The huddle at the nursing station seems to go on for longer than usual and involve more arguing, though Marian can't hear what anyone is saying from Pod Two. (She does at one point overhear a "what the FUCK is that SMELL" from the hallway.)

It's 6:49 pm by the time Fraser comes to the door of the room. He's another of the travel nurses in Marian's cohort, a very overweight man in his forties who does "the travel nursing lifestyle", living in an RV and moving to a new hospital gig every few months alternating with road trip holidays. 

"Hey. I drew the short straw again. Heard it's your patient's fault the entire unit is iso?" 

(Samora would be intensely embarrassed if she had the full picture. As is she's only moderately embarrassed.)

Marian likes Fraser. He’s not always the most perfectly professional, but he’s impressively immune to intimidation by scary trauma surgeons and he has the advantage of, himself, not being at all scary to give report to despite having probably an order of magnitude more years of nursing experience than Marian herself. Someday Marian will be in her forties and so much cooler than she is now.

“Yeah, uh, I’m really sorry about that.”

Fraser looks over at Samora, gives her a little wave, and starts pulling on an iso gown. “Wow, she really doesn’t look too bad,” he says to Marian. To Samora, “- let’s have a good night, is that a deal?” 

Oh dear, did Marian not tell him? She says "I only speak Celestial and Taldane" in Celestial and Taldane even though she's not expecting to get lucky and especially not with the latter, and points at the pile of explanatory drawings.

“She doesn’t speak any English, sorry.” Though another thing she appreciates about Fraser is that he pretty consistently treats patients like people - even if he’s at least once jokingly threatened to call a patient’s workplace on them if they didn’t - Marian honestly doesn’t remember what it was over, just that she was vicariously mortified about it. “We’ve been communicating okay but it’s all by drawing pictures.”

"Well, shucks, I can't draw for shit." Fraser shrugs helplessly. "- And the story gets more interesting. Tell me more?" 

"Right. Uh," Marian consults her paper. "She was found unconscious downtown with massive bleeding from multiple injuries - that looked like maybe she was attacked by wild animals? - and, uh, also dressed in weird all-handmade clothes like those historical re-enactment people. With an actual sword on her." 

Wow Marian had kind of lost track of exactly how spectacularly weird this whole situation is! She's managed not to think about the sword and bizarre assortment of personal belongings in hours. Let alone the map thing. ...Which she should get to later, if she goes in anything other than chronological order here she's going to confuse herself hopelessly and miss things. 

"Huh. Okay." Fraser isn't taking notes, Marian isn't sure if she's ever seen him take notes while taking report, but he seems to be listening attentively. 

The not-taking-notes used to stress Marian out but it's not like she's observed him dropping or forgetting anything.

"Right. Uh, she was intubated in the ER, was really hypotensive - obviously, she lost a ton of blood - and they couldn't get the bleeding under control, initially thought she might be hemophiliac but the lab results looked more like DIC so that was stressful, they delayed taking her to the OR for hours."

Whiiiich in hindsight is maybe related to their later problem, though, uh, she's still not sure how Samora would have gotten FUCKED UP SLIME MOLD BACTERIA in her gut to begin with. 

"...It went away, her last coag panel was way better and I haven't had any issues with bleeding since I got her." Yes Marian is aware that makes no sense. "- oh, right, that's also when they would've noticed the hypoglycemia. Her initial blood sugar was thirty-four and she's gotten - uh, I haven't actually counted -" Marian attempts some mental math, Samora has been in the hospital for like nine hours and they probably started treating her sugars an hour in and she's usually gotten D50 at least every fifteen minutes, four times eight, "- she's gotten, like, at least thirty amps of D50." 

Fraser looks impressed. "That's - wow - how many calories is that, that's insane." 

Somehow it hadn't even occurred to Marian to wonder how many calories are in an amp of D50 but it's not like it's hard to calculate - 25 ml of D50 is 12.5G of sugar - so eight of them is 100g, she’s been getting at least four an hour for 8h, so 400g of sugar, times 4 calories per gram of carbohydrate… “At least 1600 calories? I think. ...It was probably a lot more, actually, that was assuming she never got more than four in an hour and she totally got more than four some hours." 

"Yeesh. Okay. Do we know why?" 

Honestly Marian has spent rather little time thinking about the baffling medical mystery of Samora's blood glucose, because it was at least a baffling medical mystery that was well under control even if it was an enormous hassle. She shrugs. "I think they figured she was type one diabetic and took too much long-acting insulin, or took her usual and fasted but normally eats a lot? I don't know."

In hindsight neither of those really make a lot of sense, given how Samora is more than awake enough now to inform them of known medical problems and would definitely have done that. 

"- Anyway, uh, glucose checks every five minutes and yeah it does actually have to be that often. I'm really sorry, she used to have an art line but." 

Raised eyebrow. "I'm figuring she pulled it out at the same time she Houdini'd out of her restraints and self-extubated in under a minute? I did hear about that." 

Oh noooooooooo is everyone gossiping about that, that's so embarrassing. "Uh. Yeah. - she didn't get as far as yanking the Foley out but she did politely request we let her use a bedpan instead, I meant to ask– I think I did send Kristy to ask the resident but I assume we got distracted, it's been. Distracting." She's breaking her rule against going out of order and does now feel like she can't remember where she left off, but she did want to make sure that request got passed on. 

"- anyway. They treated her hypoglycemia and gave her a ton of fluids and blood products while they were trying to diagnose the bleeding problem, and I guess eventually decided to just go ahead and take her to the OR, that would've been at like...noon, I think? Sounds like it went surprisingly smoothly given everything, she had a lot of damage to muscle and fascia and her gut was really cut up but they were able to hook everything back up again, they did a loop ileostomy to let it heal. I got her at twoish, she was on a ton of pressors and tachycardic with a systolic BP in the 80s but - didn't look too bad, given that."

Fraser makes a face. "Okay but I'm in awful suspense over here, when did the horribly-smelling infection turn up?" 

He's also doing his own glance-over of Samora, clearly trying to judge for himself how she looks and whether it's still "not too bad" given all of the everythings. 

"I think around 3:30 or 4– oh crap sorry need to take a blood sugar." Marian gives Samora another apologetic smile and goes to do that. 

Samora is actually feeling way better all of a sudden, probably because that horrible life-draining spell she got hit with finally wore off. She gets herself back upright and gets the weird shirt-dress thing they've draped over her actually arranged with her arms in the sleeves and as much of herself covered as possible.

Not being life-drained has made her alert enough to realize that she's barely dressed--she's seen back-alley girls wearing more clothes than this--and is about to be left alone and unarmed with a strange man who plausibly doesn't know what it means that she's a priest. She doesn't think he'll try anything--even if he was inclined to she's currently disgusting. Still, she's internally cringing at what her parents would feel if they saw her. 

...Huh, her blood glucose is 92. Which is normal, and also the highest Marian has ever seen it. Her heart rate, which had mostly been in the 130s to 150s, is now at 110. Also she looks abruptly vastly better - mostly more awake and alert but also her color is better.

Wow. Okay. Marian definitely isn’t complaining but she is confused.

She gives Samora a questioning look, in case Samora also just noticed something different.

Samora smiles encouragingly, and does a quick series of stick figures: someone pointing at her with jagged lines coming out of his hand, Samora lying down, hourglass hourglass hourglass, Samora sitting up smiling. Then she points at her "clothes" and Marian's clothes and mimes putting on a shirt and pants. 

Fraser leans in to look at the drawing. “…What on earth is that supposed to be, ‘I got cursed by a Harry Potter wizard but I got better’?”

Yeahhh Marian does not so much feel like this particular attempt at communication clarifies anything! …Except for the part where Samora wants pants, which is super understandable but also she does still have a catheter. 

Marian makes the pants gesture back and nods to convey that she understood it, and then shrugs and points at the hourglass she drew, which will hopefully get across “it might be a bit of a wait.” As far as she knows they don’t have pants in the patient linens, someone will have to go to the OR. Maybe Samora doesn’t realize quite how unsalvageable the clothes she arrived in are? 

“Glucose is fine all of a sudden?” she adds to Fraser. “I’d keep checking for a bit, but - maybe whatever the problem was isn’t affecting her anymore?”

Fraser nods sagely. “Harry Potter wizard curse. Insulinio overdoseo.” He makes a wand-waving gesture. “Sorry, where were we?”

That’s a good question. They were at the part where Marian gets to go home soon, right?

She shakes herself slightly. “Right. Uh, she had seemed pretty out of it still - I started fentanyl for pain, I think she just looked kind of uncomfortable and obviously had a big surgical incision, but I didn’t go up on the midazolam. I had just noticed her temp was up a bit and she looked off, and the drains and incision were leaking - I bet someone got a photo from the paracentesis we did later, it was awful - and I had to leave the room to get stuff for some new orders. I came back after a minute or two and - yeah, she was out of the restraints, self-extubated and ripped out the art line, and had snapped the IV tubing for all her drips running in the central line - we’d taped it down really well - so that was leaking blood everywhere.”