Marian squeezes his hand tightly and watches his sats as Dr Beckett does this. Ma'ar's heart rate jumps up again, unsurprisingly, and he clenches her hand tightly, but he stays pretty calm for it. 

"Dr Beckett?" she offers. "I think we can let him suction in his mouth himself, or at least help? It might be less stressful. ...Ma'ar, if we untie your hands, you're going to wait for her and not pull the tube out yourself, right?" 

That does sound a lot less unpleasant. Ma'ar nods. 

Being able to lift and bend his arms again is such a vast relief. He's still weak and uncoordinated, but he lets Marian wrap his fingers around the oral suction catheter and then bring it to his lips. For all that his mouth feels bone-dry, judging by the slurping sound there is apparently a collection of goopy saliva or mucus near the back of his tongue. 

Urk she hates that sound. Blood, piss, diarrhea, vomit, all fine. Saliva is the WORST, especially when it's slimy like that. 

"Really good," she says, keeping her voice level and cheerful. 

"Ready?" 

Emmy detaches the tubing and holds it in place with one hand while she empties the balloon-seal. "Okay. Now - big cough!" 

The tube comes out in one smooth motion, trailing mucus from the end. 

Ma'ar grabs at the bedrails and pitches forward, coughing and gagging. For a moment he's sure he's going to vomit, but nothing comes up, and then he burps and feels somewhat better. There's a sticky wad of phlegm at the back of his throat, though, which he can't quite seem to cough up entirely. And he can't see anything, his eyes are streaming with tears again, but he's pretty sure that he's drooling on himself. 

:Mouth thing?: he begs Marian. 

She puts it in his hand, supporting his shoulders. "I'm sorry that was so unpleasant, but it's all done now. You did great. Just take a nice big breath now?" 

She offers him another moistened hand towel to wipe his face, then helps him do it when it turns out his hand is too shaky. And she has a set of nasal cannula ready. With the mist-bottle wall attachment to keep it nice and humidified, in her opinion giving patients oxygen by nasal cannula without that is just cruel. 

"You did really well," Emmy says, and finds herself grinning. "How are you feeling?" 

Ma'ar starts to answer out loud before remembering that, one, they don't speak his language, and two, his throat is incredibly raw. 

:...Better. Thank you: He closes his eyes. :And I am sorry. For using a compulsion on you: 

"Well, I'm sorry we didn't realize you thought you were a prisoner." She takes a step back. "I'm done my shift now, but...I'm glad you were my patient. Get some rest, get better, and I hope you're long gone from here by the time I'm back on rotation." 

Awwww. 

The room clears out. It's just him and Marian now. 

Ma'ar looks up at her. Tries to smile. 

:What next?: 

"- Honestly, not much? That's going to be your main event of today, I think. For now you just need to rest, and tell me right away if you're feeling worse, especially if you're finding it hard to breathe. Okay?" 

Nod. :Can I have water now: 

Marian starts to shake her head, then pauses. "...Okay, you can have one ice chip right now. As a treat, for bearing with us through all that. And in an hour or so you can start trying sips of water. It's going to be hard for you to swallow at first, is all." 

:Thank you: 

Marian promises to bring this, putters around the room a bit disconnecting and turning off unused IV pumps, and then ducks out into the hallway and pauses to do a thirty-second happy dance, where it's slightly less embarrassing. Her patient's vital signs are good and he's breathing on his own and he SMILED at her. She's so happy. 

By the time she gets back with a cup of ice chips - slightly delayed, Elaine was stuck in an isolation room and needed clean sheets and wipes - Ma'ar is asleep. 

Well, he probably needs it. He might have spent most of today sedated, but it wasn't exactly restful. She cautiously sets the ice chips down - on the counter, not the bedside table, he totally might try to chug them himself without her there and she would rather he didn't. 

And she goes about her day. 

Ma'ar spends most of the next four hours sleeping. 

He wasn't expecting that. Everything felt so desperate, before, he was confused and terrified and just wanted to be able to think, to figure out how and why any of this is happening... 

But the day's events seem to have taken a heavy toll on him. Whatever happened in Predain, it's too late now.

And...he feels safe here, mostly. They could have done whatever they wanted to him; they could have kept him unconscious and tied down for the next week, if they felt like it. It would have made Marian's day simpler if she'd just drugged him to the eyeballs. But she didn't. 'Doctor Beckett' could have been furious, would have been within her rights to refuse him any more help, and instead she came in person to take the tube out. He's starting to believe that this place really and truly is about helping save people's lives. Even if a lot of their methods are unpleasant. 

Now that he's relaxed a little, it's impossible to fight the exhaustion. So he sleeps, half-waking when Marian comes in to turn him in bed and listen to his lungs and ask if he's hurting. He admits that he's in pain, and lets her give him more drugs for it, and sleeps again. 

Somehow it's only 4:45 pm. And Marian is completely out of things to do and, somehow, fully caught up on charting. The first eight hours of her shift went by in such a surreal whirlwind, and suddenly she isn't quite sure what to do with herself. 

Normally, finding something to occupy her time wouldn't be a problem at ALL. The rest of the unit seems pretty quiet today, though, and - well, the downside of having the hallway-alcove room assignment is that helping anyone else means being really far away from Ma'ar. He's comfy and his vitals are beautiful, blood sugars holding steady, but she still doesn't want to spend a long block of time not even in earshot. 

She takes a longish bathroom break, checks Facebook on her phone, and -

- somewhere in the middle of that, the reality of the situation starts to sink in. 

Her patient. Who this morning - only a little over twelve hours ago - everyone thought was your generic homeless alcoholic. 

Is from a fantasy setting.

Which is impossible. And has telepathy. Also impossible. And - almost successfully - mind-controlled the resident in order to flee the hospital. 

Which he thought was some sort of prison slash medical experiments facility - which isn't that unreasonable, honestly, even some Americans without any medical background, if they woke up disoriented in an ER, might draw a similar conclusion.

Though it's also partly because he clearly has HELLA PTSD due to having fought in a magical war in said fantasy setting, and thought that Security Creep was some kind of official police officer showing up to arrest him for war crimes. 

WHY IS THIS HER LIFE.

Okay. Focus. She may have a minute of downtime right now but she's still at work, she can have a breakdown about how magic is real later. At home. 

Right now she...needs to make sure she's actually done all her tasks, because her standard workflow - give meds and draw labs as scheduled, fill out all the little boxes in the charting software, do the obvious things and  troubleshoot the obvious problems - is probably going to be missing all the 'dotting her i's and crossing her t's' type followup that has to do with what just happened. Because the hospital system is in no way set up for MAGIC BEING REAL. 

Okay. Think. She– oh, right, there's a task she literally promised Ma'ar she would do and then forgot about, which is talking to Amélie about the situation and planning the night shift assignments accordingly. 

She gets up from the toilet, washes her hands, pats her face with a damp paper towel just to feel more human, and then forges back out into the unit. After a quick check on both her patients - still sleeping quietly, monitors quiet and happy - she heads for the nursing station. 

The main part of the unit is an approximate square, with the rooms laid around the perimeter, a hallway, and then a central block for the nursing station, with an aisle dividing it in two; one half forms a C-shaped desk, screened in by glass so that it's a little sound-isolated but still offers a full view of the patients. A giant screen in the middle hosts a central display of all the heart monitors. The other half houses the med-room and the admin clerk's desk, though Tracy starts at 8 am and went home at 4.

Dr Prissan is in his usual seat of honour by the printer, feet propped up, arm lazily draped over the desk as he reviews scan imaging, occasionally tapping the mouse. Most of the nurses are out and about, though Anne-Marie is charting at another computer, occasionally death-glaring her patient's monitor. 

Marian clears her through. "Uh. Have you seen Amélie?" 

Anne-Marie jumps and looks alarmed, then avoids eye contact in a very don't-pick-me sort of way. 

Dr Prissan just swings one leg down, then the other, and spins his office chair around. "Your mind control wizard behaving himself?" 

Marian tries to ignore Anne-Marie's quiet choking sound. "Uh, he's been lovely. Mostly sleeping. He really wanted water."