"Neat." Also horrible, but, still neat. Marian writes it down as well. Takes a moment to reread her own notes; the handwriting is terrible because her hands are shaking but she can read it and it still makes sense. 

"...Do you have someone who knows more medical things, that Earth doesn't? I assume you have better medical tech than us if you have spaceships."

What a bribe. Wow. On the one hand there's a sinking feeling in her stomach as it goes on longer and still seems like not-a-drug-trip, because alien invasion. Not that waking up to find she'd been hallucinating on the train would be fun but at least it'd just be her and the worst that could happen was, oh, losing her job or something, not the entire planet being enslaved. On the other hand, not only does this job get her the hell out of Burnaby and mean she'll never have to interact with Dr Dubois again, they probably have amazing medical technology. 

<We have doctors who know lots about medicine, and the people of Velgarth know much about medicine in their own fashion, through their genetic ability to sense and manipulate energy-currents in the world. But we do not know anything about humans and what is safe for them, and the people of Velgarth have not invented electricity yet. We think that combining the knowledge of our three worlds we could have really incredible medicine.>

Nod. "Can I talk to one of the medical people? Just, I think it'd be especially hard for my brain to hallucinate realistic medical science." 

The Healer with them will happily start telling her about Velgarth Healing! 

What what what whaaat, this is the neatest thing ever - although it's magic-y enough that it's hard to check her intuitions for definitely not a hallucination - but it's really coherent... 

She takes a lot of notes and finishes her coffee. (She is slightly vibrating from caffeine.) 

"- All right. Uh. I -" Deep breath. "If this is for real then I want to help. I do want to know if it's dangerous, although I guess if the planet is being invaded it might not be more dangerous than staying here. Uh... Can you actually do work visas though?" The person on the phone said so, but on reflection they were definitely an alien and she's very suspicious that interview was mostly made up. 

<We cannot. We can just...go places, though. The local authorities cannot stop us.>

Nod. "I...would rather not commit visa fraud," which is maybe stupid if Earth is being invaded but still, "but - I guess if you have ways of just crossing the border, no one's going to notice. Uh, I do have shifts next week and technically I need to give two weeks notice before leaving." 

"We can do a Gate - a kind of magic - to bring you back to our facility," Leareth suggests. "If you still want to go back to your job next week, I am sure we can arrange something." 

This seems like it should feel like a bigger deal than it does. "All right." If they don't let her leave later, well, then they probably weren't really going to let her go now either, going to Alaska with them doesn't actually change their intentions there. 

<I think she will do very nicely.> he thinks happily.

:I agree: Leareth checks the shielding again and then raises a Gate. 

"Whoa!" Marian quickly shoves her thermos and notebook into her backpack and scrambles up. "Where are we actually going right now?" 

<Our facility is underground in Alaska.>

"Huh. Guess that's smart." 

After the other humans (not from Earth! apparently!) cross, Marian takes a deep breath and squares her shoulders, and does so as well. 

- whew. A little disorienting and it's not not the kind of thing you might hallucinate, but it's not too bad, and she does seem to be underground now. She can't tell just by looking around whether she's really in Alaska, but she's definitely no longer in a hotel building in downtown Vancouver. 

Some stalk eyes swivel to look at her and also there's a big white apparently normal horse for some reason.

:Welcome!: Rasha says cheerfully. :You're the nurse?: 

There is a horse talking in her head, what. Marian waves awkwardly. "Hi." 

Leareth dismantles the Gate and sits down. "Did you still wish to speak with the Andalite doctor?" 

"Yes please!" 

The Andalite doctor would be delighted to speak with her! Usually he can drug his patients, see, but it's hard to know what's safe for humans and they've been experimenting in morph but that only gets you so far. And a couple of weeks ago a god tried to murder some people - Velgarth has gods, they're powerful extraplanar assholes, when planets have gods that's usually what they are - and he had to do brain surgery and he would have really benefitted from someone on hand who had heard of the concept of surgery on humans, though it went all right. And the other time, when Leareth stepped into vacuum by mistake while doing Gate-targeting experiments on spaceships (he sounds disapproving) someone remembered to mention that he sometimes lights things on fire when he wakes up, so the doctor could turn off the hyperbaric oxygen chamber, but it would've been good to have anyone else around who realized that seemed bad - do Earth humans know that, actually, he doesn't want to presume -

Marian, too, gives Leareth such a disapproving look. "Eeek, yes, we know that's bad!" She's never had to deal with a patient who could light things on fire either and is cringing about it. Brain surgery, wow, she's now kind of wistful to have missed that. 

She doesn't have her nursing books with her and should probably go back and get some? And she can give them a list of other books she would want if she's now helping aliens and people with magic Healing but lower technology figure out medicine. She can tell him lots about drugs used on humans but she doesn't have any, uh, and if as she's suspecting they aren't a real hospital with paperwork and licenses and all, she doesn't know if they can buy them. Do they have the kind of technology that would let them study drugs from one dose and then synthesize more, because one, that would be sooo cooool, and two, she can...probably steal them some? Not morphine because that's in a locked box–

Leareth, mildly, suggests they have magic that can get into locked boxes. 

Uh, but they might assume a nurse stole it and someone could get in trouble. You could...buy it from one of the drug dealers in Vancouver? Opiates are a recreational drug that humans get addicted to, too. 

They can definitely synthesize drugs from one dose and maybe even just from the chemical formula, if she happens to know it. 

Wow! She doesn't know it by heart and doesn't think her quick-reference book has it either, but it's probably in a more in-depth pharmacology textbook?