Two days pass before she gets a call. A kind-sounding woman named Beverly asks her a bunch of questions about her nursing experience, only some of which is included in her resume, then thanks her and says someone will be in touch if they move her to the next step.

A day later she gets another call inviting her to an in-person interview at the hospital. They (casually) mention that they'll cover her flight and hotel, and ask if any day in the coming weekend works for her.

And then she's there, landing at a small airport in western Massachusetts, taking a taxi through the mountains and into the hills around Haven, whose welcome sign proudly declares it "home to 11,300 souls." The cloudy day gives a muted filter to the brown-red-yellow-oranges of the Autumn trees interspersed with houses and shops.

A quick stop at her motel, the taxi driver happy to wait for her, and then she's finally at Haven Hospital, the clouds parting just in time to light up the white trim and columns around its ivy-covered brick walls. A long driveway splits into parking lots in front of four different wings of the broad, three-story building.

By the time she's out of the taxi and stepping through the front doors, the sun is behind the clouds again, and a gust of chilly wind enters with her.

Is it normal to pay for flights and hotels for people you haven't even decided you want to hire yet??? Marian isn't going to say no, obviously, she likes traveling and the only cost is getting time off at Montfort (she hasn't officially given notice yet though she did have an awkward conversation with the nurse manager about her vague possible plans to leave) and also it's, like, pretty flattering and makes her feel like they really care about her wanting to work there, which is a weird but cool experience. 

She hadn't actually looked up the town population before and wow that's small, she's kind of amazed they can support an ICU that size. Maybe it happens to be the best hospital in the whole region and they get all the rural patients too? 

It's pretty! It's not at all what she expects a hospital to look like but what does she know. She likes it better than Montfort. 

- oh no job interview. She spent the flight over practicing her answers to possible interview questions they might ask but she's still so nervous aaaaaah. 

The inside is as modern as any hospital she's seen, and familiar scents and hushed, distant sounds surround her as she's directed from the front desk to an office, where the woman she spoke to on the phone, Mrs. Reed, is waiting with a quick smile upon her entrance.

"Hi there! You must be Marian. Welcome to Haven Hospital!" She rises to shakes her hand across the desk, then gestures toward a chair as she sits back down. "Please, sit while you can, we'll have you walking around before long. Was your flight and drive in okay?"

This is a more intimidatingly nice hospital than Marian would expect in a very small town - it feels fancier and more modern than Montfort - she's slightly confused but mostly just feels an uptick in nerves. 

"Yes, thank you, it was fine." Is she supposed to make small talk. "It's a lovely town." Was that too gushy? 

"It is, really, I'm so glad you came in the Fall to see how everything looks with color before we lose it." She beams for a moment longer, typing some things on her keyboard before deliberately turning back to Marian and lifting a manila envelope out of a drawer. "So, I've got an orientation packet here that'll answer most of the basic questions you might have, and goes over the organizational structure so you know who's who—plenty of time to get into that later—but for now why don't I just outline how your day will go? We've got a few people interested in giving you a thorough soul searching, aside from myself."

She winks as she hands the envelope over, thick with organizational charts and policies. "First, our CNO will give you a tour of the hospital and introduce you to a few people, then eventually hand you off to Carla Foster, our ICU Nurse Manager, to guide you around there. You can meet most of our other ICU nurses, along with Dr. Lamb, who heads the ICU. Then there'll be dinner in the staff lounge, if you'd like to join, and afterward you'll meet the Nurse educator, and then you and l will meet back up to go over some things and answer any lingering questions. How does all that sound? Do you have any questions before we begin?"

That sounds like a really long day and Marian isn't used to job interviews containing the word 'soul-searching' but what would she know, she's only had the one adult professional job. 

"No, that all makes sense." She'll try to memorize the relevant names. 

"Great! I've let our CNO know you've arrived, she'll—"

There's a knock at the door.

"—take you from here. Come on in, Amanda!"

The door opens, and the Chief Nursing officer smiles and holds the door open with one hand while offering a handshake with the other. "Thanks Bev. Nice to meet you, Marian. I'm Amanda."

"Bye, Marian, I'll see you later!"

"Now, let's get started back at the lobby, shall we?" And back through the halls they go, toward the entrance she came in through. "Tell me, Marian, what was it like back in... Montfort, was it? I've never been. What sorts of patients did you all get up there?"

That's a really general question and Marian didn't think to prepare an answer for it so hopefully she doesn't sound incredibly stupid!

"Uh. It was one of the smaller hospitals in the city, the ICU was twelve beds. We were, like, the only French hospital on the Ottawa side of the river, so we got French-speaking patients. Lots of cardiac patients, flu and pneumonia in winter, sepsis - a lot of ODs, I think we must've somehow gotten, like, most of the overdose patients from the whole city - oh, we used to have to transfer out anyone who needed dialysis but recently our unit got dialysis machines, I was one of the first cohort to train on them."

There, she said a thing that makes her sound proactive, she hopes. 

She clucks her tongue. "Must have felt awful, not having what your patients needed. Here at Haven, our CEO always makes sure we can address the town's ills, whatever form they come in... within reason, of course." They pass an orderly, who gives Marian a curious look, and Amanda smiles and waves. "Not that I'm judging, mind, it's all thanks to a very generous benefactor. Donated a small fortune to various town infrastructure a few decades ago, sort of a 'paying back to his roots' situation. Didn't even ask for anything to be named after him, though you'll see some plaques around, if you pay attention."

They arrive back at the lobby, where a couple patients are sitting. One is filling out paperwork while the other scrolls on their phone. “This is where most visitors first arrive, of course. Our reception team, like Sally here, is fantastic at making everyone feel welcome and ensuring they get to where they need to go." She gives another smile and wave to the brunette behind the counter, who returns both. "You mentioned flu and pneumonia in winter, that's all the same here no matter how much we push the vaccines each year. Sepsis, yeah, infections of all kinds, and a number of injuries from hiking and skiing. In the Spring we'll see a lot of allergies flare up, and the ticks get active again, so we try to stay well stocked for diseases—do you all have Lyme up north? It's getting terribly common down here." She starts to lead down a hall. "Some injuries from the farms and ranches, but thankfully not too common. And yes, a few drug problems, but not as many as you'd expect given the opioid crisis all around us; people in Haven know it's important to be responsible with their vices."

Huh. That's pretty cool, actually. Maybe that's why they can pay so much? It does seem really exciting to work somewhere that will never end up having to transfer a newly admitted patient to another hospital at 4 am (incidentally, during terrible winter weather) because every single ventilator in the building is in use already. 

Marian nods along and waves at the receptionist. "I think we have Lyme but probably less, we didn't see it that much." 

"I'll pray it doesn't spread that way more, then." They pass through a cafeteria. “Most administrative offices and staff areas are on the third floor, though a few others are peppered around. Right above us is Human Resources, where Bev normally works with her team, but if you use the private staircase there," she gestures, "you'll come out at the staff lounge, nestled right between HR and our training rooms. We've got a dialysis machine up there you can check out later if you'd like, see if it's the same sort you're used to. Either way, our Nurse Educator, Rachel, will be going over some things with you in there after dinner, along with some of your competition."

"Huh, is there a shared staff room for the whole hospital? That's - actually pretty cool." Montfort didn't have that, only a cafeteria also open to families - where Marian basically never went - and staffrooms per-unit, which did mean that she mostly didn't know anyone from the other units socially.

(Also there are so many naaaaames. Hopefully the orientation packet has some of them written down, it feels too socially awkward to stop and write it down every time - shit - every time Amanda, that's her name, mentions another person who Marian hasn't even been introduced to yet to attach a face to the name.) 

"Each wing has its own break room, but yes, it is nice to share space with everyone for meals!" She smiles as they pass through another hallway, wide, tall windows showing that they're transitioning from them main building to the Western wing. "This is our psychiatric center. We have two wards, with the minors on the second floor."

She swipes a key card to open a door, then makes sure it's firmly closed behind Marian before they move on. "Color coded hospital gowns and bracelets, green for psych, will let you know if a patient has wandered into the wrong wing... or, more likely, is attempting an escape." She grins as they pass by a security guard who's sitting opposite a door aimed further into the wing, this one made of metal. "Have you had to sedate many unruly patients, up in Montfort?"

"- Heh, yeah - I do work in the ICU so they're normally, uh, not actually capable of escaping." 

"Oh, sure, but better they don't hurt themselves trying, isn't it?" There's another guarded door, this one less intimidating. "Initial involuntary intake," Amanda explains as they pass by. "We do our best to get them evaluated quickly so they're not stuck waiting for hours, but we're low on psych clinicians after an unfortunate incident in June. Fingers crossed on some of our applicants working out." 

"Oh, yeah, definitely." 

Also, yikes??? Is Amanda just not going to say anything more about the 'unfortunate incident'? It feels incredibly awkward to ask when she hasn't spontaneously offered more information but what if it's some weird test where she's supposed to ask?

...Well, if they do offer her the job that shouldn't matter since she isn't being hired for psych? And, like, nurses gossip a lot and they have a shared staff lounge so she'll probably get to assuage her morbid curiosity sooner or later. 

She settles on. "Oh, oof, yeah good luck," after an only slightly awkwardly-long paus. 

"We'll manage, either way... though worth noting, if you'd ever like to broaden your skillset to psychology, we have a very generous continuing education program." They pass more doors (none of them guarded). "Assessment rooms, voluntary intake, filing room... aaand we're heading to the pharmacy." Another locked door, another long hallway with lots of natural light pouring in as they head back to the main building. "Do you have a partner, or would you be moving here alone?"

That’s probably not a weird question?? “Uh, no, just me.”

"In that case, see if you can chat with Evelyn or Linda during dinner. Ev is a nurse in psych, and Linda works in the lab. If you get along with them, they've been looking for a third housemate."

They pass into a long, thin room paneled with warm brown faux wood. Various shelves of over the counter drugs line the walls, and a pair of windows labeled Consult and Pick Up give a glimpse into the white room full of medications that makes up the rest of the floor. "The lab is upstairs, but Tom or Katy aren't client facing, so should usually be free to consult on dosage, or verify prescriptions, or help with anything else you need. Also, as it mentioned in the benefits package, as staff any prescriptions you need filled are covered by the hospital, but you're also welcome to off the shelf stuff too...  within reason, of course." Amanda smiles.

....Right. That's a little weird - Marian thinks, it's not like she's an expert on what is or isn't weird - but also kind of neat? 

(It's maybe a little weird to suggest she live with colleagues but, like, Marian hasn't arranged an apartment here yet so she appreciates the recommendation and will try to memorize the names?)

"Oh, cool." 

"South Wing next," Amanda says as they pass back the rest of the way through the central building and through another long hallway. "Maternity, pediatrics, women's health, child care. We had 210 births last year, the highest in Haven's record." Her tone is proud. "A lot of towns are shrinking, but we've got good stock here in Haven. A lot of mothers go the at-home route, and our infant mortality is very low too, thanks be to Spring blessings. We expect the numbers to keep going up, so if you ever want to shadow a maternity nurse during off hours, we'll pay time-and-a-half to have more flexibility among the staff."

"Wow!" Marian isn't sure what she means by 'Spring blessings' - either it's some kind of postnatal support program, which would be pretty cool, or it's a religious thing which would be awkward to ask about - but that does sound like a lot of babies for a town of this population! (Not enough that you would expect to see that much infant mortality either way, surely, she's pretty sure the national rate is X-in-thousands not X-in-hundreds.) 

"And, neat, I'll keep that in mind." She's about 1000% more interested in maternity than psych, so she might even end up taking them up on it. 

Amanda seems to pick up on her interest, and beams at her before leading the way through the rest of the wing, including going upstairs to show her the maternity ward, including the nursery, where a pair of twins are currently resting.

"We'll take a skyway to the East wing, which has surgical suites and recovery." The end of the hall opens into a glass corridor, which the slowly setting sun and riot of Autumn colors paints gold and orange and red from the trees around it. "How are you holding up so far? Any questions for me? I know I'm throwing a lot at you."

"Uh, I'm probably not going to remember everyone's name you're telling me about, but the rest is fine?" Marian is peering around the glass corridor at the view. "Wow, I think this is the prettiest architecture I've ever seen in a hospital." 

"Isn't it? There are pictures of the old hospital on the history wall of the main building, I imagine it's more what you'd expect. But Mr. Hannover had some conditions for how the money would be spent, and time proofing Haven's institutions was part of it. You should check out the town hall, it's gorgeous." They pass into the Eastern wing, and walk through halls with pale blue and cream walls. "And here are our various surgery suites and recovery rooms. Do you collaborate with OR staff often at your current hospital?" 

A normal amount? Actually Marian really has no way of knowing what a normal amount is. "Sometimes we have to send patients to the OR urgently - or they're being admitted urgently from the OR - and we call reports or go pick up patients there? I don't know if Haven Hospital has closer collaboration than that?" 

They're passing by the nursing station at the center of the wing now, where one nurse is on the phone and another two are looking over a patient chart. "Those both sound right, but yes, there's also the bi-monthly meeting to check if there's anything extra that needs to be done, for either current patients or lessons learned from past ones." They make their way down the stairs, and emerge into the first floor of the wing. There are waiting areas around them, with comfy-looking furniture and walls paneled with dark wood, lit by warm light. "We want to make sure every voice is heard, here. After all, if we didn't think someone had something to offer, why hire them?"

Oh wow they actually do the best practices thing! That’s really cool! (Possibly Marian should be embarrassed that Montfort doesn't, but she’s mostly just impressed and pleased.)

Also, wow, that’s the classiest waiting room she’s ever seen. Forget about uncomfortable chairs and industrial carpet and flickery fluorescent lighting, this feels like an upscale hotel lobby or something. Having a wealthy benefactor funding the hospital is clearly a pretty sweet deal.

“That makes a lot of sense! Sounds like a really good idea.”

"It helps in countless little ways, including making us all feel a little more like family." Amanda leads her through the rest of the wing, away from the waiting rooms and partway down a wide hallway that has massive elevators further down, and a wide pair of swinging doors on the far end. "Our ambulance bay is down that way, but we'll head to the last wing through one of the staff doors, just so you're aware of all the options. Every wing has a few." They pass through a supply room that has a back door marked EXIT, and then they're out in the fading sunlight and mild Autumn chill.

Amanda takes a deep breath as she starts walking along a path that leads to the final wing. "And here we finally arrive at your potential home away from home. General inpatient care is on the first floor, ICU on the second, and as usual, administration and staff rooms on the third." They reach another unmarked door and she uses a keycard to open it, leading in through another supply room and out on the far side of the reception desk.

The walls are pale grey with hints of blue or pink or yellow, like a drizzly sky cloaking a sunset, and various potted plants and landscape paintings adorn the walls. They take the stairs up two flights, and soon they're at an office door with a plaque on it that reads Carla Foster - ICU Nurse Manager on it. A quick knock, and then...

"Hey Amanda. Hi, Marian, I'm Carla." She steps out and briefly grips Marian's hand. "How are you finding Haven so far?"

“It’s a lovely town and the hospital is gorgeous! And you guys seem really well run."

Oh no did she just out herself as someone whose previous hospital workplace wasn't well run and who therefore doesn't have the type of experience they're looking for. Job interviews are terrible. 

Carla smiles, or half smiles, one side rising while the other mostly just quirks in a wryly amused way that makes it hard to tell if she's smiling with her or at her or something in between.

"We'd like to think so." She turns to the CNO. "See you at the panel later, Amanda."

"Yes, see you there. Good luck, Marian!" Amanda gives her shoulder a friendly(? reassuring?) squeeze, then heads off in the direction of the main building.

That's...weird...ugh what is Carla thiiinking, Marian is reviewing what she just said and it was mostly just polite and generic. She doesn't think that half-smile is Carla deciding to probably not hire her because she's too impressed with their hospital meeting the very low bar of following best practices? Also, like, they're clearly trying to impress her, she thinks, maybe mostly with how much money they have but still. 

- anyway she's definitely overthinking this now and needs to focus on the rest of her interview and making a good impression on Carla. And, like, she is actually qualified for this job, it's not like she's trying to get one past them even though the entire concept of job interviews always feels like that. 

She looks attentively at Carla. 

Carla looks attentively back at her.

Or maybe consideringly.

Or evaluatingly.

And then she nods, seemingly to herself. "So, what made you leave Montfort?"

Because it turned out she could get paid a lot more money probably not the correct answer for an interview and it's not even really true, she started looking before that. 

"I learned a lot there - I actually started before graduating nursing school, there was a mentorship program - but it felt like time to move on?"

Arghhh what's the correct level of honest to be here.

"It's a small hospital in a city with a lot of bigger hospitals, which I think is a kind of different experience from somewhere like Haven Hospital? There were some kinds of patients we didn't really see because they would go to one of the bigger centers. And it was kind of, like, chronically under-resourced and understaffed, which - it's not that that's not educational but it - affects the culture?"

Probably a job interview is also not the place to complain about how this resulted in not firing Isobel even though she was, in addition to a bully, bafflingly racist, and management was fully aware of her being a problem and actually very sympathetic to Marian pleading to never work the same shifts as her ever, and just couldn't actually fire someone who, for all her frustrating traits as a person, is actually a very competent nurse and would pick up a ton of overtime. 

Small shrug. "I felt like I was ready for something new." 

Carla studies her throughout, then nods again, slower. "So to be a happy you, say, a year from now, you'll have had new nursing experiences, while being in a better hospital culture, and under fewer constraints. That picture sound right? Missing anything?"

"That sounds pretty great!" And also have twice as much money in her savings account, that would be cool too. "I guess it is also a plus to live somewhere different for a while - my parents are always, like, this is the time in your life when you can move around easily. But that's not really about the hospital specifically." 

"Well, Haven's certainly different. Come on, I'll show you around this floor, then we'll work our way down."

Staff offices! Conference rooms! Lockers and showers! Break lounge (with small kitchen and some comfy couches)! Training suite!

"IT is the door at the end of that hall, in case a computer or piece of tech is acting up. Files and charts that way. We're going more and more digital, but it's a slow process, and there are still regulations to follow. Are you tech savvy? I can never tell which youngsters will or won't be."

"I think I'm reasonably tech savvy?" Not compared to some of her Internet friends but definitely compared to her average Montfort colleague, at least. "I took a programming class as an elective in college and stuff." 

Ooh and this does actually give her an opening to talk about Relevant Job Experience. "Montfort was working on digitizing too - when I started they used this ancient custom-written EMR, like, all black and white and it only responded to the F keys, and orders and med records were all still on paper. Last year we moved to Epic and yeah it was a whole process." 

Carla smiles. "Our EMR had color, but that's about the only improvement from what you're describing. Four colors, to be precise. A few years ago Massachusetts required use of MassPAT for any medication prescribers, and we moved to Epic for integration as well. Glad you'll be familiar with that part of things, at least. We have some staff here who really don't mix well with technology, and while we've taken steps to make sure that's not anyone else's problem, it gets more costly the fewer people can handle themselves."

They reach some stairs. "That about does it for this floor. Bottom is general inpatient which I think we'll do next, and then the ICU. Any questions before we head down?"

"I think not yet. I guess I'm curious how you have Epic set up but that's kind of getting into specifics."

Hopefully the staff who "really don't mix well" with technology doesn't include too many doctors. 

First floor nursing station! It looks nice and modern, with space enough for six people to sit in a hexagonal pattern, from which anyone can look down at least two of the four hallways branching around them. General units that way, surgical units that way, step-down units that way, and more really comfortable-looking family waiting spaces in the direction of the main building. Carla takes her through each of the halls so she can get familiar with them. They spot a few nurses making the rounds, most of whom smile and wave at Carla and/or Marian, and one doctor who's talking to a patient being prepped for surgery.

"What, you color-code the patients? Huh. Is it...generally a problem...that they might end up on the wrong floor?" It's also confusing hat they bother to color-code who's from out of town, but maybe that somehow makes more sense in a really small town like this one? For, like, insurance or something??

Carla gives her another one of those assessing looks, and says, "We get a lot of sleepwalkers in Haven. Something in the water, maybe. It's not often a problem, of course, but once in a while it's helpful to have an extra bit of guidance, in case someone wanders to another wing, or even outside the hospital."

That's kind of creepy? What sort of 'something in the water' causes sleepwalking of all things? 

...Also Marian absolutely feels like she's being tested on something! And has no idea what! Why are job interviews like this, why can't they just ask her the hard questions about mistakes she's made and how she learned from them instead of, like, ambiguously testing her on some sort of unspecified social skills thing?? Or, you know, make her run through an ACLS sim while someone watches her with a clipboard, that's not any less mortifying but at least it makes sense. 

"That's - unusual," she says carefully, with no idea whether that was the right thing to say. 

"It is," Carla says, and turns to give her another of those half-smiles before opening the door to the second floor. "I did tell you Haven's different, remember?"

And then they've (finally) arrived at the ICU, near another nurse station. Half of the seats have nurses present, and Carla says, "Tour first, then some introductions. If we go this way... you'll see that all our ICU rooms are private, but this area is for contagious diseases specifically..."

Negative pressure rooms! Regular patient rooms! Respiratory therapy!

"Feel free to ask any questions as we go..."

Equipment storage! Medication! Clean utility! Soiled utility!

This is definitely a distraction from feeling like she’s failing some sort of job interview test that she didn't know to prepare for. 

Marian does have a bunch more specific questions at this point! Do they usually try to assign a nurse to patients in adjacent or at least nearby rooms? Are you allowed to sleep during breaks on night shifts and if so is there, like, a place for that that isn't "in a recliner in the soiled utility? What shift schedule do most of the nurses here work? What's their policy on when patients need to be 1:1? (At Montfort it's approximately only if they're on continuous dialysis, and probably only that because it's new that they do it at all and people are still training, and Marian feels like this miiiight be a decent proxy for whether the hospital is understaffed in general. Montfort regularly had patient assignments that would have been considered outright unsafe at the Ottawa Civic Hospital where she did her final clinical rotation.) 

Also this is kind of a dumb question but, uh, how many copies of standard equipment like glucometers do they have? ...She will admit out loud that Montfort had, like, kind of a shortage of a lot of equipment and you would end up fighting over them with other nurses even in cases where it would be really nice to just keep a glucometer in the room all the time because you had q1h blood sugars or whatever. 

Carla seems approving of her questions!

Nurses are usually given rooms near each other, yes, assuming they have more than one patient at a time in the first place. It's a very rare day that they're so understaffed that a nurse would need to move across the wing to tend to all their patients.

You can (and should) feel free to sleep on the comfy couches in the staff lounge above!

Nurses work in 8 hour shifts by default, giving them two days off. Some have arranged for 10 hour or 12 hour shifts on certain days to cover for each other if they need to leave early or arrive late, but there are a couple break nurses usually around to help step in if someone needs a shorter shift on a particular day or week.

Ratios can vary, of course, but they aim for 1:1 for everyone except those in step-down care. On the rare occasion where they've got more than a few patients at a time, they might call in some part-time help; mostly nurses who have semi-retired due to age or parenthood, and work per diem.

"Oh, that sounds annoying," Carla says with a slight frown. "Not to mention unsafe. We try to make sure all our sections are fully stocked. If you ever feel like there's a shortage of something, you let me know right away, alright?"

Marian nods along.

(She honestly kind of prefers 12h shifts, but she feels like 8h shifts are probably objectively better for patient safety or whatever, and it's just that she got used to 12h and so always ends up feeling terrible at time management whenever she picks up an 8h shift and has to be caught up on charting and stuff by 3 pm. 

...It doesn't seem like that's going to be an issue here, though. Because, wow, they can usually be 1:1? That's awesome and hopefully doesn't mean Marian would be bored, she's really bad at sitting still.  Also it's cool - definitely not what Marian is used to, but cool! - that they're not usually in a situation where all the ICU beds are full and they're needing to keep track of who can most safely be kicked to a lower-acuity unit if they need to admit someone new. And they have enough equipment! 

So far she's even more impressed than she expected to be! Probably all of that makes if you're a small town hospital and have a wealthy benefactor?) 

Carla shows her the extra workstations around the floor, then they head back through the quiet, clean halls to the central nurse hub. "Dr. Lamb should be free to meet soon. I'm going to head back up and check on him, maybe do a bit of work. We'll contact someone here to let you know when it's time to come up, alright? Feel free to shadow a few nurses, get familiar with how we do things, ask them whatever questions you'd like. They've all been informed you're here."

They reach the central station, which has two nurses currently manning it. "Hi Mal, Lucy. This is Marian, I'm leaving her here to poke around a bit before her interview. Help her out however you can, okay?"

"Sure thing, Carla," Mal says, and gives Marian a small wave. Lucy looks up from her computer long enough to flash Marian a brief smile before looking back at her monitor.

And then Carla leaves.

...Okay but, like, it's rude to bother nurses who are in the middle of their work day doing their job? However, it's super weird to go wander around sticking her head in patient rooms, though, even if that's a lot of what she's curious about. 

Mal seems maybe less busy and more open to interacting? Marian smiles at her and waves back a little. "Hi. - So how do you like working here?" She's paying a lot of attention to whether Mal is giving indications that she would actually prefer to be left alone. 

Mallory smiles at her again, and if it's a trying-to-be-pleasant-but-actually-leave-me-alone smile, it's a pretty bad one? "Hi! It's uh, pretty great? I've been here about a year, and, yeah, not looking for the exit anytime soon. It's tough sometimes, you know? But it's important work, and everyone above is pretty supportive. I'm Mallory, by the way, Mallory Hill, but Mal works fine." She holds a hand out.

"It's lovely to meet you." Aaaand Marian is going to tell her social anxiety to shut up and go away; she was explicitly told to shadow nurses and ask questions, and she'll of course try not to be annoying but if Mallory wants to not be shadowed at this point then she should say so with actual mouth words. 

"And, yeah, ICU is definitely tough. - Though you guys seem, like, really well staffed and resourced? I don't know, have you worked other places before to see how it compares...?" It would on some level be fun to complain about how Montfort is sketchy as fuck compared to Haven Hospital but if Mal hasn't worked anywhere else she might just be judgy about it. 

"Oh, no, I was born and raised here in Haven, so this is the only hospital I've been to. I've read some horror stories online, though, in nursing forums and stuff? Makes me feel really lucky, honestly. Where are you in from?"

"Ottawa, Canada. And, yeah, I think my old job was - probably the kind of place you'd read horror stories about?" Okay it might actually be fun to horrify Mal a bit, but 'it would be fun' is less important than making a good first impression so she'll hold off. "I'm curious how many of the other staff here grew up in town? And what's the staff turnover like?" 

"Hmm, maybe three in four? And I'm not sure about that, no one's left in the past year... well, voluntarily." Her smile dims. "There was that thing in psych, but... yeah, that's not exactly an every year thing, and most of the people I've met here have been on staff for years."

WELL THAT’S OMINOUS. Does Mal seem like she's going to...explain more...? No...? Okay that's fine, Marian will just be over here being mildly unnerved then. 

Anyway, three out of four people being local is - it feels like a lot, given the minuscule size of the town, but it's probably not to an extent where it's super weird to be one of the only people on staff who didn't grow up here and isn't in the clique. (Marian feels too awkward to ask out loud whether, like, there is a clique of popular nurses and if so whether any of them are bullies.) 

"That seems pretty good - retention, I mean, not, uh, whatever the thing was in psych." 

"Yeah, it's nice. I've got seven months left in my residency, and I could theoretically go to another hospital after that, but I'm not sure why I would? Or, I don't know, maybe if I want to see more of the world. How was Ottawa? Besides the hospital horror?"

"I mean, I think it's a pretty nice city but I wouldn't move there specifically to see more of the world? It's, like, the sort of nice city that's good to raise a family in." Shrug. "- They have a nursing residency here? Neat. I was going to ask where you went to nursing school - is there one affiliated with the hospital?" She had kind of been assuming not, just because tiny town, but it seems unlikely that the hospital could get three-quarters of its staff from people born and raised here if they had to move away for college, surely a lot of them would decide not to come back. 

"Oh yeah, the local community college is small but it's got a good variety of programs tied in with professionals and organizations all over Haven. My BSN just had seventeen students in my year, about half of which came from nearby towns."

"Huh! I - sort of want to ask what that’s like but I’m guessing it’s just normal for you? …My BSN cohort had like 200 students and that was for the French program, I think the English program was a lot bigger.”

"Lords and Ladies! How did you all even... okay, yeah, and I guess that's just normal for you... huh. Feel like I'd get swallowed up in that many people, all doing the same thing I was... but I guess you had plenty of people to be friends with, at least?"

Lords and Ladies? That's, uh, not exactly a - swearword, exclamation, whatever - that Marian is used to hearing! It feels very...fantasy-novel??

...She's not going to focus on that right now, she's here to make a good impression. 

"Yeah, I don't know, I didn't - feel like the point of college was making friends? Just, like - you know, I'd been waiting since freshman year of high school for the world to let me do something real–?"  

Wow okay that was - probably way too much honesty, oops. Maybe she can salvage this.

"- When did you know you wanted to be a nurse? I read a memoir when I was fourteen, by an ICU nurse, and I just - knew that was what I wanted." 

"Oh, that's neat, what was the memoir? For me, this'll sound weird I bet, but I was just always fascinated with medicine and bodies, you know? Like, life and death, it used to be this big mysterious thing, and these days we can just... study them, figure things out, a bit, and hold the Reaper off a bit longer, if we try hard and get lucky. I'm sure others get satisfaction doing their own things, but to me there's nothing more meaningful."

“No, that’s not weird at all! Bodies are super cool! And, yeah, so is modern medicine, right?”

Marian is definitely getting a good grade in bonding with her potential future colleagues.

“My grandfather was a doctor and my parents both have PhDs, I think everyone assumed I would do one of those things? But I think nursing is, like, the unglamorous but super important parts? …The memoir is A Nurse’s Story by Tilda Shalof and it’s - really honest? About the tough parts of being an ICU nurse? But also about the parts that are really really rewarding.”

Mal takes her phone out and seems to be making a note of it. "That's really cool, about your family. My parents are supportive and all, but they run a bakery and cake shop in town. They're super proud of me, but not much I could talk to them about my interests, once I went off to college. Is it gonna be hard, being away from them if you move here?"

Oh no is it weird to not expect to miss her parents?

"...I think it'll be fine? I - it's almost, like, a family tradition at this point, moving somewhere really far away? My grandparents on both sides immigrated from Europe to Canada, and then my parents were the ones who moved all over, all my aunts and uncles are still in British Columbia." 

- oops she should maybe have said something supportive about Mal's parental experience first? It seems awkwardly late to add anything at this point, though. 

Mal does a swivel to check something on her monitor as she talks. "Oh, huh. Are you the first in your family to come to the States, then? And is this your first time?"

"My parents spent some time in the States when I was little, but it'll be my first time working here."

Aaaand Marian is now really distracted wondering what Mal is looking at. It's rude to read people's screens over their shoulder and also, like, patient confidentiality, she doesn't actually work here yet, but apparently it's going to bother her being in an ICU and not knowing what's going on with all their patients. 

Mallory seems to notice, and smiles slightly as she sticks a thumb down the hall. "Patient with pneumonia on a ventilator. Been mostly stable for a couple days now, and everything looks fine, but it's almost time for another physical check-in. Want to come?"

"Sure, if that's okay with you! I'm happy to help with a turn if you're due. Or I can just hang back out of your way if you'd rather." 

"Oh, that's nice of you!" She stands and takes a bag to strap over one shoulder, in which Marian can see a stethoscope, some suction equipment, pulse oximeter, blood pressure cuff, and other standard diagnostic tools. "If you want to help repositioning I'd appreciate that, but otherwise just watch? Helps keep things simple in case some thing goes wrong... not that I expect anything will!"

She leads the way to a closet full of PPE and hands Marian some gloves and a mask, then puts her own on and heads for the patient's room. "What was your favorite sort of thing to do, back at your old hospital?"

Marian dons her PPE and then can stay out of the way. "Oh, hmm - if I had to pick one thing in particular, I think it's, like, really complicated gnarly dressing changes? It's like getting to do an arts and craft project at work." 

She's going to try to juggle looking around curiously with not making Mal feel obtrusively Observed. 

"Ha, yeah, it does feel like that sometimes! I sometimes feel like I'm training for some way less prosocial skills while doing those..."

Mal trails off as they reach the room, then goes into worker mode, checking the patient over first, then the ventilator to make sure everything's in order. It's a man in his 50s or 60s, fairly muscled and fit despite his age, seeming to be in a deep sleep as the ventilator pumps air in and out of his lungs.

He's also got a bunch of scars. His arms are criss-crossed with them, long white cuts and less clean gashes, including a puncture mark in his left bicep. The highest runs up his shoulder and neck, dangerously close to his carotid artery.

Mal finishes checking that everything's in order, and starts to take things out of her satchel one at a time. First a quick listen to his heart and lungs, then a temperature check, then a blood oxygen measurement, all followed by some writing on her electronic clipboard.

(Less prosocial skills like WHAT? - nevermind, not important.) 

...The scars are kind of fucked up, wow, though they all look old and healed, not super relevant to his current medical condition; he otherwise looks like he usually takes decent care of himself? It's less common for (relatively) young and physically fit people to end in up the ICU with pneumonia but, like, it definitely happens, it doesn't necessarily imply anything concerning in his medical history. 

The electronic clipboard is coooool! It just seems massively better than hauling an entire desktop computer assembly on wheels in and out of patient rooms. 

She's tempted to ask Mal if there's a story behind all the scars, but not when it means interrupting her; she'll also check out the ventilator settings, and peek at IV pumps - she's particularly curious what they have him on for sedation, he looks pretty solidly out and also if Marian were to get into a fight with him over the matter of tubes remaining in his body, she might not win, so she would hope he's sedated and restrained. Having horrifying scars does also feel like it might correlate with being the type of guy who freaks the fuck out about waking up intubated.

She's also glancing around a bit to get a sense of how Mal likes to organize her patient rooms, because it's always neat to see how other nurses do things differently - is she an 'everything laid out on surfaces where she can see it' kind of nurse or 'the counters and table must always be clear' type? 

(Oh, and does the patient have a, what was it again, a yellow strip on his gown for out-of-towners? If not then Mal might well know him, unless he's from somewhere even more rural, but huh that would be a weird thing about working in a hospital in such a small town, though maybe 10,000 people isn't quite the level of small town where everyone knows literally everyone else?) 

The patient is being kept under with propofol, does not have the yellow stripe. Mal does seem to be an "everything laid out" kind of girl, and it's clear from watching her work that she's deliberately going down a checklist of all the things she needs to do; currently she's checking for secretions, probably to determine if any suctioning is needed.

Neat, Marian also likes everything laid out. (And was a lot more deliberate checklisty about things when she had been a nurse for a year, though these days she's drifting more toward "puttering around doing things in the order she thinks of them", and also she was almost always about twice as rushed as Mal seems to be.) She is going to IGNORE the itchy feeling to check when the propofol tubing was last changed because, one, it might make Mal feel judged, and two, she doesn't at all seem like the sort of nurse who neglects that.

...Marian is honestly really bad at standing around being out of people's way and not doing anything, and is stomping hard on the urge to do things like reorganize supplies on the counter (it is Mal's room and Mal's supplies and she presumably has them just the way she wants them!) Maybe she'll try to discreetly peer more closely at the patient's intense scars, and speculate to herself on how he might have gotten them? 

Some of the scars are definitely older than others, and she can tell that at least two of them were made by different sorts of injuries. A third... even looks like a bite mark? Hard to tell what kind, other than "not human." If it was a dog, it was a big one. There's enough damage, some over tendons, that she'd expect the patient to suffer from some loss of function, either from the original injuries or the scar tissue.

Another couple minutes pass before Mallory asks, "Okay, ready to help turn him?"

Con...cerning...? Marian's new top theory is that he's from one of the "farms and ranches" mentioned - people injure themselves on farm equipment sometimes, right? - and they either have a wild animal problem or a really badly trained guard dog. If he lives somewhere remote where it's hard for him to make it out to see a doctor, that might also explain why a guy barely older than her parents and probably in equally good shape (old injuries aside) ended up in the ICU on a ventilator rather than, like, getting antibiotics prescribed before it got that bad. 

She smiles at Mal. "Yeah, of course, happy to. ...Is there anything I should be particularly careful of with him? He, uh, looks like he," vague gesture at the scars, "has maybe been through some shit?" 

"Oh, I was worried about that too at first, but he's in pretty good health other than his lungs! We get guys like this in fairly often, some women too, and I always check for healing breaks or fractures or damaged organs or something, but they're mostly fine aside from what they're in for. There are sayings about Haven folk coming from sturdy stock." She finishes preparing for the turning, and gets into position. "Not everyone, mind, but my friend in high school was doing some skateboard trick off a railing, fell and smacked his head right on the pavement, no helmet or anything. I thought for sure he'd gotten himself killed, but he just had a mild concussion. When I told my mom she just clucked her tongue and said, 'Ah, well, that's the Hennigars for you.'"

“Wow! Yeah, that’s really lucky - would super have freaked me out, too.” Marian arranges herself on the other side of the bed, ready to follow Mal’s cues. “I find it pretty satisfying when patients are, like, mostly fine except for one problem. We would get a lot of the, like, six different chronic health conditions that all exacerbate each other.”

It feels weird and unprofessional to comment on this in a patient room, but she hasn't...seen a lot of overweight people...? Despite the fact that the US has such a reputation for high obesity rates (it was one of her Montfort colleagues' first comment when she said she was interviewing at a US hospital.) Maybe that's more a big city thing? Possibly this town just has really good public health or something, what with the wealthy benefactor - there was also that one weird comment about the locals being responsible with their vices... 

"Six?! That's... oof. Sounds like a nightmare." She shakes her and sighs. "Okay, let's get him lateral facing you?" She prepares to lift the blanket he's lying on to gently roll him onto his side toward Marian. "On three, two, one..."

Tuuuurn while Marian keeps hold of his stomach so he doesn't roll too far forward...

"Great, thanks." She starts to reposition his legs and arms with pillows so that he's in a comfortable position. "I haven't had someone that bad off before. Heard of a few cases, but personally my most complex was a woman who had chronic heart failure and AKI, so it was hard to balance the diuretics without damaging the kidneys more. Did you have patients that bad often?"

(Oh, Marian likes Mal. She, too, has strong opinions about positioning patients comfortably.) 

"Oof, yeah, that's a classic, it sucks. I think the worst we had on the unit was, like, CHF, COPD, type II diabetes, chronic kidney disease and peripheral vascular disease from that, and none of that was even the reason she was admitted, she was post-op for repairing a perforated ulcer. ...Also weighed 400 pounds. We had her for, like, two months.  I guess most of the patients weren't quite that bad but we always had those folks for so long, basically all the staff on the unit took care of her at some point or another." 

"Ugh. Part of me thinks a patient that complicated is an interesting challenge, and that poor woman must have really struggled day to day..." Mal finishes adjusting the patient. "But when you put it like that it just sounds... exhausting."

“It can definitely be an interesting challenge, yeah, but it gets sort of depressing, it’s - they don’t usually have great prospects for quality of life afterward even if they recover, you know?”

"Yeah." She seems distracted by her thoughts as she finishes up, then seems to rally herself. "Let's head back, unless you have any questions about all this?" She gestures around.

"Nah, let's head back." Any questions Marian does have are not ones she wants to ask in a patient's room. 

Also oh no did she accidentally pick too depressing a topic for job interview bonding with potential future colleagues??? Or maybe she came across as un-empathetic to those patients, who of course also still deserve the best care? ...She doesn't think Mal is upset with her for bringing it up but she is definitely now paying a lot of attention to that possibility. 

She seems troubled, but not upset? As they make their way back to the nursing station she's even smiling slightly as she says, "Lucy's patient just had some abdominal surgery, if you want to shadow her for her checkup too? You seem like you enjoy having something to do."

Slightly nervous giggle. "Sure, that sounds good! I like helping and, yeah, I'm not great at sitting around. ...Uh, assuming they'll know where to find me for my actual interview if they need to?" One advantage of bopping around here seeing what's going on and occasionally managing to be helpful is that she's not sitting around being self-conscious and anxious about the interview. 

"Figured. And yeah, they'll probably call here. Let's  check that, actually... hey Luce," she says as they reach the nursing station. "Any calls for her yet?"

"All quiet here." Lucy says to Mal, then nods to Marian, eyes alert and searching. "Hey. Sorry I was too busy to chat earlier. You joining me next?"

"Thanks for checking. Yeah, I'd like to if that's okay with you! No worries about being busy earlier, I mean, you're at work." Marian isn't sure what that searching look means but hopefully it's not a secretly-judging-her look, she doesn't think she's done anything worth being secretly judged over? 

"Yeah, works for me. Back in a bit, Mal."

She takes some things and leads Marian down another hall. "Overheard some things, before. I'm one of the one-in-four, though I think it's actually closer to one-in-three. I'm from upstate New York, schooled at NYU and did my residency in Harlem. We should swap horror stories, sometime; locals like Mal really don't know how good they've got it, here."

"Ooh, yeah, we totally should." Marian smiles at her and trots after her. "- So how long have you worked here? And how did you end up deciding to apply, I guess?" 

"It'll be five months next Monday. I bounced around New York hospitals for a few years hoping each one would be a bit less... dysfunctional?" She flashes Marian a grin. "Some were definitely better than others, but each had its problems. Then I had a bad breakup and was like 'alright, I'm ready for a new scene,' you know? Big city vibes weren't doing it for me anymore. Leaving friends and family was sad, but I barely got to see them outside holidays anyway, and I can go back for those."

They reach the patient's room. "Checked around nearby towns, sorted by offered pay, looked up license requirements, and here I am." She opens the door and leads Marian inside. "Hi Mrs. Collins, how are we feeling? About ready for dinner?"

"No," Mrs. Collins grouses as she tries to sit up, which Lucy quickly goes to help her do by adjusting the incline of her backrest. "Got no appetite for more broth." She's a caucasian woman in her mid to late 40s, with a wiry frame and hair that's greying at the roots. She's giving Marian an appraising or suspicious look. Or maybe that's just her general discomfort showing.

"I'll see if we can get you something a little tastier," Lucy says as she starts to take her temperature. "This is Marian, she might start working here soon and is just here to watch and help out if needed."

"Oof, yeah," Marian agrees when Lucy brings up looking for a less dysfunctional hospital. Also apparently she's not the only one who's noticed that Haven Hospital pays really well. 

They reach the room and - okay, if Marian feels like patients are giving her Job Interview looks now - and that was before Lucy had mentioned that she was shadowing her - then that's got to be social anxiety talking and she should tell it to go the fuck away. She gives Mrs. Collins a little wave and smile. "Hi." 

(And returns her own discreetly appraising look. Nothing instantly jumps out as doomy, but it was definitely a thing at Montfort that patients who were awake and not intubated often had more wrong with them, for the simple reason that otherwise they would already be transferred out to make room for someone who needed an ICU bed more urgently. Haven Hospital is a lot less crunched on space as well as staff, though, maybe they actually hold onto their patients until they're not just stable but also have care needs that can realistically be met by a med/surg nurse with five patients?) 

"You're new," Mrs. Collins says, ignoring the wave (and apparently Lucy's Information to that effect). "Where are you from, girl?"

"Marian is from Canada," Lucy says, dropping to a slightly more professionally-brusque tone as she starts on blood pressure. "Have you used the bathroom yet?"

"No. Kept feeling like I had to, but I just pass gas." Mrs. Collins is still squinting at Marian, but she looks away as Lucy presses a stethoscope to her chest, muttering, "New eyes are always tricky. Don't know what they're thinking."

Another of those appraising looks, from Lucy this time. "Probably they're thinking that people like you are better off with more, better rested staff. Do you want help getting to the toilet?"

"No. I'm not an invalid, I'll go if I need to."

(Marian would definitely not be super comfortably with her postop ICU patient getting up by themselves to use the bathroom, but Mrs. Collins isn't her patient and she's going to let Lucy field that one rather than try to awkwardly say something.) 

...Small towns are kind of a way, aren't they. Marian should maybe ask Lucy later if it's the kind of small town where people would still be treating her like a newcomer in a year and making weird uncomfortable comments about it. 

"It seems like a lovely town and I think I'd like to live here for a while," she says, because surely that can't go wrong as polite small talk. 

Mrs. Collins seems to only grow more suspicious, or disgruntled, or whatever she is. "It is lovely. And we work hard to keep it that way."

Lucy rolls her eyes at Marian over Mrs. Collins head and gives her a slight smile, but keeps her professional demeanor as she continues to go through the checkup. "Just as a reminder, if the pain is getting bad or you need to use the toilet, please do press this to call for me, and we'll get make sure you're more comfortable."

"I know how a button works. I'm fine."

Welp apparently that CAN go wrong as small talk, ouch!

...Marian shouldn't take it personally. Mrs. Collins is probably in pain and tired of being in the ICU surrounded by things that beep and it's not like it's her job to make Marian feel welcome in Haven. 

Though, uh, once they're out of the room she definitely intends to ask Lucy if many people were - like that - when Lucy moved here, and if people still see her as a newcomer now that she's been there for months. 

The rest of the check-in goes smoothly (and more quietly), and then they're back in the hall on their way to the nurse station. "Yeah, so that's a thing," Lucy says, voice low. "Sorry I didn't warn you, I thought it might have only happened to me for more obvious reasons."

For more obvious rea– ohhhhhh are people here sometimes racist. That's not, like, surprising, for a small town in the US - it's probably worse here than in Canada - but bleh, that sucks, and also Marian has no idea how to say something sympathetic without it being weird or awkward since she's white. 

Shrug. "I figured it was a - small-town people are prickly about new people showing up sometimes? And she's in pain and - I'm not going to take it personally. ...Though, uh, I am curious if a lot of people here are - weird about newcomers?" 

"Nah, most people here are actually pretty friendly. And yeah, people in hospitals are rarely their best selves, but I lost count a couple months ago of times someone remarked on it in a... weird way?" She shrugs. "It's hard to put my finger on, somehow. Not everyone's, like, annoyed or something, but it's still more of a thing than I expected. Saratoga Springs isn't that much bigger than Haven, and we didn't treat newcomers like this. Or maybe we did and I was just too young to notice."

Huh. Something did feel odd about it, but Marian wouldn't on her own have had a baseline to compare to.

"Mmm." Marian fidgets. "...Are the other staff, uh, weird about it? I think that might bother me more than with patients - Mal was really nice though..." 

"Oh yeah, the hospital staff have all been cool so far." She lowers her voice a bit as they approach the nursing station. "Not that they're not a bit weird in their own ways, sometimes."

Mal waves as she sees them approach. "Hey Marian! Carla said they'll be ready for you in her office, in about five minutes. And that was two minutes ago, so no rush, but I was getting ready to come let you know."

AAAAAAAAAAA INTERVIEW 

Marian is a grownass adult and can do job interviews without panicking. "Thanks! Should I just - wait here for three minutes, then -?" Pause. "I'm curious what Dr Lamb is like?" Is he going to be weird at her too, she's not sure how much more of that she can handle on a job interview day

"Oh don't worry, he's really nice!"

"He is," Lucy confirms. "Just try not to stare."

Mallory swats Lucy's leg. "Don't do that, she's nervous enough!"

Great! That's not ominous at all! Marian will thank them for the advice and then sit here mentally preparing herself to definitely not stare even if it turns out there's some reason it's tempting to. 

It seems like just seconds later that Mal says, "Uh, Marian, maybe you should be going up now?" and when Marian looks at the clock another TWO MINUTES have passed and she now has less than a minute to get up to the office.

Welp okay she had still not been 100% sure if they were going to come get her or if she had to go over there on her own time, and clearly should have clarified that more. 

"- Oops. Thank you." She'll hurry, which - fortunately - is actually pretty distracting from being stressed.

(She reminds herself that the literal worst that can happen is that she interviews terribly and they don't hire her and she has to either stay at Montfort or keep applying to other hospitals, it's not like anyone is going to die if she screws it up. Somehow the prospect of bombing an interview almost feels more stressful than letting a patient die, but that's stupid and Marian's brain should stop it.) 

Is the office door open or does she have to awkwardly knock? 

She'll have to awkwardly knock, and Carla will open the door a few moments later.

"Right on time. Come on, we'll be using this room over here. How did you find the ICU?" As she speaks, she leads Marian a few doors down to a conference room with a rectangular table in it.

Three chairs have been placed along one side, and one across from them. In one of the three sits Amanda Adams, who smiles at Marian as she enters.

Carla goes to sit next to Amanda, while the third seat is taken by a man who must be Doctor Lamb. It's obvious which seat is meant for Marian, and as she sits across from the other three, she notices that one of Dr. Lamb's eyes is a dark grey while the other is so pale it's practically white. 

Wow that's really cool actually also Marian is DEFINITELY NOT STARING. 

...Well, one of the patients she met had fucked-up scars and the other made uncomfortable comments about her out-of-towner status, but Marian has zero complaints about the ICU itself. "I liked it!" It's probably weird and unprofessional to say that it made every other hospital she's worked - not just Montfort, honestly - feel sketchy in comparison. "It's clearly well run and the staff were really welcoming," she settles on. 

"Glad to hear it. If things work out here, you'll probably end up the break nurse for this shift while you get acclimated, so I hope you got along well with the others." She turns slightly. "This is Dr. Lamb, our head of ICU."

"Nice to meet you, Marian." His voice is made for radio plays, deep and warm and thick as honey. "I read your application and the notes from your interview, and I have to say you seem like a great fit for Haven. But I'm sure I don't have to tell you that this can be a hard job, sometimes, particularly for those in ICU, and we like to ask new potential hires about their experiences with that side of things. As an example, a good place to start might be your worst day on the job. And there's no need to be nervous; think of this more as us getting to know your strengths and perspective on things, rather than us looking for weaknesses. Alright?"

(Oh, neat, that actually sounds like a really good way to get oriented on a new unit! Helping colleagues and getting to bounce in and out of their patient rooms is something Marian enjoys a lot and would normally probably be too overwhelmed to do much of when starting a new job.) 

- wow, Dr Lamb has an unfairly gorgeous voice too. Marian can at least appreciate his voice without staring! 

Also: storytime! Possibly this is a weird way to feel about it, but the thing about extremely nightmarish shifts is that they make incredible stories after the fact. She's not not nervous - she's not sure whether to believe the whole "don't be nervous" thing - but recounting it is actually sort of fun. 

"...Right, so I think this wouldn't happen here - the hospital I worked before is a lot more, uh, resource-strapped in general. We had a system where one of the nurses would be responsible for the code blue pager and go respond to codes elsewhere in the hospital, but like, you also had a normal assignment on top of that. - and we didn't have break nurses. Anyway, there was one shift where I had the pager and there were three codes in the ER before noon. I think two of them might actually have been simultaneous, there was a lady they found on the beach with a body temp of - sorry, 18 Celsius, I have no idea what that is in Fahrenheit - and they were coding her for, like, over two hours. - she didn't make it. But in the meantime there was another code - pneumonia and sepsis, I think? - and we managed to get her stabilized enough to admit to the ICU and then there was another code, a lady whose potassium was like 9 - at this point I think I'd spent more time over in the ER than I had with my actual patients, they were stable but it wasn't great - we kept having problems with, like, the sepsis lady really needed a central line but the ICU attending and residents were over at the ER with the third code - anyway I eventually handed off my patients so I could admit the lady with the high potassium and start dialysis. And then she coded again. And our only decent IV access was the dialysis line, because there hadn't been time either to do a central line, so we had to, like, rip off the dialysis circuit to use it for meds. We did get her back and I had to give report having done basically no charting, which was pretty embarrassing but I genuinely don't know when there would have been time. ...Oh and at some point I had agreed to stay for a 16h, but thankfully I handed off that patient and took someone's stable uncomplicated assignment for my last 4h, I - was getting kind of frazzled at that point." 

Hopefully that wasn't too rambly? 

"...I think there's a lot I would do differently now – mostly better time management and not dropping balls, this was when I'd been a nurse for less than a year, I was pretty overwhelmed and I definitely got worse at those by the end of the shift. But it - was a good lesson in, like, knowing I can keep going when literally everything is going wrong." 

"I would be quite proud of any nurse in the hospital who could deal with a day like that without getting down on themselves, let alone having a positive takeaway," Amanda says, and Dr. Lamb smiles while Carla nods along. "I'm curious to know whether there was any sort of feedback loop your hospital engaged in, or anything similar that you thought of to ensure those sorts of more systemic errors didn't happen again? With limited resources in mind, of course, it does sound like everyone was working under a number of constraints."

"...I mean, I don't know if I had positive takeaways at the time," honestly makes Marian admit. "It was a year ago, I've had time to process it." Also she's pretty sure you're supposed to come up with positive takeaways when answering job interview questions even if it's kind of a stretch. "I did get more careful about agreeing to 16h shifts after that - I think most of the time I can provide safe care for a 16h but I'm not sure I could have if they had kept me with the really sick patient." 

Lol at the concept that Montfort either had functional feedback loops about avoiding systemic errors, or would listen to Marian if she had ideas Marian shrugs slightly. "There was a review process for, like, incident reports, but I'm actually not sure that came up for this shift in particular - it was more if someone reported a specific medical error or near miss, and I don't think 'we were already short-staffed and then a really implausible rate of problems happened' triggered that process?"

Part of why Marian isn't particularly down about herself from this shift is that she doesn't think anything that went horribly wrong was per se because she made a mistake. (She's sure she made a lot of mistakes but they mostly weren't what caused the problems, unless you count 'allowing the doctor to leave her patient's room without putting in a central' line but she's preeeeetty sure that was because someone else was crashing somewhere else, again, and it would have felt like a dick move and not obviously correct to demand they prioritize her patient anyway.) She would have had to answer differently if the question were 'what shift made you feel shittiest about your performance as a nurse'.

"...Honestly, seeing how things are here, I kind of feel like Montfort, like, frogboiled me into thinking that problems from not enough staff are just unavoidable? I did go over it by myself and try to figure out what I should prioritize differently in future, but I try to do that in general, and it - wouldn't really have occurred to me to go to the unit management with any of my thoughts? There's another case where I did, I can talk about that in a minute if you want. Uh, here, If I had I think I would have said we should be more willing to call in extra staff and rejigger assignments in the middle of the day if it's clearly not working - but, uh, I know later that summer the higher management told our unit manager to stop bringing in people for overtime because they were over budget on salaries, so I dunno if they felt like they could have done that." 

Carla is nodding along while Amanda looks mildly scandalized (on her behalf, probably?). "Keeping an eye out for the worst-case scenarios is part of what we try to do, here, so we're prepared for them. We really do encourage all our staff to let us know if anything happens that might pose a risk, even if it's low likelihood. Someone up the chain might decide it's too low chance anyway, and we don't have infinite money, but I think Lucy and a few of our other imported staff have had a similar... unboiling period, before they realized that even if things are a lot better here than other hospitals, they can still be improved."

"Not infinite funding, no." Dr. Lamb smiles. "But I've yet to get turned down for anything I consider reasonable, at least. And I would like to hear about that other case, whenever you're ready."

"Okay." Why was she nervous about this again, it turns out job interviews are just a fun excuse to air all your grievances with hospital management  oh no what if she's rambling and sounding like an idiot though Marian is going to answer the question! She does think it's actually relevant! And will hopefully, in the context of this hospital, reflect well on her rather than making her sound like a really annoying high-maintenance employee. 

"Uh, so we had a patient with pancreatitis and suspected ileus, his abdomen was really distended, and he was deteriorating - decreasing urine ouput, difficult to ventilate - and someone brought up that maybe he had abdominal compartment syndrome, so I looked that up and saw you can diagnose it by checking bladder pressure to approximate intra-abdominal pressure, and it didn’t look very complicated or anything? But we didn’t have it in the official hospital manual of policies and procedures, and the charge nurse basically said I wasn’t allowed to do it and would be risking my nursing license - this was less than six months after I graduated, I was still technically in the internship period, I think I might have pushed back more if it happened later - anyway, I didn’t do it, I tried to print off the instructions and have the doctor do it but that also didn’t happen for some reason, maybe just that everyone was really busy as usual? ...Anyway, the patient didn't end up making it," and Marian is apparently still kind of upset and mad about the whole thing, "but I brought it up with my preceptor and the nurse educator on the unit a bunch more, and they did add it to the policies and procedures doc and do a training, so that particular thing wouldn't happen again." 

The three of them exchange looks, and Dr. Lamb leans forward slightly to rest on clasped hands as he smiles slightly. "I think our nurse educator is going to like you."

"Agreed. Can I ask, Marian... and I know this is a hard question to answer in front of strangers, particularly in a professional setting, but... what's your relationship to your emotions like? In general, but on the job in particular. Do you feel like you bottle them up to get processed later, or do you feel like they guide and empower you, or something else?"

Yay Marian is getting a good grade in job interviews

- wait, what? Is that a...normal...job interview question...? It feels very unfair, Marian doesn't even slightly have an answer prepared for it!

She does fortunately have a script for not having an answer prepared. She smiles. "That's a really good question! I need a moment to think about it, if that's okay?" 

Okay. Right. What answer do they want from her– ...ugh nevermind, Marian both feels vaguely slimy about that kind of reasoning and also doesn't...know...what the Correct(TM) Job Interview answer is here. She's just going to have to, like, introspect and give them the actual answer and hope it's not terrible. 

"Uh, I - guess it depends on, like, emotions about what?" If the emotion is DYING OF SOCIAL ANXIETY then she feels like there isn't really a better solution than telling it it's stupid and bottling it up. "If I'm really upset because a patient I had gotten attached to didn't make it, or I feel guilty because I missed something and a patient got worse as a result, but I have other patients to focus on, then - yeah, I bottle that up and process it later - my colleagues and I used to go out for breakfast after really rough night shifts and do our processing then. Probably in general I'm more inclined to process after the fact? But, like, some emotions are - useful guidance - like, I have a lot of feelings about whether my patients are comfortable and feel listened to and stuff, people've said I empathize really hard, and I think that's helpful and motivating?" 

Amanda nods. "Some group processing after a shift is common here too. It's a delicate line to walk, between leaning into that empathy or distancing ourselves from the emotions in the moment, but I think both have their time and place. Either way, it's important to me that our nurses feel supported, whether it's through leaning on each other, or, if they're not comfortable with that, getting access to other forms of emotional care."

"Loss is often felt pretty keenly in a small town like this. As someone from outside Haven, you'll be a bit insulated from that, for a while at least, but I'm curious to know how often you've interacted with patient families before, and what that's like for you."

...Huh, yeah, that's a fact about being in a small town where your patients are more likely to be people you know that Marian hadn't really considered yet. Oof. 

"- Uh, a fair amount? It's - I do think of it as part of the job, making sure families are kept up to date and have what they need to feel supported and stuff – especially if their loved one is dying but, like, in general too? Obviously some families are more, uh. Difficult to work with than others. And setting boundaries can be part of the job too. ...I've gotten feedback that I'm good with patients' families, though, uh, with the caveat that it was at the same time as feedback that I would have better time management if I prioritized it less." 

Ugh how much honesty is appropriate here. It's seemed to have mostly gone well when she said things she felt conflicted about saying?

"- Uh, it's also definitely true that - when families are grieving is when it's been hardest for me to keep it together until the end of my shift - but that was mostly when I was in the student care aide program or my final clinical rotation, it - does get easier with practice." 

"I see the families less often now that I'm heading this place, but I remember a few times it's made some hard days even harder." Normally Dr. Lamb's gaze shifts to whoever is speaking at the moment, and defaults to her when he's speaking to her, so it's not that him watching her is unusual... but there's an extra something in his gaze, as he says, "Empathy is highly valued among our staff, but something worth mentioning, I think, is that Haven is home to a number of less common spiritual belief systems, which can also lead to a few unusual forms of grief. Nothing I think you should be worried about, and of course your own religious beliefs, or lack of them, are your own business, but if you're at all uncomfortable interfacing with less 'standard' spiritual expressions, it may be worth letting others interact with the families for a while, until you have a better sense of what to expect."

Um????? 

Marian isn't religious but, like, she's not going to be judgy about it? That's a really basic job requirement?

It's just that now they're being weird again and, uh, Dr. Lamb definitely seems to be implying that whatever the "less standard spiritual expressions" are is something she might be expected to be uncomfortable about? What the heck does he mean by "unusual forms of grief"? 

"I don't think I'm - that easily made uncomfortable - but I'll keep that in mind," she says. 

"He's trying to be diplomatic," Carla says, maybe picking up on her confusion. "But just to give an example, last year someone brought a very lifelike, full-sized doll, complete with chicken blood, into the waiting room as part of a 'protective ritual' while their family member underwent surgery." She shrugs a shoulder, arms crossed. "General hospital policy is that visitors are allowed to perform spiritual or religious rites so long as they're not too disruptive, and that staff members should feel free to remove themselves from any situation that makes them uncomfortable. It's in the orientation material, but it's worth going over more explicitly."

"It's not usually anything that dramatic," Amanda adds, glancing at Carla. "But we've found it helps to forwarn newcomers that they might see or hear unusual things, now and then."

Okay, that’s…weird enough that it kind of wraps around from being really fucked up to being cool. …Like, still disturbing and bizarre, but Marian is almost too fascinated to be uncomfortable.

“…Yeah, okay, I’m glad for the warning! I think I can be, uh, chill about that if it’s not a surprise.” Aaaand she’s going to have to read the orientation packet actually carefully and not zone out, if it might have other tidbits in it like THAT.

Dr. Lamb is smiling slightly as he watches her, now, and says, "I'm guessing you can be too." He checks his watch. "I'm done with my questions, if anyone else has one?"

"Just one. I know it's a cliche, but... where do you hope to be career-wise in five years, Marian? Or ten, or twenty. I know you're still new to the profession, but do you have any long term goals in mind?"

Marian did actually prepare an answer for that! It was on one of the standard lists of interview questions she found on Google. It was also a pretty good prompt to, like, think about it at all. 

"I think mostly I want to get really, really good at being a nurse - like, there are some senior nurses I looked up to on our unit at Montfort who just knew everything and were fast at everything and could multitask doing a really complicated procedure and being empathetic with a patient and - a whole lot of things like that. I might want to be an instructor for clinicals when I have more experience, teaching new nurses is important. ...If I ever did want to branch out into other areas of nursing, maybe ER? I don't think I'd be good at it now, but maybe someday." 

"It's definitely a job that can take a lifetime to master, particularly if you branch out. I'd be happy to give you some time now and to check out what working in the ER is like here, once you're settled into the ICU for a bit."

"Do you have any questions for any of us?"

Marian almost certainly has questions but, uh, not necessarily ones she's delighted about asking hospital management in a job interview. She can ask Lucy later about the ominous chicken-blood doll rituals. 

"Thank you, but I think I'm question'd out," she says wryly. "I definitely need to spend some more time with the orientation packet.”

"Understandable. Why don't you head over to the cafeteria to get some food? You can bring it up to the full staff lounge in the main building, or the ICU one if you'd like, and I'll have someone find you when it's time to meet Rachel, our Nurse Educator."

“Sure, that sounds great!”

It’s tempting to hide in the ICU lounge, but probably more informative and thus virtuous to eat in the big staff lounge, and Marian isn’t that socialed out. She’ll do that.

The cafeteria is split between a soup-sandwich-and-salad shop, a bakery with various pastries from cheesy to sweet, and a cafe with a wide variety of tea or coffee. It's at about a third of capacity, a sporadic scattering of what look like patient friends or families and a few staff members, but when she goes upstairs with her food to the general staff lounge she sees it's more than half full. A quick scan lets her find Lucy sitting at a table with a couple others, but no Mal.

Wow. Marian obtains coffee and a sandwich and will treat herself to a sweet pastry, and then - yeah, okay, if there's room at the table then she would rather sit with Lucy and hopefully get introduced to her tablemates rather than go forge forth and try to brazenly insert herself at a table and meet people on her own like she's the new kid at a high school. Also, anyone sitting with Lucy is probably at least slightly filtered for being normal about newcomers to the town.

She'll sidle over with her food and give Lucy a little questioning wave? 

She smiles back, and once the guy beside her finishes talking, says, "Here she is. Hey Marian, good to see you're still with us. This is Paul, one of our tech guys, and Sarah, from ER." Paul nods to her, and Sarah smiles. "Mal is covering for me, we're gonna swap soon. How was it?"

“Hi! Lovely to meet both of you.” She turns back to Lucy. “I think it went well? I kinda had fun, actually. They asked about my worst shift and - I don’t know if you find this too, but I feel like really bad shifts can make great stories after the fact?”

"Oh yeah, I think about putting up an anonymous blog sometimes, you know? Sharing the best bits that no one outside a hospital sees." She blows on a spoonful of cheesy soup, then swallows it. "I heard you say a memoir is what got you into all this, what parts made it sound good to you?"

“…It was a lot of pieces, I guess?” Marian pauses to take a gulp of her coffee. “If there’s one part that stood out the most, I think it was, like, the teamwork vibe? Everyone just really pulling together to do something ridiculously hard. But it’s also - it seemed like a job that uses all the parts of you more than most jobs? It’s got, like, intellectual puzzles, and having good judgement and intuitions, and social stuff and empathizing with people, and physical tasks and - toughness, being able to just stay on your feet and keep going - I don’t know, I read it and it seemed like it would make me feel really alive. And I was right.”

"Huh," Paul says between sandwich bites. "When you put it like that I feel like I should have given it a try. Could use a boost to my general 'aliveness,' I think."

"You should have said something sooner, I've got just what you need," Sarah says with a smile.

"Stimulants?"

"Defibrillators."

"Feeling alive sounds like a silver lining for how crazy the job can be," Lucy says with a grin. "I like the relaxed days more than the adrenaline pumpers. But I'd probably miss them if things got too easy-going."

Marian smiles slightly at the side conversation. "That seems more sensible of you, really. I don't - sometimes I feel weird about how I like the hectic shifts more, you know? Since obviously a relaxed shift means things are going better for the patients? ...I do also like when there's enough time to do a really good job of stuff like baths, I guess. But I'm definitely a bit in it for the adrenaline." 

"Oh please tell me you mentioned that during the interview, I bet it would have been a first!"

"I don't think I did! I didn't want to, like, sound weird." Though Marian is now struggling slightly to remember exactly what she said and what all the questions were. 

"Well, now we know who to blame if things start to get crazy around here," Paul says, and points a finger-gun at her with one hand. "A month of calm shifts and she might turn to a life of crime just to feel alive again."

"You can ignore him," Sarah says to Marian. "He likes to think he's a detective, he'd be thrilled with an actual mystery."

"Hey, there are plenty of actual mysteries around here."

"Fine, a mystery he can solve."

Marian resists the urge to protest that she absolutely would not, because it's clearly banter and she's not here to be a killjoy. She's aim for a faintly mysterious smile instead. 

...Okay are they sort of acknowledging the thing where this town has a surprising amount of weird going on? Marian should prooobably make some attempt to ask about that even though it feels awkward - what's the least awkward way to ask...

"Ooh, any cool unsolved local mysteries I should know about?" 

"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?" 

"Oh, you're asking the wrong person for that," she says as sops up more soup, her bread bowl now looking precariously thin around the edges. "If I try for a minute I can remember stuff Lucy or Sarah found surprising, and if I try harder I can think of stuff I don't remember seeing in media, but... I dunno, I guess the most common stuff are things people say as part of conversation? Lucy and I went to a restaurant once and these two women were arguing over whether or not they should cast a weather ritual to help put out some fires in California... or like, one was saying it was too risky, because of the ecological effects of messing with the weather, and the other was kind of offended, like her methods were being questioned? I remember her kind of lifting her chin and insisting that any ritual she casts of course takes into account ecological effects... it was really fascinating, to Luce, but I've been overhearing stuff like that all my life."

She shrugs. "And people are a lot more superstitious, here. Not as much at the hospital, but like, you'll see a lot of folks putting out saucers of milk on their windowsills at night, or throwing salt over their shoulder, or tying red string onto things. I never really know how many of them believe it all does something, if you know what I mean? Whether it's the weather rituals or the salt, it just sort of all feels like people being people, believing in some things for good reasons and not really thinking about why they do or believe the other stuff. I asked my mom once if she actually thought the house shrine did anything... mostly I was wondering if she'd get upset if I didn't set one up in my apartment. But she just shrugged and said it made her feel better to have it, and she didn't make a fuss about me not having one, so I guess she's not, like, deep into that sort of thing."

"Huh. Yeah, it would definitely feel kind of surreal to be randomly overhearing that sort of conversation in a restaurant!"

There's a version of 'everyone is superstitious and into woo' that would drive Marian up the wall, but - hopefully this isn't that? It doesn't sound like people are pushy about it. She's glad to be warned but - assuming they offer her the job at all - it feels like a silly reason to turn it down when everything else about it is great. 

"Yeah, that tracks with how most outsiders feel. When I try to imagine not hearing conversations like that once in a while it's a bit surreal in reverse, but Lucy admitted that she did overhear things like, one woman telling another one how drinking a bit of super diluted soap with some sage and thyme in it would solve her arthritis in a New York cafe, so it doesn't seem that different elsewhere, to me."

"...Ew? I haven't heard that many conversations like that but I think maybe Ottawa is just a super boring city." Slight laugh. "Or I don't get out enough." 

"Well, I'd be interested to hear more about Ottawa sometime, and I'll let you know if it gets too boring." Mallory has mostly finished her soup, and is now eating the soup-drenched remainder of the bowl. "Next up for you is basic tech competence stuff, right? And then you're heading home tomorrow?"

"Yeah. - I'd thought about staying longer, but, uh, I haven't actually given notice at my job in Canada yet, so I need to get back ASAP." 

"Oh, yeah that makes sense! I was going to offer to show you around town, but offer open if you end up coming back."

A young woman not dressed in uniform with a full tray of food comes by, eyes scanning the room, then spots Marian and walks over. "Hi, are you Marian? If so, the Nurse Educator told me to let you know she's ready for you in," she checks the clock. "Nine minutes or so."

"I would love that if I do end up coming back!" 

Marian smiles at the young woman. "Thanks for letting me know! ...Uh, we haven't been introduced, have we?" Maybe she's one of the names that was mentioned at various points that Marian definitely didn't retain all of? 

"Oh, uh, no, I'm Linda. I'm here for an interview." She flashes a slight smile, says "Good luck," and wanders off to sit with some others.

"Same to you! Thanks for letting me know!"

And Marian is not going to repeat the mistake she made last time, especially since it's a bit of a longer walk from here to the nurse educator's office. She'll thank Mal warmly for her various advice and info on the town, and say goodbye in case they don't run into each other again before she leaves, and then she's going to go over EARLY and hover nearby rather than risk being late. 

The hospital is quiet and peaceful. Occasionally someone passes by and gives her a curious look, but no one is rushing or looking stressed. The general sense she gets is that, today at least, the hospital is a place of calm people going about their work, focused and diligent.

Eventually it's time, and before she can reach for the door a middle-aged redhead steps out. "Ah, you must be Marian? Good timing. I'm Rachel." She shakes her hand. "This way to the training rooms. How are you finding Haven so far?"

"Pleased to meet you. The town is beautiful! And I like basically everything I've seen about this hospital, so far." 

She'll follow. She's pretty curious what this meeting is going to consist of; they didn't get much orientation to the equipment or computers at Montfort, and definitely none of it was at the interview stage. 

"Glad to hear. It's more than twice as big as the town I grew up in, so it's always hard to see it from an outsider's view."

They reach the rooms, passing by what looks like a small class with chairs facing a whiteboard to enter a room full of various equipment, from an IV stand to defibrillators, along with some lifelike mannequins in various positions on beds.

"So, this is going to be the last bit of your interview, and I know you're tired so I'm sorry you ended up having yours after dinner; I've been busy with our other applicants earlier." She has a clipboard and pen, which she clicks and starts to write with. "This is mostly a basic check of ability, so don't feel too nervous, alright? We just want to make sure if there are any pieces of equipment or basic procedures you'd benefit from extra training on, we're aware of it before a potential hire. Do you have any questions before we begin?"

Ohhh they have their own sim lab that's so cool. She's not surprised to notice that the mannequins looks vastly less decrepit than what the University of Ottawa nursing school had. 

This is fine. She doesn't love demonstrating Nursing Skills while Being Observed (and what the heck is Rachel writing already, she hasn't started yet), but it was mostly awful in school and now, like, she knows what she's doing? Mostly? At least, she's going to tell herself very firmly that there is no need to be stressed about this. If any of them are equipment models she's not familiar with because Canada uses different ones, or if she's confused about what she should be doing, she can just say that, there's absolutely no reason why it should be too embarrassing. 

"Not yet, I don't think?" 

"Great. I think we'll start over there, with cardiac monitoring and interventions..."

Testing time! Various different ones, not rushed or timed but with an ever-watchful Rachel occasionally jotting things down. Nothing she encounters is particularly new or challenging for her, and Rachel seems pleased throughout.

Marian still isn’t the biggest fan of being Observed, but - just like with the interview - she relaxes within the first few minutes and ends up actually kind of having fun.

In what feels like just a short time, Rachel is looking around the room after finishing jotting a few more notes down, and the clock on the wall tells her an hour has passed since she entered. She's gone through most of the room, and after a moment Rachel turns back to her with a smile.

"I'm trying to think of something that might challenge you, but it looks like you know your stuff front and back. Is there anything in here you haven't used before, or don't know how to as well as you'd like?"

Oooh! Marian would not necessarily choose to sign up for a challenge if she weren't confident she had done impressively well on everything else, but at this point she feels good and is having fun and, like, in real life (as opposed to Being Observed With A Clipboard) she does actually really like challenges! 

"Uh, I'm not trained on ECMO - our hospital didn't have the capability to do it, I think I only even saw it once at the big hospital where I did my final clinical. I'm - okay, I'll admit I'm kind of scared of it, but it would also be really cool to be trained on it someday...?" 

She spotted what she THINKS is an ECMO machine in the room but she, uh, has not actually worked with it enough before to be sure. 

"Oh, sure. We've got a bit of time, and I like to see applicants learning new things." She leads her over to the machine Marian correctly guessed was the one. "We've got one for patients and this one for training and as backup. You may know there are two main types, VA and VV?" Rachel sets her clipboard aside and points. "VA-ECMO supports both the heart and lungs, and the setup process takes some doing. First we want to check each part looks okay. This pump circulates the blood from the patient to the ECMO circuit and back. Oxygenator gets it into the blood, and removes carbon dioxide. The heat exchanger, here, regulates temperature. Finally, the cannulae and tubing that connect to the patient. Once we're sure it's all properly clean and intact, begin by priming the circuit." She starts to fill the tubing with saline. "You'll connect the saline bag to the ECMO circuit and open the clamps to allow the solution to flow through. Check for air bubbles, then we move on to cannulation, which is the fun part that the working surgeon or ECMO specialist will be doing. We'll see if we can get you in to assist the next few time it's in use, after some more focused training, so you can get certified."

Rachel stretches the cannulae out. "Each cannula finds a central vein and a central artery. Once they're in place, you'll connect them to the ECMO circuit. Start the pump at a low speed to gradually initiate blood flow through the circuit." She points at the monitor. "Watch the flow rates, pressures, oxygen, and carbon dioxide rates close. Also, keep an eye on the patient's hemoglobin and hematocrit levels. With me so far?"

Marian is with her so far! This is extremely cool and also, uh, definitely more terrifying than dialysis, which just involves a central vein. All the actual subcomponents of the process that would be her job are fine and make sense, though, it's mostly just abstractly very scary. 

"Everything makes sense but I think I'd want, uh, to spend a lot of time making sure I really know the normal flow rates and pressures and stuff, before I'd be comfortable handling this solo?" Right now it's all Just Numbers, and you can cheat on that by setting alarms but Marian prefers to also have the alarms going off in her brain and not just on the machines. 

Rachel smiles. "Of course. Main things you'll want to watch out for, and we'll cover this in regular training if you come for that, are clot formation in the circuit and air embolisms. If you notice clotting, you may need to administer anticoagulants or replace the oxygenator." She demonstrates. "In case of air embolism, immediately clamp the circuit and follow emergency protocols. If the pump fails, you have to manually pump the blood using hand cranks until you can switch to a backup pump. Hopefully someone else will be available to come help with that."

She starts to return things to how they were. "Other than that, it's standard monitoring. Check for bleeding and infection at the cannulation sites, make sure they're comfortably sedated. We'll go over the sorts of adjustments you might need to make if any of the numbers stray too far in the bad directions. We can do a few training sessions once you've got your normal weekly schedule down. How does that sound?"

"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.

Marian is definitely a secondhand-bike person normally, but like, she can afford a nicer bike on her new salary. Also it seems less likely it'll get stolen in a small town, probably, so it's less wasteful to spend a big chunk of money? 

She'll look at the secondhand bikes anyway, in case she happens to love one of them, but otherwise she's willing to spend up to let's say $800 to get a nice lightweight bike. (It's double what she's ever spent on a bike before and it's in US dollars.) 

Is there a store owner around who she should ask about taking her selected bike on a test ride? 

The store owner is busy talking with a family looking over some child bikes, but one of the employees is available! He's a dark haired college guy of roughly college age, and he's wearing some band tshirt, cargo pants, and an earring with a small, sharp tooth (fang?) hanging from the lobe.

"You can try it out here," he says as he leads her to the mostly empty lot behind the store. "If you want to try it out on more hilly ground, I can grab a bike and ride around with you a bit. New in town?"

Marian is not staring at the tooth on his earring but it is, perhaps, a somewhat effortful non-stare. 

"Yeah! I just moved here from Canada. I'm a nurse, I'll be working at the hospital." 

He smiles. "Cool. I hope we only meet again on my turf, then, or neutral ground."

What the heck does that mean??? 

"Uh, yeah, please don't get sick or injured enough to end up in the ICU, that would suck." 

She'll ride the bike around a bit, and - then, yeah, if he doesn't mind then she would like to try it out on the hills as well.

He seemed to agree it would suck, and, still smiling, goes to grab a bike from inside before following her out into the hilly roads.

"Want a tour?" he asks as he bikes casually behind her.

"Sure!" Marian calls back over her shoulder. 

(There are going to be hills. There's no actual reason why Marian has to prove her physical prowess to this random bike store employee, but - it’s possible that she’s feeling competitive and determined to prove that she can handle hills, especially given how she’s currently riding the fanciest bike she’s ever ridden in her life.)

He leads her around a couple blocks, pointing out a book and board game store he likes, a tea shop called PoeTea with a gimmick of serving random personalized poetry with every order, and, when they reach the to of one of the hills, a well positioned bench with a nice view of the northeastern portion of town.

She manages the hills! Probably the competitiveness helps! The bike handles really well, in any case; it may not be what helped her overcome the hills, but it may have been a close call with a slightly worse bike.

Oh good! Marian appreciates the tour and, once they get back, is inclined to go ahead and buy this bike? It seems like a pretty good bike.

"Thanks for your business," the guy says as he takes her card. "Can I get you any extras? Bike locks, pads and helmet, stability charm, night lights?" He taps a bag hanging on the wall behind him, which seems to have all of the above in it. "Special deal for all at once."

Marian can afford extras and, since she does need a lock and helmet and lights, will definitely get the special deal for all of them!

(- wait, did he say stability charm? ....nevermind, Marian is just going to make a mental note of another Weird Thing and keep going with her day.) 

"Enjoy, and feel free to come back if your tires ever need more air, on the house."

"Thanks!" She might even have to take them up on that, since she didn't pack her bike pump or tire repair kit, they're still in her parents' basement, and she doesn't think it makes sense to buy a new set here. 

Marian will head out of the store, wheeling her new bike and holding the bag of various accessories, and then - oh right, it's not dark out yet so she doesn't need lights, but she should dig the helmet out of the bag probably? 

She does so, and beneath it, nestled between two elbow pads, she sees a thin metal chain, like one would wear around their wrist. A small charm is attached to it, an eight-pointed star set within a circle.

Huh. That's cute. Weird, but charming and very on-brand for this town. 

Marian puts it on, why not. (She doesn't bother with the elbow pads. It seems extremely unlikely she's going to crash her bike when riding on surface streets to get home.) 

It rests comfortably against her arm. After a few moments the temperature matches her skin and she barely feels it.

In that case Marian is likely to completely forget she's wearing it pretty soon! 

She doesn't have a pressing reason to be back at her apartment immediately – it's not like she has anything much to do tonight except make herself something to eat – so maybe she'll do a bit more leisurely biking around and seeing the town, in the opposite direction from where the bike store employee took her. 

The wind is chilly and crisp as she rides, leaves crunching under her tires as she zips from block to block, each building lit orange in the slanting light of the early afternoon. She eventually finds herself in a square, with a large stately building on one side, crowned with an untarnished brass bell and framed by grandiose columns. A gazebo gleams a clean white in the middle of the square, and she spots a bank beyond it, opposite the stately building that's probably the town hall. On the other two ends of the square are a library and post office-general store combo

The square has about a dozen people crossing through it in various directions, and the scent of wood smoke fills the air. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barks, and further out she hears the rumble of a garbage truck as it drives further away.

Oh wow, it's gorgeous. 

Marian probably has time to lock her bike up with her new bike lock and check out the library? It's not a huge deal if she ends up biking home after dark, she kept careful track of the turns she made and she has lights. 

As she gets closer she realizes that the building looks a bit like a church, or maybe was one at some point? But instead of stained glass windows there are normal ones, and there's no religious iconography: just the words HAVEN PUBLIC LIBRARY on the sign outside.

There's a stillness to the air inside, absent the chill wind that blows over the hilly streets. Warmth slowly seeps back over her body, and the faint noises of the town mute entirely once the doors close.

There are people at tables, on couches, at desks. Above them is a second floor, and in what might have once been the altar, a small cafe spreads the scent of coffee to contend with the books.

Many, many books. The walls are covered with them, and more fill shelves that alternate between the various seating areas.

Marian should definitely be trying to meet new people, she's going to be living here, but that's aaaawkward and maybe she'll just...go browse some books. Do they have a sci-fi section? 

They do! A sign for "Classics" at the far left seem to indicate everything from dead writers, and further to the right trends toward "Contemporary" from living ones.

There are two more signs in the middle of the section: "Soft" below and "Hard" above.

Marian is definitely more into Contemporary authors, even if she sometimes feels sort of vaguely unvirtuous about it. She'll have a peek at the Hard scifi in the Contemporary section, thoooough she's also definitely going to be discreetly people-watching while trying not to be weird about it. 

There are a variety of people all looking over various bookshelves, some just scanning titles, some picking out a few to examine the covers or flip through their contents. Most look normal, though the jewelry (charm?) trend continues, every third or fourth person having some specific bit that follows the theme she's seen all day.

After a couple minutes she spots a guy with glasses, moving slowly in her direction. He has a notebook in one hand, which he's constantly writing in as he looks between it and the books on the shelves, frowning slightly.

(Well, Marian is also now on board with the jewelry trend, apparently! Though she'll have to take it off at work, bracelets don't mix well with constant hand hygiene.) 

...Huh, what's that guy up to? Marian isn't sure how weirded out to be. She'll, uh, offer him a friendly smile, unless he's avoiding eye contact in which case she'll try to do that and fail. 

He'll notice her when he's a few paces away, distractedly (maybe reflexively?) smile back, until his gaze drops to something else, and he focuses back on the shelved books.

Welp that was awkward. Whatever. Marian is a little embarrassed at how hard she's failing to be socially outgoing and Make Friends, but to be fair she hadn't been planning on that when she left her apartment. She should probably head back soon, anyway. 

...She's also realizing that she doesn't, like, actually have a library card for this library, and wouldn't be able to take out any books even if she wanted to. Soooo maybe she should go ask about that? 

"Oh, welcome to Haven! Just fill out this form with your address, and we'll send you a card in a few days."

Yep, easy, she can do that! She does have to think for a moment to remember her address.

A crowd of students enters the library as the librarian takes the form back with a smile. They look to be somewhere between 7-10ish, and are wearing slightly formal uniforms, jackets over button up shirts for the boys and blazers over thin sweaters for the girls. The two adults with them is wearing a larger version of the uniform, and after saying something in a low voice to the crowd, the kids spread out in pairs to peruse the shelves.

Awww, cute! And so reassuringly normal and not weird. Marian will smile and wave at the kiddos on her way out. 

A couple will wave back, smiling, and then she's back outside in the crisp autumn-scented wind, the sunlight starting to turn gold as the afternoon deepens.

And she'll cheerfully bike home to her new apartment to do a bit more unpacking and make herself some vegetable stew for dinner and to pack for lunch tomorrow. ...She makes a note to herself that it would be cool to know her neighbors, and maybe on her next day off she can do some baking and bring them cookies or something - that's how you get to know your neighbors, right? at least in a small town she doesn't think that's super weird to do - but for right now she does kind of want to save her social energy for her FIRST DAY AT A NEW JOB.

WOOO FIRST DAY

"C'mon in," Carla says when Marian knocks on her office door, as email instructed, and when she walks in she sees her manager arranging some snowglobes on her shelf. "Welcome back." She's smiling as she turns and picks up a folder. "Good day to have as your first, we've been empty since yesterday afternoon. Come on, let's get you set up at the nurse station so you can get through some of these trainings... and don't get excited, Rachel mentioned your zeal in the training room, these are just to make sure you understand Haven's procedures and software and so on."

(It is so surreal that the unit being empty is a thing that happens???? Honestly, some part of Marian would maybe have preferred for her first day to be a super busy hectic hellshift - because it's more interesting and because everyone else would be too busy to pay attention to her and make her feel Observed - buuuuut that's an irresponsible thing to want, it'll definitely be better for her future patients if she has time to really get to know how things work around here.) 

Marian is going to very firmly try not to feel embarrassed about having her ""zeal"" called out. She's pretty sure that being enthusiastic about training is a good thing, even if it's probably part of why she stood out to Isobel's clique at Montfort as a target for bullying. 

She is caffeinated and so ready to go on learning Haven's procedures and software!

A quick stop at the locker rooms to show her which is hers, some privacy to change into her new uniform, some ID cards, and then...

"Welcome back!" Mallory waves enthusiastically from the nurse station, beaming as she and Carla approach.

Lucy is smiling too, and pats the back of a chair next to the computer beside her. "All yours, already set up and ready for you to go through the gauntlet."

"It's not that bad. Just a bit boring."

"Hopefully some companionship helps you get through it faster," Carla says, smiling despite her dry tone. "But if they're more of a distraction, there are private work rooms too, if you remember where they are?"

It'll probably be a little distracting, but on the other hand Marian does really want to get off on the right foot here and actually make friends among her colleagues, which means avoiding being too introverted. 

"I do remember where they are, thanks, but I'll try doing it here to start." She smile brightly at Carla and then slips into the chair in front of the computer. 

"Alright, feel free to come find me if you need anything, or when you finish."

Mallory waits until Carla is out of sight, then smiles at Marian. "I want to ask you how the move went and what part of town you're in and everything, but I don't want to distract you either. But if you happen to have some spare attention you can imagine that I'm interested in those things!"

"Same," Lucy says while browsing through some patient records. "I'll be doing some outpatient followups, but feel free to talk under me."

Marian smiles back at Mal. "Yeah. Uh, I should see what this involves and then I'll know if I have spare attention?" 

How difficult is the procedures and software orientation? 

Not terribly, relative to what she's used to! There are tutorials walking her through a few stereotypical example cases. They're efficient, if a bit mind numbingly simple, clearly meant for people less computer savvy than she is.

...Yeah okay this is kind of boring as a sole activity. Marian does conscientiously try to give it her full attention for a few minutes, buuut it does eventually seem like she's not going to miss out on anything if she multitasks. 

"- Uh, I think the move went okay?" she says to Mal. "Only got in yesterday. I bought a bike and signed up for a library card." 

"Ooo, I haven't been to the library in years. It's nice, isn't it?"

"Yeah, it was nice!" Click click click Marian will do a few more tutorial bits before answering in more detail. "Bigger than I would've expected for a small town, I think? Oh, and I saw a bunch of really cute schoolkids come in at one point, is it near the elementary school?" 

"Ten minute walk, yeah." Mallory lowers her voice as Lucy starts talking to someone on the phone. "I remember going a few times when I was in fifth or sixth grade. We had a library at the school, but it wasn't as big or interesting, and we were doing a research project on the history of the town, so we went down to look through old newspaper articles."

Wow. The newspaper archives for this town are probably fascinating. 

Marian clicks through a few more items, and then lowers her voice as well to answer. "Any super cool weird town history you remember finding?" 

"Heck yeah!" She's still whispering despite her enthusiasm. "Turns out there were a ton of duels in our history! It was a huge part of the culture of the founding members, it's how they solved a bunch of political deadlocks. Families also sometimes solved their grievances that way... never to the death, that was illegal, of course, but even after it was banned at the state level, there are rumors it continued as recently as the second World War."