"If you lose your job, your former name goes into brackets. To show where you used to work. It'll stay that way until you find a new job. If you have more than one job, you become a hyphenate. If your clinic has a name, it would be the name of the clinic. Or the name of the company that owns the clinic. So if it were, say, Saint Mary's, you'd be John Saint Mary's."
It all sounded so weird to her now that she'd met people with 'normal' last names. It was strange, really, to see how perspectives could change once you were removed from the situation. Something that had seemed commonplace for her, everyday, was now more than a little bizarre.
"It gets weirder for kids. Their last names are where they go to school. McDonald's schools aren't as good as Mattel schools. But then you put the parent's current last name in parenthesis behind it. So it would be Amy Mattel (Nike) or some such."