A number of people have in fact cleared out; less is at stake, now, and the patient's fate is known.  The CEO and CFO and risk officer are clearing up some of the mess of the hospital having a sudden prospect of large income which then did not materialize - nobody staked life changes on that, obviously, it's just that the equity markets in which hospital shares trade are responding to the suspension of trading due to all the secrecy.  Night-shift Personnel is figuring out how how the impacts on various participants will affect the hospital over the next couple of days, if anybody needs to move shifts around.  (Mostly no; hospitals operate with a lot of slack when there's no area-wide emergencies going on.  But some people can shift schedules very easily and that will help to maintain the hospital's slack tomorrow, with other people going off-duty to rest.)

The morning-shift Personnel known as Personnel is here, actually specifically in case Merrin needs anything though she's not going to say that.

And the second-rank Keeper who works in the medical part of Exception Handling, because sometimes people find things easier to talk over with a Keeper.  It's not that Keepers aren't people, more like - they're reliably not the sort of people where they'll quietly judge you and then let that info leak out to their social network.  Keepers really will judge you less; there's a sense in which you are not their species, and not something close enough to their own psychology to be judged by their own standards.  Even to their friends, they're not likely to laugh about that thing you did wrong; of course non-Keepers do everything wrong, that's how things should be.  The universe is not so dark a place that everyone needs to become a Keeper to ensure the species's survival.  Just dark enough that some people ought to.

The grandmother-gendertroped lady has gone home, to somebody she knows well enough to cry around them; she was old enough to have seen some sad things in her life, but she has not, in fact, been this close before to the sharp and bitter end of healthcare.

A number of people have in fact cleared out; less is at stake, now, and the patient's fate is known.  The CEO and CFO and risk officer are clearing up some of the mess of the hospital having a sudden prospect of large income which then did not materialize - nobody staked life changes on that, obviously, it's just that the equity markets in which hospital shares trade are responding to the suspension of trading due to all the secrecy.  Night-shift Personnel is figuring out how how the impacts on various participants will affect the hospital over the next couple of days, if anybody needs to move shifts around.  (Mostly no; hospitals operate with a lot of slack when there's no area-wide emergencies going on.  But some people can shift schedules very easily and that will help to maintain the hospital's slack tomorrow, with other people going off-duty to rest.)

The morning-shift Personnel known as Personnel is here, actually specifically in case Merrin needs anything though she's not going to say that.  She'll totally make eye contact.

And the second-rank Keeper who works in the medical part of Exception Handling, because sometimes people find things easier to talk over with a Keeper.  It's not that Keepers aren't people, more like - they're reliably not the sort of people where they'll quietly judge you and then let that info leak out to their social network.  Keepers really will judge you less; there's a sense in which you are not their species, and not something close enough to their own psychology to be judged by their own standards.  Even to their friends, they're not likely to laugh about that thing you did wrong; of course non-Keepers do everything wrong, that's how things should be.  The universe is not so dark a place that everyone needs to become a Keeper to ensure the species's survival.  Just dark enough that some people ought to.  He'll make eye contact too, if Merrin looks his way.

The grandmother-gendertroped lady has gone home, to somebody she knows well enough to cry around them; she was old enough to have seen some sad things in her life, but she has not, in fact, been this close before to the sharp and bitter end of healthcare.

A number of people have in fact cleared out; less is at stake, now, and the patient's fate is known.  The CEO and CFO and risk officer are clearing up some of the mess of the hospital having a sudden prospect of large income which then did not materialize - nobody staked life changes on that, obviously, it's just that the equity markets in which hospital shares trade are responding to the suspension of trading due to all the secrecy.  Night-shift Personnel is figuring out how how the impacts on various participants will affect the hospital over the next couple of days, if anybody needs to move shifts around.  (Mostly no; hospitals operate with a lot of slack when there's no area-wide emergencies going on.  But some people can shift schedules very easily and that will help to maintain the hospital's slack tomorrow, with other people going off-duty to rest.)

The morning-shift Personnel known as Personnel is here, actually specifically in case Merrin needs anything though she's not going to say that.  She'll totally make eye contact.

And the fourth-rank Keeper who works in the medical part of Exception Handling, because sometimes people find things easier to talk over with a Keeper.  It's not that Keepers aren't people, more like - they're reliably not the sort of people where they'll quietly judge you and then let that info leak out to their social network.  Keepers really will judge you less; there's a sense in which you are not their species, and not something close enough to their own psychology to be judged by their own standards.  Even to their friends, they're not likely to laugh about that thing you did wrong; of course non-Keepers do everything wrong, that's how things should be.  The universe is not so dark a place that everyone needs to become a Keeper to ensure the species's survival.  Just dark enough that some people ought to.  He'll make eye contact too, if Merrin looks his way.

The grandmother-gendertroped lady has gone home, to somebody she knows well enough to cry around them; she was old enough to have seen some sad things in her life, but she has not, in fact, been this close before to the sharp and bitter end of healthcare.