “incompetence.” When, no, in fact, that was the amount listed by his insurance company to charge the policy holder.

The sheer gall and sense of entitlement people like Mr. Jenkins had when it came to “accessing” her is something she found not only incredibly annoying, but also ironic. Considering that the elderly population was always going on about the insolence of “her generation” when, in fact, they were the rude, entitled and uncouth ones. She truly despised their audacity in this regard—found it utterly appalling. It made her so upset at certain parts of the day that she resorted to using her scant lunch break to chain-smoke rather than actually eat something.

Maybe that’s how she ended up passing out at her desk one day in the middle of a certain Agnes Lovack yammering on about the pain in her legs and that’s why she was here to get an X-ray and an ultrasound to determine what had really been plaguing her these past few weeks. About three minutes into nodding along in faux empathy, Carissa blacked out. When she came to, she found herself in one of the imaging rooms with an MRI machine, where she had been laid out, apparently, to recuperate. And her first thought upon recognizing this fact was, “Wow, maybe they really do care enough about me to have surrendered a room like this and risk a major backlog of people.” But no, as it turned out, there were no MRIs scheduled for the rest of the day, so she had free rein to just lie there. When that dawned her, she realized her employers didn’t really give a damn about her at all. They were fine to just toss her off in this unused room without considering she might be in desperate need of medical attention beyond a mere “waiting for it to pass” “remedy.”

That’s when it also dawned on her that she was as replaceable to them as any of the people in the waiting room’s hips. What the hell was she still doing at this job, really? Yes, she knew all the obvious answers to that question. But what about the answers that most people chose to suppress every day for the sake of the paycheck? Carissa slowly got up from the table (she was glad they at least didn’t shove her deep inside the “hole” of the machine—that, to her, would have been as bad as the feeling of being buried alive). By the time she placed her feet on the ground, she had made her decision to quit. A decision that, whether they “respected” it or not, she was about to implement immediately.

She walked back into the waiting room area to see that all hell had broken loose in her absence, with one of the “greener” radiologists having been tasked with taking over the desk until, evidently, Carissa returned “good as new” from her “rest.” Well, she wasn’t “good as new,” nor did she feel rested, and she gathered that the radiologist was banking on both, springing up from her seat to say, “Oh good, you’re back. There’s lots of people waiting to check in,” she noted, stating the obvious as she motioned to the long line that was starting to go out the automatic doors.

Carissa simpered as she raised her eyebrow and replied, “Bully for them.” The radiologist looked at her strangely, prompting Carissa, who knew few people under the age of about seventy had any idea what that meant, to add, “They’ll understand that, by the way. It’s an expression I learned here. From one of the olds.” She traipsed past the line, shouting out various exclamations of adieu at each of the people waiting: “Byyyyye!” “See ya never!” “Hope you don’t die too soon!” That sort of thing.

And when she found herself outside those automatic doors, feeling an intense wave of serenity wash over her, she knew she had made the right choice. Hell, she suddenly felt so stress-free that she wasn’t even obliged to light up a cigarette. Maybe there would be another job, maybe there wouldn’t. But all Carissa knew was that she was too young and vital to spend this much time with this ilk. Her ageism now firmly ingrained…at least until she herself entered “that period” of her life. Even then, however, she imagined the haunting of this job would still make her ageist toward her own kind.