The X-ray techs are still very obliging and arrive within twenty minutes. And with two of them, though Marian stands up and goes into the room anyway to make sure no tubes get yanked out. 

The tube is where it belongs, but the end of it looks slightly misshapen and more solid than it should.

...Weird? 

Marian would like things to be LESS WEIRD and not MORE WEIRD. 

Maybe she'll just...try to ignore it, and get out the big 60cc syringe so she can check for any stomach fluids she can get out of the tube, and then push in a little air bubble and listen with her stethoscope for the burble in the stomach, and then a teeny bit of water? 

This works mostly as expected; there's more resistance than usual, though, to getting things into or out of the tube.

Marian spends a minute grumbling to herself under her breath while she confirms that pushing water through doesn't seem to clear the resistance. 

Eventually she grits her teeth and goes to bother Dr Millinger. "Can you, uh, look at the X-ray of the tube placement? I was checking it and it seems kind of weird, and it works but there's some resistance, like it's half blocked..." 

He rolls his eyes but checks. And, mercifully, either fails to notice the timestamp or at least doesn't bother to hound her about it. 

"...This day just won't stop being inconvenient, will it. Well, pull the tube and have a look, I suppose, and put in a larger-bore one for feeds tonight." 

Ughhhhh. It's nearly six pm, too. 

Marian at least thinks to put in the X-ray order first, and call to ask if they can come in half an hour. If she's organized with how she uses her time, hopefully she can get everything done and charted by shift report. 

She arranges the new, thicker tube on the bedside table, and then un-tapes and slides out the original one, making a face because saliva ew. 

There isn't much of it, at least; her patient is still doing a very convincing impression of a dehydrated person for someone who visibly isn't at all.

The last few inches of the tube are coated in a hard inky black substance that gleams like pearl.

What the ACTUAL FUCK. 

After ten seconds of blank staring, Marian curls up the length of tube in her gloved hands, and marches across the unit to the center desk to shove it under Dr Millinger's nose.

"This is what was wrong with it." 

"...Okay, I don't know what you want me to do about it," Dr Millinger mutters after a long moment. 

"...Do you want me to still put in another one." 

"Obviously? We've got to feed her somehow." 

Marian marches back across to the room, finds a kidney basin to curl the tube in because she HAS to show it to the next nurse or they won't believe her, and then tries to insert the new tube. 

There's the same odd resistance as last time, but no more trouble than that getting it in.

She helps Elaine do a round of turning patients, interrupted midway through by a mildly disgruntled X-ray tech arriving and needing supervision. They finish turning Gunshot Wound Patient, and then she slips off and asks Dr Millinger to confirm tube placement in the stomach before she goes back and tries, again, to check it with the syringe. 

It seems entirely normal, now.

Then she should have juuuuust enough time to start the basic tube feeds formulation running, at 20 ccs an hour starting rate, and then sit down and do some rushed charting before the night shift nurse arrives to take report. 

Does her patient do anything else horror-movie-esque before 7pm. 

Her heart rate rises to just over 100 for a few minutes, once; otherwise it's all quiet.

Marian gives the most surreal shift report of her ENTIRE LIFE, to a travel nurse in her fifties with the world's most lesbian haircut and a very obvious attitude of Not Having Time For This Shit. 

And then she escapes for the night. At which point she is unhappily reminded of her bike, waiting outside and damp because it just rained, and the long uphill trek. 

She spends the entire ride home vaguely uneasy about - nothing in particular, really, it just feels like the genre of her entire day has turned into 'inexplicable weird things happening.' 

But nothing else weird happens, and she makes it home and halfheartedly eats some carrot sticks with hummus and reads fanfiction on her laptop for a while and then collapses into bed. 

About half an hour after Marian leaves, the night nurse finds the patient's extremities very cold, to the point of turning slightly blue; she responds well to their attempts to warm her, at least.

An hour after that her veins go dark again, just the same as they did earlier.

The unit is very short-staffed, and especially overwhelmed due to the dialysis patient next door trying very hard to die AGAIN, so it takes her a while to notice this. At which point she rolls her eyes, swears colorfully, and calls the resident. 

     The resident is a poor second-year one who has NO IDEA what to do about 'black veins'. "Can you, uhhhh, give her some fluids I guess?" At least this is sort of vaguely doing something??? 

Sure, whatever. She has a go at flushing one of the IVs so she can re-hook-up the fluids bag. 

This doesn't work at all; the IV is clearly blocked.

Ughhhh she didn't get that in report at ALL. She tries the other one. 

Nope.

WELL THEN she is going to have words with Marian in the morning. She grabs a new IV kit from the supply cart, and some cotton balls and tape for taking out the current ones, which she does first.