Her patient's systolic blood pressure is still hovering in the 80s, so Marian sighs and maxes out the norepi drip again, then folds her arms and waits, trying not to hold her breath. This isn't actually the baby doctor's fault but she's SO STRESSED. 

Her patient stays calm and limp and does not threaten her with any more scary arrhythmias. Though he's desatting a bit again by the time Dr Millinger fiiiinally talks the resident through sticking a clear dressing over the site and switching the IV lines over. 

Probably it's because the head of the bed has been lowered to flat for five, maybe ten minutes now. Marian checks that she can raise it again, and awkwardly stretches over from the wrong side of the bed to listen to his lungs again. Absolutely full of crackles, but she doesn't have a good angle to get at the suction tubing from here, it can wait one or two minutes. 

"Marian!" It's Elaine. "Want to sign off on blood and plasma with me?" 

"Yes! I do!" She bounces.

They double-check all the information on her patient's transfusions, and get them hooked up, and Marian glowers at his temperature on the monitor - it's 93.3 - and ups the heat setting on the plug-in electric blanket. 

His blood pressure is recovering nicely, she bumps the pressors back down a bit, but his O2 sats are back to hopping between 90-92%, occasionally dipping to 89% and beeping at her. 

"I'm really sorry, I have to go in and clean some of that stuff out of your lungs, it's going to be uncomfortable but it'll make it easier to breathe after, okay?" Presumably he cannot hear her at all but talking to her patients is a habit. 

The paralytics are wearing off and her patient does cough this time, with the simultaneously satisfying and incredibly gross result of getting a lot more yellowish phlegm into her tubing.

"Euuughhh lung snot," Marian mutters. Quietly, to herself. To the patient: "That's really good - sorry, I need to do a few more." 

Coughing has to hurt a lot, given the broken ribs, even with all the drugs in his system. He starts coming a little more awake by the third go of it, grimacing and pulling at the wrist restraints, then making an abortive attempt to sit up. Which has to hurt even more. 

She gently pins his shoulders, trying not to put pressure anywhere near his broken ribs. "Shh, hey, it's okay - you're okay - just take some deep breaths now, I'm done for now." Someone amazingly, the patient's eyes are half-open, though unfocused and not tracking her.

"You're at Renown Hospital," she adds, just in case he's conscious enough to process words, though even if he is he probably won't remember it – the sedatives tend to cause amnesic effects. "You were, uh, in a bad accident - you just got back from surgery, but it went fine, everything's going to be fine - just try to relax..." 

- there's a voice but the language isn't familiar - 

Leareth is in agonizing pain, enough that he can barely parse what exactly is hurting, it just seems to encompass everything. It feels like he's suffocating. He seems to be tied down, or held down; he can't move - 

Also his head feels dark and swampy; it takes constant effort to stay conscious at all, let alone complete a thought. Something is wrong but he can't even grasp at what kind of wrong it could be. 

With a flailing effort, he reaches for mage-sight. 

- nothing. Or, well, there's a person's aura, but no shields, no active spells - not even his standard talismans - and his native personal shields have to be entirely down right now - 

:Help: he tries, more instinctively than deliberately, though it comes out less as a coherent word and more a burst of !!! emotion. 

The floor shakes again. 

Marian squeaks and jumps a foot in the air, which is unfortunate because she's holding the patient down and inevitably jars him. "Sorry sorry sorry– Elaine was that you, what, do you need help–" 

Elaine is midway through jumping up from her COW right outside the door. "What? Do you need help?" 

"I mean, yes - maybe - you didn't just yell something?" 

"No! Wasn't that you?" Elaine hurries over and helps hold the patient still. "Oh, did you bang into something - I heard things rattle in here–" 

"Huh, you didn't feel the earthquake? Just a sec, I'm bumping his sedation up - he was totally out before, I think he'll calm down as soon as I stop torturing him."

She turns up the Versed drip to the maximum, she'll put it back to something more reasonable later. "Can you cosign with me on upping the fentanyl too - he looks so uncomfortable..." 

"No wonder! Poor guy, he really got messed up. By the way, I gave your other guy his meds and turned him." 

"God, thank you so much - I feel like I haven't stopped moving once this morning, what time is it even..." 

It's apparently 10:15. Somehow. And she's managed to lose track of her coffee. 

At least her patient is calm again. And his sats are at 98% which is beautiful. His heart rate is jumping up again and his blood pressure is riding higher than it needs to, systolic in the 140s, but she's going to wait and see if that's just from the bit where she was hurting him. 

Also he's drooling everywhere again. 

Marian signs and gets him cleaned up, while trying not to look too hard at what she's doing, and then flops down in the nearest chair and tries to remember what else was even on her to-do list. Right. Labs and blood gas - except she should wait on the latter until not right after she shoved suction tubing down his lungs. And then she needs to call for an X-ray to confirm the central line is in the right place still, and check the chart for results and new orders. Oh crap and the endless parade of placing various tubes has NOT included a gastric tube, so if he does have orders for oral medications she can't even do anything about it - probably she should handle that first and then get the X-ray for both at once...

One thing at a time. First up: make a list. 

Her patient is calm and still and, when she finally catches up on charting and looking up results and goes to slide in a nasogastric tube, he is incredibly sedated; he doesn't respond at all in any way to being pinched, or having a tube stuffed down his nose, and he barely coughs when she goes after him with the suction again. 

This is probably excessive, but it's also so nice and peaceful, and his blood pressure seems to be bearing up, she's even able to nudge down the norepi drip another notch. Versed isn't as short-acting as propofol though; if she runs it at twice the rate he needs all day, it could take him another few days to clear it out of his system. And at some point they're going to want more information on his neurological status, though she would really rather it was later, just in case there's some reason other than coincidence why a FUCKING EARTHQUAKE happens every time he starts waking up. 

She nudges the Versed down from 10 mg/h to 8, and then calls for a bedside X-ray. 

They come twenty minutes later, and her patient's only reaction to being ratcheted up into a 90-degrees sitting position, and then jostled and jarred around so an X-ray board can be stuffed in behind the sheets, is to grimace very slightly and cough again. 

Huh. 

Dr Millinger is going to be ticked off if she makes it impossible to get a valid neuro assessment on him for the next twenty-four hours, so Marian cautiously increments the Versed drip down to 6 mg/h, which is much more in the vicinity of 'reasonable for a person his size and not an elephant.' She checks the time - almost eleven - and tries to remember what time the second CT scan is six hours from. 

Leareth drifts. 

He's in pain, even when they - whoever 'they' are - are letting him lay still, but it's oddly far away; mostly he feels floaty and distant. And very, very foggy; it's hard to string together thoughts, and he isn't sure whether he's even managing to stay some-degree-of-conscious versus drifting in and out. 

He counts numbers in his head, to try to test this. It's slow going even for that simple task, and a couple of times he gets muddled and loses track and ends up starting over, but eventually he's gotten to a hundred and is fairly confident this was all in the same block of semi-alertness. 

So. Orient. 

He tries opening his eyes, just a slit, and can't see much; everything is blurry, and also painfully bright. 

He tries mage-sight. His range is appalling; as with his ordinary vision, it's like he can't make it focus properly, and everything beyond what seems to be one room is lost in haze. There's not much to See nearby; he's totally unshielded, he can't feel the signature for any of his usual artifacts, and the room itself contains no visible shielding or wards or alarm-spells or anything. 

Thoughtsensing picks up on the glow of a mind nearby - un-Gifted, probably unshielded - but again, he can't seem to focus in enough to get any surface thoughts clearly. 

Breathing is uncomfortable, and harder than it ought to be, but he vaguely remembers a feeling-of-suffocation, and that at least is gone now. And he remembers being cold, before - wanting to shiver and curl up but mysteriously not being able to do either of those things - but right now he seems to be wrapped in something deliciously warm, though not a heat-spell or weather-barrier since he can't See anything there. 

- what - where - orient - 

Just staying conscious is more effortful than climbing a mountain. He craves sleep, letting go and just resting, with an intensity that's almost painful. And he's running out of strength and willpower to fight it. 

...He's foggy enough that he might forget this entire chain of reasoning if he sleeps, though. And he isn't safe. Clearly. Something is wrong.

It's not clear he's going to have a choice, though. 

Gamble - get more information - 

He reaches out with all his strength for the nearest mind. 

:Where am I: