"...I guess it's probably a good idea to at least prep it and have it in the room. Seems like a bit of a waste but then it'll be right there if he starts freaking out. Did you want to come look at him?" 

Emmy closes her eyes for a moment. Drags a hand over her face. "...Not right now. I'll mosey over when we're done with rounds. It'd be pretty neat to get him off the vent before the end of my shift, honestly, so - all the power to you, girl, getting him weaned off sedation."

She smiles tiredly. "You've got pretty good beside manner. Especially with him. You're patient, and you're calm and you - you talk to your patients more than most of the nurses, I noticed you have that habit of narrating what you're doing." 

"Awwww. Thank you." Marian can feel herself blushing, but at least this time she's embarrassed about praise, not about fucking up. "Though, honestly, half of why I do it is it helps me stay organized and remember what I've done and what needs doing." 

"Ha! Clever trick. I'll have to keep it in mind. - Oh, looks like my presence is required now. See you round?" 

"See you." Damn, she got distracted and missed her chance to ask the onsite pharmacist about dosing the electrolyte replacement, and seeing the dietician there reminds her that she didn't notice whether all the random vitamin-levels labs ever came back. 

She does remember to pull out a flask of propofol for continuous IV administration, and she gets some tubing and then hovers by the nursing station, holding the bottle upside-down above her head while she primes the tubing wrapped over her arm, and waiting to nab the pharmacist during the minute of switching to the next patient. 

It turns out to be a successful strategy, and she gets an offhand 'seems fine' from Dr Prissan about repeating the same doses and rates of phosphate and magnesium, which is close enough to a verbal order. 

She's sitting at her computer, charting frantically. Thinking to turn her other lady onto her back - she can manage that alone - she stands up. 

Eek. For some reason she's lightheaded. 

She sits down again. Time for some self-diagnostics. 

...Oh. Right. The obvious culprit is that she hasn't eaten today, despite being on her feet since 6:45 am, and it's now...god, how is it 1:05 already? She hasn't really drunk water either. Just two coffees, ages ago. She's not really hungry, but her hands do feel slightly shaky. 

Well, nothing is on fire right now. Maybe she can ask Amélie about taking a break. 

Ma'ar is now at the point where he's using significant willpower not to squirm around visibly. It's not that he's in pain, exactly, but he's just uncomfortable. He risks shifting his position in small ways, a little at a time; probably no one can see through the immensely puffy blanket covering him. 

...Which is starting to go from 'deliciously warm' to 'too warm'. 

He does some simple mental arithmetic, checking how clearheaded he is. Tenses his muscles one at a time, checking that at least they all obey him. He manages to cast a tiny mage-light, just to confirm he can. 

There are no minds within range of his Thoughtsensing. His vision is only a little doubled and blurred, now; he can see a - glass? - door or window. A corridor, then more glass. It's an odd sort of building. He does vaguely remember seeing a lot of glass before, when he was walking through the city, but it was dark at the time. 

...He doesn't like the gap in his memories. He remembers walking, endlessly, and then there's fog, and fog, and fog, and then there's now. There are fragments in there but he has to struggle to put them in order. 

Marian, outside. The river, the uniformed guard. That...must have been his capture, though he doesn't really remember how he ended up cornered like that, or why he had stopped moving. After that... A different room, not this one. A steel-barred cage. Pain. Being held down firmly, the unexpected and very unwanted feeling of something cold in his anus - attempting to run, failing - 

Then there's a long gap of impassible fog, where all he remembers is the occasional agonizing pain hitting him from nowhere. 

Now he's here. Still tied down, with things shoved into orifices that should not have things in them, his head aching dully, weak and drained - but he can stay awake, he can think, and he can use magic.

That's enough to start with. 

Amélie pats Marian's arm. "Please, no, take your break. You've got one of the heaviest assignments today, with that admit. How's he doing?" 

"So much better!" Marian grins, delighted. "Temp's just about normal and he's only on a sniff of pressors - uh, there's not that much he needs done, but if you have a chance it'd be cool to get him all the way off the norepi. Oh, and the doc might put in an order for some maintenance saline, sodium's normalizing but it's still low. And I'm still waiting on more phos and mag from the pharmacy, feel free to start those if you have a chance but no rush. Other things... Social work might show up? And maybe Dr Prissan will do a bedside echo?"

     "Other drips?" Amélie prompts her. 

"...Oh, right, and he's only on one of midazolam, but if he gets agitated please don't go up on it, start the propofol instead. It's primed and in the pump and I programmed it and left it on standby, you'd just need to hook him up and hit start. Hopefully he'll be chill though." 

Wow that was not the most coherent report she's ever given, but eh. Amélie got the gist of this guy's story, she listens in on rounds. 

     "Sure thing, hon. Take forty-five, if you want, you've had a busy morning and I'm not promising any of us'll get a dinner break." 

"I don't need..." Okay on reflection, 45 minutes of peace and quiet sounds like bliss. 

     "Enjoy! Now get out of here before something else happens." 

Marian gets out of there. 

The unit continues about its routine. 

Amélie listens in as Dr Prissan finishes rounding on their final patient for the day, but stands well back where she can watch the central display of all the monitors. Neither of Marian's patients have any alarms ringing. 

When the phone rings, she glances at the display - CLINICAL LABORAT (the last letters are cut off) - and, after two rings, answers it curtly. 

Huh. Marian's admit at the end of the hall is apparently extremely low on three very random vitamins, which were checked for some reason. 

Phone tucked between her shoulder and ear, she repeats it back quietly as she notes them down, then bends over to swipe her badge and log back into the nearest computer. "Zinc, vitamin B6, vitamin C, you said...? Thanks." She's already pulling up the chart, skimming the new results, as she hangs up. That's...baffling? She can't recall ever seeing someone low on B6 and not low on B12. Weird. 

Rounds seem to be finishing up. She heads over and taps the resident's shoulder. "Hey, sorry - got some results on Marian's guy at the end of the hall, random vitamin and mineral deficiencies...?" 

Emmy slowly brings a hand to her forehead. "What is up with him? Thanks for letting me know, I'll...ask the pharmacist - or dietician...?" She's not sure and both of them have already fled. Probably to use the bathroom. Rounds went long today and she's starving. 

Well, neither is going to kill him in the next ten minutes, she's pretty sure. She briefly shuffles through her memories of that horrible class on metabolic pathways. Zinc is...immune system, that's all she's recalling, but also she has a vague mental note that low levels are expected in critically ill patients.

Vitamin C is scurvy, obviously. She didn't notice his gums being loose or any scars reopening? But both C and B6 both do, well, a lot of things? She has them mentally filed under 'important for enzymes working, just, like, in general.' Which seems vaguely like the sort of thing that might make someone vaguely sicker than they should be. 

Dr Prissan is already sitting down, sprawled comfortably back in an office chair with his feet propped up on the desk, checking his text messages. (Emmy used to feel a bit judgy about that, but after he gave her his personal cell number and asked her to text rather than call for non-urgent queries, she figures many of them are actually work-related consult requests.) He's always snippy about being bothered when he's just finished rounds.

Besides, she knows his attitude on things like this; she can practically hear his voice. Sometimes bodies are just weird, y'know? There's a lot we don't understand, and not everyone's the same either. You need to stop overthinking those technically-abnormal results that aren't actually causing any problems. 

Well. Maybe she had better start by going to peek at the guy, seeing for herself if he looks, to her half-trained eye, like he's still experiencing Problems. If she notices that in fact his teeth are falling out from scurvy, she can do something about it then. 

It's been quiet for a while. Which makes it hard to stay awake, but Ma'ar has discovered that digging his nails into his palm wakes him up a little, and coughing on purpose wakes him up a lot (it's just very very uncomfortable.)

He's trying to avoid pushing his Gifts before it's time, but his vision is clear enough to confirm that the hallway is empty, so he practices bending and straightening his legs. They feel heavy, but not deadweight. He isn't sure if he could stand unassisted, but with help, probably? Or he could always crawl. He's not going to rule out options just because they're undignified. 

Someone hurries past and he immediately goes limp and closes his eyes, but they don't even glance his way. 

...All right. Focus. He explores the limits of his bonds. The cuffs holding his wrists are, while not tight enough to be uncomfortable at rest, nonetheless inconveniently restrictive, and his hands are weak and shaky. 

If he could sit up and lean forward, maybe he could get at the knots with his teeth? .....NO NO NO that's a bad idea, it does very unpleasant things to his horrible tubes. And also hurts his neck, for some reason. And apparently there are precautions they've set, because something starts making a very loud noise behind him. 

Ma'ar squeezes his eyes shut. Think. He doesn't want someone to come investigate, right now. Can he...? 

He can cast a sound-barrier, apparently. It takes a bigger bite out of his meagre reserves than he'd like to admit, but he can do it. 

Yawning, clipboard in hand, Emmy wanders down to the end of the hall. 

Ma'ar hears footsteps, and immediately stops tugging at his restraints and closes his eyes.

Maybe as a result of his exertions, he's really feeling quite warm, to the point of discomfort. The blowing air seems to be drying any sweat on his body, but he can feel beads of perspiration popping up on his face and neck. 

Emmy blinks, startled and confused, when she crosses the (invisible to her) sound-barrier and suddenly hears the ventilator alarm. Oh, it looks like he was just coughing. She hits the silence button, then surveys the patient. 

Heart rate is...98? That's new. Maybe it's related to his temperature being all the way up at 37.2 all of a sudden. And his blood pressure is actually running very high, systolic in the 140s. It sure looks like his heart is working a lot better now that he's warm and has enough magnesium in his blood. She peers at the norepinephrine drip - only 2 ml/h - okay she's just going to pause that for now. 

Maybe he's in pain? It'd sure be convenient if Marian were here, but since Marian is taking a well-deserved lunch break, she might as well see if the special sauce is literally just 'trying to talk to the patient.' 

...Not knowing his name messes up her script a lot. She lays a hand on his shoulder anyway. "Hey. Can you open your eyes for me? I'm Dr Beckett, the resident. You're in the ICU." 

Ma'ar has been trying very hard to read her mind already, while keeping his expression relaxed. 

He opens his eyes.

Her surface thoughts sharpen as she makes contact with him. She's...a Healer, no, not quite a Healer, the associations are flashing by so fast in her mind but there's...scholarship, science. A chirurgeon, maybe, like those trained at the Academy in Predain? Except, he thinks it's not really either of those things. He's missing necessary context. 

She's that, but also she's a...student? Or second-in-command? Something in between those concepts. 

She's telling him where he is, but he can't make sense of the concept, he only gets a blur of its top associations in her mind. Complicated machines screaming, flashing lights. People lying still, tied down, tubes in their mouths and noses. Pain. A place where people die, sometimes - and sometimes a place where people come back from the brink of dying...? 

He's way too tired for this. 

She's not thinking at all about precautions against mage-gift, he notes. And she doesn't seem to have the faintest idea that he can read her thoughts, or be putting up even rudimentary shields. Has this place not heard of Mindspeakers? They're rarer, in some countries, and it's not what he was known for... 

More confusingly, there's no recognition in her thoughts. In fact, one thought-fragment is her wishing she knew his name, or...for some reason, the whereabouts of his family? 

Well, that's progress! 

"Squeeze my hand?" Emmy says, reaching under the blankets. She tries to speak slowly and loudly, but she's already distracted, remembering the poor lady in 198 with the wound that needs debriding - she hasn't done it before and Dr Prissan wanted her to have the chance, but wow she would prefer the chance didn't come at the very end of her 36-hour call period. The man in 192 needs parenteral nutrition and the PICC line team can't do it until Friday, and his gut incision should heal within a week, so she could suggest that she throw in a central line before she heads out - that'd make two today, nice - oh and she got to cardiovert that lady in 194 too, she was nervous and it did end up taking two shocks but it worked... 

Ma'ar looks her in the eye and squeezes her hand when he feels it. And tries not to react in any way to her thoughts, which are DEEPLY ALARMING as well as incredibly baffling.

Is this a place where they study people? Do scholarship on how bodies work - and, of course, how they break? The chirurgeons used to cut dead bodies apart. He wonders if any of them bemoaned how much more they might learn if they could cut open the living. 

He's so scared. 

All right. It...still seems more likely he'd have been grabbed at all if the - authorities, local Guard, whoever the uniformed man was - knew something of who he was? But maybe they somehow only knew he was a criminal and fugitive? It's easy for information to be lost when it travels a long distance by Mindspeech or courier; he's learned that information himself. Anyway, it seems like in his current situation, the - scholars? - don't care about who he is.

Only that they can learn by studying his body. He can sense the curiosity in this scholar's thoughts - to her, he's an enigma, an anomaly, she's looking at his eyes and lips and skin and musing on something to do with...blood, and also food? 

That still doesn't really explain Marian. 

He's not going to figure it out here, though, where they're keeping him drugged and tied down. Get out, first, and then reason it through. 

...Is that a good idea? Marian thought there were a lot of things wrong with him. But also she said they were better now, and he feels better, he couldn't have done magic before. His head is maybe clearing a little more? 

His reserves are still almost nothing. But he has control. He thinks he could manage a compulsion now. Probably. 

Emmy peers at the patient's lips. Cracked and dry, but that's just hospital air, her lips are chapped too. She thinks scurvy looks more extreme than that? Overall, now that he's warm and perfusing well, he looks - well, pretty healthy. A man somewhere between thirty-five and forty-five, dark hair and eyes. Ethnicity unclear, he could be Hispanic or Native or maybe even some variant of East Asian. Fine lines around his eyes and mouth, shadows under his eyes. Visibly toned muscles in his shoulders and neck. 

He doesn't look like someone who's lived an easy life. He doesn't look like an addict either. Also his heart rate is up to 115 now, his blood pressure still running high even though she paused the drip. 

"Are you in pain?" she asks him, slowly and clearly. 

He's in a lot of pain, but if he says 'yes' she's going to drug him about it. Ma'ar shakes his head. 

....And then stares past her and concentrates, with every fibre of willpower he possesses.

He needs to test this, and he can't afford to give himself away, so he has to start with something totally innocuous. He's going to...compulsion her to roll up the sleeves of the jacket she's wearing. 

A less tired Emmy might have noticed something off. As it is, she lets go of the patient's hand and rolls up the sleeves of her doctor's coat without even noticing it. 

"Are you feeling anxious?" she asks. 

He's terrified. 

He doesn't know what the 'right' answer is, here. Objectively terrifying things are happening to him, so she might be suspicious if he says no? He settles for nodding, but in a noncommittal sort of way. 

Emmy tries to smile reassuringly. "I can believe it! You've had a rough day." She's distracted, remembering that they'd discussed doing a bedside echo and she doesn't think that ever happened? Maybe there's no point, he looks better and it could have been just his wonky labs, but she would feel a lot more comfortable if she knew... "I'm sure it'll be better once we can get some of those tubes out." 

Ma'ar nods, trying not to look too eager or hopeful. 

...Actually, maybe he can do this. 

He focuses hard, and lays another compulsion. It's a good idea to take out the tubes. She wants to do it. 

Emmy feels a brief mental stumble, but doesn't quite notice it happening. 

Well, he does look ready for extubation, she thinks. No reason to keep going with unnecessary and invasive treatments, risking ventilator-associated pneumonia and all the other possible complications, and right now it sure looks like his main problem is that, now that he's alert, he's also miserable and uncomfortable with the endotracheal tube. She's very familiar with the look. 

...She can't just do it on the spot, though, she's a resident. Dr Prissan needs to sign off on her treatment plan. And...wait...wasn't she nervous before? She wanted them to do the echo first - right now she can't remember why, but something niggles...?   

Emmy stands frozen on the spot, hand still on her sleeve, trying to figure out why that doesn't feel like it resolves it - she should update the patient and then walk down the hallway and find Dr Prissan, but for some reason she can't.