“Were you aware that your unit made the news today?” Dr Chen says, a bit waspishly. (It doesn’t explain everything, or even come close, but her top theory right now is that a bunch of med students are the ringleaders on a stupid prank and “Dr Harrison” wasn’t.)

“I - no - what does that—?” Dr Chadra had a whole script mentally lined up and it’s now throughly thrown off. “Why do you— ohhhh. Shit.” 

The journalist!!! He forgot about that!!! Dr Harrison brushed it off with a confident pronouncement that obviously no one would take a tabloid journalist seriously, but in hindsight obviously the specialist in Tennessee who they just dumped a bizarre and concerning and pretty fake-sounding case on would be inclined to get on Google. Awkward.

That…does, in fact, sound like the reaction of someone whose mind was entirely on something big and important and genuine and who was bemused at the concept that they would have had time to read the news today.

“So what did you call about, if it’s not to confess that this is an overly elaborate med student prank?”

…Back on the script. “Your expertise would be invaluable on this case but Dr Harrison isn’t comfortable saying more about the, er, biological cellular regeneration treatment over the phone. If you would consider flying here and signing an NDA, we can read you in on everything.”

“And I’ll be listed as a coauthor when you publish the case study later, huh? Is that what he’s thinking.” If this ISN’T a baffling prank then this would, in fact, be an excellent bribe for cancelled everything this week and getting on a plane to the west coast on zero notice.

That was not part of the script but Dr Chadra can react on his feet. "Probably? I assume so? I mean, like, that seems super reasonable, if you're consulting on it?" 

"...I need to think about it."

What she in fact needs is to find someone, anyone else who can confirm, as a third party, whether their puzzling and incredibly concerning radiation syndrome patient actually exists. If the patient is real, then - well, maybe she doesn't need to understand what the actual fuck is happening in Reno to know that they need her help. 

Well, she's in, what, Tennessee or something, she's not getting here until late tonight one way or another and by then either their patient will be dead or he'll be fixed or he'll be temporarily stabilized and they'll have until tomorrow morning to figure out what the fuck to do next. 

"Okay," Dr Chadra says.

“Keep emailing me updates,” Dr Chen says after a brief unsuccessful battle with temptation; she’s full of desperate morbid curiosity. “You’re setting up to do your secret treatment intervention again, yes? I’d consider getting the full set of labs immediately before and after, for the comparison.” 

...That's a good idea, actually, given that it's now looking like it could be another hour until they can use the Restoration and Leareth's labs are probably still getting worse - it's not imminently a life-threatening crisis but only because he's on all the life support - and it does seem valuable to know exactly how much the Restoration helps with all the myriad horrible problems. 

"Will do," Dr Chadra promises. "I'd better get back to it." 

Leareth is hanging on but, if Shavri's Sight is tracking the same things then his labs are definitely going to be getting worse. His cardiac output is deteriorating again, probably from a mix of counterproductive response to inflammation signals and the fact that his cells are getting less and less able to use all the oxygen being moved around in his blood. Oh and possibly the tiny arteries that feed blood to his actual heart muscle are having inflammation-related tiny blockages? ...It's not an emergency, they can go back up on the ECMO flow rate, just, it's pretty non-ideal, if Leareth's heart stops then that might make him non-targetable by Golarion magic again even if they're supporting his circulation. 

If Samora is not 100% definitely required for preparing the diamond dust then Shavri would kind of like her back in the room and on-call to cast Stabilize? 

Absolutely. She prepped the Restoration before Catherine got back so there's nothing else she in particular has to do. She can stand here casting Stabilize every six seconds if that's what makes their odds best, or she can stand here with one on the tip of her tongue waiting for Shavri to say Now.

She still has one Remove Disease, three Remove Sicknesses, and an open slot that can all be turned into Cures, plus three channels.

Wow Shavri is really tempted to demand that Dr Harrison authorize using both the Remove Disease and another Cure immediately! But it’s probably not worth it, they’re going to have an entire night to get through after this and the pneumonia continues to be very far down the list of Leareth’s worst problems, and it’s not clear how much a Cure will help right now, increasingly many of his problems look more like deteriorating Endurance than like injuries. Probably they should hold off unless he starts bleeding internally or something - he’s not, right now, he’ll just be in serious trouble if it does happen while his blood’s ability to clot is destroyed.

Casting Stabilize every six seconds seems great, though, if it’s not going to wear Samora out and result in her being exhausted later.

Marian continues to work as fast as she reasonably can, which is not that fast because it would be so stupid to fumble a container and drop a bunch of their desperately-collected diamond dust on the floor. 

Doooooes it at least seem like the final product, after three rounds of dilution and re-filtering with water and rubbing alcohol and then microwaving the paste in a clean ramekin inside a sideways biohazard bag, is a sprinkle-able powder?