Leareth has definitely been trying to drift far away from their body while all of that is happening, but he's not asleep, and does respond to Karal's thoughts about him. Hmm? 

Do you feel like trying to teach me mage-sight until I'm sleepy again?  It can wait until morning just fine, it's just that he's awake now and likes to fill his time with something useful, and there's not much choice of useful activities right now.

(He wonders what sort of face Marian would make if he asked if he can have his clothes back for mending. ...Then again there might not be enough left, given all his burns.)

Oh. That does make sense, and - yes, they might as well use the time for something productive. Though if that thing is magic, Leareth is likely to get tired faster than Karal; even if he's not actually doing any magic, it requires a lot of carefully stepping around the compulsion to avoid getting stuck. 

He should start by teaching Karal how to properly center and ground; he actually thinks Karal has already been doing it instinctively - he has good instincts - but learning to do it on purpose is a useful prerequisite for using Sight on purpose. Inconveniently, Leareth can't really do a slowed-down demonstration like he normally would if he were teaching someone in concert-rapport - he's only able to do it instinctively when startled, which does happen a lot but it probably goes by too fast for Karal to notice. He can give the usual verbal explanation of how, though, and then watch Karal attempt it and provide feedback. 

...This is going to be a little more difficult with the tube-breathing artifact, since the usual instructions for centering involve focusing on one's breathing and finding a place inside one's body that feels still, and it's considered easier to learn to ground if you can actually have both feet on the floor. 

(Karal has been too distracted to consciously notice how much better Leareth has been at deliberate thinking lately, compared to earlier on, but now that he thinks about it it's a really big difference!  Whatever internal stepping around the compulsion Leareth is doing, he's very impressive at it.)

Ah.  Well, he might as well try anyway, especially if Leareth can at least tell him if he's moving in the right direction.

Now that he thinks back on it, yes, he can tell that Leareth does a flicker of something when he does magic, his mental stance changing in some way... He didn't realize it was a necessary step, not just the way you instinctively focus before an important task. 

He wonders how similar it is to that, really - or more, to the thing you do before a fight, going still and balanced, that specific sort of calm that may require sudden movement at any moment.  It feels odd to do that in bed, but it's not as if he's never had to.  He doubts it's the same thing, or else few people would even need it as a separate skill, but is it anything similar?

...It's definitely conceptually similar to that? When you fall into a ready-to-fight stance, the goal is to be aware of your center of mass and balanced, so that any sudden movement will be in control. Centering and grounding for Gift-control is like that, but - not exactly for your body, there's nothing that actually stops you from doing it lying in bed. 

Ohh.  So... the difficult part is that he has to learn to do that before he has any ability to move his not-exactly-body, which feels like entirely the wrong order to do these things in...

But he does at least have the memory of Leareth doing magic.  Though not very much of it, and he was mostly not paying attention.  He doesn't suppose Leareth can startle himself into doing something that won't be a terrible idea in bed in a house of healing?  ... Probably he shouldn't, or at least not until they've decided Karal can't get it right without clearer examples.

Well.  Breathing and stillness and balance.  He can try for those.  The tube-artifact isn't so bad (maybe just in comparison to its previous incarnation), it does let him do his own breathing, and he can focus on that without the discomfort overshadowing everything else.  ... Is he supposed to be able to tell if he's getting it right?

(Karal is not great at trying to do things from a verbal description.  At least not when there isn't a clear problem that the task is a solution to - if he knows what he's trying to accomplish, he can usually find the way to get there, but here he doesn't know that, and his instincts struggle with what feels like an aimless search.)

They are kind of coming at this in a weird order - most people with a newly-awakened mage-gift will be doing a lot more accidental magic than Karal has so far, and out-of-control magic offers a better sense for what would need to change to be in control. 

...Does Karal remember the feeling of instinctively throwing fire, on the battlefield? (He must have, to end up triggering Leareth's immortality spell.) That was - something he did the way an untrained man might pick up and wildly wave a sword, with no idea how to place his feet for balance or control - can he try to remember what it felt like, and then try to feel for what it would be like if he had known how to be balanced? 

He knows he did - fire and anything else he could reach - but he should... probably not remember that in any detail... if they don't want Lisa running in here again worrying about some alarm or another.  (He doesn't trigger any, but his heart rate and blood pressure go up abruptly.  Just the mention of it is a sharp pain.)

Oh - he grabs at the first distracting thought - is that what called Leareth into him?  He had been wondering - he half thought it was Leareth's magic in the first place, really, not that he knows anything about how Gifts work.  And then - yes, maybe he would have done more things, by accident or half on purpose, except Leareth was there holding on to the mage-gift and (he assumes) preventing that from happening.  ... Which brings up the question of why he hasn't done anything by accident since he took control of the mage-gift from Leareth.  Probably because his mind learned that the magic is Leareth's and not his, so he instinctively doesn't touch it at all?  That feels like what might be happening.  Which would make it difficult for him to make any progress on this.

Hmm. 

... Maybe he should just try doing something - something small enough not to do damage if he gets it wrong, which of course he probably will.  Would that be reasonably safe, or is it a terrible idea?

Leareth was holding onto their Gifts to prevent any awkward accidental magic, yes, and then immediately afterward they were suffering from severe backlash and too drained for any significant casting. (Leareth's instinctive Gate earlier didn't just fail because of the compulsion, but also because he hadn't realized until it was half-done that they still lacked the reserves to complete even a short-range Gate.) 

He thinks they're still fairly drained - it takes longer to recover from backlash when also contending with serious physical injuries, and he doesn't think they're being fed even through tubes yet - and Karal probably can't do anything big enough to cause any significant damage. They should still be careful not to hurt themselves, but Leareth thinks it would be safe to try something small. …Pushing one of the pillows away with mage-energy, maybe, unformed force is a relatively intuitive technique and also unlikely to explode if done clumsily.

Leareth can try to lay out a sense of how to reach for that, though he’s mostly stymied by the compulsion, even deliberately forming an intention around using magic is apparently too much a volitional action.

This has a clear goal and so Karal is much better at it even with little clear instruction.  His first few attempts still do nothing, or throw a barely-there billow of force all around the room, or go off in some other direction - one moves one of the tubes and he freezes and hopes nothing is wrong, but it doesn't seem to be - but all of those things feel like something and he can half see how to focus them closer to what he wants...  He does succeed in pushing the pillow, too lightly once, and then off the bed.

It's so oddly physical, when he's not moving at all (he could be, it might help, but it... feels like cheating, at this scale, and besides there's hardly room).  It's as if he had grown additional limbs on some other level of reality and was just starting to learn how to use them - and he can tell how much more there will be, once he does.  He likes it.

So... that again, but trying to find a place from which it feels... better, more stable, more intentionally directed... instead of just throwing the Gift around and hoping it hits something?

(Lisa startles slightly when the pillow gently thwaps onto the floor, but - the patient doesn't look distressed, maybe he was just shifting position? She'll hover and wait for signs that he was trying to get her attention, but otherwise leave him alone, it's still a while to go until midnight.) 

Karal wants to look for the place where it feels like the energy is coming from - it usually feels still, and most people experience it being inside their chest or torso somewhere - and also find the metaphorical limbs-in-another-reality that are his mage-channels for actually wielding the magic, which most people locate in their head insofar as it has a physical location. And then there's a - counterpoint, like planting his feet correctly on the ground would let him be ready to instantly swing a sword in his hand with force and not risk overbalancing... 

Ohh-- yes, there is a still source of all this, clear enough when he thinks to look for it, right behind his heart.  The next part is... a little harder to find, because it turns out not to have enough of a physical location to be findable that way (fortunately Karal doesn't think about how that's possible, just goes with the instinctive sensation of there being some entirely non-physical space in which these things happen)... but then the counterpoint is immediately obvious, and that too is not a physical location so it doesn't matter that he's lying in bed - Leareth is exactly right about what it feels like and that is as familiar as breathing...

He tries pushing at the pillow on the floor again, lightly enough that it'll just indent and not move - from one side and another, still carefully as if he was doing the simplest sword exercise in slow motion, but it does what he wants and it feels right.

Exactly! That's very good. Karal has excellent instincts. 

Right now he's been moving the magic by "feel" and not really interacting with it once it's left his mage-channels, but - there should be an adjacent mental motion to try to 'look' at what he's doing - and once he can 'see' the mage-energy as he's moving it, he should be able to lean further into that and see any other mage-energy signatures in the room... 

(It's actually somewhat more common for people with newly and traumatically awakened mage-gifts to be unable to stop using mage-sight, but Karal's current challenge isn't that rare, and it makes sense given that Leareth was mostly the one controlling the mage-gift for the first day.) 

That would help, wouldn't it, like seeing his blade as he moves it - it's often better not to need that, but sometimes you do, when doing something precise enough.  It takes him a few more tries - seeing is less instinctive than moving - and he needs to make himself stop squinting his physical eyes as if that was going to accomplish anything - eventually he just closes them entirely and that makes it easier to find the other way to see things...

He can see his own mage energy as he extends and moves it, pushing against a wall just to give himself something obvious to watch for that won't do anything while he's distracted with watching, and... nothing else. 

... What am I doing wrong?...

Huh. Leareth - isn't sure, actually, the compulsion isn't letting him interact directly with their mage-gift on purpose to get a closer look.

His top theory would be that Karal is too focused on his own mage-energies, and accidentally "narrowing" his Sight to only that - though Karal doesn't seem tense, and if he's trying to transfer his physical habits, he presumably has an instinct to track his broader surroundings and not just stare at the point of his sword as he moves it... 

- it's also possible that Karal is just...getting tired...and losing precision with an unfamiliar and unpracticed mage-gift. Leareth can't tell for sure without paying more attention to their body than he really wants to right now, but - how drained does Karal feel? 

Not awful, but pretty tired?  Not tired enough to just fail to do something, he doesn't think, but maybe tired enough to have trouble doing it right when he doesn't know how yet.  Leareth's right, that's probably a bad state to be learning new skills in-- and more importantly a bad state to put himself in at all, he should stop before he gives them both backlash.

Maybe I'll get it right next time.  And you might need to remind me to check how tired I am, I'm clearly not doing very well at that.  He thinks he'd be better if everything about his body wasn't so off. 

They should sleep.  But he enjoyed this, will definitely enjoy more of it, and it seemed like Leareth did too?

He did, despite the frustrating limitations of the compulsion. It's practically useful, it feels like forward progress, and it's also just - satisfying. (Leareth likes magic.) 

He can definitely try to remind Karal to check for feeling tired, especially if he notices they've been doing a lot of physical or Gift-exertion. It makes sense that it's hard to notice spontaneously when everything in his body already feels terrible for a dozen different reasons. 

And, yes, they should sleep. 

At midnight Lisa creeps back in to draw blood. 

The patient doesn’t look awful. He’s keeping his sats above 95% with reasonable airway pressures, and his blood pressure is tolerable. His heart rate is hovering around 120. 

His blood sugar comes back at 66 mg/dL. 

…Okay, where is he PUTTING it. It’s not a critically low result or anything but it’s so weird when he’s on maintenance fluids with dextrose! Also it was slowly climbing before, what changed? 

Lisa treats it with D50, but she’s suspicious that whatever it is might somehow also be affecting his electrolytes even though that makes no sense. …She’s going to put in an order for an extended electrolyte panel, actually, and make sure the order is entered as stat. Something weird is going on with him.

- also she's going to recheck his blood glucose fifteen minutes later to make sure it actually went up. 

It did! 84 mg/dL, which is almost a normal rise for having gotten 25ccs of 50% dextrose rammed down his central line. 

The lab isn’t busy at midnight; she has results 35 minutes later. Potassium 3.1, very slightly down from the last result.

Also his phosphate, which hadn't been checked in more than twelve hours, is pretty low again, just barely not a critical result. 

WHAT IS UP with this guy???? 

She’ll go get orders to top up his potassium and run another bag of sodium phosphate. 

The resident wants to give any additional potassium supplementation enterally, since he’s already getting IV potassium and they don’t want to exceed the safe rate of dropping it directly into his central circulation, and also he “tolerated it last time.” Lisa can see the logic, and it’ll let them safely get on top of his levels - which have now been outside of normal range for more than twelve hours - but also poor guy, Marian’s report was that it wasn’t very comfortable for him and this time the resident ordered a full 40 mEQ, twice what he got last time. On the bright side, extrapolating from his past response, it miiight actually get him to the middle rather than lower limit of normal range.

She should wake him again anyway for suctioning and another change of position, he’s back to starting to think about desatting, but she’ll track down Marian’s drawing of the “this will help your heart but might make you nauseous” explanation, hopefully he remembers that?

He does!  He nods a bit unhappily, and wishes he could sleep through the nausea but judging by last time he won't be able to. 

Ah well, at least it didn't last that long. 

... Why is his heart doing wrong things again, though?  He looks worried.  Points at it and gives her a questioning look, although probably that's not enough to convey the question and he'll have to draw things...

It doesn't feel like his heart is doing wrong things, though?  And he's not feeling very weak... well, some, of course - he supposes he was better earlier in the night, but he was definitely worse yesterday so this didn't feel like something to worry about...  Conveying feeling better and worse in drawing form is going to be so hard, but he really does think he'd like to know more detail about what this all looks like from her viewpoint.

Oh no now she’s gotten him stressed out! Which makes perfect sense, he had a scary day, but that's not what Lisa was intending! His current level isn’t scary, just - really should have improved more than it did with the treatment they’ve given so far, so it’s time to get more aggressive, especially since he’s apparently capable of dropping very fast without warning and should have some wiggle room.

Lisa wouldn’t say she’s as creative an artist as Marian, but she can make do. She draws a blood tube with an eye next to it - hopefully he recognizes that from precious drawings? - and then a graph, with a few dotted horizontal lines dividing it into thirds. 

Top third gets a smiley face, and a dot in it at the start - he was normal at some point this morning, after the OR and before he was super awake - and then she draws a line down to the next dot, well into the scary low zone, which gets frowny faces. The next dot is even lower and even frownier, and - to hopefully make it clear when she’s talking about - she points at the patient and mimes pulling out an invisible breathing tube, and then putting it back in.

And then she’ll draw some dots going up again in a gradual line, but it takes a couple even to get into the middle zone, where they get flat-mouth faces, not as bad but definitely not happy. And then the most recent dot is very slightly down from the last one. 

...Does that seem to get across to him at all? Maybe it needs more illustrative stick figures but she's not sure...what...to draw stick figures doing that would convey it better...?