"Words. Gotta words. Feel like . . . shit." Whether that's a description of how he feels or an expletive at having lost his train of thought is unclear.

"...I'm getting worried." Lissa feels his forehead. "You don't seem to have a fever, at least." She's grimacing, or at least he thinks so, she's very blurry. "Damn it, everyone's asleep. I – hmm. I'm going to the House of Healing to get help. You need to stay awake. All right? Abras, hey – do you think you can stay awake for five minutes?" 

". . . Dunno. Want to." He tries digging his nails into his arm but his hand is also a useless pile of mud, so instead he bites his lip really hard. Now his lip is bleeding a little but he's that bit more awake.

"Okay I'm going to be back really soon. Hang in there. It'll be okay - just five minutes..." And the door bangs shut and she's gone. 

He needs to be awake. And not do anything. Except if he set the room on fire he would probably stay awake. But then there would be a fire. So he needs to not do anything. And stay awake. He should try to concentrate on something. Two four eight sixteen thirty-two sixty-four eyes gotta stay OPEN, one-twenty-eight two-fifty-six five-twelve NOT gonna sleep, ten-twenty-four, uh, twenty-forty-eight, forty-ninety-six, uh, eight thousand and, no nine thousand, and, shit, ninety-one eighty . . . two? Four? How long is five minutes? He bites himself again and tries to remember what comes after forty-ninety-six. And not do anything. Except if he set the room on fire he would probably stay awake. But then there would be a fire.

"...All right, all right, what's the problem we've got here." It's the older Healer, sounding tired and irritated. "Hey there. Ah, you're sort of awake at least. Abras, tell me what day it is and where you are?" 

"It's . . . night. And I'm in my bed. Awake. Said I would stay awake." He knows those are the wrong answers but he doesn't have any better ones.

"Hmm." She sounds...annoyed, probably. Or something. She sits down on the side of the bed and reaches for his arm. "Squeeze my hand." And waves her other hand in his face. "Look at my finger – all right, follow it with your eyes, please." 

He squeezes her hand in the manner of a particularly unathletic kitten, and does his best to follow her hand his his eyes. This involves turning his head somewhat. Also his pupils are the wrong size, not that he knows that.

"Good," the Healer says, in a voice that does not sound especially like she means it. She turns. "Lissa, girl, how much argonel did you give him?" 

Lissa squeaks. "Just the usual times! At bedtime and at midnight. Not just now because he was, er, like this. Um, and he was pretty out of it at midnight, but I'd be groggy too if someone woke me in the dead of night, I didn't think much of it." 

"Thank the gods you've got that much common sense. He's had way too much – it's a narrow margin between here and him stopping breathing in his sleep." She turns back to Abras. "Tell me how you're feeling. Pretty drowsy?" 

"Yah." He attempts to emphasize this with a nod, but it turns into almost nodding off and then jerking awake again.

"Well, unfortunately we're going to have to keep hassling you until morning – I know you want to sleep, but I'm not super comfortable with that right now. Are you thirsty?" She turns back to Lissa. "Get him some water, please. He's pretty dehydrated. Probably he's been too sleepy to notice." 

When the water arrives it hardly seems worth the effort to drink any, but as soon as he starts it's the most delicious water he's ever tasted and he successfully downs the whole glass.

“Easy, easy.” She takes the cup away, and turns back. “He’s not in immediate danger right now, just don’t let him fall asleep. I’ll head back to the House of Healing and send you over a trainee. Keep getting fluids into him, food if he can manage.”

She pats his shoulder. “You’re doing great. Some of that fogginess will wear off by first light and you’ll feel better.”

Then the bed creaks as she rises, and footsteps, and the door slams.

The fogginess going away sounds good. He vaguely remembers having reasons he didn't want to think, but he can't remember what they were and not being able to think is really awful. For one thing, he's still really sad but now he can't have complete trains of thought about it, so his mind is going in even smaller circles. He tries to count the floorboards next to his bed; that proves hard enough to keep him occupied for a while.

"Abras, drink some water." Lissa grabs his hand and puts it around a cup. "Drink it. There. Good." She sounds very tired, and a bit cranky, but like she's trying to hide it. 

...She's done it multiple times, no? Everything being in very small circles makes it hard to tell. 

"I've got some food for him." It's the trainee again, whassername. Shavri. "Gemma thinks part of why it hit him so hard is that he clearly hasn't been eating enough. Abras, drink this." It seems to be a thick mixture of cream and honey. 

Is it the first or the third or the tenth time that she's bothering him to eat? Time must have passed, because there's some grey light coming through the curtains now, and the fog is starting to subside. 

The first one or five or a thousand times he gets bothered to eat, he eats, because he doesn't know what to do and clearly Lissa and Shavri do. Then the fog lifts enough that he remembers why he shouldn't eat. "If I eat I might do things. Don't do anything. Can't do it right so I have to not." There, now he's explained it and they'll know and stop giving him food.

"...No?" Shavri sounds confused and worried. "You need to eat – you're ill, Savil can't teach you to control your Gifts until you're better and you aren't getting better because you aren't eating." 

(Ow. Along with the fog lifting, the pain in his head and in mysterious other places, which had faded to a distant nagging reminder, is making a resurgence.) 

He's pretty sure the version of him that came up with his plan was smarter than he is right now, but the version of him he is now can't find the flaw in Shavri's logic. Also the pain is eating all the new brain he's getting, so it doesn't seem like he's going to become able to any time soon. "Are you sure? I might do bad things."

“Why don’t we take you out to see Yfandes?” Lissa suggests. “She can stop you from doing bad things by accident, I think. And if you do set anything on fire it’ll just be Savil’s garden. I can get a bucket of water just in case, but so far you only set something on fire once and it’s because I scared you.”

It doesn’t seem like they’re planning to wait for his approval; thirty seconds later, Shavri has a warm robe and a cloak on him, and the two of them are hoisting him onto his feet. 

He does his best to make his limbs do the thing; he wants to talk to Yfandes anyway and if she can stop him from doing magic so much the better.