For some reason people seem to think asking around to find the New York table is a very weird thing to do, but eventually someone points her to it; two tables actually, right in the middle of the Anglosphere side of the cafeteria, under a stretch of ceiling with no air vents and a stretch of floor with only one drain, which a sandy-haired boy is sitting atop and periodically looks at hopefully.

....Isn't that a bad idea here? 

“I’m Marian, the school nurse,” Marian says, trying to sound like someone who is extremely qualified for this and 100% knows what she’s doing. “I was looking for Julia?”

People look vaguely startled at this!

Oh right, the school nurse exists!! Poor thing!! The original idea the NY redesign team had in the 1950s was that, being a mundie, the school nurse would be ignored, and that having an infirmary would solve the tragic problem where even minor injuries were often deadly if you didn't have really solid healing magic, which the indies can't afford. They even tried to tweak the spell to specifically search for the kind of people who'd want to save dying teenagers even if it meant never going home again. But the school nurse, despite being a mundie, turned out not to be ignored anywhere near hard enough to survive, and so it's just kind of a way to murder random people, which is pretty unethical if you think about it!!!

"I'm Julia," says Julia brightly. 

“Hi! I, uh, wanted to ask you about something. I heard you have a - magic rug? Is that right?”

"I have a friendship with a magic rug." Healing Our Souls, Healing Our World: A Year In A Circle With Gwen Higgins, the bestselling book by a New York indie author who also filed the serial numbers off and sold it as a self-help memoir to mundies, argues that the reason items go bad is that we think of them as possessions rather than agents, as instruments of our will rather than allies in our shared goals, that it's a form of modern-day slavery that damages us and damages our relationships. Julia thought it was very deep. 

Uh oh was that a faux pas. “Sorry,” Marian mumbles, sheepish. “I— anyway, is it true that your rug is - helpful for doing therapy and talking about your feelings? Because, uh, the mental health of students is one of my serious concerns right now, and I think this school could really badly use a support group for anyone who’s finding it a rough adjustment? And, uh, I was wondering if - I was hoping you might be interested in helping with that?”

"You think we should have, like, therapy sessions? With my rug? Where everyone talks about how they're coping with high school and with how, like, traumatically ugly this place is?"

Wow that was surprisingly easy! 

“Yeah! That was basically what I was picturing! I mean, also the part where being attacked by magic death monsters is presumably pretty traumatic? But…yeah. Uh, does that - sound like something you’d be up for helping with?”

"Yeah! It could be on Wednesday afternoons? I have Wednesday afternoons free. I think we need snacks, can the infirmary dispense snacks if they're for therapeutic purposes? That'll also get a lot of kids to come, if you tell them that there'll be therapeutic snacks. And tea! New York has a teapot and I could probably borrow it for therapy but I can't use New York's tea, it's really expensive here, but maybe if it's therapy tea the infirmary can provide it? I read the design plans and they said the infirmary is supposed to give you medically necessary things for the students, and I think the tea is medically necessary for therapy!"

“I was kind of thinking about that! I think the food being terrible is - actually pretty bad for kids who’re already struggling? Because depression can mess with appetite and then not eating enough makes you more depressed. I— oh, I should’ve realized I could try to sell the void on Ensure meal shakes being medically necessary. I can try it for tea and cookies too. …Uh, how many people could realistically do group therapy in your room at once? Trying to think if we should have more than one session back to back, or alternate weeks or something, depends how long a gap you have on Wednesdays I guess…”

"Oh, I have the whole afternoon off from lunch to dinner, I guess we could do back to back sessions! It's a freshman dorm, it can maybe fit eight people if we really squeeze, but probably that's good for us? Because it's intimate and will make us feel closer to one another."

“Yeah!” Hmm, what else can she argue has therapeutic benefits for a school full of traumatized kids. “I wonder if I could sweet-talk the void into giving me - hmm, art supplies to do art therapy? Scented candles for aromatherapy?”

"You're a genius," says Julia cheerfully. "...emotional support animals would be really neat, except people will eat them, and I dunno if they'll be good for emotional support, given that..."

"- Also maleficers would drain their life-force for more magic and apparently that's actually really bad for your mental health," Marian says. 

"Well, we shouldn't invite maleficers to therapy! But yeah I guess they might steal the animals afterwards."

"- I feel like they need therapy even more than most people!" Marian is mostly thinking of the disturbing horror-movie-soundtrack murder kid. "But, uh, super fair if you don't want them in your room." 

"New York can't consort with maleficers, everyone else would freak. It's like how, uh, maybe Osama bin Laden needs therapy but if he showed up somewhere and was like "hey, I want to hang out here and do therapy", we'd actually just kill him, with a drone strike - I don't know if that's a good analogy -"

"Maleficers are doomed," says Silas flatly. "They'll rot from the inside out. There's no way to save them but there is a way to save other people from them, and it's not therapy."

"Ohgod. Eww." 

Marian takes a deep breath. Focus. 

"...Is it possible to reverse?" she asks quietly. "I mean, it's - like an addiction, right? And in the mundane world, even if people are doing crimes because they're addicted, we - it's an illness, and sometimes it's possible to treat. And that would also stop them from murdering anyone, right, if you got them wanting to quit and recover so they wouldn't rot?" 

- shrug. "Some people go clean after graduation?" 

"If they've got family who can protect them so they don't have to use magic while they're trying to shake the habit," Silas says. "Trying to use magic but only mana as a maleficer is like trying to drink in moderation as an alcoholic, it doesn't work, you have to stop. If you've gone far enough you can't even make mana normally anymore. And no one can stop using magic in here. The Scholomance isn't the outside. If you're a danger to people, they put you down, nothing to do with whether it's your fault."

Oh no that's so upsetting. ...Marian is also not taking it at face value. She has to remind herself that, given her complete lack of cultural context on this, she has no idea whether this viewpoint is more analogous to Alcoholics Anonymous or that 12-step program for quitting street drugs that the hospital has flyers for, or...what's a good comparison point...those horrible abstinence-only-sex-ed-esque support programs run by Christians for people with "porn addictions." (Which might be fine? Marian doesn't want to accidentally be biased against religious people just because she herself isn't. It's just that the documentary they showed in class was really weird and unimpressive.) 

"....I guess it makes sense that quitting would be really hard in here," she says quietly. "But - I mean - the version where people just use animals isn't a crime, right? And - my sense was that people do do that, sometimes, until they graduate, and they don't go on murder rampages in the meantime?" 

"New York doesn't abide maleficers," says Julia firmly. "We aren't going to go out of our way to kill someone who hasn't killed anyone else, but if they want a rehab they can't use my rug, and I haven't got life advice for them, except 'I guess you shouldn't have blown up the Twin Towers'."

....Okay. New York is institutionally required to be incredibly judgy. Good to know? 

"Right. I understand," Marian says, very professionally. "It'd be - probably not a great fit anyway, honestly. In the mundane world, they do group therapy in, like, prisons and stuff, with convicted murders, but they don't have them go to the same therapy group as high school students." 

"And also they're in prison! And can't hurt anyone else! Which seems like an important difference!"

"Mmm." Marian is not going to argue this point any longer. She still feels really bad for traumatized murder kid, but - Julia has a point, it's kind of absurd to imagine him in a group therapy session with scented candles and art, and if she somehow did convince him, he would just be disruptive. 

"- Anyway, if we're going to get therapeutic supplies from the void, we should - probably convince it we know what we're doing? So I think I'll see if I can get it to give me some workbooks on doing group therapy?" 

"My rug is Buddhist, so ideally it'd be Buddhist group therapy, like with meditation and stuff."

"Oh yeah, meditation, that's something we could do! I bet I can get the void to give me a book on it. ...Uh, what does it mean, that your rug is Buddhist?" 

"Like, the pattern is Buddhist and it likes it when I do yoga on it and I decorated the rest of my room to go with it, with Buddhist inscriptions a Chinese kid did."

Marian...feels like that cannot possibly be how things work. Then again, apparently magic is a thing and she would have said yesterday that that couldn't possibly be how anything worked, so clearly her qualifications here are dubious. 

"Uh, right. We can probably do yoga too, although it might not work that well if the room is really packed." 

"We could do yoga in the gym maybe! Not as therapy, just as group exercise."

"Is the gym, uh, safe?" 

"Well, no? But it's the place that has enough space for group exercise and we can drag Orion along."

"Uh, sorry, who's Orion?" 

She points at the boy sitting atop the drain. "That's Orion! He can handle mals."

"Are we allowed in the gym outside Field Day this year? Somebody told me I wasn't allowed in the gym freshman year."

Someone probably was worried he'd join the seniors on gym runs just for fun. He probably would. "Freshmen are allowed in the gym! It's usually too dangerous, but I thought maybe you could look out for us!"

"Yeah, sure!"

"Maybe we can do yoga on, like, Sundays? I feel like Sundays are a good day for yoga because they're supposed to be a day of rest."

"Oh! That's, uh, really good to know. ...Uh, hey. Orion?" She waves at the kid. "Can I ask you something?"

"Hm?"

"- Sorry, I don't know if you heard when I introduced myself. I'm Marian, the school nurse. I'm not magical, apparently they just kidnap us. Anyway, I - really want to not die - and I'm trying to be smart about it? So I was wondering if there might be anything I could trade with you, or the rest of New York - I can get drugs and medical books from the void and maybe other things if I can make a case that they're medically necessary - and I would really like it if you could, uh, be my...bodyguard...if I want to go anywhere...?" 

Marian isn't sure she's ever been this self-conscious in her entire life! But - it's a good idea. If she wants to survive longer than a month, it's going to require strategy. 

"Uh - Julia do we have extra buzzer things -"

Awkward! "I think we have, uh, two. For graduation alliances."

"Well that's years off, right, she could have one now?"

Marian has no idea what they're talking about! But it sure sounds like it might be important! 

"- I know I won't be any good for your, uh, team," that's not the word but she's forgotten the right word, "at graduation. Since I'm not magic. But I am a fully trained and qualified ICU nurse - I've saved patients with gunshot wounds and severe sepsis from other injuries - and I'm the only person here over twenty-one, plus, uh, I didn't have to spend most of my early teens frantically learning survival skills and combat magic instead of anything else? So I bet I know a lot of science and bio and chemistry stuff that no one else here does. I've already got one of the Chinese students doing a medical apprenticeship with me...." 

Marian runs out of breath and a second later runs out of bravado and– shit did she just say all of that out loud, aaaaaaaaaah they're going to think she's - what - she doesn't even know, actually - 

She wants to survive as long as she can and she wants to save as many people as she can until then and that's what's important here. 

"- Anyway. I think I can save a lot of kids who do have magic, and - maybe make the difference, for you guys, on having enough allies at graduation that you all make it out alive? But if you want me to - provide all the value I can here - then I need help with the surviving part. Because I've got a magic knife but I can't learn spells. I just wanted to say that." 

.....and now she can quietly die of humiliation about how she actually said all of that out loud. 

SOOO awkward. "You can ask the seniors?"

Soooooooooooooooooooooooooooo awkward. 

"- I would like to do that. Where are they." 

"- up in the library probably? It's their work period. New York's got a spot right in the middle of the reading room, three couches and two coffee tables and a teapot, can't miss it."

.....Marian has MANY concerns with this! One of them being that she has literally no idea how to find the library from here. 

"...Uh. Can I - trade a favor right now for one of you to walk with me? - I don't know what sorts of things you need, but the void is pretty happy to give me antidepressants basically whenever, and it seems like I can get ADHD drugs like Adderall if you pass an ADHD screening test first? And I have, uh, a bag of saline and a lot of gauze and some tape measures that I don't think are evil yet." 

"None of us have ADHD!... I guess Zeke might have ADHD? I'm allowed to take Adderall for midterms and finals and twice a semester just to stay up later but if I feel the need for it more than that I'm supposed to hire out more homework, my dad thinks that it's not actually good for teenagers to take stimulants too much. If you get the tea and snacks we'll absolutely trade you for the tea and snacks."

"....I mean, it's probably not good for your brain development, but neither is being murdered by homework or evil magic death monsters! So, uh, it - seems like the cost-benefit analysis there is kinda different. Anyway I don't know how big a thing you'd need to trade for walking me to the library. I have some mild pain meds," she eventually figured out that 'paracetamol' is the same thing as 'acetaminophen', "and a lot of alcohol swabs?" 

“I definitely have way more ADHD than, like, most people, I dunno if I’d pass a screening thingy? I could maybe help with bodyguarding stuff in return for a screening thingy but I shouldn’t, like, do it by myself or whatever - do you wanna help with bodyguarding stuff,” he asks Orion.

"Like right now? Sure, I don't think anything's down there," he says, gesturing at the drain.

"Uh, sure, I'm happy to do the screening with you after." Mostly Marian just wants a chance to make her case in front of someone who actually has any authority here to make decisions. At that point, she'll at least know whether this is an at-all-viable path for her. 

"We can all go to the library now, I guess." She stands up and tucks her spice-shakers back into her bookbag.

Marian follows her. She's quiet, mostly focused on trying to psych herself up for giving an Inspiring Speech to the NY seniors about her potential value to the school. 

The New York juniors and sophomores are lounging in their study area, working and speaking to each other quietly. The teapot is whistling. 

(Zeke stuffs the rest of his food into his face in about ten seconds flat and then follows along! He’s going to get a bunch of adderall or whatever and he’s not going to have to worry about draining the general supply and then he’s going to get to learn even more LANGUAGES and also do other stuff probably.)

"Where's Annaka, the school nurse has a question."

        "She's busy."

"It's the first day of classes! And she has a morning gym slot, she told me."

        "She's busy, Julia. What's the question?"

And then another girl, who looks like Julia but infinitely more dangerous and slightly less exquisitely makeup-ed, stomps through the reading room and says something quietly to a junior, who runs off. 

"There you are! This is Marian, she had a question and I told her she could ask you."

"Sure, what can I help you with?" says Annaka very very briskly.

......Wow. That is the facial expression and body language of someone who has just been interrupted with SOMETHING ELSE in the middle of a shift that involved her patient coding ten minutes ago and her other patient's horrible granddaughter yelling at her on the phone for half an hour. Metaphorically speaking. 

"...Sorry if now's not a good time," Marian says. "I - just wanted to make the case that it's worth New York, uh, investing some resources in helping me live longer so I can save more of your kids and the other kids they might ally with later. I was an intensive care nurse - I know my shit - but I can't do magic so I need some help here." 

"We've got the extra buzzers that warn Orion -"

"...and that someone could use to lure him," Annaka says flatly. "Not that. Happy to have someone - ward her room, make her a fighty construct, whatever. Ask Mark."

“I have an enchanted knife,” Marian offers. Gets it out to show them. “And one of the Chinese students is doing wards for me in exchange for apprenticing in medicine. But I just figured I should do all the precautions I can. Um, and in particular I might want to sometimes leave the infirmary to go check on students? And I was wondering if Orion could escort me, sometimes, it wouldn’t take long…”

"I have no objections to that," Annaka says briskly. 

"We were thinking about running group therapy sessions!" Julia says cheerfully. "And seeing if we can convince the school that snacks and tea for therapy are medically necessary."

"Don't say anything about any New Yorkers in group therapy," says Annaka immediately. 

"I'm not an idiot!"

....Shit. She's missing a LOT of context here.

And, on the one hand, obviously Marian is in a position to give advice to this poor kid - she can't be more than seventeen, eighteen, and she's running around frantically, responsible for people's lives with even higher stakes than Marian herself has dealt with - 

- but on the other hand, it's just as obvious that the New York kid - Annaka? - has literally no reason to think that Marian is even slightly competent or useful to her. After all, Marian isn't a wizard. She didn't know magic existed until yesterday. She's just a random, helpless, kidnapped mundane human, who - from Annaka's perspective, and Marian has to admit it's a very plausible perspective - is almost certainly going to die no matter what happens. 

"Thank you," she says to Annaka, meeting her eyes levelly. "I really appreciate that.

And she catches Julia's eye, and lowers her voice. "...Clearly something's going on here that's above my head, so I - think I should just make a list of services we could exchange, and you can show it to her later when it's a better time?" 

"Yeah, I can do that - look, the one bright side of all the seniors running around for some stupid reason is that we can get a couch -"

         "Good luck, stay safe, I'll look forward to hearing more later," says Annaka in one breath, and leaves.

"- Is someone dying?" Marian asks Julia, because she can't help herself. "I - sorry - your sister's making the face that I make when one of my patients is trying to die on me." 

"I don't think she'd be that upset if it was just that someone was dying! Maybe if it was one of ours? Is one of our people dying?" she asks the room at large. 

         "They're doing an investigation," one of the juniors says irritably. "We haven't put out a don't-be-surprised yet so don't spread it around."

"I see." 

She really doesn't. An investigation of what? 

...She can't help here, Marian forcibly reminds herself. Her job is to be the school nurse. Not less, not more. Just doing that is going to be hard enough. 

"Thanks," she says to Julia, with a lot more weariness in her voice than she meant to let slip. "I guess I should go do a screening with Zeke now?" 

"Have some tea first!"

Well, that's almost like coffee. 

"- Sure! I'd love to." 

Someone pours her a cup. 

The reading room is ...actually quite nice? The Void is visible past the mezzanine, but it's warmly lit and the couches are comfortable and the students look - relaxed, not totally miserable, as they work through their homework assignments, pouring over impressive leather-bound books. In the distance other kids are sitting in worse seats with worse lighting, but this table here is cozy. Julia has pulled up a pillow to sit on and is reading the Iliad.

Marian eagerly takes the opportunity to SIT DOWN. 

(You would think that being a school nurse required less standing and running around than being an ICU nurse, and this might be true if her infirmary had any...seating...other than the stupid cots. However, her feet still hurt.) 

She also takes the opportunity to make some discreet observations. There...sure do seem to be some bizarre class dynamics here? The New York group is clearly the elites. She's not totally sure about Shanghai's relative status, but - they're better off than the independent kids? And definitely better off than the random mundanes who didn't know magic was a thing until today. Like - what was her name, oh, right, Wendy. 

...right, she should find Wendy and tell her that her stash of Adderall is going to find buyers in the Shanghai enclave. Maybe. Unless getting it from the void saturates the market, but the void isn't exactly an infinite supplier of controlled substances... 

Trying to simultaneously track what's medically justified and appropriate versus what will keep Marian herself alive versus what will benefit various other specific students is making Marian's head hurt. She decides to take a break from thinking about it and read titles of library books while she sips her tea. 

Most of them are in languages she doesn't speak but some English titles include Alchemee By Artificial Light and Practical Potions for the Modern Home and All You Need To Know About Ancient Magical History.

...She kind of wants the one about ancient magical history, actually? It seems - relevant, to understanding this bizarre hidden world she's fallen into. And also it'll be something to do when she's not seeing patients. 

"Julia?" she says quietly. "Am I - allowed to take out books from the library?" 

"It's not disallowed but they're really picky and tend to vanish on you and then you won't ever be able to find them again."

Well that's not creepy at all! 

Marian would maybe risk it for something really important. A random history book she just happened to spot is not that. 

"....Oh. Uh, I - probably shouldn't actually stay here and read it, I need to get back to the infirmary in case anyone's looking for me needing medical attention." Maybe later once she's in a more stable position - if she's not dead - she can trade favors and have someone hand-copy the relevant sections. Or she can see if the void is willing to be nice and give her a non-medical book. "Any chance Orion or someone could walk me back down?" 

"Don't you need to screen Zeke so you can give him Adderall? I bet he'll go back with you for that."

"Sure, yeah, that works if you think he's up for taking on any mals that bother us." Marian feels awkward even pushing back that much, but it would also be so stupid if she died because she felt socially awkward about asking teenagers for favors. 

"It's the first day, and mostly the recommended thing to do about mals is to run away from them rather than fight them anyway. I think you'll both be fine."

"Cool, good to know. Thanks for the tea!" And she really hopes it doesn't keep her up tonight. "If I get any neat Buddhist meditation or therapy books, I'll let you know." 

She looks around for Zeke. 

Annaka trots back a few minutes later. "Julia!" she says in brisk-rushed-voice. "You're not in trouble and no one's dead but we need to talk with you. Is this a good time?"

"You're going to have grey hair by the time you're, like, twenty-three. Is this about the smelly -"

"Julie, please come with me."

"Have fun nursing people," she tells Marian, and stands up with great annoyance to go join her sister.

Zeke is located over in that direction and seems to be only somewhat occupied by staring vaguely at a section of wood grain. It’s very wood and very grain.

Marian goes to join him - 

- and then stops, and pokes the wood with her ivory magic knife. "....Is that a death monster disguised as wood." 

Zeke edges away from the wood.

“- I don’t think so is there like an eye stalk poking out or something -“

"What? Oh, no, I - it looks normal to me? I just got nervous because you were paying a lot of attention to it and you've got magic." 

“Oh, okay, cool - I was bored and there’s a weird knot in the wood and I thought it looked super neat!” he says, pointing at the weird knot in the wood that looks super neat.

Huh, okay, maybe this kid actually literally has ADHD. 

"I guess," Marian says, not sounding very convinced. "Uh, I - would've thought it wasn't a great idea to get really focused on looking at something neat, in here? Because you'll miss seeing the death monsters?" Her fingers semi-involuntarily tighten on the hilt of her ivory knife, which she's barely let go of during the last 24 hours. 

“We’re, like, in the library with a bunch of seniors and Orion and stuff, I’m not gonna go to sleep but it’ll probably be fine.”

"If you say so. Uh, anyway, I was hoping maybe you could walk me back downstairs to the infirmary and then I can do the ADHD screening stuff with you?" 

“Totally!”

Marian follows him down the stairs. Keeps an eye out and her knife in her hand, just in case he's inattentive in general. 

He is taking this so seriously and doing such a good job at looking out for mals! Probably! His eyes are darting around a lot, at least.

They encounter a tiny blue octopus creature that runs away from them at high speed, jaunting merrily on all eight legs like some sort of horrible cephalapod spider, and a slippery ooze that they can just walk around, and then they are at her office!

The octopus thingy was kind of cute? Probably she's not really supposed to think that about the death monsters. 

Marian ushers Zeke into her infirmary-office and offers him a seat on one of the cots. "Uh, right. I think this time I'm going to ask the void nicely for a clinical screening tool on this. It's been so helpful." Flattery flattery flattery. 

The void will provide! 

It's a very bad photocopy of a multipage questionnaire, but the text is large so it's still readable. The first page has a list of items, and checkboxes beside each one for 'happens at home', 'happens at work', and 'happens in social life.' 

Carelessness
Overlook or miss details? Submit inaccurate work?
 
Trouble staying focused
Trouble focusing throughout meetings or conversations?

Poor listening
Do you become distracted during conversations?

Easily sidetracked
Do you start tasks then lose focus?
 
Difficulty organizing work
Are you disorganized and messy? Do you miss deadlines?

This is really involved and feels kind of ridiculous, but the void does seem to be more helpful when she does a bunch of rigamarole around it? Maybe it's like some bizarre magical variant on the placebo affect? 

Marian asks all of the questions and checks off boxes based on Zeke's answers. 

He overlooks things sometimes but it’s hard to tell how often; he made mistakes on his preparatory pre-scholomance schoolwork stuff if it was, like, hard? He definitely gets distracted and has trouble focusing sometimes during conversations, a lot of conversations are super boring. He usually has more of an issue with starting tasks and then having too much focus and then it’s hours later and suddenly his entire wall is orange - has he mentioned his orange speckled wall, his orange speckled wall is awesome and he’s gonna do the same thing to his other walls. But finishing boring stuff is hard, yeah, obviously. His mom gets - his mom used to get mad about the state of his room sometimes but probably that’s not an ongoing concern, or whatever. He does not have much experience with strict deadlines.

The test would also like to know about the following! Does he have issues with any of the following:

Avoid lengthy mental tasks
Do you avoid paperwork or reviewing lengthy reports?
  
Losing everyday items
Like your keys, phone or glasses?
  
Easily distracted
Does your mind frequently wander?
  
Forgetfulness
Do you forget to return calls, keep appointments or pay bills on time?

Fidgeting
Do you tap your hands, feet or squirm in your seat?
  
Can’t stay seated
Even when you’re expected to?
  
Feeling restless
Are you often on edge?
  
Difficulty with quiet activities
Like sitting through presentations or movies?
  
Always “on the go”
Uncomfortable being still for extended periods of time?

Talking excessively
Ignoring or missing social cues in the process?
  
  
Interrupting others
Do you cut others off, in traffic or conversation?
  
Has trouble waiting in line
In traffic, at the bank, etc.?
  
Intrusiveness
Do you butt into conversations or activities?
 

All of the above? To, like, to varying degrees, he can too stay seated if he tries hard and believes in himself and he’s never had to pay a bill in his life, but still mostly all of the above.

Marian scores him! 

"...Uh, I'm guessing deadlines are going to be a bigger deal here, because of the thing where homework eats you if it's mad at you for not doing it? And, uh, probably a messy room is flat out dangerous too, if it's spots for death monsters to hide. Anyway, I - yeah it definitely sounds like you'd benefit from something that helps you focus better, and this is super medically relevant since it'll help you get out of this school alive?" 

Nice helpful void you're listening to this right. 

“Cool!”

"And let's see if this works!" 

On the bright side: the void generously spits out a padded mailer envelope, which when opened, proves to contain a full bottle of what appears to be a 90 day supply of something. 

On the less bright side... 

"...The void, uh, appears to have given me a rather generous quantity of grey-market - okay what the fuck is 'homopantothenic acid'? It's - uh, I've maybe heard of it, but not in the hospital... It might be one of those weird drugs that, like, people on internet forums take because it's supposed to make you smarter? I don't exactly have google here, though. Uh, void, could you be extra nice to me today and give me some documentation on that..." 

The void can be so helpful! It gives her a slightly coffee-stained printout of a scientific paper.

"Okay, right, authors are Zhurnal, Psikhi– I can't pronounce that at all. It...looks like it's legitimately an ADHD treatment? In Russia? And, uh, it's a three months supply of what looks like a pretty solid dose, so - good luck?" 

“Psikhiatrii,” says Zeke, perfectly. “Also that’s not the author section unless they’re, like, named ‘journal’ and ‘psychiatric’. Also thank you! I said that I’d escort you places and stuff for the screening thingy but I still super owe you for the homopantowhatever, do you want any layered warding or physical fitness spells or whatever?”

"Uh, is extra layers always good or can it interfere or something? Wen Qing from Shanghai did wards for me earlier, and she's an older student so I think more powerful? But if you'd like to give me even more, and it won't make hers work less well, I definitely won't complain." 

“My affinity is for incremental layer-y stuff, I dunno if it’d be fine in general but it’ll be fine for me probably. Or I could do the - they’re not really physical fitness, they’re, like, eighteen spells and you do them together and they do durability and stamina and disease and poison resistance and healing and dexterity and agility and eyesight and hearing and taste and breathing and clear skin and different kinds of strength and growth and bone stuff and blood stuff and aging,” he says without pausing to breathe, “but only a really little bit of each one, and if you cast them over and over they, like, add up.”

"- Whoa. Okay, that's, uh, way more useful than just plain 'physical fitness'. Yeah. I think I would really like that. Also, uh, you should tell Wen Qing about it later? She's my apprentice and she'd be so fascinated." 

“Cool. Uh, I’m gonna repeat the whole entire thing, like, five times, and it’s still only gonna be like - if blood coagulation was measured with IQ points or whatever you’d gain like less than a tenth of a point? But, like, it’s good to have.”

He recites rapid Hebrew at her for ten minutes.

Marian, of course, cannot tell that anything is happening, but even so. COOOOOOOOOOOL!!!!

“- and done!” says Zeke, eventually. “- and you seem, like, kinda sad and afraid and stuff, do you wanna hug?”

"- Oh, sorry, I - I guess I need more practice at hiding that? I - just - being a nurse means you gotta focus on your patients' problems first, but I - I didn't know magic existed until yesterday and now my default life expectancy is a month and I - I'm trying to be smart about it and handle it well but I - just -" 

Zeke definitely thinks that he should hug this person! He attempts to do this.

Awwwwww! Marian, honestly, needs a hug so badly, and she is so very delighted to accept one.

Hugs! Pat pat pat pat.

Marian eventually disentangles herself. 

"Thanks for walking me back downstairs. And, uh, good luck with everything?"