Yeah, they can do that. 

Kalorm has another good night. He sleeps straight through. (Dalthem gives him the heavy-duty anti-nausea drug at midnight before starting the antibiotic.) The cocoon rotates him gently from side to side, shifting the weight on his skin. 

Even deeply asleep, left undisturbed by any reminders to cough or take deep breaths, his lungs improve a little. Treatment Planning suggests they start giving him inhaled anti-inflammatories every 4 hours, and this seems to be helping. By 6 am, he still needs 40% oxygen to maintain an O2 saturation of 91-92% at rest, but he's consistently getting breath volumes above 500 ml on lower pressure support. His routine bedside chest CT scan at 6 am is looking a lot better. 

He's still needing about 20% of the max dose on his vasopressor infusion, but Treatment Planning suspects this is literally just compensating for sedation, and maybe the effects of positive pressure ventilation on cardiac output. His extremities are warm and pink. 

Merrin, yawning, hauls herself out of the sleeping pod at around 7:45 am. 

Kalorm is awake! (A quick glance at his IV infuser console shows that he's off sedation entirely.) He's back to supine, head raised to about 60 degrees. The ventilator O2 concentration is back up to 50%, probably because he is - with great concentration - in the middle of doing a resistance-band exercise with his weaker casted arm. (He is, perhaps, not mentioning the fact that it's still twinging to the medtechs, but the broken bone was very thoroughly surgically set with pins, and he also has the cast to prevent him from accidentally doing anything too ill-advised with it.) The strap with the trapeze bar is hanging in reach above him. 

He sees Merrin, and immediately sets down his bad arm and - going slightly cross-eyed with the effort of concentrating on his hands - uses his good hand to pull the resistance band off. He takes a couple of deep breaths - he's already slightly pink in the face - and then, with a burst of effort, reaches up with both hands and grabs the bar. The motion is still pretty wobbly, but he manages to hold on. 

He catches Merrin's eye again and smiles around the breathing tube, looking incredibly pleased with himself. 

He SHOULD be pleased with himself!!!! Merrin is so impressed!!!!! She really wants to hug him - and it actually probably wouldn't hurt him, at this point - but she just woke up and has not had a decontamination shower or changed into certified-clean scrubs, she is too gross to touch Kalorm right now. She settles for beaming at him. 

The current medtech on duty - another 3h-shift ICU specialist who Merrin has worked with a handful of times - also looks pretty pleased with herself! Kalorm is apparently often very difficult as a patient, but he's been great for her! He woke up on his own at 6 am and managed to indicate clearly via gestures that he wanted to be on his back - which is how he's been for 90 minutes, and his O2 saturation is actually still tolerable on 40% oxygen if he's resting. Which he has not done a huge amount of, because he immediately started trying to communicate wanting his picture board, and very emphatically found and pointed at the graphic for "bed-based rehab", as well as managing to use the "sleeping" image plus an emphatic headshake-negation to convey that he wanted to be less sedated. Which Treatment Plan tentatively approved, and Kalorm is definitely gagging on the tube more but seems entirely willing to put up for this in exchange for being more alert. 

She is sliiiiightly worried he's going to completely exhaust himself by the time Halthis even gets here for shift change, but he actually seems fine and back to full speed again after each ten-minute break to catch his breath. She had read in the chart that he was, like Merrin, a significant outlier on stamina, but she's still impressed. 

Merrin keeps a careful distance from the bed, because she is gross and sleeping in a patient's room is, like, not really in the recommended protocols for infection control. "He looks great this morning!" she says to the other medtech. "Are we thinking we could try sitting him up on the side of the bed today?" 

He's allowed to do that? No one had told Kalorm he might be allowed to do that!!! He looks so hopeful. 

"It's definitely pushing things a bit harder than we normally would, his core might not be strong enough for it yet, but Treatment Planning thinks he's stable enough to give it a try later this morning?" 

"Great! Kalorm, do you hear that? I need to go shower and stuff because I'm gross and did not get a bath last night, but I should be back by the time Halthis is in. Uh, why don't you rest until then so you don't wear yourself out before we have a chance to try it? She's right, progressing to sitting up now is faster than we'd normally take this, I think you can do it but it's going to be really hard and you'll need all your energy for it. Okay?" 

Okay FINE. Irritated eyeroll. 

(Kalorm lets go of the bar and settles his arms back on his chest, though. He is perhaps, possibly, appreciating a reason to rest that doesn't feel like he's admitting defeat.) 

By the time Merrin gets back (at 8:15 am, because it turned out that once she was in the shower she didn't really want to get out), Halthis back on shift, and has her chair pulled up to beside Kalorm's bed. 

She appears to be trying very hard to keep a straight face. 

Kalorm is still on his back, the head of the bed still raised to a nearly-sitting-up angle. The final foot section of the bed is also folded down, letting his calves and feet hang lower than his thighs. (Kalorm - unsurprisingly - thinks this is very stupid, it's like he's pretending to be sitting up properly while absolutely still in a bed, but Halthis said it would get his cardiovascular system used to having to work a bit harder, so that actually sitting up on the side of the bed won't be such a sudden transition.) 

He now has the addition of a foldout lap-table, which comes as a bedframe attachment, and even has a cushioned moveable well for him to rest his forearm on while he writes - or, well, doesn't write, but presumably this equipment is not designed for Kalorms. It's really obnoxious but he will grudgingly admit that it makes it way easier to draw more neatly. 

He has an easy-to-grip pen in hand and has been focusing very intently on the drawing, because this was definitely not something he could communicate using the stupid picture board, and who knows when they'll let him talk again, it seems like the task is firmly on his todo-list now to be less incompetent at breathing. 

Halthis is very effortfully not laughing. "Merrin, I think Kalorm has something to tell you. Come have a look." 

??????????

Halthis' lips are twitching. "Kalorm has been working on this for a while. This was his first question." She shows Merrin the paper: 

Awwwwwwwww. "He wanted to know his cookie total?" 

Nod. "Which is, apparently, thirty-four – though I said that if he managed to sit up on the side of the bed today, you would almost definitely add another cookie. ...I think he also wants to know how and why he woke up already having earned like twenty cookies, I said I was sure you'd be able to go back in the chart and tell him. And then he drew this masterpiece. ...Kalorm, just to double check that we're actually synced up on this, who is the figure on the left supposed to represent?" 

Kalorm points emphatically at Merrin. 

(He's noticeably better at pointing today! He still mostly uses his forearm and keeps his elbow resting on the pillow, but he's less wobbly and uncoordinated.) 

He gives her a confrontational sort of raised-eyebrows look, which might perhaps translate as "so? explain yourself?" 

Merrin has no idea why Kalorm is looking at her like that! Is he upset about the cookie reward system...does he think she was trolling him or something, she really wasn't, he has just in fact done really well over and over - 

"So let's go over this." Halthis reaches for the picture again. "Kalorm did absolutely earn his cookies, following the general principle of ICU medicine I've shared with him, which is that the staff may work hard but it's pretty much always hardest for the patient. But, as noted by all this ventilator tubing, Kalorm cannot actually collect his cookie rewards yet. And Kalorm has conveyed that he thinks Merrin, our cookie-awarder, also worked very hard and - as conveyed by her open mouth in the drawing - is entirely capable of eating cookies right now. Kalorm, am I correct in thinking that you are saying Merrin should also get thirty-four cookies right now for her part in getting you through the last week?" 

Nod. Grin. 

That is simultaneously hilarious and sweet, and also Merrin is so incredibly self-conscious now. 

"I, uh, I literally just did all the medtech things, which is my job that I get paid to do? Kalorm, I cannot eat thirty-four cookies at once! ...I guess I wasn't expecting you to eat yours all at once either." 

"I think we can be in agreement that Kalorm will eventually, once he's eating solid food again, get cookies as a component of a balanced diet, and there is no reason why Merrin shouldn't also get the same. Cookie for breakfast, Merrin?"