See, he’d love to do that, this is not less awkward for him, but unfortunately! There is a big fucking balloon in there and if she tries to yank it out with the balloon still inflated then they’re not going to have a good night after all!

He shakes his head and makes an emphatic “no stop” gesture and holds up the syringe, which hopefully will communicate that it’s an essential part of the process. Honestly he’d be a little inclined to talk her through doing it herself - she’s clearly a smart cookie - but his drawing skills are not up for depicting the steps involved.

He wants to put what in where? What? No! Why?!

She crosses her ankles and gets out the clipboard again. Draws a human silhouette with broad shoulders and narrow hips and short hair. Draws a slightly shorter human silhouette with wide hips and a hint of bust and long hair. Draws a big X through the male silhouette and circles the female one. 

….Yeah okay that’s pretty clear. Fraser isn’t offended. It is objectively really awkward. Fortunately the gender ratio on the unit is favorable toward her request.

He nods, makes a placating gesture, and goes and sticks his head out the door. “Oy! Lisa, can you come in here and pull my girl’s catheter, I think she’s skeeved about having an old fat guy do it.”

   “Uh.” Lisa gives him a dubious look. “She’s got the novel pathogen, right? - think we’re not supposed to have other caregivers going in and out unless it’s an emergency - I don’t want to put my patients at risk…”

“Aww, are you kidding?” Fraser scowls. “Look, I really don’t want to sexually assault my patient, here, it’ll make the rest of my shift so awkward.”

     Lisa shrugs. “Leave the catheter for day shift? I think Marian’s back.”

“I really don’t think she’d be any happier about that.” He turns back to give Samora an apologetic look. He’ll point at her, at his stomach, out at Lisa, and make a demonstrative gagging face, maybe that conveys ‘Lisa is too much of a coward validly worried about her patients and doesn’t want to spread the horrible slime disease any further.’

That's. Very reasonable, actually. It would be cowardice of her to demand someone else risk illness to protect her pride. She's an adventurer and if she ever decides to retire and marry she will already be marrying someone who doesn't mind that (probably another retired adventurer) whether anyone back home hears about any of this or not, so it really is only her pride at stake. It still feels disgusting in a completely different way from the slime.

Okay. Lateral thinking. Marian was clearly employing a lot of that on her shift, what would she do— she wouldn’t have this problem in the first place, she’s a harmless-looking girl…who can also draw better than a preschooler and would probably be more confident in her ability to provide visual instructions that wouldn’t cause the patient to do something absurd and ill-advised while she had her back turned…

Samora cannot imagine the Inheritor, when She was human, hesitating over this sort of thing. She nods stiffly and uncrosses her ankles.

Yeah, okay, but she’s clearly not actually comfortable with it and just wants the catheter out more than she wants a dude who looks like someone’s creepy uncle touching her bits. 

Fraser holds up a hand in a “wait” gesture. Maybe he can get Lisa to go poll the unit and find out who can draw, he bets one of the residents would take up that challenge - 

- or he could just cheat. “Lisa! If you’re not going to come in here, can you get me a new Foley tray?”

     …Lisa is not sure how this solves his problem but sure.

Well, see, he can bring it in and open it up, inflate the balloon, and then show the patient the balloon and how to screw the luer lock syringe onto the port and deflate it. And can she practice with the example catheter where he can see it, before he lets her at the one in her bladder while he has his back turned? 

(This is probably “wasting medical supplies” or something but it’s not like the unit stock budget is his problem.)

She tries pulling on the tube while he isn't looking and it doesn't want to come out, and as soon as he comes back with the demonstration one it's obvious why. She figures out how it works (with a bit of fumbling because she's not very familiar with the concept of things that screw into other things) and competently removes the other one from inside herself as soon as he turns around again. And smiles at him when he looks back, because it's almost certain none of this was his fault and he was a gentleman about it and now that she's wearing pants again she can acknowledge that.

There, awkwardness averted! 

…He should check her glucose again, he’s pretty sure it’s fine or she’d look worse but it’s been way more than five minutes. Also what’s her BP, can he go down on the norepi some more?

Her glucose is totally fine! Also her BP is still on the high side of normal, though some of that may be from the awkwardness of the last couple minutes. Her wound drains are starting to accumulate slime again. 

She introduces herself via pointing again; she isn't sure if Marian gave him her name but it's the easiest way to ask for his.

(Slime contained in drains is fine! He’s not looking forward to the smell when he has to empty them, but so far it’s not yet making things worse than the baseline stink permeating the room, which his nose has almost gotten used to.

Also, whatever the reason for her BP being high, he's going to sneak the norepinephrine dose down.)

Oh right that’s a thing. Marian totally didn’t introduce them by name and, again, Fraser intends to never let her know she forgot. He points at himself. “Fraser.”

It's a pleasure to meet him but she wishes it was under better circumstances. Heh. She's pretty sure the last time she actually said that to someone they were a ghost.

She draws another picture--her belt and belt pouch and boots and sword and shield--and shows it to him while putting a hand to her forehead and peering around in a "where is it" gesture. 

Fraser has no idea but he can have a poke around the room and look in the obvious places! 

It doesn't take that long to find the drawer where Marian shoved all the stuff that actually followed her from the ER. About three-quarters of it is neatly organized in biohazard baggies and the rest is awkwardly wrapped up in a disposable incontinence pad and stuffed in on top. No sign of a sword or shield but Fraser brings over what he could find, minus the bagged up bundle of clothes, which look pretty disgustingly saturated in blood and in any case weren’t in the drawing-list of requests.

He puts the rest on the bedside table and slides it to where she can reach, then points at the sword and shield, shrugs and makes an “I’m not sure” face, and the points at the door and makes a “talking” gesture in front of his mouth, which will hopefully convey that he’ll try to find out.

(It’s probably “against hospital policy” or something to let a patient have a sword in their room? But it does sound like a good idea to find out where the hell it ended up, which Marian didn’t mention, and also who knows, maybe no one ever bothered making a policy since it doesn’t exactly come up often. Also Fraser doesn’t actually work here as a long-term employee and does appreciate the leeway this gives him to ignore policies and pretend he had no idea they were standard.)

That's honestly better than she was expecting! Though she's going to be so sad if she doesn't find her sword again eventually and has to tell her father she lost it. She sets about getting everything back where it belongs, starting with the cloak because it'll help her get over the dungeon fever faster.

Fraser sticks his head out the door again. "Liiiiisa!" 

Lisa is busy, actually! She's in the room with one of her patients in Pod Two. 

- right, Fraser is trapped in the horrible iso room, fine. She'll come over. "Yeah, what?" 

"My patient came in with a sword - and a shield, I think? - and I don't know where they ended up. I bet they're still in the ER. Can you call and check?" 

Why did Fraser's patient have a sword. What the actual fuck. 

"Uh, yeah, sure. - in a minute, kinda busy with a thing." 

Fine, Lisa has two patients and it's pretty valid that she's busy. "Okay, just let me know." Fraser turns back to Samora. 

Samora gets her belt, cloak, boots, and breastplate back on and starts putting everything else back in the bag. It is definitely more stuff than could reasonably be expected to fit in an ordinary bag that size.

She's thinking about the dagger in her boot, and whether she should inform Fraser she has it. Argument for: he might not have noticed it in there, and she's an armed adventurer and he's an unarmed civilian and she's misleading him about something important if she doesn't tell him she has it. Argument against: she's worried that communicating "I have a knife", in this place where nobody even wears the normal kind of knife you use for eating, will be taken as a threat even if she does it in pictures. (The possibility of these people being the kind of people she needs a hidden advantage against is clearly ridiculous at this point.) She needs to draw "I have a knife and have no intention of harming anyone who doesn't attack me first" all in one go.

Fraser turns around and - 

- okay wow he was not expecting her to immediately start putting everything back on including her...armor...? (He hadn't actually been super sure what that item was when he was moving everything over to the bedside table.) It's not technically putting pressure on her abdominal dressings, and Marian had apparently just decided against trying to keep the ECG leads on her so it's not in the way of that either, so...maybe that's fine? It's nonstandard but that's not illegal and if Marian's back she's not going to be weird about it.

....also, uh, that bag is not. Behaving like a normal bag. 

Whatever. Maybe it's some sort of optical illusion? If he has an opportunity to stick his hand in it he might take that up, but he's not going to be rude about it. 

She's not sure exactly what Fraser thinks is weird, and it's not a priority anyway. At least this isn't her party's other bag of holding.

Once that's done she goes back to drawing--and then abruptly stops and flips the paper over, because she failed to realize all the implications of deciding Fraser is trustworthy. A little while later she makes the same "where" gesture as previously and shows a sketch of two people: one short and slight, with an overlarge head and pointy ears; the other tall and very skinny and wearing more armor than Samora. (She's not expecting him to recognize them at all, but it would be foolish to waste a spell slot on a Sending only to find they were somewhere else in this very large building.)

…Wow, he has no idea! Except for how one of them looks like a House-Elf but, like, he was actually joking about the whole Harry Potter spells thing? 

Fraser shrugs and shakes his head. He has questions (for Marian, though mostly for lack of anyone else who might even plausibly know the answers). He doesn’t have any answers for Samora about where her…friends?…have ended up.

That's alright, it was a long shot. Back to her previous drawing!

Samora with her boots drawn exaggeratedly large, and a dagger near one boot with an arrow pointing from the dagger to the boot. Drawing of Samora holding the dagger in the general vicinity of Fraser, very firmly X'd out. Drawing of Samora holding the dagger in the vicinity of a very large wolf. Friendly smile?

…Fraser has Marian’s cell number and would be be really tempted to send a photo of this drawing to her and ask her to use her entire five hours’ worth of context on the patient to interpret it. He’s not going to because, one, Marian clearly needed her time off desperately, and two, he doesn’t usually take his cell phone onto the unit with him and, in fact, it’s still in his backpack in the break room.

Lateral thinking…

Right. Clearly she’s saying she has a knife in her boot and fought a - wolf? some kind of large doggish animal? - with it, but…doesn’t want to attack anyone else with it?? Seems obvious, given how she would get herself into so much trouble if she tried to knife any of the ICU staff. Also, right, they said her injuries looked like an animal attack… 

Whatever. It doesn’t make perfect sense but she can have a knife with her if she wants. Fraser nods ands shrugs and smiles at her.