The silverware clattered against the porcelain in a rhythm that felt oddly like a heartbeat, or maybe just the residual thrumming in my own fingertips after an 11-hour shift. I was sitting at the far end of my aunt’s mahogany table, the kind of table that demands posture and polite conversation, when the question drifted over the gravy boat. It was Uncle Ted-a man whose primary interaction with the healthcare system involves shouting at his television during pharmaceutical commercials. He’d heard I just finished a 41-day intensive certification in advanced manual lymphatic drainage, and his eyes crinkled with that specific brand of paternalistic amusement that usually precedes a verbal pat on the head.

The table didn’t go silent, not exactly, but the air in my immediate vicinity suddenly felt 101 degrees thicker. My cousin giggled. My mother looked at her plate. And there I was, caught in the familiar, suffocating trap of the ‘grey-collar’ professional: the choice between a silent, resentful nod or the exhausting labor of an impromptu lecture on pathophysiology. I felt my jaw tighten, a physical manifestation of the 201 times