Taver carries Shavri and Andrel over from Healers', at breakneck pace. It seems like the very least that he can do. 

"Van - gods - what was he thinking - Andrel why weren't you watching him–" 

She stops herself. Not the time. Focus on Vanyel. 

There's some life-force there - his cells didn't all have time to die, and Cam is getting oxygen into his blood and forcing his heart to pump - but it's wildly disorganized, there's no pattern, just random faint eddies here and there. 

Shavri can try to focus on those eddies, strengthening them around his heart, trying to coax it to find a rhythm again, but - there's something else wrong, nebulous and indistinct but everywhere, the way it looks niggles at her in a familiar way but she can't quite recognize it - 

"Andy, focus on his heart. - Cam? Something else is wrong, really wrong - not just the drowning - I don't know what but it looks like– Damn it. Damn it. Andy, there's no way he could've gotten his hands on argonel, right?" 

"No? I'm not stupid." Andy is trying very hard to concentrate right now and he is not in a good mood. "We keep it locked up and he wouldn't know where." 

"Cam is there anything you can do to figure out what -" 

"- yeah -" Machine appears, runs a tox screen.

Vanyel appears to have taken SO MUCH of the sleeping pills that Cam left with the Healers. Going by his blood levels, quite possibly all of them. 

"For fuck's sake, he took the sleeping pills -" Okay, time for bloodletting. And blood-replacing, but that part's invisible.

"ANDY -" Shavri snarls. 

"I checked! The bottle was still there! He didn't leave the room!" 

"Shut UP just FOCUS!" 

Shavri tries. 

She tries really, really hard. She's a very very good Healer, much better than she was at age thirteen, and she can make bits and pieces of progress. Get those cells cooperating, over here - get energy to these ones - 

After the third time that she gets Vanyel's heart to sort-of-beat a couple of times before losing it, she starts swearing loudly under her breath. "I can't - I just - we're almost getting it but it won't stay -"

She's almost crying with frustration now. No, actually, she straight-up is crying, it's just hard to tell because the rain washes the tears away in seconds. 

Taver hovers, distant, mostly unreadable, but somehow seeming a little unsure of himself. 

:The Death Bell rang for him: he says finally, once it's been at least ten minutes of struggle. :I am not sure if we can save him, now: 

Shut up, Taver. Defib? "Stand back -"

Elsewhere, Vanyel opens his eyes in a white place where nothing hurts. 

"...I can't believe I did that. That was so stupid." 

The Shadow-Lover says nothing. 

"Gaaaaaaah." He can't fully feel the frustration with himself, but he deserves to. "I - why - what was I even thinking - gods, this is such a mess, 'Fandes–" 

He stops. 

Yfandes is going to lecture him for the next week straight, is the thought his mind reaches for, but Yfandes...wasn't there. 

Fifty-fifty odds, he thinks dully. Delian went back to Tran. Taver - broke in the other direction. 

...Is that right? Compare the factors. What's in common, what differs...? Taver is Groveborn, Delian and Yfandes aren't. But Delian wasn't bonded to Tran, when it happened - that might have made a difference, given him more space, more mental degrees of freedom - 

He doesn't have enough information to guess one way or another, he thinks emptily. So. Fifty-fifty odds that Yfandes would, at some point, have come back to him. 

Except then he tried to kill himself. He's actually not sure what direction that pushes the odds in? 

"Can you tell me if my Companion is -" he starts to ask, and trails off because one it's a stupid question and two he isn't sure what the question actually is. 

"- It is not entirely clear. But - it seems more likely than not she will endure your death. At least for a time." 

He grits his teeth. 

"Do I have a choice. Can I go back." 

The Shadow-Lover hesitates. 

"Tell me."

"...I could send you back, if you wished. Those who love you are trying very, very hard to save you, and will not give up easily." 

And they have Cam, which does a lot. 

He would probably feel really guilty about it - about everything - except that the emotion is distant, here in the white peacefulness outside time. 

"- All right. I'm hearing a 'but' in there. What? Tell me." 

"...I could send you back, but your body is - damaged. You would live; I could push the bounds of probability that far. You would not be...yourself, intact, as before."