It's an enormous relief to have someone show up who's clearly on top of their shit, even if she is radiating vague judgement and it's hard to tell how much of it is aimed at the general situation as opposed to the staff. Pascal feels defensive of Marian, who - well, was clearly more out of her depth than usual last night, and not as on top of her game as usual by the end of a 16h evening-night shift, but who did manage to hand him a patient who, it sounds like, is much more stable than he was at literally any previous point during the night. 

It's 8:50 am. Rounds will be soon. He should prepare a script for that. He can say that social work is on the task of finding Sashi an interpreter and eventually a place to stay and stuff! It's not like he can really take credit for that but it does make it sound like he did something on his shift so far. 

...Also the potassium IV pump is beeping and might've been for several minutes, he should go in and flip that to the next bag ASAP. 2 of 4 bags left to go! Marian did explicitly point out that they gave him 40 mEQ, plus whatever he actually absorbed from the dose he puked up, during night shift, and moved his potassium from 2.8 to exactly 3, which she thought - and Pascal agreed with her logic - didn't seem incredibly promising for normalizing his levels before the end of the day. But she did point out that he was having diarrhea and excessive gastric secretions and probably losing some in cursed wound drainage. And Lionstar is finally NOT losing copious amounts of bodily fluids every hour during the time it takes for a bag to run, so yay! 

Tsashi watches. 

She's pretty confused about what just happened. The person who just came was dressed differently and maybe-fancier, and seemed like she might be important? Tsashi had wondered if she were the town leader's second-in-command or something. (She in some nebulous way didn't talk or act like the actual town leader, and also they probably wouldn't think Tsashi was that important, not somewhere big and rich like this.) The woman - seemed to being trying to talk to Tsashi, but also didn't speak her language, and she didn't seem incredibly surprised about this? And she talked to the Healer for a bit and looked upset and stressed and then just...left again? Without any indication of whether she was going to come back? 

Tsashi is frustrated and tired and she misses Lionstar. Lionstar is right there, but he's not really there. It's probably a good sign that he's still alive at all, but probably a bad sign that it's been an entire night and he's showing no signs of waking up, and Tsashi doesn't know which of those is bigger.

Anyway, it seems like "wait for Lionstar to wake up so he can use Mindspeech to explain what happened" is...probably not a very good plan. And Lionstar would want her to have a plan to be okay and get home somehow even if he dies here. 

...Unfortunately she doesn't even know what kinds of obstacles her plan needs to address. She doesn't know where they are, more specifically than "far away, probably north", and they've given her some food but she doesn't know if they'll be expecting her to pay for it later, and if so what kind of work she could do here. (The village doesn't really use money but Tsashi does know the concept, because Lionstar taught her.) Come to think of it, probably they'll want someone to pay for having Healers with Lionstar day and night? Maybe not if he dies, but it's not like him dying would mean they hadn't done all of that work? 

It's terrifying to think about trying to handle any of this on her own. What would Lionstar tell her to do - 

- well, one obvious thing is to find out if they have a Mindspeaker. That feels hard to communicate with gestures, or even draw, but Tsashi can probably come up with something.

She tries to get Pascal's attention and mimes holding an invisible piece of paper and putting it down on the table-surface and writing on it with an invisible writing-utensil.

She's asking for paper! Pascal had just been thinking that he should give her paper - and try to suggest she draw something about where she's from, but he can't think of how to do that, so maybe he can just let her draw whatever she's wanting to draw?

He'll get her paper, and show her how to adjust the bedside table so it's low enough for her to sit in the recliner and use it as a drawing surface. 

Tsashi is grateful! She settles in for some intently focused drawing. 

Dr Sharma comes by at 8:55 am, holding a large cafeteria coffee and looking like she might have sneaked an hour of sleep in there before staggering in, splashing water on her face, and definitely not redoing her hair. 

"Hey. How is he? - Did social work manage to talk to the kid, I put the referral in STAT -" 

Poor Dr Sharma. "Sorry, you just missed her - I think she's coming right back, though, she was going to try to get breakfast for Sashi. And a globe, we still can't figure out where she's from and I guess you can't do the phone interpreter thing if you don't know what language to tell them you need." 

"Oh. That makes sense." Dr Sharma had clearly failed to think of it as an obstacle. "We should probably try to wait on rounds until she can be there? We can round on 196 first. I just wanted to come see how he's doing," slight crooked smile, "so I don't sound completely incompetent when I'm presenting on him at rounds." 

Oh phew he won't be expected to give A Speech in front of the whole team on how Lionstar is doing. (It's a thing, but by no means universal, for the resident or sometimes med student to get a report on the patient in private beforehand and then do all the talking, so that the patient's nurse only has to jump in to answer any specific questions that come up. Pascal vastly prefers this even though he always feels kind of unvirtuous about it.) 

He has everything written down on his sheet, and can sound very professional as he rattles off Lionstar's recent vital signs and current ventilator settings and drug doses and everything he observed on his head-to-toe assessment. 

It takes long enough that Dr Sharma is looking antsy, presumably about starting rounds on time on 196, but she'll go in very briefly to check the dressing and wound vac drainage. 

- and in the process bang quite hard into one of the IV poles and drop her binder with a loud thump, because she's tired enough to feel almost drunk and the caffeine has yet to hit her bloodstream. 

Pascal is hovering nearby enough to notice that the patient is actually reacting to this! Not that much, but Lionstar grimaces and tenses slightly as though startled by the sudden loud noise. 

Aaaaaah is he going to have a seizure though aaaaah– ...no? Good? 

"He's starting to be a bit more responsive, I think?" Pascal says to an embarrassed-looking Dr Sharma. "I've, uh, been trying pretty hard not to disturb him, since he had a seizure before." 

"I'm really sorry!" Dr Sharma is collecting papers from the floor, looking mortified. "Yeah, we should be minimizing stimulation. I really don't want to have to give him more midazolam until we know whether he's stopped reacting terribly to it. Okay. Uh. I need to go for rounds on 196, if the social worker gets back can you tell her we'll be over here soon?" 

"Yeah, of course." Pascal is a bit worried that it could easily take half an hour to round on 196 and waiting for that is the sort of thing that the very busy hospital social workers can get pretty snippy about, but the social worker did think this case was going to take her all morning? Hopefully if she gets back before the medical team is ready then she can just talk to Sashi or whatever and pause for rounds? 

He sits down at the computer desk again to wait. 

Diel gets back about twenty minutes later, with a globe and a colorful map and some clothes sized for a ten year old probably-girl and the hospital breakfast which is pancakes and scrambled eggs and sausage and a carton of orange juice. She sets the food down in front of Sashi first. 

Tsashi is very hungry, but she's used to ignoring hunger and she's actually very preoccupied in drawing; it takes her a moment to look up.

The drawing is hastier than her last one, because her first attempt ended up very messy and overcomplicated and didn't seem like it would work. She's happier with her second attempt, though! She feels like it should definitely convey Thoughtsensing, at least, her mistake in the first drawing was in trying to draw the projective Mindspeech part.

- oh, food! So much food!!! Is that all for her??? It's much more...well, normal-looking...food, too. She doesn't specifically recognize it except for the eggs but it smells like food, and it isn't weirdly transparent or inside a tiny food house where she can't even see what it looks like.

Tsashi beams at the fancily-dressed person and moves the drawing-stuff to one side of the table. She isn't quite daring enough to reach for the food-platter but her eyes are definitely fixed on it. 

There's also a drawing face-up on the table, surprisingly complex and detailed: 

Ah, kids. Diel smiles tiredly at Sashi. She has absolutely no idea what that's supposed to signify, though it's quite good as art. She pushes the food platter across the table to her. 

Tsashi is now pretty distracted from her mission of "convey that she would like to request they find a Thoughtsenser" by FOOD. She starts eating a pancake with her hands, which do at least look cleaner than the rest of her. 

Pascal follows Diel into the room. 

...That is also a really creepy drawing! Pascal also isn't sure what it's supposed to be of. An..eyeball...monster? He's going to be really frustrated if Dr Sita finds it and starts sticking it up in random places to startle the nurses with.

He hovers to see if Diel is going to have questions for him. Also because Lionstar's blood pressure is 88/49 and this is not quite low enough for him to go up on the norepinephrine again but it's definitely making him edgy. 

Also oh right. "- Uh, we're probably rounding on him in - I don't know, in the next ten minutes ish? The resident was asking if you could be there. I think mostly so you'll know what's going on in general and stuff, but they might want you to say something about what happens next with Sashi?" 

"I can do that." She's frowning at the eyeball monster. "I think we'll be able to find her a placement by tonight, the big challenge is just getting that translator in."

"Yeah. It'll be really good to have a translator, you can just tell she has a million questions for us." It's prooooobably ""unethical"" or something to hide the eyeball monster before Dr Sita sees it. Also it's maybe actually significant and means something? Pascal just has absolutely no idea what. 

Tsashi gets an entire pancake into her face and gulps some juice and then manages to remember that the fancily-dressed maybe-important person probably wants to talk to her? 

She looks up, politely attentive. ...The person is looking at her drawing of a Thoughtsenser and seems confused. Does it clarify anything if she points at it and then, hmm, cups her ear in a "listening" gesture and then points at her own head? (Lionstar says that some people think of Thoughtsensing like looking but other people think of it like listening, and eyes are easier to draw than ears.) 

It occurs to her a moment later that this might be interpreted as "she's a Thoughtsenser" but hopefully it's obvious she isn't, since if she were they wouldn't be having the problem with not being able to understand each other's languages in the first place, right. 

No, that really doesn't clarify anything. Diel regards her tiredly, and then tries a bunch more languages off a printout she brought, stumbling through the pronunciation of some of them. It wouldn't really make any sense for Sashi to speak exclusively Cantonese but she checks.

Tsashi listens very closely and very intently focused and tries to lean around to look at the paper, and even cautiously tries to imitate a few syllables.

She clearly does not understand any of the languages included on the printout, though. 

(Tsashi is confused. The fancily-dressed person who might or might not be important in this town did look at the picture, and was paying attention when Tsashi tried to clarify, and definitely seems very motivated to talk to her, but...doesn't seem to be getting it at all. At this point Tsashi is deeply unsure whether the problem is that she's incompetent at this or whether they don't have Thoughtsensers this far north. That...would be really inconvenient. She could try to convey that Lionstar will be able to talk to them once he's awake, but she's not even sure whether that helps with anything, probably they're already trying everything they can to help him recover. Also it's not immediately occurring to her how to draw that and it would probably take a long time, which she's worried would make the fancily-dressed person impatient.) 

Lionstar's blood pressure is dropping a bit further. The monitor alarm is going off again. 

This is not a huge deal (at least not yet) because Pascal can just go back up on the norepinephrine, but he would still kind of rather he wasn't juggling it with a fraught social worker interaction happening right next to him. He silences the monitor alarm and fiddles with the IV pump and tries not to look stressed, it'll freak the kid out.