Marian immediately jumps up, looking embarrassed, from where she's been sitting huddled with her back against the void wall and her enchanted ivory knife in front of her, repeatedly checking the ventilation grate for monsters about to drop on her head.

...On reflection she should probably chill out, first because stress is exhausting and pointless and second because apparently they're more dangerous if she BELIEVES they are. 

"Uh, yes. I'm Marian." She sizes him up. Black, but not of a shade that has her automatically classifying him with the probably-from-Africa kids. Bald, dressed in a way that leaves her thinking he's reasonably prepared for this bullshit. 

"Uh, hi. You probably don't want to try to memorize all our names, there are thousands of us, but I'm Caio. Oh good, you have a knife. Um, do you know how getting medicine works yet? I'm going to be going into alchemy track and coming here for things is probably safer than some of the supply rooms at least later in the year."

"I - haven't actually tried, and I'm not sure it'll work for me since I apparently can't actually do magic? But. Uh. I should maybe try." 

Apparently it's temperamental or something? Which does sound like a thing magic might be. Maybe being very polite to it will help? 

Feeling INCREDIBLY STUPID, Marian turns back to the void wall, and - after a long hesitation - reaches out to touch it. "I would like to request a package of acetaminophen tablets 500 mg each, please." 

After a stressfully long pause, the wall of bottomless light-swallowing blackness - which feels creepily gelatinous against her hand - spits out a single, slightly crumpled sheet of what is apparently 'paracetamol', the kind with each pills in little foil blisters set in perforated-foil-squares.

Marian frowns at it. "....I don't know what this is. I need a pharmacology book - I didn't see any -" 

The creepy wall of darkness spits out a cracked, incredibly ancient-looking leatherbound tome, heavy enough that Marian almost drops it when she instinctively tries to catch it. 

"....Great. I bet whatever 'paracetamol' is wasn't even invented back whenever this was written." 

"Sometimes it does stuff like that. You can throw things back if you don't want them, probably, it's risky for us but I don't think you have a thing where if you don't learn everything in that book your next book will be worse."

"...I mean, I'm not gonna decide it's useless yet. At the very least I could...burn it? Does it get cold here?" 

"Not especially. Nobody brings coats, it's cooler than some of us are used to but I hear you get used to it."

"Well, whack a monster with it, then." Marian sighs. Looks at the meds in her hand. Looks back at the void wall. "...Well, I guess that's about how well it works. Do you actually need anything right now?" 

"No, I don't have any assignments or anything I need to cook up right now, I just wanted to meet you and see what the prospect of getting stuff here would be. Drugs aren't going to be as useful to students most of the time as things like bandages - thread's in moderately high demand, they can be unraveled - and more straightforward chemicals like rubbing alcohol and peroxide. But you can do a business in painkillers and study drugs and antibiotics and anything you've got for colds and flus - everybody is going to have those in a few days, inductions bring in a new batch from outside, though at least most of us have scored flu shots from a few continents. I bet some people will want a vitamin stash. I would myself, come to think. If you want to try getting more things I would like having a supply to keep in my room of stuff like surgical glue, bandaids, I could probably find uses for petroleum jelly..."

Marian finds her first use for the stupid creepy leatherbound tome! It has some blank pages inside and she snatches out her pen and starts scribbling down a LIST. 

"...Oh, uh, I can give you bandaids, that's one of the things I keep in my pockets at work. - I should maybe just inventory those? Uh, and I want to try to get into the locked cabinet but I don't know where the key is and I'm worried about monsters. Maybe you could help look for it, or - uh, is unlocking things the sort of thing magic does, maybe an older kid here could help...?" 

She finishes her list and then starts unloading the remaining contents of her pockets onto one of the gurneys, after first poking it in eight different places with her ivory knife just to be sure. 

She has:

- Six 2x2 squares of individually wrapped sterile gauze and two remaining 4x4 squares

- One roll of clear plastic medical tape 

- Eight alcohol swabs and ten chlorhexidine swabs 

- One spare central line dressing

- Two IV butterfly needle kits, sizes 20G and 22G 

- A mauve lab tube

- Eight ballpoint pens of various types, SOMEHOW, have they literally been multiplying in there??? (Marian gets stressed enough about this that she immediately drops them all on the floor and tentatively pokes them with her magic knife one at a time to confirm that they are, in fact, all pens.) 

- A pair of medical scissors

- For some inexplicable reason, silk sutures. (Are those from last shift when she floated to the ER?) 

- A six-pack of those fancy hemostatic silver-impregnated dressings that she has to sneak into the OR supply room to nab every so often, they're amazing for patients on anticoagulants with oozing line sites.

- Two fingerstick lancets and a canister of test strips for a glucometer that she does not have 

- Three insulin syringes 

- One 10cc luer lock syringe 

- One 25G needle for subcutaneous injections 

- Two bags of IV antibiotics - already mixed, unfortunately, so unless this place has time-pausing magic they'll only be stable for another 24 hours

- And, of course, a bag of saline - good for a nice while! - and a mixed bag of blood-pressure-increasing drug, and two bottles of propofol with primed tubing. Whyyyyyy did she have to go and be all organized and prime her tubing first. If the bottles were unpierced she could keep them at room temperature for months...not that she's ever going to need fast-acting intravenous sedatives here, it's not like she has the facilities to intubate someone.... 

- ....most embarrassingly of all, the KEY to the FUCKING OPIATES CABINET which she apparently WALKED OFF WITH and then got KIDNAPPED to a MAGIC DEATH SCHOOL and now for the rest of her (probably short) life, the rest of her former unit will all think she's a drug-stealer!!!!!! 

Marian inventories all of this out loud to Caio. 

"Okay, about half of that is almost completely useless, but don't throw it out right away in case I'm wrong, wait a few days in case anyone is like, 'I have just now discovered I am diabetic and need three tubes of insulin', if that's a thing that could happen. But do throw stuff like that out after that, you don't want to keep too much on hand, a mimic could replace it. You have good poking things habits though. Uh, I can unlock the cupboards and check them for mals for you if I can have the pens and gauze but I need to pull together some mana first." He drops and starts performing burpees.

"You can't have all my pens!" Marian says, with the reflexive possessiveness of someone's who's been through four years of nursing school and most of a year of actual hospital work.

She watches him drop to do some burpees, and...no, actually, she's just not going to ask. 

"You can have, uh, six pens. And sure, take all the gauze. ....Um, if you wanted to do me a huge favour, maybe you can try to ask the older students if they could use propofol for, uh, alchemy ingredients or something? It's this white stuff. It's an anesthetic, puts people to sleep - I can't think what I'd need it for here." 

"I... don't have any idea if that would work on mals instead of merely one's fellow students, but maybe an upperclassman does! I will settle for six pens," he pants. "- okay, that should do me, stand back in case something leaps out to hug my face." And then he starts incanting in Portuguese at the lock. It's an annoyingly long spell but they are not in a desperate hurry. The cupboard doors fly open and nothing leaps out to hug his face.

"Thanks!" 

And then, just in case, Marian is going to pull out every single drawer and jab its contents with her knife. Not hard enough to actually damage mundane objects, just enough to check that nothing objects. 

...The bottom drawer has some sort of weird clear-carapaced THING in it! It has about six vials of morphine stuck to its back and is curled up, apparently asleep or resting or whatever it is that monsters do. 

Marian shrieks and jumps back anyway, but calms herself down quickly. ".....Uh. I don't know what that thing is but - can you fight it carefully and steal back the morphine, that seems worth something." 

Caio peeks. "Oh, that's an agglo. They don't bite. I'm not sure how to get the vials off it though." He picks it up and starts tugging on one. "Iiiit does not wanna let go."

"Uhhhh." Marian thinks quickly. "Are you sure it won't bite me? Because it looks like I can get at the tops of the vials, I could just keep it all in my syringe? ...It's not super sterile or anything then, but I feel like in a school where you're risking death by monsters every day, that's maybe not the top priority." 

"I'm strictly yummier than you, you don't have any mana at all, and it's not biting me." He waves it around a little. "You could keep it in the drawer for now and let it hold them for you and get it out as needed?"

"It won't run away? Do I, uh, need to...feed it shiny things or something, to convince it to hang out here?" 

"I don't think it can get out easily? I guess you could tape it in place. They like tinfoil but mostly they go for stuff a little magic's rubbed off on, if you want to keep it for a long time you should ask people for their scraps of whatever."

"Ooh." 

The top drawer even contains MORE TAPE. Which has been knife-tested and is not a monster in disguise! Marian tapes the sides of the agglo's drawer down so it's stuck. 

"...Right, uh, so what else've we got. Antibiotic ointment! Ooh, and more suture kits! I bet that'd come in handy. ...Why are there six measuring tapes, what sort of school nurse needs six measuring tapes - you wanna take them and trade or something, I don't know if they're useful for magic but they've got to be more useful than they are here..." 

"They might be bad measuring tapes. Sometimes that happens, though scissors are worse. I'll take 'em anyway but I'd rather the ointment."

"Uh, hmm." Marian sifts through the miscellaneous collection of ointments, using the tip of her knife rather than her finger because she's not an IDIOT. "...I want the bigger tube." It's labelled in what she's guessing is Arabic, so she can't actually read what's in it, but it's fairly obvious that it's topical antibiotic so whatever. "You can have, uh -" she needs to drive a reasonable bargain here, doesn't she, this drawer isn't infinite, "- two, of the individually packaged ones." They're the kind that come in flat plastic pouches, enough for one use, with one end notched to tear off. 

Once she's checked that they're safe, she passes them to him. "Uh, what do you mean by 'bad' measuring tape? Do they bite?" 

"No, but they might strangle. Or just give you the wrong answers."

"....Weird. Well, I can test them. Uh, carefully. And - you can tell the other students I've got more stuff in here, and I'd like to trade it for more, uh, magic wards on this room to keep out monsters and things?" 

"Yeah, sure. You'll need upperclassmen to do anything that lasts a long time and there's a curfew so nobody can rescue you if something happens in the night, so hold out for the good stuff when you're dispensing things."

"Right." 

Marian stops going through drawer contents; it seems like a bad idea to do when she's not giving it her full attention, at least until she gets it practiced to the level of instinct that she needs to assume at any moment that any object might be a creepy monster about to eat her. (Assuming she lives long enough for that...) 

"I, uh, also wanted to ask - what's the social scene like here? ...I, sorry, that's probably not clear what I mean. If it's just kids, here, are things run, like, with gangs? Is there anyone who's, uh, in charge?" 

"You are the only adult. The school enforces some things - curfew, passing classes - but there is not as such anything stopping kids from murdering each other. There is - fairly good honor system enforcement of the big prize, getting to move into an enclave if you get out alive and were promised that, and alliances are sacred, and the room poaching rate is very low, and the seats in the school are themselves fairly competitive so obvious delinquents who will reflect badly on their families usually do not come. So I am more likely to be eaten by a monster than murdered. But not because they'd be, like, arrested, or anything."

"Ugh." This is not an especially tactful response but Marian is reeling and overdue for half a dozen different flavours of emotional breakdown and if she focuses REALLY HARD she can, sort of, attempt to make plans about her own survival but she sure can't track social graces at the same time. 

"...Uh. Probably no one's going to be motivated to murder me, right? I'm - useful, and not competition? Um. Just - sorry - thinking out loud, I'm trying to - figure out what I can do to live longer than the last nurse, because you guys need me here. Hmm. ...Is there, like, an underground barter economy here? Like, in prisons you can trade cigarettes like they're money - what's the closest equivalent of that here?" 

"You're useful and not competition but even though you don't have mana you do have life force and you should be suspicious of anyone who wants you to pretend to be a vet. Uh, instead of money we use mana sometimes but mostly barter, there's not a physical currency, you don't want things that aren't useful for themselves cluttering places."

"I, uh - don't follow. What do you mean by people wanting me to 'pretend' to be a vet - what's that got to do with anything?" 

"Anyone who brought in animals is probably killing them for life force and might go for bigger game in a pinch."

"Oh. Gross. So, like, blood-magic is a thing here?" 

"I don't think it needs blood specifically? I don't know, I'm not a maleficer."

"- I didn't mean blood literally, it's just in the fantasy I've read, that's a shorthand for magic you get from killing people. Or animals, I guess. Does doing it turn people evil?" 

"If they do it enough yeah."

"Uh, right." Marian shivers. This is exactly on theme for creepy magic death school, damn it. "Uh, it sounded earlier like there were some kids here who didn't know magic was real until they got kidnapped? Does that happen often?" 

"No, that's super weird. I mean, it happens, somebody gets a mundane pregnant or they just pop up for no reason. But they don't usually get slots. Something did for the Chicago enclave and nearby kids got their slots automatically."

"Oh. ...Uh, can you explain what an 'enclave' is? Is that, like, wizards living together in secret?" 

"Yeah, with the place they live in extradimensional space. So there's less attack surface, for the mals."

"Huh. And, uh, this place is in extradimensional space too?" 

"Yeah. It keeps most of the monsters out, just, there are a lot, and they can breed once they're in, too."

"Yuck." Marian sighs. "Guess I'd better get used to it. Uh, someone else warned me earlier about the food not being safe? Is it just that it might be monsters, or is it poisoned sometimes too?" 

"Some of the monsters are poisonous and even if they leave the food it might not be safe any more. Rumor has it the brussels sprouts are always safe and I might just eat those all the time - in theory it shouldn't matter, it's all this, transmuted nutrient slurry, thing."

"- Well, I guess it's lucky I like brussel sprouts, then! Uh, how about...water? This room doesn't have a sink - the flip-flops kid thought it was a safety measure, less pipes for monsters to sneak in, but I kind of do need water." 

"There's bathrooms, and the cafeteria. People mostly arrange to have water bottles or something and fill them up sometimes, when they get a group to go to the bathroom, and try to hydrate during meals. I have a water condenser but I think that's unusual. I don't know how unusual, I just got here, my parents told me what I know."

Nod. "Right. Ugh, I have a thermos and a water bottle but I didn't have my backpack with me. Maybe I'll see if I can trade and get a water jug or something. And, uh - this is getting ahead of myself a bit, but are there showers? And, uh, is there any way I could get a spare set of clothes? How do people wash their clothes here, anyway?" 

"The bathrooms have showers. People clean clothes with magic or in the bathroom sink or they just kind of don't, one of those. Usually people bring things in but you might be able to get more changes of clothes bartering, like things graduating students left behind."

"Mmm." Marian hesitates. Frowns. "How do students, uh, actually graduate and leave, if this place is in extradimensional space and there aren't any adults?" 

"There's gates, at the bottom, and the dorms all rotate down every year, and the seniors try to get to the gates. Underclassmen can go with them, if you want, but it's not going to work, more than graduating normally isn't going to work. The graduation hall has the most monsters."

".........No offence to whoever built the school but that sounds like a stupid system." 

"They were trying really, really hard. There's a broken thing, in the graduation hall, that's supposed to kill the monsters, but people trying to fix it just died, every time. It works in the upper levels and runs every term, burns most of them up, which is why there aren't many right now."

"Oh." 

Marian looks down at her feet.

"That sucks," she manages finally, after a few calming breaths. "I really wish I could do more to help. I'm sorry."

"I don't think there's really any way for you to get out, I don't know what they had in mind for that. Maybe they just didn't care about some stranger mundane if you'd be able to save a few people first. I'm sorry."

.....She had been trying really hard not to think about that. 

Deep breaths. If she has her breakdown in front of this poor scared fourteen-year-old, surely he'll only end up more traumatized, or at least distracted from holding off the monsters. 

"I guess I'll - do my best, then," she says faintly. (And maaaaaaaaaybe this will in fact turn out to be a dream or a horrible drug trip but she's not putting a lot of store in that anymore.) "Right. Do you, uh, need anything else right now?" 

"I don't think so. I'm really sorry."

She gives him her most ghastly attempt at a reassuring smile. "Well, tell everyone they can come to me if they need anything medical, and the void will at least sort of give me drugs." 

"I'll tell people." He collects the stuff she traded him and lets himself out of the infirmary.

Marian sits with her back against the void wall and then, after a few moments' hesitation, tries squishing herself a little way into it, not far enough that she'll fall, but it feels less unprotected. 

She hugs herself and cries and tries to do it with her eyes open, blinking away tears, so she can see monsters in time to whack them with her knife.