"Yes, do that."

"I wish you...the best of luck with your recovery," Merrin says, with a pause because, again, it turns out that the thing she meant to say is apparently a Baseline idiom and would take a stupid number of words to translate into English, and she doubts this man cares enough about the nuances there to prefer she say three sentences rather than one. "I'll go update your nurse." 

She heads off, keeping an eye out for the nurse who helped her so she can relate the conversation and the fact that she thinks the doctor ought to see the man at least briefly, to explain how serious his condition is and give his medical recommendation. "I realize it's kind of a silly use of the doctor's time, but I think your patient might be the sort of person who would take the exact same information more to heart if it came from a Very Serious Person." 

"Oh, he absolutely is, but you know doctors, they always ask if you tried talking sense into them yourself. I'll go tell him we both tried. Thanks again."

"- Oh, I also meant to ask, is there any kind of standard procedure now for informing his workplace that they need to reassess their policies? He should have had the company's backing in taking the time he needed to rest and get treatment before it was this bad - um, where I trained there's a standard form for making sure that kind of information gets communicated and doesn't fall through the cracks, but I don't know what the usual practice is here, it's the first time it's come up for me." 

Merrin is starting to suspect that there ISN'T a standard procedure at all. The darker thought lurking in the back of her mind is that maybe Mr Sidlington's workplace would rather not know, but surely it's too early to jump to hasty conclusions on that, she needs to remember to be charitable. 

"Why would we go around telling other people's workplaces how to do their jobs?"

"Huh?" Merrin blinks at her again, trying to shake off the now-too-familiar feeling of stumbling on some unseen obstacle that shouldn't be there, because nothing is coherent or sense-making if it's there... "I mean, it's not telling them how to fix the issue, just - if they want the highest productivity from their employees, there's a correct balance to strike in terms of when to remind people to take care of themselves physically, and it seems like Mr Sidlington ending up here and this badly off the day before an important meeting indicates a failure of that process and they'd want to know so they can address it and prevent it from happening again?" 

"Maybe where you're from they would? Here they'd tell you to mind your own business."

....Well, it's not fair to take out her frustration about this country on a fellow nurse who's been nothing but helpful to her. "I see. Thank you for explaining that. I guess I'm likely to keep finding out about differences like that for the next while." She smiles, though it's perhaps not the most convincing smile she's managed today. "Anyway, I'll be around if you need help with anything else." 

And back to her own patients! She checks in with the clerk, first, to see if anything new is in either of their charts, and ask how she'll know if the X-ray has been done yet for roof guy. 

Everything she asked for has been added and the x-ray room is ready for her to bring roof guy down whenever.

Merrin is not exactly delighted at the prospect of leaving Sherry unsupervised while she takes him!

"How far away is the X-ray room and how long will it take?" she asks the clerk. "Do I need to stay with my patient when I bring him over?" 

"Uh, maybe five minutes each way and ten for the x-ray if the guy before you doesn't get held up and the machine doesn't have problems? You don't technically have to stay but you need to bring him back as soon as he's done so you won't really have time."

"Thanks. Um, I'll go as soon as I've found someone who can keep an eye on the nice lady in bed twelve, her son isn't here yet and I don't want to leave her alone. ...Oh, while I'm here, is there a map of the layout of this building or anything? Or any other quick way to give me directions so I don't get lost on the way there?"  

"Sure, we have them for patients, I'll grab you one." She receives a glossy printed brochure. It has fancy typesetting and pictures of smiling patients and nurses and doctors and separate "Our Mission" and "Our Vision" sections and also a map. The x-ray machine is down here.

Oh wow! Merrin should probably have asked for this a lot sooner? It seems like it might be informative on a lot of topics, not just the layout of the building. 

"Thank you!" she says with a bright smile, and tucks the brochure into one of her pockets before heading off to see which of the nurses looks least busy. 

This time it's a new one; if Merrin's memory for faces is good she might recognize her as the one who was talking to the woman with the sick baby.

Merrin greets her with a smile. "Hi! I'm Merrin, today is my first day. Um, I need to take a patient down for an X-ray, but I took over bed twelve for Cathy and the lady there isn't that stable, so I don't want to leave her totally unsupervised. I'll check her blood pressure before I go, but is there any way you could keep an eye on her - just go past every few minutes and make sure she's still responsive? ...Her son should be arriving soon, his name is Terrence Williams." 

"Uh, uh, okay. But if anything goes wrong it's not my fault."

What. 

"...I'm sorry," Merrin says finally, as calmly as she can manage. "I'm new here and I didn't get much onboarding so I'm not familiar with all your local policies yet. Should I be doing something different?" 

"I mean, I just don't want you dumping a patient on me right when something's about to go wrong so I get blamed instead of you," she says as if this is something people do all the time. "If you're not doing that it's fine."

Merrin is dath ilani. She has extensive training in quite a wide range of skills, many of which involve handling strong emotions. 

That aspect is normal and expected. Merrin, however, additionally has so much training specific to her Exception Handling certifications. Under normal circumstances the appropriate response to something as horrifyingly nonsensical as the statement she just heard is to point this out, and react accordingly — but Merrin has had a more nuanced education than that. She knows that there are circumstances where the correct response is to make a note of everything that is horribly wrong, but to nonetheless keep calm and carry on as one was doing.

She’s pretty sure this is one of those cases, and she also has training in how to keep calm and go on executing the most appropriate strategy she can think of on short notice, until she has time to process what happened and reassess.

Also, Merrin has Dignity, which is why none of her internal screaming is, at this point, externally visible. Her pleasantly neutral expression will perhaps look a little frozen; her eyes are focused in the distance. 

(In hindsight she…should probably have hit this point a lot sooner? But, to be fair, the fact that she’s hitting it now is NOT HELPING WITH ANYTHING, and Merrin is having to use every coping strategy she has just to put off the reckoning until a time when she actually has time and space to think.) 

Focus. Carry on with her current tasks.

(This is MUCH easier said than done.)

“I have little reason to expect something to go wrong  during the period I’ll be otherwise occupied,” Merrin says. She is speaking SO CALMLY right now. “The patient was unstable when I first saw her, but I believe I’ve dealt with the most urgent issues, and I can do a quick assessment before I go and update you?”

"Okay."