Why does Merrin have such a THING about lip-licking? Kalorm's lips are indeed chapped but he feels like this is his business, and also it's not like he's licking his lips in expectation that this will solve the chappedness problem, he's doing it for OTHER reasons. 

He lets himself be straightened out in bed. 

Merrin lifts the head of the bed to 60 degrees. "Kalorm, I know you're tired, but it's only 8:30 pm, and if you had a nightmare, I think it's usually a good idea to try to stay awake for a little while and do distracting things. Your breathing is doing really well. If you feel up for it, you could try having some ice chips?" 

...Kalorm rolls his eyes. 

Tries to figure out if he can talk. He has to clear his throat a couple of times, which hurts, and then - yeah, no, volume is not happening so much. "Cold," he manages to whisper. "Want. Warm thing." 

Awwwww. (Also, It's so good that Kalorm can TALK again. Merrin is really happy about this. The world is one step closer to being the way it SHOULD be.) 

"I can turn up the mattress heating and your blanket! And, uh, ice chips are safest to try first because they melt slowly so it's a little water at a time and easier to swallow, and I kind of especially don't want you getting hot water in your lungs. Or spilling it all down yourself, you are still pretty shaky. But if you can manage a few ice chips without choking and aren't having nausea, I think we can get you some warm water – if plain warm water sounds tolerable, we're going to be cautious about giving you anything that would be worse than water if it ended up in your lungs." 

Why is she so concerned that he's going to get stuff in his lungs???? It's literally just drinking water! ...Fine, he does have hazy memories of swallowing - even swallowing his saliva - turning out to be weirdly complicated and hard the last time he'd just gotten the breathing tube out, but it's not actually feeling as confusing this time, he just expects it to hurt. 

...Cold or not, though, having a single ice chip gently deposited in his mouth turns out to be BLISSFUL. He hadn't realized he was so desperately thirsty. His saliva is sticky, which is probably a part of why it's so annoying to try to swallow. The ice water is fresh and cold and it feels soothing on his raw throat, and - while he can't exactly say that he's hungry - his whole stomach area feels a lot less mysteriously wrongbad. He could have more ice chips! He would be fairly enthusiastic about plain warm water even if that's a stupid beverage to consume! 

If Kalorm seems to be enjoying the ice chips and not complaining that they're cold, he can have, like, five of them! Merrin will pace him carefully, he gets about one per minute, but - it seems to be going fine? 

It's going great! Kalorm is slightly frustrated that Merrin isn't willing to just give him the cup of ice, although not that frustrated, he would probably drop it all over himself and that sounds unpleasant. 

After the fifth ice chip, he clears his throat again. (Slightly less ouchy, this time.) "Warm water?" 

He's already back to a level of alertness and communicativeness that took at least 24 hours to hit last time. Merrin is really pleased about this! It's a very good sign that, nine days after the initial neurological injury, Kalorm's neurological functioning is actually more robust. 

She gets him a cup of hot water. (The insulated cup was just sent over in the chute from Hospital Supply when he requested warm water, ready for Merrin to fill. It has a lid, but a sort of wide spout rather than an opening for a straw - most people dislike drinking hot liquids with straws - and it has two molded, soft-rubber-padded handles, to make it as easy as possible for Kalorm to hold it.) 

...Merrin is going to first fill a normal cup with water that parses to her as warm enough not to be unsatisfying but not hot enough to hurt, and give Kalorm a spoonful of it to test that he agrees on the temperature reasonableness. 

It's probably warmer than Kalorm would have picked for himself! The inside of his mouth does feel more tender than usual, and more importantly so do his hands and he's worried he won't be able to hold a warm cup? It doesn't exactly hurt, though. It turns out to feel differently amazing for his sore throat. 

He nods. 

Merrin only fills the cup about a third of the way, just in case Kalorm decides to try to chug all of it at once. She puts a towel over his blanket, and pops the locked lap-table into place so he has a surface to rest the cup on, and then she sets it down and helps him get his hands in the handles. "There you go. If you do fine with this then maybe tomorrow you can have a sweet hot drink." 

Kalorm tries to roll his eyes at her but cannot actually help himself from smiling. 

Drinking warm water out of a cup on his own: really hard, actually! It's taking all of his concentration! He is not particularly in danger of chugging all of it too fast because he cannot actually manage to hold his arms up for more than seven or eight seconds at a time, and then has to take an arm-resting break. Merrin has to handle lifting his oxygen mask for him each time, because he doesn't have enough arms, and also he starts feeling out of breath almost right away without it - and Merrin starts looking very worried - so taking his time is kind of mandatory. 

It is, however, incredibly satisfying. Kalorm doesn't feel nauseated at all, and his throat is already so much happier.

He would absolutely be requesting a second cupful, except that by the time he manages to make his way through the first, he can barely keep his eyes open. 

His O2 saturation drops to 85% in like five seconds! And then recovers almost as quickly when Merrin puts the oxygen mask back on him, and he never seems to be in enormous distress or anything, but it's still really stressful to be observing. 

Adventures with drinking unflavored-hot-water beverages take a while. It's nearly 9:00 pm. Which isn't absurdly late or anything, but Merrin is tired, and Kalorm looks even more tired than she feels. 

She puts the cup away for later use. "Kalorm, it's not that late, but you had a really exhausting day. Think you're ready to get settled for the night now? I'll, uh, go to the bathroom and stuff so I don't need to get out of my pod in the middle of the night and disturb you. And you'll have your call bell, obviously, if you need anything – and we'll be monitoring you, someone will come in if your vital signs look worse, but you're doing really well and hopefully we'll be able to let you get a nice uninterrupted night of sleep. So you have energy to try walking tomorrow, because I'm really excited for you to try that." 

Merrin is so ENTHUSIASTIC. Maybe by tomorrow Kalorm will feel more like walking is a thing that could be possible even in principle. He'll nod, and then - with great effort and concentration, but also determination - find his bed control console, and lower himself to– ...not quite flat, apparently, it starts feeling hard to breathe when he gets close to flat, but that's fine, he can sleep in a weird dumb position for another few nights.

Merrin isn't there, she went to presumably go to the bathroom or something. He addresses the other Random Medtech instead. "Pillow - hug? Warm?" 

This gets Kalorm a blank look for a moment! "Do you want, uh, a pillow that hugs you– oh, one moment." He listens to instructions in his earbud. "Do you mean the electric heating pad that Merrin gave you to help with abdominal cramps before?" 

Yes! He wants the hug pillow! Not a...why would they ask him if he wants a pillow that hugs him, is that even a thing– ...ugh the worst part is that it probably IS a thing. 

"That," Kalorm manages. 

He can have a heating pad pillow to hug. ...And the temperature controls for all his heating things, because it really seems like he might get too hot at some point and prefer to solve that himself. The medtech shows Kalorm how to press another button on the bed to turn on a dim red light, if he needs lighting to figure something out during the night. 

That is too many things. Kalorm is sleepy and overwhelmed and absolutely not going to remember which button or console does what.

He...will worry about that at a different time which is not now. Right now is time for SLEEPING. Are they going to ever leave him alone and let him SLEEP???

Once Merrin confirms that she's ready to duck into her pod (with a spare set of night vision goggles in case she does have to try to slip out silently in the middle of the night), they can switch off the lights and the supervising medtech will monitor him from the other room! 

Kalorm has a pretty good night! 

Well. Overall, and relative to past nights. But it turns out that a slightly stronger Kalorm is a very squirmy sleeper.

After the second time he pulls off his oxygen mask by accident - and manages not to notice despite his O2 saturation immediately dropping to 75% - the medtech on duty at that point (it's around midnight) reluctantly and very apologetically goes in and wakes him just long enough to swap in the heavy-duty harness straps that go with the positive pressure ventilation mode. (Kalorm doesn't actually seem likely to need that mode, his oxygenation is great as long as he's...actually wearing his oxygen mask...but it's one piece of equipment that they really don't have an option to make wireless.) 

The third time that he manages to roll on top of his supposedly-kink-resistant IV tubing and block it, making the IV pump very upset, the next medtech on duty shrugs and unhooks it. The only important continuous IV infusions he's still getting are the pain medication and the IV nutrition mix; he hasn't been complaining of pain, or looked uncomfortable at rest, and they can give him as-needed doses tomorrow for his rehab work. Stopping the nutrition isn't ideal, but they can go up a little more on his tube feeds, and it shouldn't be too problematic for just overnight. 

The worst casualty of the night is his gastric drainage tube. The deeper-in feeding tube is easier to secure; it's very soft and flexible, and currently held very firmly to his cheek and around behind his ear with a clear film dressing. The drainage tube is more unwieldy, and while it was supposed to be firmly taped to his nose as well as pinned to his pajamas, the tape apparently did not survive Kalorm attempting to lie mostly-facedown for a while and then turning a full 360 degrees to get onto his back again, rather than reversing the initial 180-degree rotation. 

It's...probably fine? It hasn't been on suction in nearly 24 hours, and he tolerated drinking water fine. For anything he can't handle taking by mouth yet, they still have the nasoduodenal feeding tube. The main downside is that, if he starts complaining of nausea, they won't have the option to hook the tube back on suction and drain his stomach before he vomits – and they won't be able to do anything to check if his stomach is empty, let alone make it that way, before he pushes himself through very intense exertion. This is not ideal but it's unlikely to result in a dangerous medical emergency, and so they can leave it up to Kalorm later to, if they do have problems, decide whether he wants a new gastric tube put in then. Right now it's not quite 5 am and he almost certainly does not want to be kept awake to troubleshoot this. 

The rest of the night is reasonably uneventful. 

Merrin has EARPLUGS in and so does not wake up even when Kalorm is thumping around in his bed or other medtechs are having to come in and out.

She does wake up a few times from stupid anxiety-dreams. In one of them, Khemeth is suddenly her patient instead, and is trying to troubleshoot a complicated interpersonal situation involving prediction markets, but for some Unspecified Medical Reason cannot look at screens or use keyboards, and so is attempting to handwrite and hand-draw instructions for Merrin to pass on. This despite the fact that Merrin is trying to wrangle a "new medical invention of Finnar's", a bizarre mutant monstrosity as though the temporary liver machine mated with a cardiopulmonary bypass, and for some reason all of its screens are set to greyscale mode which makes it REALLY HARD to parse alarms, and it has a bunch of UNLABELLED CONTROLS and Merrin has SOCIAL ANXIETY about messaging Finnar of all people to ask how to do this. And ALSO her cellular texter keeps going off with notifications for a...movie livestream???...that dreaming-impaired Merrin cannot figure out how to turn off and is mortified about. 

She has another anxiety dream about the incident in Harkanam two years ago, which is absolutely ridiculous, it's been six months since her brain last gave her that nightmare. Her brain should stop that. 

She eventually meanders out at 8 am, moderately grumpy and very much hoping that Kalorm will have a good day and then consent to her going home to sleep. She can promise to come back first thing in the morning! She hasn't even been interacting with him at night! She just. She's been here for coming on six days and she. So. So. Badly. Wants to sleep in a bedroom that has a door. 

Halthis is back! Looking reasonably chipper after her full day off. Their schedule is way more tenable when they can have other people in to cover the nights. (And it does definitely help that by now she's established a relationship with Kalorm, and mostly finds him endearing rather than frustrating.) 

How's Kalorm this morning? 

Kalorm this morning is CRANKY. 

The main reason is that he's in a hospital and hospitals are terrible and he keeps waking up in one anyway. It's so frustrating. He wants to be out in the deep ocean, he wants nobody he doesn't trust to be able to observe him, he desperately wants no one at all to touch him. 

Though, also, he's thirsty and his mouth is dry. And he has MUSCLE SORENESS. His abs and lower back kind of hate him. This is absolutely obnoxious; it's not like he even exercised all that hard! 

He doesn't voice any of this - it won't help - but he glares at Halthis. 

Yeahhhhh. Halthis notices the glare. She doesn't take it personally. 

You know what else is the case: Kalorm hasn't been getting his IV nutrition for like eight hours! And he spent enough of the night lying on top of his feeding tube that he probably only got half the volume of tube feeds he was supposed to. Sheeeeeee is going to check his blood sugar. 

It's kind of low! Not, like, scarily or dangerously low, but technically below the cutoff for "normal" range in a healthy person in Kalorm's age cohort, and definitely lower than his blood sugars have tended to run in the past. 

Kalorm takes a break from glaring at Halthis in order to glance over at the sound of Merrin's footsteps, and give her an unhappy look. 

Merrin is being informed of his blood sugar by a flashing number on the screen. That is probably a better explanation for the miserable look Kalorm just gave her than any of the hypotheses she was previously considering! 

The fastest way to fix it would be to just give him some IV dextrose - she could do that in ten seconds - but her mental model of Kalorm thinks it's really stupid to have his blood sugar fixed by injection instead of eating a snack. And he probably just can handle a sweet drink at this point? It'll take longer, because he should really be pacing himself especially since he apparently SOMEHOW LOST his nasogastric drainage tube (Merrin is mildly stressed about this!) but it feels like...better incentives for him? 

She heads over. Takes his hand. "Hey. I'm really excited for you to do some more rehab today, but I think your body needs some fuel for that. Are you feeling hungry or thirsty? We ended up pausing the IV nutrition you've been getting overnight, and I think the tube feeds didn't make up for that."