"Eh, people here are mostly just weird about some stuff." Lucy shrugs as she dips some bread into her soup.

"The cameras go on the fritz pretty often," Paul offers. "Probably the most common repair ticket we get. And the records... I mean, we have to follow a lot of laws about keeping those properly, right? But I feel like every other month the database needs to be rebooted. It's a good thing the hospital is so meticulous with its paper records."

Marian had NOTICED that people here are weird about some stuff. She’s curious what Lucy would have to say if they were alone, but - not the time, obviously.

“Yeah, that sounds really inconvenient! …They said something during my interviews about some of the staff here not being great with computers, but - it’d be kind of impressively bad at computers to make the whole database need rebooting.” How would you even do that as a user on the EMR. Marian doesn’t know enough programming stuff to guess but she bets her more programming-y friends on the Internet would be horrified. 

Paul rolls his eyes. "I know every IT since the dawn of time has bemoaned their coworkers not being able to follow simple instructions, but yeah that warning was an understatement. I hear Lucy and Sarah talk about how their other hospitals were so much more hectic than this one, and I feel like I'm in the reverse situation." He finishes his sandwich. "They pay well, though, and management actually listens now and then, so overall worth it."

"...Yeah, I got the impression management was more likely to listen to concerns here than where I've worked before."

Marian is not quite feeling socially brave enough to retell the story from her interview about the bladder pressure protocol; it feels like it would be too much making herself the center of attention, especially since it looks like Paul is maybe done his lunch and ready to go soon. 

Lucy is also basically done, and a minute later she's lifting her tray. "Gonna head back, Mal will be here soon. Good luck with the rest of it, Marian."

"What she said," Paul adds, then leaves with her. Sarah is still only halfway through her salad. She looks a few years older, and studies Marian as she eats.

It feels like she's building up to some deep, personal question, but when she finally speaks it's to just ask, "So do you do any sorts of extreme sports? Or even just regular sports?"

That's a really weird question??? 

However, for once, Marian actually has an answer!

"I used to do competitive swimming, in high school? I was pretty into endurance open water swimming at one point - I, like, had ambitions of being the youngest person to swim across Lake Ontario? But you need to own a boat or know someone who's willing to pilot a boat beside you, and my parents weren't super on board with that."

Shrug. "I started doing taekwondo in college. I thought it'd be cool to get better at balance and flexibility - and sparring is, like, really good cardio." 

"Oh, I was thinking the of more adrenaline-junky sports, like skiing, that's what I'm into, but that's pretty neat! I think we have, like, one martial arts studio in town, but there are a few indoor swimming places with those long Olympic pools."

Oh no now she feels like she disappointed Sarah by not being into adrenaline-y sports. Neat that they have Olympic-size pools, though - several of them apparently! - she hadn't been sure what the swimming situation would be like in a small town. “Skiing - oh, right, downhill. My parents were really into cross country so that’s what I think when I hear skiing.”

Sarah doesn't seem disappointed at all, just cheerfully thoughtful!

"...huh, I think I have heard of that before, but I can't tell if I'm just fooling myself. But yeah, we've got mountains around here so I've been enjoying downhill skiing."

Mal plops a tray with a bread-bowl-full-of-soup and a cookie next to Sarah and sits. "Hi Sarah, glad you're still here Marian! Not that they'd immediately kick you out if you flubbed the interview, I think, unless you said something super weird I guess. How was it? Sorry, am I interrupting? You don't need to repeat yourself if you've been explaining things already."

"No worries, I'm done anyway. See you later Mal, and maybe you too, Marian. Good luck!"

"Thanks!" Marian turns back to Mal. "I think it went okay?" Though it's hard not to start second-guessing herself now. "I, uh, feel like I would've had to try pretty hard to say something weirder than the chicken blood voodoo doll story they brought up." 

"Oh man, I wondered if they would! It happened just before I started." She lowers her voice a bit. "Those were the Ashmores, my sister went to school with their daughter. Of all the pagans in town, they go pretty hard... which I guess is already obvious, huh?"

After a moment she sobers and tears a piece from the side of her bread bowl to dip into the soup. "I'm glad their uncle turned out alright, though. I heard that was a rough night for everyone in ER."

"- Oh, good, I'm glad." Presumably the chicken blood ritual had no effect one way or another. "I think they brought it up to feel out whether I would be uncomfortable about, uh, I think they called it 'less standard spiritual expressions'. ...I think it's kind of cool, honestly. Are there are a lot of pagans in town?" 

"Oh sure, my family traces itself back pretty far that way. German on my grandmother's side and Irish on my grandfather's. I grew up celebrating Mabon, Yule, and Ostara at home and with neighbors, then Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter at school and with some friends. If you look at a map of the town it's a bit of a patchwork mix."

"That's really cool! ...And probably less confusing if it was one thing with family and another thing at school? My parents took us to a Unitarian church when I was a kid and I was kind of deeply confused about the part where, like, Jesus and Buddha are from different religions, we just learned all the stories interchangeably at Sunday school." 

"Oh, for sure, I was confused as a kid because of how differently books and shows treated each? Like Christianity is rarely the cool religion to have, unless vampires or demons are around, and so kid-me just thought like, 'oh yeah, these different religions exist to protect people from different kinds of monsters.' When I asked my Jewish friend what Judaism protects against he went and asked his dad, then the next day said 'the Angel of Death.' I got kind of jealous, and also scared, until my parents told me about Passover and explained that that sort of thing didn't really happen anymore."

Marian laughs. "Oh, yeah, I can see that being alarming."

Christianity being about protecting people from vampires is very...Dresden files, or something...but makes sense for a kid who grew up pagan? ...Marian is pretty sure that it's disputed to what extent any of the historical events in Exodus happened, let alone the blatantly supernatural ones, but she's absolutely not bringing that up, this is a fun conversation but it's kind of perilously close to being a super awkward one. 

"But yeah, there's a mix of different faiths and spiritualities and so on around here. 'Pagan' is kind of a catch-all term, you know? So while a lot of kids at my school were Christian, it was less like the Christians and the non-Christians and more like, a bunch of different stuff that only sometimes had things in common, and the two or three types of Christian were just another subset."

“That’s really neat. It’s - I admit I had a stereotype in my head about small towns in the US and this isn’t it.” There was a notable lack of mentioning any atheists, and it’s kind of also a stereotype in her head that Americans are weirder about that than Canadians, but whatever, it’s not a big deal, she’s fine with being vaguely culturally Christian if that’s the social milieu.

"Oh yeah, no, it's super weird. That's what everyone from out of town says, but I picked up on it from media when I was younger. It feels a bit special sometimes, having grown up here. I definitely had a different experience reading Harry Potter and Percy Jackson growing up than most Americans did!"

Marian laughs even though that's, uh, a slightly weird thing to say? She doesn't know that much about all the different varieties of pagan, but she wouldn't have thought it was that much like Harry Potter, she doesn't remember religion per se coming up much at all and don't they actually just celebrate Christmas at Hogwarts anyway? 

(She's trying to remember which one Percy Jackson is - it's not a Tamora Pierce series even though that's what her brain suggests first, there was a movie of it which she heard about via Internet osmosis, it's - something with Greek gods in a modern setting? That does at least resonate more with what she very vaguely knows about pagan traditions, she guesses.) 

Anyway she should probably bring the topic back to something more directly related to what she's here for, which is interviewing for a job. "Are there any other, uh, surprising spiritual practices that I might run into if I do come work here?"