Marian squawks and knocks over her coffee, spilling it all over her COW and lap. "What? Who said that?" 

Elaine is busy wrestling Leg Lifts Lady onto a bedpan. "Hmm?" 

"- Nothing, nevermind, it wasn't you." 

She grabs an armful of paper towel from the dispenser above the pod sink and mops up her spill, then hesitates in the fishbowl-like doorway to her patient's room. He's lying still - but his heart rate is up again. 

She crosses the room. "My name is Marian, I'm your nurse. Can you open your eyes?" 

The voice is a lot closer now but Leareth has no idea what she's saying! And he still can't quite focus on her thoughts; trying is making his head pound. 

"Where am I," he tries to say out loud, but for some reason talking is not happening at all, and he starts coughing instead, which is shockingly painful. 

Marian reaches for his hand. "Shh, hey, don't try to talk - you have a tube in your throat to help you breathe. Can you squeeze my hand?" 

The words are gibberish but now that she's actually touching him, he can make out surface thoughts, though sort of metaphorically blurry.

The problem is that a lot of them make no sense. Most of her mind seems to be occupied on - the sort of complicated mostly-nonverbal reasoning he would associate with complex magic, but it's not any kind of magic he recognizes, and he can't really follow. She's trying to explain what's happening, he thinks vaguely? The issue being that this doesn't make sense either. 

He can squeeze her hand though. Assuming that it's even a good idea, to give her the information that he understands her - but her mind is unguarded, fully open, and even out-of-focus he can sense her intent. She's worried and earnest and trying-to-help. 

He squeezes her hand with all the strength he can muster, which it turns out isn't very much. 

"Good! That's really good!" The words are still opaque but her mind lights up with delight and satisfaction. "I need you to try to relax and hold still, okay? You had an operation and you're hooked up to a lot of equipment, right now you still need help to breathe, so you mustn't pull on things. I know the tube is uncomfortable. You can be more asleep for it if you want?" 

Leareth is trying blearily to follow her surface thoughts, but she has a lot of them - only a corner of her mind is focused on the words, running a well-practiced script underlaid with that same earnest, very very young-feeling helpfulness. Most of her attention is on other things, flickers of numbers mostly, a vague sense of the room - he can catch a glimpse of himself through her mind and it's terrifying. Would be terrifying. For some reason he doesn't seem to be capable of panic, right now; he feels floaty and calm and incredibly drowsy. 

She seems to be talking about that, maybe? He doesn't want to be sleeping; he wants to be able to wake up. He tries shaking his head, which doesn't really work. 

"Please hold still," Marian repeats. "You're okay. You're doing really well. Right now I just need you to rest." 

Leareth's head is throbbing too much to maintain focus with Thoughtsensing, but he can still pick up on her affect, which remains uncomplicatedly friendly. And worried, and a tiny bit exasperated behind that, but...in a way that feels like how a Healer would be. And he's clearly injured or something, so that fits. Kind of. Aside from all the parts that make no sense and that he can't keep track of at all. 

He wonders momentarily if he's under some kind of heavy block or just painkilling drugs; he doesn't remember ever feeling like this before. 

It's not much in the way of reassurance, one maybe-Healer seeming helpful, and he still doesn't have any of his shields, which is enough to force a sliver of panic through the thick-laying fog. 

But he's overwhelmingly sleepy, and if he stops fighting it then maybe his head will hurt less - it's making it impossible to think anyway - so he lets go, and the world fades out. 

Marian holds very still until she's sure he's definitely out again, and then bounces off gleefully to inform Dr Millinger that their patient is AWAKE. Though definitely not very with it, yet; it felt like he was only understanding a quarter of what she said. But it's hopefully a sign that his minor intracranial bleeding is stable and not getting worse with her unawares.

And! There was NOT an earthquake! Just superstition after all! 

...Well, there is still the weird part where she would swear her patient called out to get her attention, which is impossible. She must have hallucinated it, which seems ridiculous and unfair, it's not like she's even that sleep deprived. 

Dr Millinger is guardedly pleased but wants a couple more scans at six-hour intervals just in case, and to know right away if the patient becomes less responsive. Also he wants another set of labs four hours after the last ones, when all the blood transfusions are done. 

Elaine needs help cleaning up Leg Lifts Lady and turning her other guy, and Marian squeezes in an actual assessment and noon meds for her appallingly neglected second patient, and flops to catch up on her non-neglected-but-very-exhausting patient's charting. 

She squints at him, relaxed and comfy-looking in bed, O2 sats hanging out at a comfortable 94% even after the respiratory therapist dropped his settings to 50% oxygen. His blood pressure is a little high, even, now that he's gotten a bag of blood and two bags of plasma poured into him. She fiddles the norepi drip down.

"Elaine, uh, I'm going to call for the second unit of blood - would you mind if I take a fifteen-minute lunch break after that?" She's hungry and also badly wants to sit down somewhere quiet where nothing is beeping in her face. 

"Right, sure, of course. Uh, is your guy due to be turned?" 

She squints at him. "He looks comfy, I'll leave him be for now." Or else there might be EARTHQUAKES. 

Elaine cheerfully agrees to this, and Marian helps her prep for a trach dressing change while they wait for the blood to come up in the tube system, and she hangs it and charts a set of vitals, cheering very quietly to herself that her patient's temperature is up to 97.1 which is normal and good. He looks so much better. Still pretty sick, of course, bedridden and surrounded by life-support equipment, and she's not zero worried but he seems to be trending better rather than worse and this is great and she's in such a good mood about it.  

The break room isn't as quiet as hoped, because two of the pod six nurses are watching sports on television, but there is a merciful lack of ventilator alarms within yards of her ear, and she can sit and shovel carrot sticks and hummus and stew into her mouth while charting at the computer in the corner. 

Ten minutes in, she's caught up on the bare minimum charting for both her patients, though ideally she'd flesh it out more for Fifty-Seven, Red, she's probably forgetting half a dozen relevant things. 

There's a ventilator alarm somewhere, insistent. 

And then a shriek, and it goes silent. 

And then a monitor pinging very loudly and urgently. 

"Oh for fuck's sake." The unit has terrible acoustics, Marian can't tell if it's coming from the direction of her patient's room, but it sounds like maybe she had better check. 

She walks rather than runs, though. 

"...Oh fuck! What the hell. What the hell happened – Elaine, what–" 

Her patient is almost entirely sitting up in the bed, wild-eyed, fighting hard - if not very efficiently - to get his hands loose from the restraints. His monitor is alarming for a heart rate above 150 and his blood pressure is spiking alarmingly high and he's lost the O2 sat probe again. 

The more concerning part is that there's...smoke???...in the room? And also that his ventilator isn't just silenced, it - seems to not be on? 

Marian sprints. 

Elaine is plastered back against the wall of the room for some reason, but Marian goes straight to her patient and takes his shoulders, shoving him gently but very firmly back against the bed. "Hey hey hey. Easy. It's me, Marian - you need to relax - just relax, it's okay, I've got you..."  

He's awake enough to almost be making eye contact with her and he keeps trying to mouth something around the tube. The only reason this isn't setting alarms off is because the screen of his vent is black. And - scorched around the edges?

"You need to stop trying to talk you're going to be okay just let me fix this– Elaine! Elaine I need help in here right now what are you doing–" 

"He - there was - electric shock - fire..." 

"I noticed the fire! If you get me a wet towel I can put it out! But I've kind of got higher priorities here!" 

He's suffocating and every breath is agony and he can't think through it at all - he can't remember anything except fog and glue - but the voice seems familiar - 

:Help - cannot - breathe -: 

...Great she's hallucinating again. 

Except that mysterious electric shocks and smouldering blankets aren't a hallucination, Elaine's seeing those too... 

"I know - it's okay, it's okay, I'm going to fix it - I need you to stay still so I can fix it - just hold still - just for ten seconds–"