"Ma'ar, are you having any pain or tenderness in your belly? Or just feeling nauseated?" 

Why is she still trying to ask him so many relentless questions. :Little tender. Mostly just feel sick: 

"Okay. Whatever you're sick with, clearly your guts aren't happy about it. I think you'll be more comfortable if we swap the feeding tube in your nose for a different kind? We can put it to suction and keep your stomach drained, and it'd reduce the risk that you vomit when you're groggy and get it in your lungs, which would be very bad. Doing the swap will be pretty unpleasant, though. Are you up for that?" 

Ma'ar considers it, and nods. He would really like to feel less disgustingly awful. At this point he would probably agree to having a needle shoved through his eyeball, if Dr Zee said he would feel better afterward. 

Marian starts another whiteboard note for Nellie. "Dr Zee, could we give him just a tiny bit of midazolam for it, or something?" 

"- Sure. 0.5 mg." 

Dr Zee turns back to Ma'ar. "I'm worried about your electrolyte levels - different kinds of salt in your blood, basically. You were dangerously low on a number of things yesterday - probably as a result of the hypothermia, it causes your kidneys to dump more salt, and we have a suspicion that using magic heavily might affect that too. We tried to treat it yesterday, but I don't think we got you back to a healthy person's usual reserves, and you're losing a lot in gastric fluids. Your sodium is low - that's likely to be causing the headache and fogginess, and it's probably some of why you feel so weak. And your potassium is very, very low. Your heart relies on it to maintain a steady rhythm, and with your levels this off, you're at an awfully high risk of sudden cardiac arrhythmias. But we can't dump too much in you at once, either, without causing worse problems." 

Ma'ar listens, or rather Thoughtsenses, without opening his eyes. 

:...Oh. So I - might - I could just die: 

"...There's a risk. I'm not going to hide that from you. But we are not going to give up on you easily, and we're pretty good at restarting hearts, if the underlying cause is reversible. And your heart is in good shape, compared to most of our patients here. It's...a messy process, though." She thinks an image at him, of the last code she presided over. "And even when it works, a lot of people will have long-term effects. So it's an important thing to discuss, whether someone really wants everything done to bring them back once they know what that 'everything' includes. ...I would do everything and then some, for you. I just want to make sure you're informed about what that means." 

If he were any less bitterly tired, he would be so curious about that rapid flicker of memory she shared. It's awe-inspiring. Urtho, if he were here - if he had lived, if he'd not spent every drop of life in his body to burn down his life's work - if he were here, he wouldn't stop asking questions for the next week. 

He wants this not to be happening. He wants to somehow undo it. And he can't. This is what his desperate decades of work accomplished. He has no choice but to live with it now. 

...or die, maybe, and he doesn't know if whatever sent him here would work a second time. 

"Ma'ar? Is that upsetting to hear - you seem upset -" 

:Not what you said: 

:- I - cannot really imagine anything bad enough that I would rather die than endure it. Please do everything you can: 

Dr Zee looks into his eyes. "I scared you. I'm sorry. This is never a pleasant conversation to have, it's just one I have to have anyway. And - I can't make any promises, we're doctors not gods, but... I think you'll get through this." 

:Thank you: 

Ma'ar is, in fact, incredibly scared. But he's also exhausted.

He closes his eyes, and drifts, and somehow in spite of the sheer physical misery, falls asleep. 

It feels like about five seconds later that Marian is gently waking him. "Ma'ar?" And then a bit less gently. She squeezes the muscle between his shoulder and neck, hard enough to hurt a lot. "Ma'ar. Hey. Please wake up for me?" 

He was working on it; he's just so exhausted. He sends a wordless mental acknowledgement rather than bothering with words. 

"Ma'ar, we're going to give you a little bit of a sedative to help you relax, and then get the new tube into your stomach." 

And to Dr Zee, muffled, "- this is the most lethargic I've seen him. I mean, except when he was snowed on propofol, but you know." 

"I'm worried it's a rapid increase in his sodium. We've given him a lot of boluses. We need to send off some labs stat." 

"- I can do that first and then the NG. It's fast with the art line." 

Ma'ar lets them fuss around him. 

Having the tube put in isn't even as unpleasant as he expected; Marian injects him with the drug he remembers from the day before, the one that makes the world feel misty and pink and soft around the edges, and then she cranks the head of the bed up, switches him back to the nose-prong oxygen so his face isn't as obstructed, and slides the well-lubricated plastic tip of the tube - the smallest dual-lumen one in stock, pre-chilled in a basin of ice chips to make it a little stiffer and easier to place - into his other, unoccupied nostril. That part is deeply uncomfortable, if not exactly painful, and he gags when it tickles the back of his throat. But Marian lets him have a few actual sips of water, so he can swallow and help the tube slide down the right hole, and then it's all done in about ten seconds. His stomach is gurgling warningly about the water, but he doesn't throw up, at least not before Marian grabs the syringe. 

He closes his eyes again, then; he doesn't especially need to watch his stomach contents emerging through the inconveniently clear tube. 

She gets a lot of air bubbles and about 50ccs total of alarmingly bright-yellow bile. And then more air bubbles. 

"...Feel better at all?" 

He does, actually; he's still unpleasantly too aware of his stomach, but the nausea is a lot more muted. :Mmm. Thank you: 

"You're welcome. ...Huh, are you feeling less cold? You're not shivering anymore." 

:I am not sure: It's getting harder to even process the various loud discomforts that his body is flinging at him. :I am more comfortable:

"Right. Midazolam is a muscle relaxant. I was considering giving him something earlier, except he really didn't need to be more sedated. They drugged him hard on night shift." 

"I saw - do you know what's up with that? I, uh, didn't really have time to get a full report from Nellie."