After last week, something had occurred to Francine. Something she thought she should probably check out. At the clinic, yes. Even if it did mean asking for help from complete strangers.

She poked her head diffidently into the lobby and gave a small wave. Not necessarily big enough for anyone to see, mind you. "Hi?"

"Hi," Francine repeated nervously, approaching the desk. Hospitals and doctor's offices had never been her favorite, no matter how much her mother would love her to marry somebody who worked in one. "I guess I need to talk to one of the doctors or nurses?"

"Oh." Much less intimidating than Dr. Maxwell back in Houston. Also younger and prettier. "Um, sure. I hope. You know how things can get really weird around here?"

She wasn't sure how long this doctor had been here; Francine didn't want to break her brain by jumping right into 'so we're building up a militia to defend against invasions.'

Francine made a face at the second one. "Yeah, there was plenty of that last week."

Ouch. "You could say that, yeah." Thinking of Thursday night, she added, "Not that they were all bad."

"So I noticed," Francine said with a nod, not really wanting to dwell on how much things were still weird from last week.

"Anyway, I have this thing -- I mean, it's not just mine, but I'm part of it, and it seemed like a good idea to check in here about some help."

"Thanks." Francine took a deep breath. She could do this, really. Without having to hide behind somebody else! "Well, there's this group of us -- we first got together last week, but it worked out pretty well so we're hoping it can be a regular thing. But we're kind of amateurs, so some medical advice would be really helpful."

"Just, you know, safety? What to do in an emergency? Lifesaving stuff if things get out of hand."

"...You mean like finding a safe place to stay out of the way when people start using sharp pointy things?"

"Oh, we're not using sharp things," Francine assured her. "Well, most of us." They had said fighters were welcome too, after all. "Like I said, staying out of the way. We just want to make sure everybody's safe."

This was where the favors-from-complete-strangers thing came in. Francine twisted her fingers around a bit. "So we were sort of hoping we could get, um. A demonstration?"

Francine quailed a little, feeling dumb that she apparently hadn't managed to get that across. "Um. Sorry, I didn't. Um." Oh come on, Peters, try to look like a mature young person and not a .... duck. "CPR?" she quacked.

Francine pulled her notebook from her bag and checked. "We had about nine last time, but we're hoping for more. It's a group for doing all kinds of support stuff for the people who actually go out and fight when things invade around here. Not just first aid. But that's a pretty important one."

"It's not like we couldn't use other medical advice too," Francine said, blithely misunderstanding. "But yeah, I meant CPR. We've got people from all over, time-wise--" She shot an unintentionally ironic glance at Martha to see if that concept freaked her out. "A couple of us have had training, but some have never even heard of it."

Some people, Francine thought to herself as she smiled at Martha, would be paying more attention to the visual demonstration anyway, but hey, if it worked, it worked. "That would be wonderful," she said. "We meet up on Fridays, at the picnic shelters in the park. so there's plenty of room."

"That would be great, thank you." Francine had a brief flash of a thought that made her want to facepalm a bit. "I'm glad it's this Friday. I don't want to think about would have happened at a group CPR demonstration last Friday."

"Thank you so much," Francine said again, smiling a lot less nervously now. "I'm Francine, by the way."