She's in a room that is definitely not any of the rooms in the Montfort Hospital! Though, if she had to compare it to her expected surroundings, the part it resembles most is that one low-acuity bay tucked around the very back of the ER, which she's pretty sure used to be someone's office before the ER ran out of space and it got converted into what everyone still calls the "in-and-out".

It's long and narrow, maybe twenty feet long by eight feet wide. The lighting comes from two elderly, slightly flickery incandescent bulbs on the ceiling; it's not nearly as bright as Marian would prefer. One of the narrow ends has a door. Arranged against one of the long wall, it has two narrow cots or gurneys, not currently made up with sheets, the mattresses cracked with age and the frames rusty. Beside them is a metal supply cabinet with drawers, also ancient and battered, and beside THAT is, inexplicably, an enormous hardwood desk that looks like some sort of Victorian antique. All of these are covered in a fine layer of dust, as though left untouched for months. 

The other wall has a door, currently shut, and a wall of shelving, currently holding an extremely random assortment of objects. Most of them are vaguely in the category of medical supplies or at least 'supplies that you would find in an ER' - there's a bottle of something that might be iodine going by the colour, but with the label worn off, there's an age-yellowed box of Rolled Gauze Bandages, there are some boxes of needles and syringes and a pile of those crinkly silver thermoreflective blankets still in their plastic packaging. There are some folded sheets and blankets which do not look entirely clean. There is a truly enormous bottle of milk of magnesia. There's a copy of Gray's Anatomy that could easily date to before 1900. Someone, at some point, thoughtfully labeled some of the shelves, with masking tape and marker, but the labels are faded and most of the bits of tape are half peeled off or rolled up, and they don't seem to be still accurate. 

...The opposite narrower wall....isn't. To all appearances, it looks out into inky utter darkness. 

"Urk," Marian says to nothing in particular, still sitting in a heap on the floor next to her pile of random medical supplies and her puddle of vomited-up coffee. 

Okay. Focus. Think. Where is she and what just happened? 

...maybe she's having a drug trip? Is it possible that she took something by accident? - it would be a very strange drug trip, though. She doesn't feel high, just still kind of sick, and her surroundings seem real. Just baffling. 

She gets up, only shaking a little, and goes over to touch the nearest set of shelves. 

They feel solid. The aged box of rolled gauze proves, in fact, to contain packaged rolls of gauze, their individual plastic wrappings brittle with age. The bottle of dark yellow mystery substance smells like iodine, and the one labeled 'Milk of Magnesia' in fact appears to contain that, though it's sludgy with age and otherwise very questionable-looking. 

The metal supply cart has all of its drawers locked. It looks like she would need a key, the location of which isn't immediately apparent. 

The door beside the shelves proves to lead to a bedroom. It's very small and looks weirdly like a college dorm; it has a bed and a desk and a shelf, all of which are old and dingy-looking. 

The wall of light-swallowing darkness is not any less mysterious up close, and Marian doesn't quite dare to poke it, but walking to that side does help her identify a drain in the floor.

Marian sacrifices one of her 4x4 gauzes stashed in her pocket and is able to scrape most of her vomit down the floor-drain. 

At which point she finally notices that there are voices on the other side of the second door, the one she hasn't tried opening yet. 

...Nervewracking and embarrassing, to approach anyone here when she's half-convinced she's having a drug trip, but she's not going to figure out what's happening any other way.

Marian sighs, rubs her eyes, and thinks to scoop up the IV bags on the floor and tuck them onto some free shelf-space before she cautiously tries to open the door and poke her head out. 

It's....a cafeteria? 

It looks just as run-down as the miniature...school health clinic? Is that where she found herself? 

It's also full of kids. A lot of them look really young, like, barely old enough for high school. A few are older, but none could pass for college age. Also a bizarre number of them are bald?

And there's one in pyjamas? Most look dressed for - camping, or a Scouts trip, or backpacking in Europe, something where you'd want to be prepared. 

One who might be older or might just be very tall notices her come in and walks over to her, carrying a paper cup full of water. "Hullo, you must be the new nurse?" he says, offering her the water.

He's got a sword on his belt. In, like, a scabbard. It's big.

She takes the water, because it's thoughtful of him and she really could do with rinsing her mouth out. The infirmary did not noticeably have a sink, which on reflection is a weird oversight in the design. 

"I, uh - the new nurse for where? I didn't, um, exactly - interview for a new job - I was at the hospital and then suddenly I was in this place?" 

"Well. It's called the Scholomance, and it kind of... kidnaps people, sometimes. Particularly to be the nurse. It's not an ideal system. Magic exists, by the way. That's also not an ideal system."

"Uh. So I've...been...kidnapped? To be the school nurse? To a magic school?" 

This is now seeming WAY more likely to be a bizarre drug trip. Or maybe a dream? But if so it's the kind of really cool dream where noticing she's dreaming and then trying to do lucid dreaming things inevitably wakes her up. And she's not waking up. She's still here. 

...If it's real, which it probably isn't but still, then it's both INCREDIBLY COOL and also so deeply inconvenient! And if it's a dream she might as well roll with it! 

"Is there, uh, any way to get a message out to my job so they know someone else needs to cover my patients for the rest of the night? I'm not sure anyone, um, saw. When I got kidnapped." 

"There is not a way to get messages out of the school. Except via graduate, which, well, they left about an hour ago. The more ways for information to get in and out, the more ways for - well. Monsters. To get in and out. Speaking of which. There are monsters."

He sighs. "You have, so far, been safe from monsters, because you didn't believe in magic. Unfortunately, that's no longer true."

What. 

Okay, she needs to– 

What. 

Marian lifts a hand. Takes a deep breath. Lets it out. 

She is still not waking up and she still doesn't feel at all like she's on drugs. Although now her heart is kind of racing, which is understandable of her body but not at all helpful. 

"Right. Sorry. I - just - absorbing this. ...Uh, sorry, no offence, but I'm not feeling super convinced on the 'magic' front yet. It did feel like I got teleported but it seems like on priors it's more likely someone slipped me weird drugs." 

"Hm. I-"

He looks up. "Oh for fuck's sake." With one hand he shoves Marian a few feet back, and with the other he draws his sword. A chihuahua-sized spider made of knives lands where Marian was standing, and in an instant his sword is through it and a decent way into the linoleum.

"Sorry. I should've had my eyes open, that was stupid."

Marian is SO STARTLED but catches herself against the wall and manages to barely emit a squeak. 

She stands with her back pressed against the wall and stares wide-eyed at the knife-spider. "Did that just drop from the ceiling?" Monsters dropping from ceilings just seems unfair, as a property for a school cafeteria to have! "Uh. Should I - try to find a weapon?" 

"...yes."

He unhooks a long ivory-handled dagger from his belt and presses it into her hand. "It'll make your reflexes quicker, and it'll stab things that need stabbing. I recommend prodding things with it even if they don't look like they need stabbing - there's mimics."

"Huh. ...Thank you, I appreciate that. I'm...guessing that students people must get hurt a bunch, here? If the school is full of, uh, those. I think I might need more medical supplies." 

"As I understand it, the school will provide you with medical supplies in the same way that it provides us with spells: inconsistently, and sometimes actively spitefully. Um. I don't know how literal that is, but we get our spells by reaching into the Void and asking for them, so you might try doing the same with a given medicine?"

"The....Void. Is that, uh, the creepy wall of infinite darkness that was back there?" She gestures. "....Also if I'm here can I get spells too, or am I - too old to learn it or something -?" 

- if this is real then she is ABSOLUTELY going to have a sobbing breakdown about it at some point, but she can put it off for LATER. She's had practice at putting things off. 

"Creepy wall, yeah. But magic's inborn. And, um, if you had it you'd know, you would've been eaten several years ago."

"Oh." 

She takes a deep breath. Focus on her feet. No, that doesn't help. Focus on multiplying squares in her head, until she gets up to eleven squared and her brain grinds to a halt on it. 

"...Uh. I'm - guessing - so there didn't seem to be anyone else there who I'm, er, replacing. Did they....die." 

"In August."

"Fuck," Marian says, heartfelt. "I - is there any advice you'd have for me, to - do better than that? ....And, um, I bet I could help save a lot of kids who get hurt? If I'm, um, if I'm not dead. So...maybe some of them'd be willing to help me not end up dead?" 

"...I can introduce you to some people who do good wards," he says slowly. "They need refreshing every once in a while, but I can make it worth their while, hopefully."

Another deep breath.

"I...think it could be a smart investment," Marian says, slowly. Her voice only trembles a tiny bit. "I - guess I can't make it worthwhile right away, it'd be - in case of emergencies - but, uh, if anyone already here is sick or has an injury that's not healing well or some kind of chronic health issue, I could do check-ups now. In case, you know, I'm not, later..." She trails off. 

(There is a strong undercurrent of mental aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah but she's keeping a lid on it, for the moment.) 

"I think 'in case of emergencies' is pretty reasonable, around here. I'll show you to some people who can hopefully help."