Ow? 

For a moment Ma'ar confusedly thinks that he's under attack - one of the combat mages on Urtho's side must have gotten past his shields - but then the grey fog recedes a little, and awareness of his body returns. 

He's still tied down, and almost too weak to lift his head, and someone is talking to him and hurting him. He manages to lift leaden eyelids, just a crack, and the world is a painfully bright blur but he can make out her face. 

The pain stops, and more meaningless words slide past his ears. The woman looking down at him looks more worried than angry. 

Well, if they're attempting an interrogation, they haven't even bothered to figure out what language he speaks. And there's no point hiding anything, now, but he also can't think of anything he would want to say. 

"Hey there. That's really good. I'm sorry about that. Everything's fine. You're in the hospital but you're going to be just fine." 

Wow, sometimes it's really embarrassing how her voice comes out when she's trying to do the reassuring-bedside-manner thing. She sounds like her grandmother on the phone with a salesperson. 

The man's eyes are open and sort of looking at her, but he looks disoriented and terrified. And miserable.

She repeats her reassurances on autopilot while she glances back up at the monitor. Alternating English and French, just in case. 

He's so cold. Maybe his captors are doing that on purpose, hoping he'll break and talk, but right now he's far too tired to bother. 

He closes his eyes and lets the grey fog swallow him. 

Emmy gently tucks his hand back under the blankets, giving his fingers a final squeeze. He's responsive enough that he probably doesn't need to be intubated for airway protection right now? But the blank, helpless, scared look she saw in his eyes is still bothering her. 

"Pat?" she calls out to the nurse. "Do we have, uh, any reason to think this guy speaks French or English?" 

     "Huh? Oh. Paramedics' report didn't say." Patricia shrugs. 

"Nevermind." She frowns at the patient, whose eyes are closed again. She still doesn't like his colour, or the irregular wide-complex ventricular beats invading the ECG reading on the monitor, but at least his latest blood pressure is back up to 95/50. "Is there any way we can get a continuous temp on him? I want to know if we're making progress here." 

 "Hmm. Rectal probe, I guess? Dunno if he'll let us–"

Patricia breaks off at the urgent ringing of a monitor alarm. It takes both of them a few seconds to realize that it's not hypothermic John Doe's monitor. It's the lady in the bed over, still waiting for her transfer to the ICU. 

Patricia bolts over. "Fuck, fuck fuck fuck, that's not artifact -" 

The ECG tracing is...rather more exciting than what anyone wants to see at 4 am. 

Emmy stomps on a moment of med-student-like excitement. "Crash cart in here right now please! That looks like torsades. Do we have a magnesium on her yet? ...Okay she's not coming out of it. Pat, call a code, please."  

There's shouting. Some sort of loud horn-like sound. Drifting through underwater spiderwebs, Ma'ar wonders vaguely if there's a battle happening. Why would anyone bother, though, the war's over... 

Maybe his people are trying to rescue him. 

He probably ought to do something, or at least try to orient, but he can't even concentrate enough to extend his Othersenses, so he lies and shivers in his bonds, and waits, and eventually drifts back into the grey. 

WOW she was ASLEEP and the fucking code alarm on the intercom woke her. 

Marian flops over in the reclining chair and manages to check the time on her phone. It's 4:02 am. Amazing, that means she has almost three more entire hours to sleep... 

Code bleu, Urgence... 

Nope. Nope nope nope even if that is her guy she's not working right now and she's going to stay right here and go back to SLEEP. 

...After a couple of minutes, Marian groans and sits up. She might as well admit to herself that sleep isn't going to happen until she confirms whether or not the code is that guy. It's dumb, he's not even her patient, but - well, in a sense she's almost more invested. She's never rescued someone and called 911 for them before. 

Chantal is still at her desk when Marian emerges, blinking and yawning. "Chantal? Savez-tu c'est quoi le code a l'urgence?" 

Chantal doesn't bother to look up. "Aucune idée." 

FINE she will WALK back to the ER and see what's going on. 

...The Bair Hugger hot-air warming blanket machine is by the doors. "Chantal?" Marian calls back. "Pourquoi c'est ici?" She has a suspicion. 

"...Oh. J'ai oublié - ils l'ont demandé a l'urgence - tu peut l'emporter pour moi?" 

"D'accord." Although she's going to stop on the way and grab scrubs. She does not feel like strolling into the Resus bay wearing a sparkly sweater-top. 

The man she rescued from the riverbank isn't the code; the huddle of medical staff is around the bed next door. 

Mystery bathrobe guy is lying still and quiet, covered in a shocking number of blankets, an almost-empty IV bag hanging from the gurney's pole. The monitor is occasionally beeping once or twice, when his heart rate drops below 40. His O2 sats are hanging out at 91%, which for some reason isn't setting off an alarm because the threshold is set to 88%; probably the monitor was last used with a COPD patient and wasn't reset to its default alarm limits. He's shivering a little, now, which is probably a good sign overall. 

His mystery bathrobe, and the awful plaid skirt, are crumpled up in a wet bundle on the chair in the corner.

For the first time, Marian notices a Salvation Army price tag on the neck of the bathrobe, and chokes down an incredibly inappropriate giggle. 

Very self-conscious of the bright red long sleeves sticking out from the armholes of her oversized OR scrub top - she didn't want to just strip in the middle of the hallway - Marian plugs in the forced-hot-air blanket system, and unrolls the disposable blanket component from its package. 

"Hey - I'm so sorry, I need to take off these other blankets just for a moment - this one will be warmer, I promise..." The Bair Hugger is supposed to be directly in skin contact, though some of the ICU nurses always put a sheet under it. 

For a moment the air is cold against his bare skin, but mostly Ma'ar tenses up because he's exposed and he desperately wants to run away or hide or something, anything, but he's bound and helpless and he can't. 

At least he's awake enough to notice? Marian winces, though, and hurries to drape the warming blanket over him. 

This particular model of heated blanket works by pumping hot air through a hose from the machine, and out through tiny holes in the basically-made-of-paper blanket part. 

It feels very strange. But it is, in fact, warm, and he feels less exposed, and despite everything else he's grateful. 

Marian reaches under the blanket and squeezes the man's hand. "Better? Are you comfortable - do you need anything else...?" 

Still incomprehensible. The tone is gentle, though, and Ma'ar can hear the question in it. 

He can't focus quite well enough to make out surface thoughts - his head still feels full of glue, which is worrying, actually, or would be if he could muster any real emotion - but he still recognizes the earnest flavour of her mind.

...It's her. The young woman who found him. Who, not knowing who he was, tried to offer help. He can't think what she's doing here - he wants to tell her to get the hell away, she shouldn't be here - and at the same time he's alone and helpless and he doesn't want to lose that one note of familiarity and comfort. 

He forces his eyes open a little, shakes his head, tries to smile to show his gratitude. 

Huh, the guy seems really out of it? His response was very delayed and he's barely able to keep his eyes open. Then again, he's better off than he was when the paramedics arrived. 

"You're doing great," Marian says, if only because The Bedside Manner Script calls for her to say something at this point; she honestly doesn't know how he's doing. At least his O2 sats are back up to 95% now that he's awake. She's a little tempted to put him on a couple litres of O2 anyway, but he's not her patient and she's not even technically working and the responsible thing right now is to get more SLEEP. 

She pats his shoulder again and leaves. 

- and, a few steps down the hall, remembers that her coat is probably in here somewhere and she'd better find it before shift change risks its disappearance. It's not on the chair with the wet clothes...oh, there it is, hanging over the back of that other chair behind the desk. 

She retrieves it and heads back to the ICU. 

And Ma'ar is alone again. 

He understands why the young woman didn't want to risk untying him, but despite himself he resents it. 

He stays conscious as long as he can - the muffled voices and other sounds from nearby help, it doesn't actually sound like a battle at all, he doesn't have the faintest idea what it is. But the fog is waiting for him, and eventually he succumbs to it. 

Two shocks from the defib, a few minutes of CPR, and a frantic infusion of magnesium get the lady next door back into sinus rhythm, but even a brief cardiac arrest is very tough on someone over 75, and she was sick to begin with. Her blood pressure is all over the place. 

And to make her night EVEN WORSE, just after they get confirmation that the ICU can take her, Matt gets a radio alert from another paramedic team. 55-year-old morbidly obese man coming in with severe chest pain and shortness of breath. Great. Exactly what she needed right now. 

She doesn't have the chance to even think about their John Doe hypothermia victim until Matt taps her on the shoulder, nearly an hour later. 

     "Dr Beckett? Lab just called about bed one's tox screen." 

"And?" 

     He shrugs. "Negative on the whole panel." 

"Huh. I...was wondering." She rubs her eyes. Right now her deepest wish in the entire world is for things to stop happening for one. single. hour. so that she can grab a nap before shift change. "Anything on the rest? ...You know what, damn, I should've sent the full panel on him. Pat! Hey! When you're done with him can you get a full rainbow on your other guy?" Sending off all the colours of lab tubes is often colloquially called 'the rainbow.' 

     "Sure. On it." 

"Any change otherwise?" 

     "Not really." 

"Latest temp? ...Oh, crap, did we ever get the continuous probe, we didn't, did we." 

    "I'll grab another temp now." 

"He's still pretty brady." The patient's heart rate is hovering between 35 and 45, not totally regular. "Why don't you just get the rectal probe?" 

Ma'ar was asleep, mercifully without dreams this time. 

Hands untying the bonds on one of his wrists is enough to half-wake him. He stays limp, though, keeping his eyes closed. It gives less away and is also less effort. 

Someone else is grabbing him by the shoulder and hip and rolling him onto his side. They're not doing it all that gently and it hurts; his skin feels bruised and tender everywhere, and his bones ache.

And now there's cold air against his bare skin again, making him shiver harder. Which somehow manages to be painful as well; every muscle in his body is sore. 

- and then something VERY STARTLING, which wrecks all chances of pretending to be asleep, he was not at all prepared for...whatever they're doing to him...and he yelps involuntarily and tries to fling up a shield, while at the same time flinging his free arm backward in hopes of striking whoever's responsible. 

Patricia, busy trying to place the rectal temperature probe while the resident holds her patient on his side, starts to squeak as her hands suddenly lose purchase - almost as though he pushed her, but he didn't - 

- she's just starting to lean in and retrieve the dropped probe, when the patient elbows her almost right in the eye socket. 

"Ow! Ow motherfucking OW." She hops back from the gurney. "What the fuck. He hit me." 

"I'm sure he didn't mean to! He's just confused - I'm so sorry, though, are you all right - let me have a look, can you see out of that eye...?"