Aaaaaaaaaah and just when it looked like she might be able to escape this disaster of a conversation and go process all her own half-finished thoughts and talk it over with Eddie and cry on Eddie's shoulder about how this is horrible and unreasonable and literally the hardest thing she's ever done Nevermind. It's a good thing, actually, if Carson is - noticing the pattern here, which she herself can't quite pin down yet. 

"....Yeah," she admits quietly. "I think the training where I'm from is - really different. And also I wasn't exactly trained as a nurse - I do know all the basic nursing skills, to be clear, but I was more of a paramedic. That could be part of it." Though she kind of doubts it. "But also there's some kind of - social scripts or interfacing thing here that I'm still finding really confusing. I keep trying to be very clear and explicit in my communication, so that we're not having, um, what's the word -" apparently there ISN'T ONE, great, just excellent, "...um, so we're not having the sort of miscommunication where both people feel like they're communicating fine but a lot of information is silently being lost? But, um, I almost feel like that's making it worse, only, I don't really - have another script to use for this sort of situation..." 

"Can you observe the other nurses and try to act like them?"

"I can do that." Saying out loud that she's been rather unimpressed with the skill and diligence of several of the nurses is not, at this time, going to help. "Thank you for your advice." 

It's bothering her...quite a lot, actually, that it doesn't feel like she can speak her actual thoughts to Carson - or, well, she can try, but apparently he can't hear them, or can't respond in a way that demonstrates it. But additional uninformed flailing at the problem is very unlikely to succeed, and a lot more likely to cost her - something, she's still not sure quite how to name it. 

She remembers that brief, distant look she caught in Eddie's eyes a few times. He might understand. 

"I think that's all I wanted to talk about," she says, smiling politely and with as much actual warmth as she can manage. "I - didn't expect getting a new job in a foreign country to be easy. I appreciate your patience and help." This is true, though not really the main thing she's feeling right now. 

"You're welcome." If he hears any of the things she isn't saying, he isn't admitting it.

Merrin is– ok, not exactly delighted to keep leaving it ambiguous to what extent he's hearing any of the things she isn't saying, and being unsure how much she's hearing the things that he's clearly thinking but not saying. It's more accurate to say that she feels deep exhaustion at the thought of pushing it any harder, right now.

(And a sliver of frustration with herself, because this is a clear example of one of the skills she's always found harder compared to her peers, of pulling her confused observations into the light and making them legible so they can be discussed and, if necessary, debated. She can think of SO MANY people who would be handling this vastly more skillfully than she's managing, right now.) 

(Though probably most of them would have struggled with even three hours of pushing through the sheer relentless task load of this hospital, noticing confusion and setting it aside again and again–)

She leaves the hospital and trudges all the way back to Eddie's apartment. It's not the best uninterrupted thinking time, because she has to pay quite a lot of attention to her surroundings to avoid getting lost, but she almost appreciates this. It's - no, 'soothing' isn't the right description, this city continues to be full of concerning details and she can't actually stop her brain from analyzing them, so it's hardly restful. But...grounding, maybe. For at least that brief time, she can feel anchored in this bizarre topsy-turvy world. Whether or not its economy makes the slightest bit of sense, at least it has sidewalks. 

(Mostly. She occasionally has some questions about the city planning decisions for pedestrian routes.)

By the time she finally reaches the apartment, her feet hurt - though less than at the end of her shift, walking is actually easier than standing - and it's closer to eight hours since Eddie dropped her off with Carson at the hospital. Depending on the hours he works, he may or may not be home yet. 

He is not, in fact, home yet, but he must have seen this coming at some point, because he called the building desk and they can let her in with their copy of the key.

She thanks the desk attendant, goes into the apartment, and then stands awkwardly for a minute, torn between heading straight to flop on Eddie's bed, versus hunting in the kitchen for something to eat. 

On reflection, eating food is kind of important, if she wants to be in any shape for a serious conversation with Eddie later. She forges over to poke around for options. 

For some reason her vision is blurry. It takes Merrin an embarrassingly long thirty seconds to realize that it's because she's crying, and even then, she isn't sure exactly why. 

Eddie has a lot of food in cans with no immediately obvious mechanism for opening said cans, and also some bread and cheese and sliced meat and a bowl of slightly underripe pears.

Eating the canned food would require figuring out the mechanism for opening the cans, which looks like it requires some kind of additional device that Merrin would need to find. She makes herself a sandwich with cheese, and then takes two of the pears back to Eddie's bedroom to munch while she sits on the bed and waits for him and tries to think. 

There are a lot of problems with the hospital. They're possible to solve - they have to be, because dath ilan doesn't have them, at least not that she's ever seen - and for a lot of them, the solution should actually be obvious even to her, right? Because the problem she was noticing was that a particular system, one she's used to relying on, didn't exist? 

It's oddly hard to think about, though. She tries to focus on one specific piece, and her mind slides away from it, grasping for what feels like some deep, underlying, pervasive wrongness that she can't understand. (Or doesn't want to understand...? It won't help, to look away, she knows that...) 

She chews on her thoughts, and waits. 

Eddie arrives, looking like any surprises he encountered today were insignificant next to the massive surprise of last night. "Hello. How was the hospital?"

Merrin gets up when she hears him at the door. In response to his question, though, she just...stares at him, silent, for an awkwardly long time. Her expression is mostly flat and empty but her eyes are exhausted. 

"I...don't know," she finally manages, dully. "Frustrating. Confusing. I - thought I'd be able to land on my feet anywhere but I'm not sure I can do...that." 

"Do you want to talk about it? It always helps me, when I have someone to talk to . . ." he trails off, unsure of whether Merrin thinks of him as someone she can talk to.

"Yeah. Probably." She sighs, and half-sits against the kitchen counter. "It - keeps feeling like there's some deep horribly wrong thing and if I understood it I'd know what to do about it, but I don't. Yet. I don't know if it's the same problem as whatever's causing the People's States, it's not obvious how it could be, but."

Shrug. "I should probably just say the specific things. There was a situation at one point that - could've gone really badly, I think, if I hadn't been there - a patient was getting worse and their usual systems hadn't caught it. By itself I could see it just being that the nurses are busier and have less slack, and less technology to rely on, but - it seemed like there wasn't any mechanism to address it, such that I would expect anything to change? When I tried to ask about that, it felt like I wasn't even managing to communicate the thing."

Merrin folds her arms across her chest, as though trying to stay warm. "...Oh, and I have no idea how I'm suppose to work with the doctors here. I was trying to report all the private-context I had on the patient, that he didn't know yet, and he snapped at me and told me to stop telling him how to do his job, only, I wasn't! And I, just - there kept being things like that - confusing conversations where it felt like everyone was reacting to a thing that wasn't at all what I'd actually said... It was exhausting. And I was trying really hard to understand what I was doing wrong but I don't think I managed to end up any less confused." 

"I think you're right," he starts, "that there's some single thing that's causing all of it, everything wrong and incomprehensible in the world, and if we knew what it was it would be the key to everything. . . . I've seen the same thing, people who listen to an explanation and it's like throwing rocks into a well. And I keep thinking, that can't be enough to stop us, hills don't understand words and we can still build rails around them. So what is it about people that makes everything so much harder?"

"...You see it." Merrin's voice is barely a whisper. Her breath catches. "I - it felt like - it was so much harder, when it seemed like I was alone..." 

She shakes her head. "I mean. Part of it is that hills don't - glare at me disapprovingly when I say something in a way they don't understand? But I think that's something I'm a lot more sensitive to than average, at least where I'm from, the fact that people reacting negatively to something makes me feel - small, and scared. I've tried really hard to, to learn how to handle it gracefully and cleverly - it's really frustrating, feeling like I'm right back to where I was as a kid... And I don't know, I don't think that can be the whole thing." 

He smiles kindly, or tries to, and it's obvious that the thing distorting the smile is compassion. "Dagny always says never to care what they think. If you're right, you know you're right, so what does someone else being wrong matter? It's so much easier--no, it's not easier for her, she just doesn't let it being hard stop her."

Nod. 

"I'm thinking about the other nurses, how it felt... It felt like they didn't care? Or, no, that's not really it. It did feel like they weren't, hmm, focused in caring? Like they weren't - pointing it at the problem as hard as I'm used to people doing. But if it were just that, I - think it'd feel more plausible that it was a resource-constraint problem at the core? That it's just that everyone is working twelve-hour shifts all the time - which by the way is insane, I might be the only person I know from back home who would be willing to sign up for that - and I'm sort of doubting that decision now that I've seen how mentally exhausting it is per hour! ...But, it feels like there's something else. I'm trying to figure out how to say it. It - feels like they weren't looking? Not at the actual patient, the actual causality in the world..."

Shudder. "Saying it out loud like that makes them sound horrible, and that's - I don't think they were bad people? It didn't feel malicious. But...it did feel deliberate, somehow? It felt like there was some kind of force pushing back, when I was trying to just say something clearly and have us both understand. Which also sounds kind of insane, but it's how it felt." 

"I think you're right, that it's something else, because--they do the same thing when it's their own lives on the line. I've seen engineers on trains not reporting problems on the track they drive down every week. So it's got to be something else."

"- Huh. That's - I wonder if there's something weird going on with the economic incentives, there? It's not obvious how that would apply with the hospital, but - are the engineers considered responsible for their stretch of track, in a way where they'd get the repairs taken out of their budget or something? That's...obviously an unhelpful way to set it up but I can see why someone might think it was good for accountability - if they weren't modeling the full situation...?" And that would fit with the other bizarre business and government decisions she's heard about. Maybe. Sort of. 

"No, track repairs are budgeted at a higher level than that. It wouldn't affect anyone's pay; that really would be a bad incentive. All the other railroads I know about are the same way, but there could be one out there that does it like that."

Merrin frowns some more. 

"...So. Um. A thing I caught myself doing, a bit, at the hospital, was -" aaaaaaaaaaah this is AGONIZING to admit out loud in words with her actual mouth, "- um, I was - tempted, I guess, to want it to be true that I didn't need to update the doctor again? I don't think it actually caused me to make any really bad judgement calls, I was trying to be careful, but it was putting pressure on my reasoning. I - wouldn't have thought the same thing would happen for people who aren't completely new to your entire society, because I was mostly stressed about not knowing the expectations or how to work smoothly with other people's processes. But I'm wondering if there's some sort of - interpersonal incentive, there? Instead of a straightforward financial incentive. Though that also seems obviously dumb, to punish people for reporting problems under their remit..." 

Nod. "It comes back to the thing I said earlier, about needing to hire people who other people can trust. And if there's anyone anywhere in the chain who can't be trusted, that affects everyone below them. I don't think that can be all of it, though."

"And that still doesn't explain why there are all these people who you can't trust! That's still the thing that feels surprising to me. I don't think it's just about intelligence, or even just about training? Maybe it's related to the thing where it seems as though a lot of people aren't pointing their - caring, their trying, their motivation - in a direction that solves problems? But that's just a description of it, it's still not an explanation!" 

"It really isn't."