"I would really like that!" Man, it's great being a nurse with a couple years of experience, finding the basics less terrifying and being able to stretch herself to INCREDIBLY COOL SHIT. (Which will also be terrifying the first time she has to do it with a patient for real, but Marian is now on iteration #578265 of doing shit which is terrifying the first time she does it for real, that's fine.) 

Rachel beams at her and picks her clipboard back up. "I believe you! And I'm looking forward to working together, if we do. You can head back to Beverly's office now, let her know I'm all done with you."

“Thank you!” 

And Marian will head over to do that. (Inevitably, thirty seconds after she leaves she finds herself worrying that she said something very stupid, but she tells her brain firmly to shut up.)

Beverly is waiting in her office, and smiles at Marian as she enters. "Hello again! How has your day with us been?"

“I’ve had a good time!” That is at least true regardless of whether she did well on the interviews. “I think I would really like working here.”

"Glad to hear it! I'll let you know within the week what Dr. Lamb and the others have decided. If you have any last questions about the hospital, the job offer, or logistics of moving to work here, I'm here to answer and help however I can."

Marian definitely still has some questions, but they're not exactly about the job offer, and definitely not ones she feels like asking HR about. Logistics of moving to work here seems premature when she doesn't even know if she'll get the job, and also she's sure she can figure it out. 

"Uh, I don't think I have any questions right now." 

Beverly nods like this is expected. "Then that's basically it for now! I hope you get some sleep tonight, and have a swift flight home tomorrow."

And Marian will head back to the motel, pack, and try to get a reasonable amount of sleep before her (fairly early) morning taxi back to the airport. 

She lies awake for a while half-expecting something extremely weird to happen, just to top off her trip in style. But nope! She doesn't even overhear any strange conversations when she's checking out! (There wouldn't be much opportunity to, it turns out that small-town motel front desks at 6 am are pretty quiet.) The flight is normal, which is unsurprisingly because it's not actually departing from Haven. 

And, of course, by the time she's gotten home and unpacked her suitcase, her vague apprehension about the...weirdness...is starting to feel overblown. It's just a town where a surprising number of people are into paganism, that's all, it's not surprising that somewhere is like that.

And she is genuinely really excited about the hospital. It feels too much like tempting fate to give notice at Montfort when she hasn't technically gotten confirmation of a job offer, but she's going to tell her parents, and start packing boxes in her apartment. (She's been there for years now and her lease is month-to-month, leaving won't be a problem.) 

On the fourth morning after she's arrived home, the email is waiting for her, with a nice big "Welcome to Haven Hospital!" in the subject line so she doesn't have to stress about the contents!

"You made a great impression on everyone here, and we're all very excited to have you as soon as possible! Attached you'll find the forms of  employment, and I've already begun the paperwork to get you a work visa and Massachusetts nursing license. We've managed to streamline this process quite a lot, and have friends in the state board and governors' office, so given you've already passed the NCLEX we expect this will take couple weeks at most, which hopefully gives you time to wrap everything up there..."

It seems they're offering not just a travel and moving stipend, but also covering fees for all the red tape in the way. Beverly has even attached a review of the available apartments and houses in Haven.

Wow! Marian had started to look into transferring her nursing license to Massachusetts - since the job posting hadn't explicitly required her to have already done it - and hadn't expected it to be too bad, but she doesn't think it's doable in a couple of weeks without friends in the state board. 

She's going to accept, of course, and give notice at Montfort and have a few awkward conversations about it, and look at available apartments - she thinks she does want her own place if there are already-furnished studio or one-bedroom apartments available, she's gotten used to not having roommates - and it's going to be a very busy two weeks, finishing out her remaining shifts at Montfort and finishing her packing and various goodbyes in between, but it's not like she'll be that far away, it's less than a 2h flight, and on the Haven Hospital salary she should be able to afford a lot of visits home. 

And several weeks later she flies out. 

Haven is just as she remembers it! Maybe a bit colder, the trees slightly less adorned, but she was able to find a decently sized furnished apartment about a 20 minute walk and five minute drive from the hospital.

There's a grocery store, cafe, and thrift store all within a few blocks of her, and the downtown area with the movie theatre and mall are 10 minutes away by bus. Along the route are a gym and one of the indoor pools Lucy mentioned, though the martial arts place is on the opposite side of the town's center.

Marian really wasn't picky in her search and was mostly filtering on location, but it's honestly a much nicer apartment than Marian's previous one, which had an impressively steep and narrow set of stairs to the bedroom, inexplicably lacked shelves in any of the kitchen cabinets, and also - according to people with a better sense of smell than her - often reeked of cigarette smoke from the shared ventilation with the neighbors in other units. 

First priorities are spending some time at the thrift store to get whatever kitchen essentials aren't included - it didn't make sense to haul her pots and pans with her in a suitcase, especially not when they were also $10 thrift store items - and stocking up on nonperishable staples at the grocery store. And she wants to look around for a bike shop; she doesn't really drive, and twenty minutes' walk is fine for winter but there should be at least another month before it's too snowy to be safe to bike. 

Kitchen essentials acquired!

The thrift store has a couple second hand bikes, one a bit too big for her and one that's about right, but is heavy, and looks very grey and rusty. There's a bike shop near the town center where she can get practically any kind of bike she wants.

Yeah, thrift stores are not usually the place to buy bikes. How long a walk is it to the town center to visit the actual bike shop? (The walk back won't be an issue, she'll hopefully have a bike for it!)

About 15 minutes!

Sweet! Then, after putting things away in her newly stocked kitchen, Marian will put on a light jacket and head out! She's kind of excited to get a better sense of the town than one can get when in a taxi, and also she's, uh, curious if she's going to overhear any particularly bizarre conversations. 

The air is crisp and cool, the midday sun is bright despite the clouds, and the neighborhood is... pretty normal looking, all things considered. Some houses and condos look more obviously new than others, but they share a fairly consistent style.

Some people are sitting on porches or raking leaves. She passes a few people walking their dogs, and as she gets closer to midtown there are a few people, some in small groups, going from place to place, or sitting at tables outside of diners and cafes.

"—all night catching up, can't believe they ended it like that," a woman sitting beside some friends at a cafe table says. "Now we have to wait a year just to see how—"

"I don't know how she spends that much time in the kitchen and still enjoys cooking so much—"

"—enough?" a young man about her age says as he passes by her on the sidewalk. "I don't want to miss the trailers—"

Most people are just going about their days in silence, or with earplugs in. There are a few people on bikes, and a few busses pass her by along with all the cars, though none of the intersections are particularly busy even as she gets closer to the center of town.

What does draw her attention, however, are... features.

As she walks by a bookstore she she passes a woman as pale as a candle, her steps seeming to effortlessly glide her over the sidewalk despite the slight steepness of the part they're crossing. A man steps out of his car and straightens his coat, and she sees his fingers all look remarkably similar in length. Two teenagers skate by, one grinning wide, and she could swear his teeth were filed.

Their clothes are mostly normal, but a few people are wearing old fashioned or unusual styles, and a surprising amount of people wear intricate jewelry despite their otherwise normal clothes, even the men, and there are obvious patterns she can pick out within the first couple dozen people. Wooden bracelets with inset amber, bronze leaf filigree armbands or hairpins, and even gemmed necklaces, rings, and earrings that sparkle in a range of gold, orange, and red hues. Thinking back, even one of the young skateboarders had a thin gold chain dangling from an earlobe, with something sparkling at the end.

Marian is really not attuned to fashion enough to pick out where the styles are unusual as opposed to, like, a vintage trend she wasn't paying attention to, but that's a lot of pretty jewelry! She's not used to guys wearing jewelry except for, like, tacky bling in rap music videos, but she thinks it's kind of cool, men should get to be into dressing up and wearing jewelry if they want to... 

Wow, some people are really graceful! Marian, who has never in her entire life been described as 'graceful', isn't exactly jealous, but only because she's never tried to compete on that dimension, it's a losing proposition. 

After noticing the man's fingers as he straightens his coat, Marian has to pull her own hand out of her pocket and stare at her own fingers to check that she's not completely imagining that that's kind of weird. Not that she's judging him! It's not his fault if he has some kind of unusual finger deformity...

The filed down teeth are weirder but people can do what they want with their teeth (and Marian does maybe vaguely recall reading an article online about someone who had gotten her ears surgically modified to be pointy like an elf, it's not stranger than that...)

....Hmm

Okay, fine, maybe this town is sort of strange. All the individual odd notes could be explained, but taken all together, Marian is noticing - 

- she's not sure what she's noticing? She's, uh, noticing that there might be a thing to notice? That isn't just about a lot of people being pagan, that might explain jewelry but it wouldn't explain the fingers or the teeth... 

Whatever. Marian is going to make it to the bike store and see if they have a bike she likes. That's her plan. Sheeee is maybe also going to keep an eye out for further bizarre details but that's not her goal here. 

Some further mildly interesting and/or strange details are apparent now and then, like a carving in a tree that looks like intricate Celtic knots, or the woman she spots through a bakery window who's got a crow?raven? on her shoulder. But nothing bizarre, really!

The bike shop has plenty of bikes! All the colors! A variety of shapes! Many sizes!

Ooh now Marian wants a shoulder crow that would be so impractical. She muses briefly on how she had a pet bird as a kid and it would be nice to have a pet again someday, but she spends soooo much of her time at work, it wouldn't really be fair to an animal. 

It's a really nice bike shop for a small town! Marian will spend a while perusing, picking out commuter-style bikes in her approximate size. How are the prices? 

The new bikes start at $350 and climb from there. The most expensive bikes are four digits.

There's also a 2nd hand section that caps at $250, and has decent variety.