“No, silly. Our jobs. I love my job so much. I just love it here so much. We are so lucky. We could be working at, you know, a steel mill or something. Sorting grommets. But we have it so nice here. Everyone is so nice here.”

Megan turned around and said, “I don’t think I would ever work at a steel mill, Jillian.”

Jillian reached into her file cabinet and brought out a packet of Pop-Tarts.

“Oh, yeah, but you know what I mean.” Jillian’s eyes widened. “Mmmm,” she sighed. “Oh man, these are so  good.”

“Pop-Tarts?”

“You want one? They come in packs of two,” said Jillian.

“Yeah, I know. But, I’m fine with the salad I brought.”

God, what? Megan turned around and looked at the colon of a healthy 50-year-old woman. It was pink and winding. Jillian sighed in the background and Megan tried to force herself to get back on track. I have to file these colons, she thought. That’s what I’m doing here. This is important medical stuff.

She filed the woman’s colon and switched to the next, which was filled with sludge. Jillian looked at these same pictures all day. This guy was a 40-year-old drinker, smoker, and snacker. It chagrined her to imagine this as the future state of both her and Jillian’s bowels. Annoyed her to know that they shared that fate together, probably.

THE 90-MILLIGRAMS of Tylenol T3 with codeine wore off before the day was over. Jillian left the bottle at home because the bottle said not to operate heavy machinery while taking them and, duh, she knew the bottle meant, like, cars and tractors and stuff, but she would be using a computer all day and computers were heavy and she was covering her bases. When she got home she decided it was ok to take one, just one, because she was in a lot of pain from her accident. The bottle said, “take with pain when needed.”

She felt so sad leaving Crispy locked in the bathroom all day, but that was the only place she could leave the dog where the poop and pee would be easy to clean up. There it was, it was gross, but it was true and there it was.

“Hey, Crispy!” she said.

She still hadn’t gotten Crispy that pull-toy yet and the bath mat was pretty much shredded.

“Get on out of here,” said Jillian, and Crispy obeyed and started tearing ass around the apartment in circles. Jillian took a big wad of toilet paper and used it to pick up the turds and mop up the urine and vomit (which she noticed had some threads from the bath mat in it, Crispy!). She put these wads in the toilet and flushed and then performed one more wipe-down of the floor. She fed Crispy and filled her water bowl.