They're not trying to make the room feel like it's not in a hospital. (Though they could; even in the ICU, some patients once they're conscious prefer decor that feels like a vacation resort, or even 'the exact setup of their bedroom', but this will not really make things less confusing for Kalorm, and he can make more specific requests once he's awake.) 

They are trying to make it feel as little like an ICU as possible. Without having to actually move him out of the Complicated Patient Area yet, they can drop some quickly-retractable wall partitions to conceal all the not-currently-in-use medical equipment while still having it rapidly at hand. They have a much lower total volume of sensor data now, and will have even less in a few hours, and they don't have to display all of it in the room. They'll have one screen of basic vital signs up behind Kalorm's head, one of summarized treatment recommendations rather than the raw prediction market updates, and Merrin will have her earbud to receive additional instructions or information. Once they're actually ready, the rest of the screens (that aren't behind the partition) can either be switched off or displaying soothing nature scenes. 

There will of course be a lot of medtechs on hand who can be in the room inside of ten seconds, if there's an emergency, but the only people they're planning to have at the bedside are Merrin, Khemeth, and Nerdel. Favorite models of chair are brought in for all of them. 

Once it's been thoroughly laundered in the hospital facilities for infection-precaution reasons, Kalorm can have his own blanket from the vacation house bedroom, for that note of familiarity. 

Half an hour before the end of the 24 hour period, Nerdel has a serious conversation with the medical coordinator in the command center, and then has a serious conversation with Finnar, and then escorts him to see Kalorm for a few minutes. And definitely not talk to the medtechs. 

Is he allowed to talk to her or Kalorm? 

....Quietly. 

Kalorm looks way less concerning now! Aside from the fact that his body temperature is 32 C and his heart rate correspondingly low, his vital signs are basically normal. They've managed to get his fluid balance to something more reasonable, and his extremities are less puffy. His electrolyte levels are perfect; they've removed the continuous dialysis circuit, which after almost 24 hours of use was starting to have a bit of a time, and now there are ZERO machines pumping blood outside his body instead of inside his body where it belongs. There are not even all that many tubes in him at this point. 

That is less concerning!!! Finnar is way less freaked out about the quantity of invasive medical equipment than the last time he was in this room. He's instead pretty freaked out about brain damage. Brain damage is a stupid problem. If HE ran Civilization they wouldn't still have such a stupid problem. 

He restrains himself from actually saying this out loud. 

Aaaaaaaaand now Finnar can go sit with the rest of the family in the Family Room and get updates from the Medical Crisis Liaison, where he can ask as many questions as he wants and where he definitely won't manage to get into a pointless argument with Kalorm. 

Khemeth arrives to join his mother. 

He's okay. He's not great, but he's okay. He is emotionally prepared to handle whatever happens in the next 8-12 hours, and after that he can go cuddle his Dekan, and whichever world they turn out to be in, he will cope with it. He probably won't like it, but you don't get to pick which branch of Reality you end up in. 

(He's not currently running a Kalorm in his head, which it turns out is much better for his emotional stability.) 

Merrin is simultaneously happy and nervous! Also caffeinated. She wouldn't normally start a shift on stimulants but it helps when she is doing bizarre things to her circadian rhythm. (She also spent a while with the really bright lights on in her room, attempting to convince her brain that This Is Morning Now.) 

She is going to need an actual report on Kalorm, she hasn't been following more recent changes in his condition. 

Neuro: kind of hard to assess given how they are sedating the crap out of him. EEG reading about the same as it was at her handoff yesterday, pupils react to light, Merrin will soon know way more than that. 

Cardiovascular: remarkably fine. Good peripheral circulation, no arrhythmias, no bleeding, no issue with the incision site from the bypass. He's still requiring some drugs to maintain his blood pressure, probably just to counteract the blood-pressure-lowering effects of heavy sedation and they're predicting that Merrin will be able to come down on that as she decreases the sedative dosing. His heart muscle is still not pumping as effectively as it should be, but it's been slowly improving, and they don't think there's any permanent damage as opposed to just a lot of physiological confusion. Treatment Planning actually recommends making sure his blood pressure doesn't go higher than 130 systolic and his heart rate stays below 100; first-line intervention for that will be drugs to treat pain and anxiety on the assumption that this is a likely cause of spiking blood pressure even if he's not yet fully awake; if that doesn't affect it, here are directly blood-pressure-lowering drugs that Merrin can try, in this order. 

Respiratory: yeah his lungs are a mess, though no sign of pulmonary edema or an inflammatory cascade sliding toward acute respiratory distress system, just a raging aspiration pneumonia. He's oxygenating shockingly well on 40% O2 given how much crud they're having to suction out of there constantly; they've done a full bronchoscopy twice at this point, mostly because it's actually pretty hard to get out otherwise with a chemically paralyzed patient who doesn't cough. Right lung is worse for some reason and his O2 saturation starts tanking if they turn him on his right side. Avoid doing that. He also doesn't tolerate it very well at all when the bed is completely flat, they're keeping his head elevated to a 45-degree angle. The markets are nonetheless calling 60% odds that they'll be able to get him off the ventilator in the 24 hours after he wakes up, with uncontrolled pain and anxiety actually being the biggest anticipated barrier to that. 

Gastrointestinal: they've switched to a softer, thinner nasogastric tube, which will be more comfortable for an awake patient and should also stay in place if they take him off the ventilator. They're giving him motility-increasing drugs which are not yet working very well, and draining kind of a lot of bile and gastric secretions that otherwise aren't going anywhere from his stomach, and the Treatment Planning recommendation is to load him up with anti-nausea drugs before he wakes up. Merrin should start with these ones, which aren't sedating and don't interact badly with anything else he's getting. 

Urinary system: he's still positive 2L on fluid intake vs output since the start of treatment. He should be okay off dialysis for at least twelve hours as long as Merrin is very cautious about total fluid and sodium intake; his urine output per hour was steadily dropping overnight but he's still managing around 25 ml an hour. Here is the predicted range of changes to his electrolytes over the next 12 hours, if it's more than the upper limit then Merrin will need to restart dialysis sooner. They have the femoral dialysis line really well secured. Please don't let him pull it out, for one his clotting factors are still abnormal and two it will be...interesting...to try to place a new one on an awake-but-confused patient. The central line in his chest for fluid and drug administration is also SO well taped. They would also really prefer for Kalorm to still have that in the morning. 

His broken arm was surgically set and should heal without complications at this point, unless the complication is "Kalorm does something stupid to it"; they have it thoroughly secured in a splint to at least hopefully prevent him from doing something stupid immediately. 

Miscellaneous observations made by Merrin: Kalorm, currently turned partway onto his left side, is absolutely drooling all over the pillow. 

Merrin is not making a grossed-out face where Khemeth and Nerdel can both see her but it is taking a LOT OF WILLPOWER. 

It takes more than that to conceal a reaction from Khemeth, but it's not like he's going to judge Merrin for it. It is kind of gross. Though it's kind of cute how she seems completely fine with blood and horrifyingly invasive machines, and yet is bothered by saliva. 

First order of business: have a very thorough go at Kalorm's mouth with the suction, now while he's not going to object to it. 

Second order of business: turn off cooling on the mattress, stop the continuous-IV-infused paralytic drugs, cut the sedative dose by half, see what happens. 

What happens is...nothing in particular for fifteen minutes aside from his core temperature creeping up to 32.5; drugs already in his system don't wear off instantly. 

Merrin is IMPATIENT and will turn up the mattress temperature warmer. She doesn't really want him shivering once the paralytic drugs wear off and his body notices that its internal thermostat is out of the desired range; she just also doesn't want to overshoot 36.5 C. 

It still takes him another half-hour to get there. His heart rate slowly creeps up to around 70. His blood pressure would also be going up except Merrin is just taking this as an opportunity to decrease vasopressor drug doses. 

The EEG pattern slowly changes, mostly delta waves to mostly higher-frequency theta waves, then alpha waves joining in. 

He still isn't visibly reacting to any stimuli, including Merrin causing a painful stimulus on purpose by pinching his nailbed, but the EEG does react, the alpha waves briefly disappearing and the amplitude increasing on the slower delta waves. 

"Sorry," Merrin says, patting his hand. "I just needed to see how close to awake you are." Not that close to awake. She decreases the sedation by 50% again, and settles in to wait. 

He is now starting to confuse the ventilator by trying to take breaths before the programmed ones. 

Merrin will switch it to a settings mode that lets him do that but will still come in with a backup rate if he doesn't initiate a breath for longer than ten seconds, and watches to see what happens. 

He is managing not to trigger the backup rate but his respiratory rate is still only around 8 breaths per minute and his O2 sats drop a bit. 

Yeah that is not quite good enough yet. She switches it to an adaptive mode that should make sure he is breathing enough overall while also not getting confused if he wants to do some of the work himself. 

He's now starting to react to deliberate painful stimuli with a faint grimace and a very ineffective attempt to pull his hand away, as well as bursts of higher-frequency higher-arousal activity on the EEG. 

Also his lungs are sounding pretty crackly again. 

"Kalorm, I really am so sorry about this," Merrin says, and goes in with the suction catheter. 

He does cough this time, which, one, produces quite a lot of gloopy tan lung secretions shaken loose from his lower airways, and two, is clearly a lot more painful than pinching him to check for a reaction, because - while he doesn't open his eyes - his face scrunches up and his entire body tenses. 

Nerdel looks pretty distressed about this! She reaches for Kalorm's hand. "Hey, it's okay, it's okay -"