"And she's healing affinity - she’d want to at least try to help -“

"Sure. I'm going to go back down now but if I see Shannon before you do I'll tell her. You'll tell Larisa?"

"Yeah, I'll tell her." 

Bella heads back down toward the infirmary.

Raleigh wants to go looking for Shannon, but he'd better stay here and wait for Larisa. 

Shannon isn't actually that hard to find! She's perusing a section of the library near Bella's path from the Sacramento reading room to the stairs. 

"Oh - Shannon, Raleigh said you'd want to know, Sophie's in the infirmary - I'm just going now, do you want to come -"

“Sophie? Oh no, what happened - was it a mal -?”

"It's either the flu or, uh, a maleficer, we're not sure."

"A– what? Shit! Do they, uh, know - who might've...?" 

"Uh - I think possibly it shouldn't circulate through the whole school, you can ask the older kids in the infirmary about it maybe. But Raleigh said you knew Sophie and thought you might want to sit with her."

"...Right. Yeah. Of course." 

And Shannon will follow her. 

In the infirmary, Marian is busy pleading with the void wall for more IV fluids. She looks around. "Larisa– oh, sorry. Uh, who are you?" 

Aaaaaaah this is nervewracking! She's in the presence of a real actual medical professional and she's totally out of her depth! 

"I'm Shannon. I have a healing affinity and I - know Sophie a bit, can I - is there room -?" 

Marian is BUSY ACTUALLY. "Talk to Wen Qing." 

"The dehydration secondary to the flu, we think," she says. "Possibly both secondary to the maleficer draining her life force. Do you have spells that help with any of those or determining whether it's a maleficer or the induction flu?"

Eeeek. Oh no. "I - wait so you're not sure? Whether it was a maleficer or not?" 

"Not yet. We're focusing on keeping her alive for now."

Ribo looks up from where she's been trying to translate a relevant spell and turns to Shannon and waves. "I can answer your questions Marian and Wen Qing are pretty busy."

Shannon blinks at her. She...definitely looks familiar but right now Shannon's brain is failing at names even harder than usual.

"...I have a spell version of the potion I can make to treat morning sickness?" she offers. "If she's dehydrated from throwing up that might help. I can't cast it unless someone can spare some mana for me, though." Actually, she can just baaaaarely cast it at all. She couldn't have three months ago, and only can now because her parents helped her rewrite it to be mana-cheaper. (It correspondingly works less well, though mainly in duration rather than strength of effect.) 

"Try it. We're throwing everything at her."

Ribo looks at the New Yorkers, "Would one of you spot her the mana?"

New York guy doesn't look delighted about this but holds out his hand.

Marian turns around. 

"- Wouldn't be my favorite baseline plan but the void seems to be having a hard time with this very simple request." So far it's given her: IV magnesium, IV potassium, 25% albumin, something bright yellow that might be parenteral nutrition sugars and amino acids but is only labelled in Arabic, and 3% saline which will do the OPPOSITE OF HELP with dehydration. "If she's not puking I can almost certainly get it to give me Pedialyte. Maybe even a NG tube." 

This is very socially awkward but Shannon grits her teeth and accepts the mana from the New Yorker. 

"...Spell's in French," she warns. "Takes about three minutes." 

She wiggles herself past Wen Qing so she can squeeze in by Sophie's bedside. Sophie looks like shit. God. This is really upsetting.