...That is not fair the darkness is encroaching on him and he can barely think or keep his eyes open let alone figure out what she's asking him to agree to. 

Marian frowns. His eyelids are fluttering in almost-cartoonish exaggerated sleepiness.

She remembers noticing that he follows a lot better when he's more awake, though she's starting to wonder if it's something entirely different from a language barrier. 

"All right. I'm dropping the rate by half, okay? So that you can at least understand me." 

Emmy is NOT MOVING. So far the mind control seems to be accepting that if the patient's nurse wants to nudge her aside and talk to their patient first, they get priority and she has to wait to carry out her all-important mission. 

Marian pauses the pump for ten seconds, decreases the rate, restarts it. Waits. 

"...Hey. You with me now?" 

Ma'ar is very unsure what happened in the last minute or so, but he can sort of think again. And handle Thoughtsensing, at least on Marian, who's holding his hand and fully open to him. He nods. 

"Okay. Right. I'm going to repeat what I said before. I, uh, I'm willing to stop the drugs again, if you promise that you'll stop mind-controlling Dr Beckett and that you won't mess with my head and we'll talk about it instead." 

She really hopes he's willing to listen to her. And has - very little idea what she's going to do if he refuses.

...Go with him when he leaves? He's doing better but he's still very definitely an ICU patient. Who wants to walk out with a bunch of sedation in his system and his phosphate and magnesium still low. And he's HER patient. 

Ma'ar can mostly follow that. And, yet again, has very little idea what to do with it. Marian baffles him. 

He seems to be thinking, a frown-line appearing between his brows. Not surprising that it takes him a while, when he's on propofol. She's kind of impressed he can do it at all. 

Marian grits her teeth and waits for him. As tempting as it is to max out the propofol and knock him out, that clearly isn't going to fix their longer-term problem. 

"Dr Beckett?" she hisses, without turning her head. "You okay?" 

"Please don't let me extubate him I might try to I'm mind controlled," Emmy whispers back. "I guess I can make it not let me while he's on propofol. ...Fuck, I have to tell you to stop it, don't I." She scrunches up her face. "But you don't, um, have to listen." 

Marian moves so that she's blocking Dr Beckett from reaching the patient with her body. 

"...What's your name?" she adds, returning her attention fully to her patient. 

No obvious reason not to answer. :Ma'ar: 

'Hearing' weird non-English phonemes telepathically is weird. 

"Ma'ar?" she tries. "Sorry if I'm saying it wrong. Um, I - want you to be okay and get better, all right? And you're still sick. If you want to leave, and you're lucid, you can. But can we please talk about it? After you stop screwing with Dr Beckett's head?" 

He's so confused. Confused about why Marian isn't panicking more. Confused about what she wants. About what this 'Dr Beckett' wants. About what HAPPENED, leading up to this moment, he's missing so many chunks of memory. 

...He can't get out of here without cooperation from someone. That's becoming clear. And Marian means it, her mind is an open book to him and - it's a little more complicated than 'she'll walk him out right now', her thoughts flicker to paperwork about it, but it's...mostly just that. Marian holds more cards than him, right now - she could, if she wanted, keep him here, unconscious and helpless, against his will - but she's making a decision not to.

Because she...cares? About him? And about something more abstract and idealized than him, personally– oh. She's a Healer. Not of a school he knows, and not Gifted, but all the same. 

He nods, and reaches out to release the clumsy compulsion on the scholar-'doctor', and then closes his eyes. 

Marian is also confused about why she isn't panicking more! She can feel her pulse, rapid in her chest, and her hands are shaky, but that seems distant, unrelated to her emotions. Maybe it's the stupid Ritalin, or maybe it's just that today crossed her absurdity threshold a while ago and she's all out of feelings about it. 

"Dr Beckett? Are you all right now?" 

Emmy tries taking a step away from the bed. Then tries...pressing the call bell? That counts as calling for help, probably. 

Nothing stops her. 

She immediately silences the call bell again. This seems messy and complicated and more hands won't help. "...I'm all right. I think. You?" 

"He didn't do anything to me! I'm fine. His name is Ma'ar, by the way. ...And I promised I'd stop the propofol." She pauses the pump. Without actually turning it off - she might want to be able to restart it with one keypress. 

Ma'ar's head is pounding again, the hollow empty feeling growing; apparently, even just the sound-barrier and a handful of compulsions was enough to wear him out. He can manage Mindspeech for a while longer but he can tell it's going to cost him. 

:Want her to go: he sends to Marian. :Just you: 

Marian doesn't say out loud that she bets Dr Beckett will be relieved about that - though if the patient can only understand them at all because he's telepathic, that doesn't matter. 

"All right. ...Dr Beckett? He would prefer you step out." She lowers her voice. "Can you tell Amélie we need some privacy, and, uh, check on us in ten minutes?" 

Emmy nods, and manages to leave the room at a dignified walk rather than running like she wants to. 

"Right. I'll be right back." 

Marian shuts the door behind her, and closes all the blinds, then returns to the bed. She feels weird about standing looking down at him - and there should be a chair in here, but apparently someone 'borrowed' it. 

With a shrug, she unties one of Ma'ar's hands - while keeping a grip on the trailing end of the restraint - lowers that bedrail, and perches herself on the side of the bed, where her head is closer to level with his. 

"Okay. I'm here. Tell me when you're awake enough to talk, I guess?" 

...Instead of answering, Ma'ar finds himself crying. He has so little idea why. 

It also turns out that the ventilator has some objections to this. 

Marian spends an anxious five seconds trying to figure out if he has a sudden airway obstruction or something. Watching someone trying their best to sob uncontrollably while intubated is bizarre and unnerving. 

She silences the ventilator alarm, then shifts closer to him. Telling him to please not cry now it's a bad time can he do it later would be incredibly rude so she doesn't. 

She wants to say something reassuring, but...in fact she has only guesses at what's upsetting him. It seems like it's not just being critically ill and alone in the hospital. It...seems like they've been making kind of a lot of assumptions about this patient. Assumptions which keep being proven wrong, and maybe at some point she should take a step back from it and actually be curious. 

"I'm here," she says, squeezing his hand again. 

She doesn't need to say that it's a bad time; Ma'ar can sense it in her thoughts, and also it's pretty obvious, he's having a hard time breathing because of it. 

He notices her confusion, piecing together the realization that not only is she missing a lot of information about him - which she knew - but that even her inferences from it were wrong. 

...Ma'ar is starting to suspect that he's made a lot of wrong assumptions here as well, but he doesn't have the slightest idea of where to start. 

Marian waits until he seems a little calmer.

He's not calm, though. He's breathing well above the ventilator set rate, his heart rate is still up around 115, and his muscles are visibly tense. Which she has a great view of because he was, in fact, naked under the Bair Hugger blanket which she's now folded over so it's just covering his legs. His forehead and hair are damp with sweat. 

"Uh, one second. Are you still too hot?" She waits until he nods. "All right. I'm going to turn this blanket off and put it away properly and I'll get you a gown, okay?"

She doesn't need to leave the room; there's a gown on the counter by the sink, along with a neat pile of small hand towels. She folds up the Bair Hugger disposable blanket and piles it on top of the machine - he might want it again later - and then covers him up. The ICU gowns are designed with snaps along the shoulders, and a little vent behind the pointless little chest pocket to accommodate the heart monitor leads, so she can get it on him without undoing anything. 

...Which is when she realizes that she's been puttering around the room while leaving the bedrail down and his left hand totally unrestrained. Dumb of her. A...good sign, though, that he's not actively trying to run away this second? 

He's not. He did briefly consider using his now-free hand to figure out the ties on his other wrist, but his fingers are still pretty weak and shaky, and there's some sort of cord, no, a clear tube, running from his freed hand to the machines behind him. It's probably important and he didn't want to risk yanking it. 

He waits to Mindspeak again until she's back and in contact with him, it takes a lot less energy to project. :Marian, what - will happen to me? If I stay?: