"Yes ma'am."

Elaine does not seem to know how to respond to this. She blinks some more at DZ. "...You're from - not here, Marian said? You and, uh, Deskyl both are?" 

"Yes ma'am, Master Deskyl believes we're from another universe. It's clear that we're from another planet, if you haven't heard of Sith here - Sith are people with rare extra capabilities that, with training, allow them to manipulate physics in a way best described in this language as magic."

"Wh-wha...." Elaine trails off, her jaw sort of hanging open. 

DZ will wait for her to collect herself.

She is not really going to succeed at this anytime soon! 

After fifteen or twenty seconds she does a decent job of faking it, though. "Umm, right. So she...has magic? Is she going to, uh, do magic at random when she starts waking up?" Elaine is pretty sure she's read about that happening in a fantasy book at least once. 

"It's not impossible but it's not likely, ma'am. She's in a healing trance, she'll wake normally when she's ready."

"Oh. That's good I guess. Is there - what do I need to do...?" 

"Nothing, ma'am. It will be safest if noone goes into her room without me, but she doesn't need anything but time."

"All right." Elaine is still very discombobulated, but at least that's simple and easy?

She sits down at her desk to chart. 

And DZ heads back to Deskyl's room.

Marian makes it to the cafeteria. Waits in line, grabs two slices of pizza for herself and, after some thought, a turkey sandwich and one of the fruit-yogurt-granola breakfast cups with little dividers so the granola doesn't go soggy. Both should keep fine for a few hours and still be good to eat whenever Deskyl wakes up. 

Oh, and coffee. Today is very much a coffee day. 

She pays and starts making her way back to the ICU. 

Deskyl's condition is unchanged when she gets there; DZ thanks her for the food.

"You're welcome. Uh, it seems like things here are mostly under control? I'll go see if Krystal needs help in Pod One." 

She goes off to help with shot-himself-in-the-head-guy. 

It's quiet in Deskyl's room, for a while. And then, there's... something like a shimmer of light, though Marian can't see it, exactly, or like the air pressure changing after a distant storm, or like the breeze of a door opening in a still room: easily missed, easily discounted even if it's not.

Marian's feet don't hurt, is the first obvious thing. She's not tired, or hungry. She doesn't have a headache. In fact she feels wonderful, as if she just had a full, restful night's sleep, a good meal, two weeks' vacation, and maybe a massage on top.

She has maybe five seconds to enjoy it, and then there's a sound like every alarm on the unit going off at once.

Ack! Marian nearly jumps out of her skin, and spins around to look at Krystal, who seems equally baffled. 

Gunshot wound kid is suddenly wide awake and panicking! He's also over six feet tall and kind of heavyset, so this is an impressive sight. 

Krystal starts in to try to pin his hand before he can yank his breathing tube out, but hesitates because wow does she not feel like getting punched in the head today. 

There are, suddenly, startled yells and calls of "I need HELP in here!" coming from all around the unit. 

Aaaaaaaaaah! Marian is, very briefly, frozen on the spot with absolutely no idea what to do! 

A calm comes over her, feeling subtly different than it usually does when she gets into the flow of working while in a panic, not that she's likely to have time to interrogate it.

Okay. Okay. She can do this. Whatever the fuck 'this' is, seriously, WHY TODAY. 

"Hey, buddy, it's okay, just try to calm down, you're in the hospital–"

She throws most of her body weight into pinning the kid's shoulders back against the bed. "Krystal! Krystal we should probably just extubate him? I'd wait but it really seems like Dr Millinger is busy right now!" 

"- Uh, right, yeah that's a good idea - I'll see if I can find RT, or I guess we can just do it - what's happening–" 

(The patient seems a little calmer; he's still grimacing and hyperventilating very hard through his breathing tube, but he's making eye contact with Marian.) 

"Dunno." 'My patient has magic powers from another world' is not going to work well as a fast explanation for anything. 

Elsewhere: 

The man in room 111 is suddenly the source of about eight different alarms, as various parameters on the ECMO heart-lung bypass machine and dialysis machine and monitor and ventilator go WAY outside of their expected range. In particular he's supposed to be on paralytics, because they're trying high-frequency low-volume ventilation in a frantic last-ditch attempt to try to get him off the ECMO before the filter clots again, and this kind of only works if the patient isn't attempting to breathe normally, which is apparently no longer a valid assumption! At least he's still pretty thoroughly sedated. 

Leg Lifts Lady in 112 suddenly goes still. Looks around in bemusement. Grimaces at the trach when she realizes she can't talk audibly. Looks down at herself, winces even more, and starts doing her best to pull her gown down and cover her crotch given the limitations of the wrist restraints. To her everlasting relief, no one seems to actually be looking into the room right now.

The patient in 115 with the tattoo-artist-fight-sourced abdominal gunshot wound is drawing most of Elaine's attention, since his blood pressure is suddenly climbing rapidly for no apparent reason, and she's frantically titrating pressors down. 

Coma Guy in 114 opens his eyes. Blinks a few times at the ceiling. Doesn't do anything else. 

In 113, the curtain has been pulled closed and the door has been shut; a few alarms have gone off inside, briefly, but it's quiet now.

Well, if nothing is audibly on fire there then Elaine is going to focus on the other patient and worry about it later! She really hopes Marian or someone at least will show up soon, but the sounds coming from the rest of the unit aren't exactly promising. 

...

Over in 111, dialysis patient's paralytics seem to maybe be working again? Though also his sats are suddenly at 100% and his blood pressure is - fine - well, it was SUPER HIGH for a while but they weaned down the pressors. The resident is doing a hasty bedside echocardiogram, using the random old ultrasound unit which is super not meant for this but works okay, and - maybe they should actually just discontinue the ECMO? His heart seems to suddenly be working fine. 

It takes Alice a little while to even notice that there is, suddenly, pee in the pee tube, for the first time in multiple days. What.