:Morning: says Belrun tiredly. She's still in her bloody and now slightly vomited-on clothes from yesterday and curled up next to Leareth. She has gradually snacked away all the food.

:- Oh, sorry, I completely did not think of this yesterday - do you need a change of clothes? We can grab you some scrubs from the OR, they've got a big cabinet of them: 

:That sounds perfect. Next time Leareth is particularly lucid I can try the artificial rain situation in the bathroom:

Marian giggles. :We should maybe try to bathe Leareth later, if he's up for it. I'll grab you some clean clothes: 

While the nurses are huddled up for report in the nursing station, Dr Millinger strolls in, and tosses a breakfast sandwich over onto Belrun's lap. 

Sandwich goes in face. Belrun gets some work underway on Leareth with a view to getting him able to spend twenty minutes without her right next to him and not setting things on fire so she can take a shower and change.

Leareth is still feeling pretty awful - pounding headache even with all the pain meds running straight into his central line, tender ribs, sore and bruised and achy everywhere - but he wakes up calm when Marian and Noreen come in for bedside shift report, and remembers where he is. He's still coughing up gunk, and gets short of breath literally just from rolling over in bed. Also he's managed to lose his voice even more thoroughly, which Marian says is pretty normal and will pass. 

Mostly he's just very, very tired, and all he wants to do is lie still with the lights dimmed and his lovely warm electric blanket - it's such a good concept - and let Belrun take care of anything more complicated than breathing and drinking water. 

"You can go wash up," he assures Belrun, in a barely-audible whisper.

:I'll stay by him: Marian promises. :Oh, and Dr Millinger wanted to haul you back to 110 to do some more Healing, but I told him you'd head over yourself when you're up for it and not to bother you until you do: 

:Yeah, I'll probably get around to it at some point but right now Leareth's headache is distracting me and I think I can probably sort that out with a little more work and be more efficient after: She gives him a little kiss on the temple and then goes to figure out the artificial rain situation.

The artificial rain is controlled by two shiny metal knobs on the wall, which seem to respectively be for hot and cold water; she has to fiddle with them to get a reasonable but non-scorching temperature. The towels on the linen cart are individually kind of small and sad, but there's a two-foot stack of them and Marian says she can take as many as she wants.

A plastic box on the wall dispenses weirdly liquid-goopy soap, and Marian provides her with two little packets that she says are 'shampoo' and 'conditioner', plus a bristly little brush on a stick and a tiny waterskin-like squeeze bottle; this assembly is apparently for cleaning her teeth? 

Belrun will gamely attempt all these things and ask Marian the occasional clarifying question by Mindspeech through the wall. Eventually she emerges cleaned up with her hair wet and the scrubs on and settles back into place to see if Leareth is up for another departure so she can work on the patient in 110.

Leareth is reasonably alert, propped up with the head of the bed cranked to almost ninety degrees. Marian has added a different oxygen tube that hangs around his face and hooks onto his ears, with two little prongs that poke into his nostrils; it doesn't flow fast enough to keep his sats up for long, but it means Marian can encourage him to spend ten seconds at a time on some sort of weird deep-breathing challenge with a cylindrical thingy that measures how good his deep breaths are. (They are not very impressive.) 

He recovers from a coughing fit after his last try, sips water, and then tells Belrun it's fine for her to go a little ways off; his passive Thoughtsensing is working a little better and he thinks he'll be able to feel her presence anywhere in the unit and use it to reassure himself. 

Marian fidgets for a moment. :I, uh - I did want to ask a favor. It wouldn't take very long and it'd just be looking, not fixing things - I don't know if that's easier...?: 

:Looking is a lot easier, what is it?:

:My patient next door. He's - been in a coma for weeks, not responding at all. I don't - our scans aren't good enough to tell if he's likely to...get better...or, uh. Not. I was hoping maybe you could see and...I don't know, then we'd at least know?: 

:Uh, I don't know if my judgment on that will be any good but I can give him a look and if there's anything that jumps out at me I can tell you:

:- I guess in your world, you might not be able to keep unconscious people alive that long?: Marian points her over to the room. 

:Most Healers aren't Fetchers, so it's not typical, no: She goes over to the coma guy and checks him over by Sight.

...It is, in fact, kind of shocking that he's still alive at all. 

She can see the place where his skull was cracked – significantly worse than Leareth's – and also a place where the bone seems to have been cut and opened, and then put back in place; there's a half-healed passage where, most likely, some sort of tube used to be. Torn blood vessels have been delicately stitched back together; the tough membrane encasing the brain was likewise neatly restored. It's incredible; damage that would have been irreparable even with the best Healers right there, and fatal in seconds to minutes, was mitigated and repaired as much as possible. 

There are signs of previous inflammation and swelling and bruising; it's mostly resolved, now, the body's natural healing doing what it can. Still, wide swaths of his brain are dark, missing the vibrant swirling life-force that should be present, the tissues damaged beyond repair. The base of his brain, that controls breathing and heartbeat and basic primitive reflexes, is mostly intact, but the higher areas...aren't. 

To her Thoughtsensing, it doesn't even feel like there's a person there. 

Wow.

:I think he's, uh, kind of already dead. Lots of his brain has gone dark and Thoughtsensing doesn't pick him up at all - it does pick up people who are sleeping or knocked out. I can tell you guys worked - so so hard on him, though, that's really amazing -:

:Oh: 

Marian closes her eyes. 

:I - I was kind of expecting that: She hugs herself a little. :We can't even donate his organs, he - he's not quite dead enough - there are really strict rules on it, and he's still got enough brain function to breathe on his own. Though...he won't last long, when we turn off the machines: 

:Donate his - wow - wow, what a clever idea:

:It's pretty cool! I had one a month ago. She'd checked the organ donor box on her drivers' license, so she saved - gods, I think it was four people, in the end - lungs, liver, heart, kidneys, all of them were healthy and viable - she was only twenty-eight, it was a car crash - she was fine except her head... She had little kids. Four and six. I don't think they understood much at all what was happening. It was really awful and tragic, you know? But - but at least she saved people, in the end: 

Belrun nods and steps out of the coma room to go work on 110.

Alice smiles at her, tiredly but warmly, and holds up the catheter bag. There's about half a cup of darkish urine in it. :Pee!: she announces, jubilantly. :We have pee!: