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This next location was busy to say the least, although that could be considered an understatement. The waiting room was full of many people, from those facing serious injuries to those with extreme and critical conditions. Multiple nurses buzzed around the room with intake forms going from one to the next in a clocklike manner.
When one wasn't overwhelmed by the bustle inside the room, they would be able to take in the quality in which the entire facility was built around. There was no other comparison that could be made in its architecture, its mechanical systems, and the arcane work that pulls the whole thing together. As a hospital that was known to be the best of all, the presence did not disappoint.
The interviewer checked in through the front desk, and a security guard escorted them through the long, winding, sterile hallways to a typical break room. A door led to another room attached to the side, a sign with a finger over the lips in a hushing manner, probably meant that it was a room where some could close their eyes between shifts.
The security guard stayed nearby but out of the way for the doctors and nurses that swarmed in and out, warming up food, grabbing coffee, relaxing with a book or heading to the quiet room to disappear.
The halls didn't look as busy as the number of staff that came through the doorway, though, one of the staff members was a familiar face the interviewer was looking for.
An older, middle-aged woman in a long lab coat. The tropical waves of her hair flowed down and around her shoulders. Thin-framed glasses rested upon aquatically adapted ears and lightly veiled her tired, coral colored eyes.
Seeing the interviewer, she smiled and nodded, heading to the table where she sat and joined him. "I'm rather grateful that you came on time. We'll have to keep this short, please."
The interviewer nodded and rested their questions on the table next to their writing pad.
"Now, a bit about yourself-" "Josephine S. Cordova. 46 years old. Pronouns are she/her, rather cis. Tropical, water elemental. I'm estranged from my husband, and our only son has passed away. I'm a nurse first, a surgeon on call, and reserved. I am a bit of a workaholic, so there's not much else after that in terms of skills, hobbies, or notable relationships." She spoke quickly and fluently.
The interviewer kept up with her answers as best as possible, for being caught off guard by her listing the questions. "Is that usually something you list off? Or-"
Josephine tapped her finger against the notepad. "I can read." She smiled kindly. "I see that…" they said warily. "I'm sorry for your loss."
She brushed off the gloom of the questioner's remorse simply. "It has been years now. Even longer when it comes to my marriage. I haven't seen him since the funeral, and only when our boy was 10 before that. Mind if I?" She asked while reaching across the table and taking the notepad with the list of questions.
"You don't have to read every question; just one of each category will suffice," they said, and she nodded while reading them over.
Q: What is something that always makes you smile?
"Something that makes me smile is my patients. I don't like seeing people getting hurt, but it makes me smile seeing them get better, grow strong, and be able to walk out of the hospital in a better condition than they came in, return to their lives, friends, family, and all of that." She answered, also reading off the questions herself rather quickly and sitting calmly and poised through her co-worker's bustle of entering and exiting, as though they weren't even there.
Q: What's something you do that annoys people around you?
"That would have to be my habit of stretching myself too thin. Although our work is regulated by the management team to ensure we aren't overloaded and can maintain optimal efficiency, I still find myself taking on too much by frequently helping with my coworkers' patients." She chuckled softly to herself with a small smile.
Q: What's your go-to strategy in a fight: Brute force, clever tactics, or running away?
"I'm not one to get into any kind of fights or combat. I do have to know how to defend myself in case we have a patient who is extremely uncooperative, but I do enjoy watching some tournaments on occasion when I get some free time at home. I think the best teams are the ones with the best tactics. I've seen some teams push through with full strength that powered past the teams with strategy, I feel like it's more on the fault of the strategist than a win for those with brute force. If you just keep pushing through the hard way, you'll eventually tire yourself out. That's simply natural, we don't just have infinite energy, we'll get tired eventually." She answered next with more enthusiasm for this question.
Q: What's the worst lie you ever told someone?
"The worst lie I ever told someone was when I told my son that I regretted not being there enough for his father to want to stay. In full honesty, I did not regret the distance I have grown with my husband. My husband wanted me to become a woman I am not capable of, and it was wrong of me to lie to my son that I regret it." Her eyebrows furrowed a bit, and her smile wavered, but she continued through to the next question before the interviewer could say something.
Q: If you could steal something with no consequences, what would it be?
"I would have to say, I would like to find the smartest or most clever person known around and steal all their knowledge. Know what they know, see what they see. There's no physical item that can't be replicated with enough money, but money can't buy you a new perspective that you can just see, or it can't buy you immediate knowledge. I would love to learn something new before I'm too old to learn anything else." she laughed while resting her cheek into her hand with a small but sad sigh.
Q: What's one thing you wish people understood about you?
"I wish people understood that despite how much they want to think OF me, there's not too much to 'discover' or 'learn more' about me. I am a very simple woman. I pour almost all my time into work, I don't have time for anything else outside of it. I hate to disappoint anyone who thinks I have more in life."
With all the final questions, she placed the notepad back onto the table and slid it across. Standing up, she fixed her jacket while grabbing a cold-brewed coffee from the fridge with her name on it. "Wait, I had one more question that wasn't in the notepad, I would like to ask you about."
The interviewer stood up quickly to follow the busy nurse. She stopped briefly enough for the interviewer to ask. "Does the name Guenevere sound familiar to you?" they asked just in time. Josephine gave a small smile with a small twinkle in her eye. "What about them do I not know?" she answered.
With no more of an explanation, she finished keying in a code into the number pad with her badge number. The breakroom door opened to a whole new section of the hospital the person asking questions hadn't even seen yet. "Make sure to follow the security guard on your way out. We don't need you getting lost now luv.~" she chimed before the door closed behind her.
The interviewer wrote down the last part of the final answer just in time for the security guard to reach their side, flanking, while escorting them out. There was a weird air about the interview, though; there was something that felt not yet finished, an interview yet to be satisfied. Maybe it was because the interview was rushed, or maybe it was something else.
This pondered on their mind as they left the facility, keeping them awake and unable to sleep late into the night.