Oh, are you providing me with oxygen through some special mechanism that bypasses my lungs or simplifies their job, so I am conscious while they are not functioning normally? That makes sense of how much worse I feel right now than I usually feel when I recover consciousness after an injury. I appreciate it very much, and did not know that was a thing that could be done. 

...Okay, aliens with advanced DNA-controlled artifacts but no modern medicine? Weird. 

Yeah. We're giving you air to breathe that's 100% oxygen instead of only 20% - I guess your world could also have higher atmospheric oxygen? - and the mask you have on now is pushing air into your lungs so your muscles don't have to do as much of the work. The tube you had before let us help you more, but I understand it's frustrating not being able to talk and your oxygen saturation is, like, okay right now, so this is probably okay for a while unless you feel like you're about to get exhausted. ...We can also bypass lungs completely but that's really involved and we did not actually have to do it for you. I would've usually expected to have to do it if someone's lungs were that badly messed up. 

Man it's way harder to be professional and reassuring with patients when you're thinking telepathically at them. Marian is not practiced at this. Hopefully all of that was okay to say and not mortifying. 

What a useful thing to be able to do! I'm curious how it works but am actually having a very hard time remembering and organizing information right now, which I found pretty worrying before your explanation that I am conscious unusually early in recovery from my injuries and now find only worrying in the sense that I dislike being impaired and without my allies. Does this world have any magical mechanisms for interworld communications or transit?

....Uhhh. No. We - didn't previously know there were any other worlds with people on them and I don't have the slightest idea how you got here in the first place. Especially not people who look basically human, that part is really weird. And, uh, yeah, I'm not at all surprised you feel kind of out of it. You should try to rest. 

This is so awkward. Marian is going to have to TELL SOMEONE that her patient is probably an alien, and she doesn't even have obvious proof - if the patient's impossible resilience doesn't cut it - unless she gets her patient on board with taking the belt on and off again, she'd probably survive ten seconds with it off so they could see the difference. Or unless she can telepathy more people. Marian can probably just, like, ask that. 

Can you telepathy more people? I am just worried that if I try to tell the doctor you're from another world, they won't believe me and might think I'm insane. Oops she totally just said-thought that out loud. It's probably incredibly rude to imply that you think your patient might be a hallucination. 

I can do it again but by expending resources that are limited; is the doctor the only other person who will need to be so persuaded, and if not is it possible to get them all in here at once? Honestly I would also prefer that interaction not happen for a few hours so that if they decide to kill me I can more easily leave, but I understand that from your perspective that is a worse bargain. I would for what it's worth be very very surprised if killing me were in your or their interests.

Uh, probably there are some other people who should be convinced, I can think about it? ...Nobody is going to kill you, they're doctors, but uh, if a powerful alien just tried to assassinate you then I guess I see why you would be nervous. I...probably don't have to tell anyone right away, although if you want your armor back I need, like, an explanation of why that isn't a terrible idea medically speaking. 

I have insufficient experience with medicine to tell you confidently it is not a terrible idea medically speaking. This world is one where doctors are - noncombatants, where they have commitments that are incompatible with the doing of violence? I have miraculous healing powers under some circumstances but I am not a noncombatant.

If she has miraculous healing powers (???????!!!!!!!!!!!!!) then Marian is confused about why she's– ...oh, 'under some circumstances', which plausibly don't include being on another world. That must really suck. Well, at least she ended up somewhere near a proper hospital. 

Doctors aren't banned from any violence, I think they're allowed to, like, defend themselves if they get randomly attacked in the street, or if they're working in a war zone or something. They have commitments not to hurt their patients, they have to swear an oath about it and it's super illegal. I won't claim literally no one breaks it but I know the doctors here and I trust them. With not killing patients on purpose, at least, being nice is a different thing. I really really think no one here would hurt you on the orders of a powerful alien from another world that they've never heard of. 

I am willing to do another Telepathic Bond for up to four more people - that's as many as I know how to do in one casting - who you point out to me and who want that. They should know they will also be Telepathic Bonded to one another, and that it lasts for a few hours and I do not presently possess the means to end it early unless you found my sword where you found me.

I didn't hear anything about a sword, sorry. 

Marian takes a deep breath, forces her teeth to un-grit, and squares her shoulders. Whyyyyyyyy is this EVEN WORSE than pushing terrifying doses of propofol while torturing her patient. 

....Okay. I - am going to go find someone to ask. Are you really, really, definitely sure that you're breathing okay and aren't going to run out of energy in the next five minutes? It should hopefully be less than five minutes but it might take me a while to find people. 

I do not have very much experience with any of the techniques you are using to keep me conscious and am seriously impaired. I am not really definitely sure of any related subjects. 

...Okay, I'm not incredibly comfortable leaving you alone. I'm going to go see if I can find one person and tell them which people I urgently need to come over here as soon as they're available, and then I'll come back, okay? I - you're doing great, I just need you to try to stay calm and relaxed and hold still, and don't pull on anything attached to you. 

I will try to do that. When you have more time I'd appreciate an explanation of which problems each of those instructions are meant to solve. She sounds calm and relaxed, though, and she's holding still.

Huh, is medicine really that non-obvious to...well, an alien who usually has miraculous healing powers, yeah actually that would explain it. Marian can explain as soon as she gets back. 

(Marian is still sort of self-consciously monitoring her own thought process for signs of Having A Psychotic Break, which is probably stupid because this presumably doesn't work if you are having a psychotic break, but - she would have thought the reason is that you can't remember to do it and aren't bothering to ask the question of which things make sense? Marian feels very capable of asking that question, and spectacularly confused, and she seems to be able to multiple 18 x 41 in her head in less than thirty seconds which is usual for her on the amount of sleep she had last night.) 

Great. So...might or might not be crazy, definitely is about to have a mortifying conversation. Sheeeeee is going to chicken out of having the mortifying conversation just yet, and inform the unit clerk that she needs her, the charge nurse, the trauma surgeon, and the resident to swing by her patient's room as soon as they're available, for 'an urgent thing, it's sort of admin related so I need you there too.'

- she jogs back over, kind of fretting. She was gone less than a minute but aaaaaaaaaaaah is her patient still breathing and conscious and stuff??? 

Yep! She is holding still and being calm and relaxed because she is subject to unfamiliar health interventions and those were the instructions about those. She is finding 'relaxed' a slightly difficult state to access because of the agonizing pain but she's managing tolerably.

Yeah she looks like she's doing great, that's really impressive! Marian is inclined to offer her more painkillers than this, they can probably risk somewhat more fentanyl without respiratory depression, but...maybe after providing proof of being a miraculous alien, it probably will make her groggy at a higher dose and she was already complaining of feeling out of it and finding it hard to think. 

Marian plays her eyes over the pumps and monitors, and then pulls up a chair. 

Okay, I'm going to explain everything that we're doing. The mask on your face is helping you breathe by pushing extra-concentrated oxygen into your lungs, and it's attached to a machine by this tube, so if you move a lot it might come loose and then you wouldn't be getting the help breathing and might lose consciousness again. Also this thing on your finger tells us how much oxygen is in your blood, and this thing in your wrist tells us your blood pressure and lets us take blood to do tests without sticking you for it, and the wires here watch your heart rate, if you pull off any of those it won't immediately cause a problem - well, the art line might bleed - but it'll mean we can't monitor whether you're okay or tell as quickly if you need more help breathing. 

(Marian is actually nonzero confused about that - the woman's sats didn't even have a chance to drop below 70% before Marian intervened, most people are perfectly capable of being conscious and unhappy about it - or, actually, people don't even notice, sometimes, other than seeming a bit off and confused, if their CO2 takes longer to rise or if they're COPD folks who chronically hang out with a PaCO2 of 60. But this particular patient's physiology seems to work very weirdly, like the interventions they're providing are...compensating for more damage than they should really be able to?) 

You also have an IV to give you fluids and electrolytes, because you were kind of leaking a lot of fluid from the burns, and you couldn't safely drink water when you were unconscious and probably still shouldn't. It's pretty important not to pull that out, we've also been using it to give you drugs to help with the pain, and antibiotics to try to prevent the burns from getting infected. And you lost a lot of blood, so we were able to top you up with some donated blood from other people, I don't know if your world has blood transfusions either? 

- anyway that's mostly why I want you to hold still, because there's a lot of stuff and it would be easy to pull something off by accident and cause a problem. It helps to be calm and relaxed because you'll take slower deeper breaths, which get more air to your lungs, and being tense means your body needs more oxygen right when it's pretty hard for you to get enough. 

Does that make sense? 

It seemed to. I am very impressed. That is a lot of different things to be doing about a person you found unconscious on the side of the road! 

The burns won't get infected, you can probably cease interventions related to that. If I take slower deeper breaths is it additionally helpful to be calm and relaxed?

I am not 100% confident of that given how presumably our world has different pathogens, and I wouldn't expect the antibiotics to do any harm just in case? Though you're not due for the next dose for four hours anyway. Frown. Is it hard to be relaxed because you're in a lot of pain? That's - super understandable - it's not the most important part, it just might hurt even more if you're tense and you'll need to breathe slightly harder. We can give you more drugs to help you be in less pain but I think it'd be better to do the talking to the doctor first, it can make you a bit more sleepy or groggy. 

I would up to the point of being unable to think about anything but the pain prefer pain to being sleepy or groggy, she confirms. I am in intense pain fairly often and have experience functioning through it, and I am not confident in the safety of your tubes or your facility staff when I am sufficiently disoriented. It should improve shortly anyway, once I have more skin.

...Yep, Marian has in fact experienced this patient while disoriented and is not particularly interested in repeating the experience. 

Also. Uh. What. 

I mean, yes, but - okay maybe you are expecting a different thing because you normally have miraculous healing, but for humans it takes, like, months to recover from burns this serious. And treatments that are more painful than just sitting here with them. 

I expect to be fully recovered by tomorrow, even without miraculous healing. This is not ordinary for humans where I am from either. I am a legendary hero and it is approximately ordinary for legendary heroes. ...I am a little surprised that people would be willing to endure months of more pain than this and am now wondering what your afterlife situation is.

Okay great this woman is not just an alien she's some kind of video game protagonist. What. ...Marian flags after a second that this is a pretty absurdly implausible claim and she's nonetheless surprisingly ready to buy it? Maybe because that sure does look like the rate at which this woman is improving, it's been less than two hours and she's coherent and talking - albeit in fucking telepathy - and breathing tolerably on BiPAP despite the worst lung damage Marian has ever seen or imagined was possible. Despite the ongoing lack of skin and oozing open wounds covering most of her body, Marian's gut instinct is that she looks stable. 

Well, most people are more willing to be completely zorked on painkillers for it - and aren't as dangerous if they're disoriented, I guess. And. We, uh. There are a lot of people on Earth who sort of believe in afterlives but, like, never in ways where it's observable or a thing you could check? I am personally fairly confident that we don't...have them. 

If her patient's world is real and really has afterlives then that is possibly one of the most fucking important facts Marian has ever learned. Her brain is kind of mostly bouncing off thinking about it right now, though. She's busy using her brain for things like monitoring vital signs and does not have room for lifechanging revelations. 

Huh. I'll see what I can do. I am too disoriented to guess right now. I am also surprised that many people can afford months of medicine or months of not working and that may be as important a confusion. - I can pay, and intend to, though I will need some time to figure out how best to do that.

People usually have health insurance? Right, that's probably a concept that an alien wouldn't have. ...I can explain once you're feeling better. There's probably - a lot. 

I would expect so! There would be a lot if I were explaining my world, or the other world I have been to. Insurance translates as related conceptually to maritime loans whose recipient is not obligated in repayment if the venture does not return and probably if I were thinking clearly it would be more obvious how medical treatment would be funded thereby, but all I am thinking of is that everyone's loans are cancellable if they get injured, which does not seem like it would solve the problem quite aside from how you'd have people flinging themselves at wolves left and right.