It Is What It Is

Written for OLWG #412.
The three prompts are shown below.
This is my take.

It wasn’t the line of work Lynette was hoping for but the single mother of three couldn’t afford to be picky. At least she got to eat breakfast with the kids before walking the three blocks to her twins’ elementary school. Continuing on to her job, she’d stop at her mother’s house to drop off her 3-year-old for babysitting. Thankfully, Lynette’s mother was able to help out …. a godsend in these days when she couldn’t even afford a dozen eggs.

It was drizzling by the time Lynette arrived at work; the dismal weather made the grey brick building look even more clinical and depressing than it was. Just before the main entrance was an alley where the delivery and employee entrance was located. Standing outside in a huddle were three people Lynette didn’t know; they were wearing hazmat suits, the headgear casually pushed back off their faces, as they chatted and chain-smoked. The irony was not lost on her. She waved at the group and entered the building.

Lynette was glad she didn’t have to wear one of those protective suits at work; her job area was confining enough as it was, stuck behind a glass-partitioned cubicle all day dealing with “visitors”. The company preferred the terms “visitor” or “guest” instead of “patient” but everyone knew that’s what they were.

The job was boring but Lynette couldn’t complain. As people liked to say these days, “it is what it is”. The routine never changed: every 30 minutes a door to Lynette’s 8’x10’ room would slide open and a “guest” would emerge. Lynette would instruct the person to sit in the recliner-type chair in the middle of the small room. At the same time, a canister of brightly colored liquid would be delivered to Lynette’s glass-enclosed cubicle via a hydraulic system; she would bring the container to the guest, telling them to drink the liquid …. sometimes in sips, other times all at once, depending on the tests that were being done. When the guest was finished drinking, Lynette would insert the empty canister into the hydraulic unit where it would be transported back to its point of origin. After a short rest period, the guest would leave and another guest would arrive. This was Lynette’s daily regimen; she was given 45 minutes for lunch and two 15-minute breaks. In the 18 months since starting this job, the routine never changed.

At the end of the day, Lynette would pick up her children and return to her apartment. Some evenings, if she didn’t have laundry or something else to do, she and the kids would eat dinner with her mother before going home. That was the case this particular night, however, something was not normal. While Lynette was washing up in the bathroom, she was suddenly overcome with a case of the dry heaves. They didn’t last long and she felt better after splashing water on her face. Her mother gave her a questioning look and Lynette thought “I better not be pregnant. That’s the last thing I need.”

Lynette was relieved to learn she was not pregnant. That feeling of relief was short lived when she developed headaches, started coughing up blood and losing large clumps of hair. She became too sick to work but even if she felt well enough, the company had mysteriously disappeared and the building was deserted.

Four months later, Lynette was dead.

NAR©2025
#OLWG

Here are the prompts: 1) walk in radiology; 2) got a job and started putting money away; 3) sick, dizzy and disoriented. We can use one, two, all three or none at all. It doesn’t matter; we just need to be creative.

This is “Just A Job To Do” by Genesis

OLWG#412- The Ad

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