They don't! The patient is right now being medevac-helicoptered over from where they were found, in a cave somewhere in the desert. They're waiting on a radio report from the paramedics. The helicopter should be landing in twenty minutes, though - can the ICU send someone down to help out with that? 

Marian grumbles VERY LOUDLY in her head but not on the phone. "Sure, we'll send someone over." 

Meanwhile:

Two search-and-rescue paramedics are in the back of a helicopter, currently soaring over the Nevada desert outside Reno. 

"Still unresponsive?" Bill calls back to his partner Evie. 

     "Yep. Pulse still at 40. I got the IV though. Should I radio in a report -" 

Their patient goes even more still than she has been, the thus-far-steady rise and fall of her chest settling out into nothing.

"...Oh, that's just rude!"

Evie drops the radio she was about to make the report with, and does the first thing she can think of, which is to rub her knuckles hard along the patient's sternum, in hopes of waking her up just enough that she will START BREATHING AGAIN. 

Bill leans in to check the monitor display - are the patient's heart rhythm and O2 sat reading any different? 

Her heart rhythm is still 40, strong and steady, and her O2 reading is 99.

She doesn't respond.

"...Okaaaay I'm definitely thinking something neurological," Bill mutters, cycling the blood pressure cuff again before reaching for the ambu bag. "That's...fifteen seconds?" 

     "Could just be intermittent airway obstruction," Evie points out. 

Bill scowls. "Can't reposition her neck." The patient is currently immobilized on a backboard, since they're lacking any information on what happened to her and possible injuries. "I do not want to intubate her with that limitation. Get an oral airway placed and bag her?" 

     "On it." The item in question is a hollow, curved plastic tube, which Evie carefully slides in between the patient's teeth, initially with the curve pointing up and then flipping it so the end of the tube rests at the back of the patient's throat, where it should theoretically keep her tongue from blocking her airway. She watches closely for any sign of a cough or gag reflex. 

Nope.

98.

"- Wow, she's really out. No cough or gag, zero, zip. Amazed her vitals were this stable so far." Evie waits another five seconds to see if the patient will take a breath on her own now, then sighs and presses the resuscitation mask firmly over her nose and mouth, squeezing the bag to force air into the patient's lungs. 

She backs off for a second to see if this stimulates the woman into taking a breath on her own. 

Bill checks the blood pressure reading. 

It doesn't, no. Her blood pressure is 105 over 52, in the same couple-points worth of range it's been in since they started checking.

Bill watches in silence for a bit, while Evie goes on squeezing the ambu bag to make their patient breathe. 

"...Well, other vitals are rock-solid but - back off a second - she's still not breathing on her own...?" 

(Evie leaves the oxygen mask in place, but stops squeezing the bag, and watches.) 

Bill scowls. "I guess if she keeps being apneic we ought to intubate her. Whether or not it's obnoxious. It'd be no good if she went and aspirated on us." 

(Evie is still watching for any signs of spontaneous breathing.) 

A few seconds after Evie stops squeezing, the woman resumes breathing, just as unassumingly as she stopped.

"....Well." 

They both sit back and watch her, mildly nonplussed.

"I guess we...wait and see? If she stops breathing again we'll tube her then." 

Evie has time to get most of the way through the radio report before her patient's breathing stops again.

"Oh for fuck's sake." 

     Evie hastily apologizes to the nurse who's taking her report and toggles off the radio mic with one hand while she reaches for the ambu bag again. "Yo, Bill. It's your turn." 

"I hate you." 

     "Awww. Love you too." 

"Pass the thing." 

     "You could say please. ...Also you could say what." 

"You know what I fucking mean." 

Complaints aside, it's hardly the first time either of them has done this. Within five minutes a breathing tube is inserted, held in place with cloth tape, and Bill has the patient hooked up to the transport ventilator. On 25% oxygen, the lowest setting, since it really seems like there's nothing wrong with her lungs. 

Evie sits back, staring resentfully at the radio. "Guess I should call back and finish. Blerg. - Man, I wonder what that thing is." She jerks her thumb vaguely in the direction of the...large metal object of unknown purpose or origin, found beside their current mystery patient in the cave. 

The thing in question has no answers for them. (Sure does look like a fancy humanoid robot, though.)

When their patient tries to start breathing again some thirty seconds later, it's out of sync with the ventilator; it takes a handful of tries for her to match its rhythm.

The alarm dings loudly. Evie glares at it and whacks the silence button. 

The helicopter starts its descent.

As they're preparing to touch down, she goes out of sync with the machine again; as before, it takes her a few breaths to resyncronize.

Evie scowls at the machine and silences it again. 

Marian has just received a very uniformative secondhand report from the ED nurse who spoke to Evie, and makes her way to the trauma bay just as the transport team is shifting their unresponsive mystery patient from their stretcher onto the ED gurney. 

Bill goes back and, with help from one of the burlier orderlies, hauls the strange humanoid-robot-thing down the ramp, out onto the landing pad, and inside. 

"What do you reckon - Burning Man art project?" 

     Shrug. "Could be. She'd be getting an early start, though." It's only June. 

Marian, working on automatic long-engrained habit, switches out the patient's ECG electrodes, blood pressure cuff, and O2 sat probe for the standard hospital ones. And glares at the transport ventilator; she doesn't even recognize that model and she has no idea where to look for the numbers she cares about. 

After a moment, she stops trying, and instead focuses on the patient herself. 

The woman appears to be in her twenties, tall, lean, and muscular, with short-cropped brown hair and surprisingly pale skin for having been found in the desert in summer with no sign of sunburn. Her outfit is black, plain pants and an oddly-designed long-sleeved shirt, loose and flowy but otherwise also impractical to the climate, hand-embroidered at the cuffs and neckline with a complicated pattern of silver and gold waves, plus an asymetrical belt of sturdier black material supporting a holster containing some sort of short copper rod. Her breathing is slow and steady, and on visual inspection she seems to be in good health, just completely unresponsive and very limp; her heart rate is slow, and her blood pressure is on the low side, but her oxygen reading is fine, 98 rising to 99 as Marian watches.

Huh. 

Marian checks the woman's pupils with a penlight, then pinches her nailbed hard, checking for any kind of response. 

The woman's eyes are rolled back in her head, and don't respond to the penlight. Her nail whitens at the pressure and returns to its normal pink color when released; there's no other reaction.

...This is confusing. It doesn't seem plausible that a head injury could cause such deep unconsciousness without having other visible effects, or at least affecting the woman's vital signs more. A drug overdose, maybe?

There doesn't seem to be any admitting doctor or even a resident in sight, so she starts off with a hasty physical assessment, as much as she can do when her patient is strapped down to a backboard and still mostly clothed. She listens to the woman's lungs and bowels, examines her skin for bruises or other injuries, checks if her eyes look sunken or her mucous membranes are dry - the paramedics got an IV line in and are running fluids, but not fast, and if she's been collapsed in a cave in the desert she could be very dehydrated. 

Her lungs sound completely normal; her bowels are very quiet, and feel empty. She has no bruises or other current injuries, but a small collection of neatly healed burn scars on her torso and arms, each a rectangle about half a palmwidth across and a few inches long; one, on her hip, seems to be newer, slightly rougher and more sunken compared to the rest, which are old enough that there's no telling if they were gotten at the same time or separately.

She doesn't seem to be dehydrated at all, somehow.

This is so confusing. Maybe she just wasn't there very long before they found her? If it were only overnight, it wouldn't be hot yet - maybe caves don't get hot period... 

She starts trying to flag down a resident, or anyone who's able and willing to write some admission orders. 

The older, male paramedic is having some sort of altercation with the charge nurse at the desk. 

"Look, I need to give patient belongings to someone!" 

     "Patient belongings aren't normally this big! Where are we supposed to put it?" 

"Can you please just sign for it so we can get out of here?" 

     "I don't really want to sign for something if we can't store it - what is it?" 

"I figured an art project? Maybe she's prepping for Burning Man." 

     "...Well, I guess it wouldn't be the weirdest one I've seen." 

Since her search-path takes her there anyway, Marian pauses by the desk, looks over the bizarre humanoid metal robot-looking thing. 

"I guess we could stash it in the clean utility?" she says, somewhat dubiously. "It could fit in a patient room but it'd be in the way." 

The charge nurse thrusts a clipboard at her. "Can you sign for it, then? I don't want to get sued for losing someone's ten-thousand-dollar Burning Man project when I wasn't even the one handling it." 

She should probably be suspicious or worried or something, but mostly Marian just wants to be back at the ICU as soon as possible. "Uh, right, sure."

She scrawls a signature, then tests whether she can lift it. 

She might be able to if she had to, but the thing isn't much smaller than she is, and heavier for its size than a human.

It does turn out that the joints bend, though, with a pretty human-typical range of motion.

Marian sighs. She'll...call for an orderly with a gurney or something. Or maybe she can sort of fold it into a wheelchair... 

There are wheelchairs right here, against the wall, so she tries this. 

It takes a bit of doing - the joints take some effort to move, and then stay where they're put, whatever that happens to do to the thing's center of gravity - but she can get it into a wheelchair.

Well, better than nothing. She wheels the wheelchair over and parks it at the foot of the gurney, then finally manages to flag down the resident on duty. 

"I, um, haven't done ICU admission orders before - what do you need?" 

Marian does NOT say 'I have no idea that's supposed to be your job', but not saying it takes a lot of willpower. 

"I mean, whoever's on for trauma will take over once she's admitted, I guess." She STILL doesn't know who and she's mildly scared it's one of the horrible surgeons. "We should get a head CT, they'll want that. And, uh, can I get orders for sedation just in case - she's not responsive at all but if she starts waking up, you know..." 

The resident, over five minutes, can be talked through putting in orders on the computer. 

And then, blessedly, finally, Marian has admission orders and she's called CT and checked they can take her patient and her stat order right now and they can get OUT of here. Granted, in order to go somewhere even more stressful, but it'll be one step closer to her nice comfortable well-organized ICU. 

She uses the phone line to call an orderly and instructs them to bring the weird art project in the wheelchair over to the trauma ICU whenever they have a chance; in the meantime she asks one of the care aides nicely to please watch it for her. 

Marian doesn't really want to wait for another orderly to head to CT, especially since her spot might get taken if she's late. She sighs and returns to the patient's bedside, glancing at vital signs and repeating her minimal neuro assessment - any changes? 

Her heart rate is up to 58 and her blood pressure has risen by a couple of points; everything else is the same.

That's prooooobably an improvement, but Marian is suspicious on principle of anything changing, so she narrows her eyes at the monitor for a few seconds before she starts disconnecting and/or swapping all the equipment in order to head down the hall. 

A minute of staring intently at the paramedics' bizarre model of ventilator settings still fails to reveal whether the patient is breathing on her own above the rate, but she thinks the report said the woman had been mostly breathing spontaneously with occasional apneas, and there's clearly nothing wrong with her lungs or O2 sats.

Another minute of hunting around fails to turn up the ED's usual transport ventilator, it probably got put away somewhere weird and Marian doesn't work on this unit and isn't up to speed on the various weird places to check. Maybe she'll risk just taking the ambu bag and oxygen cylinder for transport. It's not like a head CT takes long, and she'll be able to keep an eye on the patient's sats the whole time. 

She sets this up, unplugs the IV pump and wraps up the cord so it's out of the way, and goes to pull her propofol order from the PYXIS computerized-med-dispenser. At which point she runs into yet another stupid problem, which is that apparently her employee badge isn't set up to authorize her to withdraw meds in the ED. 

"Arghhh," she says under her breath, very quietly, and then spends thirty seconds caught in stupid indecision about whether to gamble and go without it, or go harass one of the staff nurses to get it. 

Her inner Alice-voice has a strong opinion on this topic, and also points out that her patient doesn't currently have a hospital bracelet to scan. Which would be very embarrassing if she had failed to notice it until getting to CT, and she needs to bother the charge nurse anyway to use the bracelet-printer. 

She does this. The patient's assigned random name, since she doesn't have any ID on her, is Forty-One, Orange. 

And then, finally, fiiiiiiinally, she's on her way down the hall, steering carefully with one hand awkwardly half-around the ambu bag while she keeps her thumb hooked around the gurney handle, watching the patient's chest to see if she's breathing spontaneously. 

She's very well-behaved about it, yes.

They reach the CT department, and Marian, fidgeting slightly with impatience, goes through the usual ritual of negotiating with the radiology tech on which equipment can go in the room with her patient and how they need to be CAREFUL, no, MORE CAREFUL, about her tubes and wires, and no the monitor needs to be angled so she can see it, and she wants the patient's hands restrained just in case... 

After five minutes, everything is finally ready, and she backs out and stands behind the glass and watches the monitor. 

Everything looks fine, at least as far as Marian can tell.

It's not like she's qualified to read CT scans or anything, but it's a relief that there's nothing glaringly wrong. 

A CT without contrast doesn't take long; the process of getting the patient slid back across the scanner bed onto the gurney, and all of her wires and tubes rearranged, takes longer than the scan itself. 

Within twenty minutes of her departure from the ED, though, she's trekking off again. Aaaaaaalmost there... 

Her pod, when she reaches it, is completely empty of any nursing staff. Leg Lifts Lady in 111 is flinging her legs around and mouthing what are presumably obscenities. 

There are raised voices and alarm-sounds coming from the adjacent pod. It sounds like a dialysis machine is unhappy. 

Marian isn't trained on dialysis and needs to get her patient settled anyway. She risks leaving the gurney next to the waiting bed and darting up to the nursing station to find someone, anyone, who can lend her their hands for the transfer. 

All the nurses in the unit are busy or unwilling to go that far away from their unstable patients. Which is reasonable of them but also FRUSTRATING. It takes another five minutes for the care aide to come back from the bathroom, and ten minutes before she finally has her patient in the ICU bed and is getting everything set up properly. 

Any changes? 

Nope.

Well, at least her patient is stable. She's stuck alone in a pod watching three other patients and trying to do an admission with ZERO help, but it could still be worse. 

(Marian immediately crosses her fingers and tries to unthink that thought, because the universe might hear her.) 

Okay. What next. It would be really nice to have, say, the admitting doctor telling her what to do, but unfortunately the admitting doctor is busy - it's Dr Millinger, apparently, she can hear his raised voice snapping at someone down the hall, he must be stressed. 

Eventually she gets together the courage to put in some 'verbal orders' under his name, for the standard ICU admission bloodwork plus all the drug test panels she can find in the comptuer. Also a catheter, a nasogastric tube, blah blah blah. He'll probably forgive her. 

She gets the lab tubes and prints barcode stickers for them off the barcode printer and gathers her supplies, then starts hunting for veins. 

It's not hard to find a good one, fit as she is.

Poke, tubes of blood, off to the lab. Easy peasy. She might as well get a couple of less sketchy-paramedic-style IVs while she's at it. And then put even more tubes in other places. And god, at some point she needs to get Dr Millinger to clear her to get the patient - she's already forgotten the woman's code name - off the stupid backboard... 

This is clearly not going to happen anytime soon, because right when she's sterile-gloved and in the middle of placing a Foley catheter, the overhead intercom beeps and starts announcing a code blue in the dialysis-patient's room one pod over. 

Marian is kind of busy and also the only nurse in the pod right now. She hates missing codes, but she stays put and keeps working, watching her patient's vital signs. 

Her blood pressure creeps up another couple of points to settle at something basically normal; everything else is steady.

It's subtle, but there's slightly more resistance than usual to putting the tubes in - it doesn't feel like they're caught on anything, exactly, just that sliding them in past the woman's flesh takes a bit more effort than it should, even with plenty of lubrication. They slip out again just fine, though, if Marian tries that at all - if anything pulling them out seems easier than usual.

This results in Marian pausing and pulling back and double-checking several times that the tube in question is in fact going into the right place, before she shrugs and figures the patient is just Like That.

Is there any urine coming out into the catheter bag? That's an easy confirmation. For the nasogastric tube, she'll plop in a verbal order for an X-ray to get confirmation of its placement before doing anything else. 

The catheter bag is filling at a normal rate; the urine is fairly dark.

She doesn't otherwise look dehydrated, but Marian notes this down to ask Dr Millinger about once he's available for questions. Which might not be before lunch, at this rate. She has no idea what's going on next door. Probably the patient isn't dead, since there are still muffled voices from that direction. 

She parks herself at the computer-on-wheels and repeatedly refreshes the tab for bloodwork results. 

For the most part the only weird thing about her bloodwork is how good it is - all the markers of long-term health look great, her organs all seem to be working well, and she's not low on any vitamins or minerals, even the ones people tend to have trouble getting enough of; the only thing even slightly concerning in that realm is a slightly raised level of proteins. The drug screenings all come back negative. Her blood type is odd, though, one of the rare ones that pops up from time to time, and her immune system is... well, they're pretty sure she doesn't have an active infection, but from the notes, that's nearly all they're sure of.

This is kind of informative, but also confusing again, and in a way that doesn't really clarify any of her earlier confusion. 

Elaine is still busy so she leaves her apparently-surprisingly-healthy patient for a while and does a round of checking whether meds are due for the other three, and doing her very best to pull out and rearrange pillows to turn the two comatose patients in 114 and 115 onto their other sides. Leg Lifts Lady is doing leg lifts as always, and trying without any success to free her hands so she can pull out her trach. 

About an hour after the patient's admission, Elaine finally makes it back over to the pod. "Oh my god." She collapses at the desk. 

"Did they make it?" Marian asks, absently, she's busy mixing pressors for the gunshot-wound patient in 115. 

"Uh, for now. Doesn't look good." 

Sigh.

"Is Dr Millinger still busy." 

"He's getting us coffee and doughnuts." 

"Oh good!" Marian could really use more coffee. "I guess I can wait. Uh, I turned your people and gave them meds." 

"Awww, thanks. I'm beat." Elaine flops her head down on the table. 

About ten minutes later, Dr Millinger arrives with a large tray of coffees. "This is the new admit?" 

"Yeah. Uh, she's completely unresponsive, GCS three, we have no idea why - bloodwork is almost totally normal, drug screen negative - vitals stable, head CT wasn't grossly abnormal but I haven't read the report yet..." 

Dr Millinger goes to pull this up. 

Her neck is in good shape, but the report notes pervasive nonspecific grey matter changes.

"- Huh, that's weird. Let's get an EEG, I'll put the order in now." 

Marian nods and writes this down and fidgets. 

When she happens to glance at the readouts, her patient's heart rate is up to 83 - it was 59 a minute ago.

"Huh."

Marian mutters to herself under her breath and heads into the room to cycle the blood pressure reading again. 

That's up, too, and by the time the reading comes through her pulse is up another dozen beats a minute.

This isn't yet that worrying in itself but the change is confusing and Marian does not like being confused. 

"She hasn't done this before," she says to Dr Millinger. "I don't know what - maybe she's in pain? If she's waking up... I'll do a neuro check." 

She repeats the usual process - shining a light in her patient's eyes, talking loudly at her to gauge any reaction, pinching her nailbeds and rubbing her knuckles on her sternum. 

Her breathing deepens and quickens as Marian works, and when she touches her chest she seems to be shivering, gently.

There's no other response.

Her pulse keeps rising.

"Dr Millinger, she's not responsive really but I'm worried she's in pain - she's definitely doing something..." 

He frowns at the monitor. "...Could be something neurological but I don't understand why. Push five of propofol, please. And let's change that EEG to stat." 

Marian doesn't know what Dr Millinger thinks could be going on - a seizure would increase heart rate and blood pressure like this but it'd presumably be noticeable... 

She hurries off to pull drugs from the Pyxis and draw up propofol and push it into the IV. 

This has no apparent effect: her heart rate keeps going up, and she's breathing like she's running a marathon.

Marian whacks the monitor for another blood pressure reading. 

That's rising too, though somewhat less alarmingly.

"Push five of metoprolol stat," Dr Millinger barks. 

     Elaine is finally hauling herself up from the desk. "Need help?" 

"Yes! Please! Can you pull up metoprolol for me?" It's a beta blocker, which should decrease heart rate and blood pressure - her patient's pulse is now running at 160, high enough to be directly worrying in itself. 

It levels out just above that, at least. The woman is starting to get slightly warm to the touch.

The metoprolol doesn't have any apparent effect either.

Dr Millinger stares at the monitor in bafflement. 

"- Try another five, I guess?" 

Marian feels kind of nervous about this, but she pushes the rest of the syringe in, and then grabs the thermometer to re-check her patient's temperature. 

Her heart rate stays at 162; her temperature is 99.4, and she's not sweating.

"What's the timeline on that EEG?" Dr Millinger snaps at her. 

"I don't know! I can, uh, I can call them..." Marian has never tried to get an EEG stat before. She doesn't even know if the department has its own phone number. She can look it up on the computer, though, glancing up every five seconds at the monitor. 

Dr Millinger paces in a circle at the foot of the bed. "- Could be she's dehydrated, I guess - BP's up too, but her urine's pretty dark. Let's get a litre of fluids in." 

     "On it," Elaine jumps in. 

"EEG people can come in an hour." 

Elaine gets the fluid bolus running. 

Dr Millinger watches the monitor, frowning and tapping his foot. 

The fluids have no immediate effect, though after a few minutes the patient begins sweating slightly.

Her heart rate stays stubbornly at 162 for several more minutes - ten or fifteen, all told - and then begins going down, just as mysteriously as it went up.

Dr Millinger has, by this point, decided that the patient is not imminently dying, and wandered off after ordering a second litre of fluids once the first is done. 

Marian flops down in a chair in front of the computer-on-wheels and GLARES at her patient's monitor. "Why are you doing this to me," she mutters under her breath. 

Alas, there is no answer.

Her pulse decreases fairly quickly to eighty, then levels out a bit, falling much more slowly from there; her breathing calms at the same time, returning to its original steady pace.

The second bag of fluids is empty by the time the EEG team arrives and starts setting up for it. 

Marian checks the level of new urine in the measuring compartment at the front of the bag - how much in the last hour-and-some? What color? 

Less than she'd hope for, but it's lightened a bit.

Well, it's better than her memory of there not being much when she last glanced over - she's been kind of bad at flipping the compartment into the main bag every hour, though. Marian still isn't sure where she's PUTTING all that fluid, it's not like she looked dehydrated to begin with - are her extremities or face puffy at all...? 

She checks for this and then watches the EEG tech finish applying gel-goop and attaching electrodes, and placing a sort of shower cap overtop to hold them in place, and then beginning the test. Which Marian has no idea how to interpret, it all just looks like wiggly lines to her, so she watches the tech. 

It's not really visibly noticeable but if Marian presses, there's a bit of puffiness, yes. Not much though.

To the EEG, she seems... asleep? Very deeply so, lots of delta waves, but the finer wiggles of alpha and beta, too; not many, but enough to rule out a delta coma. There's no sign of epilepsy or recent seizure, though at this point that's not a very strong indication that she didn't have one.

The test takes forty-five minutes. 

In the middle of it, an orderly pushing a wheelchair knocks at the side of the door. "Hello?" 

Marian jumps, startled, before realizing it's just the bizarre articulated-humanoid-robot Burning Man art project or whatever. 

"Uh, thanks, can you put it in the clean utility?" 

The orderly gives her an irritated look. "You'd have to show me where." 

Marian sighs and shrugs. "I guess just put it there - no, not in the middle, up against the wall or something... That'll do. Thank you." 

The tech finishes the test and gives her an apologetic look as she starts removing the cap and electrodes. "I can't give you a final diagnosis. The neurologist should have a report up within a couple hours." 

"Mmm. Thanks." 

Marian flops on her chair. She probably SHOULD do something about the robot statue in the wheelchair but her feet hurt. She stares listlessly at the monitor instead. 

Her patient is stable now; her heart rate has settled out in the mid-fifties, and her blood pressure is back to a comfortable 115 over 74.

This is a definite improvement in her day! Not that she trusts this state of affairs to last! 

She grabs the opportunity to ask Dr Millinger to actually put in an order for getting the patient off the backboard, since she keeeeeeeps forgetting about that. 

Sure, whatever, she can do what she wants. 

Marian gets help from Elaine to do this, and takes the opportunity to get a good look at the patient's back and check for any other injuries, scars, or skin breakdown. 

There's a few more of the rectangular burn scars, and one diffuse round mostly-healed burn on the back of her shoulder; her skin looks good otherwise.

Marian asks Elaine to get her a dressing to slap on the not-yet-healed burn, and once they have her patient arranged with a pillow behind her to prop her half onto her side, she documents it. She's very curious but it doesn't seem likely she'll have her curiosity answered for a while. 

Elaine is very behind on everything with her patients, so Marian ducks out and spends the next few minutes helping her with turns and meds, glancing occasionally back at her patient's monitor. 

Everything's quiet.

Eventually Marian hauls herself off to the clean utility room and spends a while shoving and rearranging equipment so that she can haul the art-sculpture-robot in and stand it up sort of against the back wall. She goes and finds a sticky note and labels it with a patient sticker with her code-name and bar code, and then goes and has a desperately needed bathroom break, and then her pod still seems quiet so she calls to Elaine that she's getting coffee. 

Fifteen minutes later she's back, standing outside her patient's room and looking at the monitor and the pee in the collector-box. 

Her vitals are still stable; her urine output has slowed to a trickle.

There's some sort of strange marks on her face, beside her nose and around her eyes; it's hard to make out from there.

Ugh. This calls for a closer look, doesn't it. Right when she was just about to sit down. Terrible. 

Marian sighs and forges over to the patient's bedside to get a closer look at the weird marks. 

The marks are on the sides of her her neck and the back of her hands, too, and at her hairline, black smudges following the veins - or maybe those are her veins, somehow, the marks do seem to be under rather than on her skin.

That's so weird! And Marian isn't usually squeamish about anything other than spit, but this is making her feel a bit like her shift is about to turn into a scene from a horror movie, and she's sort of cringing about it. Also about the prospect of asking Dr Millinger what to do about mysterious horror-movie-esque black veins?? 

She grumbles under her breath and then grits her teeth and goes off to find and ask him. 

Dr Millinger mostly seems too busy and fed up to even question her weird report. "Sure, get some bloodwork, why not." 

"...Uhhh, what tubes." She has no idea which specific lab test is supposed to be indicated for 'mysteriously black horror movie veins.' 

He looks irritated. "Why would I know? Just send the rainbow." (This is the common slang for 'all the tube colours used in common tests'.) 

Marian nods and smiles politely and thanks him, and then goes off and, before sending the tubes, calls the lab and tries to explain to some busy and confused lab tech why they're doing the test. 

(The lab tech also doesn't know any secret lore on this problem, but promises to ask his supervisor.) 

Black veins do, at least, make it really easy to draw blood! Marian gets all the samples on her first try and sends them off via pneumatic tube system, and then parks herself in the chair to wait, glaring at the woman's urine output but not quite upset enough about it to bother Dr Millinger again. 

Her vitals are stable, at least.

The color starts to fade, eventually; it's slow enough that it's hard to say when it started, but it's noticeably less prominent after forty minutes.

Probably that’s a good sign? Marian really wishes she were more sure of that, though. 

About an hour after she sent off the blood, she gets a call from the lab. They’re apologizing for failing to get results stat; their fancy new quick-reading machine for electrolyte numbers seems to be acting up? They’re going to use the older, more reliable lab equipment, but it’ll be a wait. 

Clotting factors are all normal, they have that at least. They’re going to run a second check on the hematology, though - something’s really weird about the patient’s plasma, it’s coming up...sort of stained cloudy and dark? 

Marian helpfully sends off yet another tube for the hematology redo, and then finds Elaine to do a round of turning patients - and frequently glancing at her patient to check the black marks - while she waits for the lab to call her back.

The marks fade almost to invisibility, but the remaining stain lingers; toward the end of this process, the catheter tubing and urine in the collection bag gains its own similar inkiness.

There's a brief beeping from the oxygen sensor, as her sats dip, but they're back above 92 and she's breathing normally by the time Marian gets there.

About thirty seconds after Marian runs to her patient's room to see which alarm is upset this time, the phone rings. When Marian answers it, a bored voice announces wearily: "I have an EEG report for Forty-One, Orange." 

Whoops, she hadn't even noticed that the report was delayed and she should probably have called them sooner. "Uh, yes, this is Marian, I can take the report." 

The report is not all that informative! Marian takes it verbally and also looks up the written report in the computer and reads it through twice. 

The patient...doesn't look like someone in a coma at all? She looks asleep. Very deeply asleep, to be fair - enough to be somewhat unexpected and abnormal in itself - but there's some jargon about 'high voltage delta' coma, and the neurologist is very sure that the patient isn't suffering from that, there are still some alpha and beta waves present. 

Huh. Weird. Not clear what she's supposed to do about it then. 

Marian does another neuro check just on general principle, though - is the patient still totally unresponsive even to sound, light, and pain? 

Yup.

Her eyes are still rolled back, but this time Marian catches a glimpse of mustard yellow rimmed with blood red, where her iris should be.

What the FUCK okay whatever probably she imagined it. She could double check but actually right now she just wants another coffee before it's definitely too late in the day for caffeine. (It's midafternoon, already pushing it pretty hard, but today is feeling like the sort of day where it's reasonable to need bonus caffeine.) 

After she's given report but before she's quite made it off the unit, though, the phone rings. Elaine answers it. 

She listens with an increasingly puzzled expression. 

"....Marian?" 

"What." 

"It's the, uh, lab supervisor - apparently your patient's blood broke their equipment...?" 

Marian stares blankly at her for ten seconds. 

"...Well, I don't know what they want me to do about it. I'm getting my coffee now." 

She leaves. 

Elaine watches her patient from the computer desk, somewhat nervous that some OTHER horror movie thing is going to start happening at her. 

The offending patient is quiet and still, her vitals politely within the normal ranges.

Marian gets back without incident and parks herself back in her chair. There's not actually a lot to do right now, which is unfortunate; it leaves her imagination with far too much time to invent terrifying half-formed explanations for her patient's weird lab-destroying blood. Also she's probably going to be too mortified to ever call the lab directly again. 

Her patient doesn't seem inclined to help her with this problem.

It's past five pm by the time she's interrupted by Dr Millinger just before finishing her coffee. "Hey. Why are all her electrolytes back as Xs." 

"....I...uh...apparently...herbloodbroketheequipment -" 

Marian feels like this is very implausible and that Dr Millinger is unlikely to take her seriously about any of the horror movie aspects of this situation. 

"- Wow. Fuck." He snorts. "Vitals stable, though?" 

"Uh, recently yes. Oh, and the EEG report's back - it, uh, thought it didn't look like a coma at all, but I checked and she's still totally unresponsive." 

"Huh. Well." He frowns. "- I'll put in a psych consult, I guess, why not, maybe it's some sort of bizarre catatonia thing." 

Marian is PRETTY SURE that this doesn't explain the horror movie black veins and blood that kills lab machinery, but she just nods politely. 

"Right. Anyway. Do we have her on tube feeds yet?" 

"Uhhhhh. No." Also she is SUDDENLY REALIZING that, while she totally put in an order for an X-ray to verify the tube placement, she isn't sure that it...ever happened... 

Dr Millinger is already standing up. "Well, put her down for the standard starter orders, and a dietician consult tomorrow." 

Marian does this, and then very sheepishly calls the X-ray department and asks them to please come and do a portable bedside X-ray 'when they have a chance', she feels too embarrassed to ask them to come stat when it's on her for forgetting all day. 

The X-ray techs are still very obliging and arrive within twenty minutes. And with two of them, though Marian stands up and goes into the room anyway to make sure no tubes get yanked out. 

The tube is where it belongs, but the end of it looks slightly misshapen and more solid than it should.

...Weird? 

Marian would like things to be LESS WEIRD and not MORE WEIRD. 

Maybe she'll just...try to ignore it, and get out the big 60cc syringe so she can check for any stomach fluids she can get out of the tube, and then push in a little air bubble and listen with her stethoscope for the burble in the stomach, and then a teeny bit of water? 

This works mostly as expected; there's more resistance than usual, though, to getting things into or out of the tube.

Marian spends a minute grumbling to herself under her breath while she confirms that pushing water through doesn't seem to clear the resistance. 

Eventually she grits her teeth and goes to bother Dr Millinger. "Can you, uh, look at the X-ray of the tube placement? I was checking it and it seems kind of weird, and it works but there's some resistance, like it's half blocked..." 

He rolls his eyes but checks. And, mercifully, either fails to notice the timestamp or at least doesn't bother to hound her about it. 

"...This day just won't stop being inconvenient, will it. Well, pull the tube and have a look, I suppose, and put in a larger-bore one for feeds tonight." 

Ughhhhh. It's nearly six pm, too. 

Marian at least thinks to put in the X-ray order first, and call to ask if they can come in half an hour. If she's organized with how she uses her time, hopefully she can get everything done and charted by shift report. 

She arranges the new, thicker tube on the bedside table, and then un-tapes and slides out the original one, making a face because saliva ew. 

There isn't much of it, at least; her patient is still doing a very convincing impression of a dehydrated person for someone who visibly isn't at all.

The last few inches of the tube are coated in a hard inky black substance that gleams like pearl.

What the ACTUAL FUCK. 

After ten seconds of blank staring, Marian curls up the length of tube in her gloved hands, and marches across the unit to the center desk to shove it under Dr Millinger's nose.

"This is what was wrong with it." 

"...Okay, I don't know what you want me to do about it," Dr Millinger mutters after a long moment. 

"...Do you want me to still put in another one." 

"Obviously? We've got to feed her somehow." 

Marian marches back across to the room, finds a kidney basin to curl the tube in because she HAS to show it to the next nurse or they won't believe her, and then tries to insert the new tube. 

There's the same odd resistance as last time, but no more trouble than that getting it in.

She helps Elaine do a round of turning patients, interrupted midway through by a mildly disgruntled X-ray tech arriving and needing supervision. They finish turning Gunshot Wound Patient, and then she slips off and asks Dr Millinger to confirm tube placement in the stomach before she goes back and tries, again, to check it with the syringe. 

It seems entirely normal, now.

Then she should have juuuuust enough time to start the basic tube feeds formulation running, at 20 ccs an hour starting rate, and then sit down and do some rushed charting before the night shift nurse arrives to take report. 

Does her patient do anything else horror-movie-esque before 7pm. 

Her heart rate rises to just over 100 for a few minutes, once; otherwise it's all quiet.

Marian gives the most surreal shift report of her ENTIRE LIFE, to a travel nurse in her fifties with the world's most lesbian haircut and a very obvious attitude of Not Having Time For This Shit. 

And then she escapes for the night. At which point she is unhappily reminded of her bike, waiting outside and damp because it just rained, and the long uphill trek. 

She spends the entire ride home vaguely uneasy about - nothing in particular, really, it just feels like the genre of her entire day has turned into 'inexplicable weird things happening.' 

But nothing else weird happens, and she makes it home and halfheartedly eats some carrot sticks with hummus and reads fanfiction on her laptop for a while and then collapses into bed. 

About half an hour after Marian leaves, the night nurse finds the patient's extremities very cold, to the point of turning slightly blue; she responds well to their attempts to warm her, at least.

An hour after that her veins go dark again, just the same as they did earlier.

The unit is very short-staffed, and especially overwhelmed due to the dialysis patient next door trying very hard to die AGAIN, so it takes her a while to notice this. At which point she rolls her eyes, swears colorfully, and calls the resident. 

     The resident is a poor second-year one who has NO IDEA what to do about 'black veins'. "Can you, uhhhh, give her some fluids I guess?" At least this is sort of vaguely doing something??? 

Sure, whatever. She has a go at flushing one of the IVs so she can re-hook-up the fluids bag. 

This doesn't work at all; the IV is clearly blocked.

Ughhhh she didn't get that in report at ALL. She tries the other one. 

Nope.

WELL THEN she is going to have words with Marian in the morning. She grabs a new IV kit from the supply cart, and some cotton balls and tape for taking out the current ones, which she does first. 

The pearly black coating on the IVs is thinner than it was on the feeding tube, but still enough to clog them entirely.

Weird and gross!! 

The offending IVs join the NG tube in the kidney basin, and she goes digging for another vein. 

They continue to be easy to find; the new IVs go in without any complications.

She hangs a bag of fluids, and then checks the catheter bag; Marian mentioned having been kind of worried about low urine output, though the patient doesn't otherwise show any signs of poor kidney function. 

There's definitely much less urine than there should be, yes.

Well, she's already giving fluids. The last set of electrolytes was...oh, ages ago, the latest test didn't give a result. 

- after that she's pulled away from all three of her thankfully stable patients in the pod, by a new admit down the hall. The bag is all the way in by the time she gets back. 

She hooks a new one and runs it at ten ccs an hour in the pump, maybe that'll keep the new IV from getting blocked off like the other ones. 

Any more pee? 

Yep! Nearly as much as the fluids she was given. There's a black tinge to it, similar to but much less striking than the color of her veins, which are fading back to normal now.

She mentions it to the resident on his next visit to the unit anyway, and at midnight sends off another tube to the lab for electrolytes and urea + creatinine for kidney function. 

The lab calls her back in ten minutes and demands to know if the patient had black veins when she drew it, if so there's a sticky note on their replacement equipment specifically saying NEVER TO USE IT FOR THIS PATIENT. 

She's able to reassure them that, although this happened earlier - and she can share some gory description of the IVs she pulled - it seems fine now. 

The tests all give excellent numbers, and the machinery makes it through the process intact.

The night nurse is VERY BUSY for the next few hours, but makes it in to briefly look over her patient and turn her once in a while. 

Is that REM sleep, looks like it might be.

This night nurse is way too busy to have a very close look at her patient's eyelids and whether her eyes are moving rapidly behind them! She just turns her and listens to her lungs and charts and runs off again. 

When the nurse touches her to turn her, she jolts into a sitting position, eyes snapping open - the irises are indeed yellow, ringed with a disturbing-looking red. She doesn't make eye contact, or really seem to be taking in the room, but she scowls -

-and then just as quickly flops back into complete limpness, her eyes rolling back into her head as they close.

Aaaaaaaack! She jumps about a foot in the air. 

...and then relaxes, faintly embarrassed, when the patient seems to go back to limpness. Huh. Weird. 

There's an order in the computer system for a psychiatry consult in the morning, which she thought at first was the usual 'neurology doesn't have a clue and wants to punt the problem to someone else' bullshit, but now she's wondering. 

She makes sure no tubes were yanked on too hard in the process, then carefully redoes the patient's restraints, tighter, and then pages the resident to ask for an order for sedation. 

     (Sure, she can start running some propofol, and he'll come by to do a full neurological assessment once he's done the current thing in the ED.) 

She gets this set up, and checks if the IV that's had saline running through it this whole time is still working. 

The machine is struggling just a little, but the fluids are going in.

(Any effects they might expect the propofol to have on her vitals completely fail to materialize.)

She was a little worried about blood pressure drops, but is relieved that this patient's cardiovascular system seems to be handling it just fine. Hopefully this will buy her a QUIET NIGHT and she can let Marian deal with the rest. 

She does avoid going into the patient's room, turning on the lights, or otherwise bothering her except for the bare minimum of flipping her onto her other side every couple of hours. 

It's quiet for a while, and then around 4:30 her heart rate suddenly slows to 13 beats per minute.

She's busy helping do a central line dressing on the new admit, a pod over, but the screaming alarm on the central console at the nursing station rouses one of the other nurses, who sprints over to the patient's room, yelling for a crash cart. He reaches the patient, rams the button to get a blood pressure, presses two fingers to her carotid to search for a pulse. 

Yep, that's 13 bpm all right. Her blood pressure is down, too, but wouldn't itself be alarming.

Within seconds two other nurses are there; someone's wrestling the crash cart into the room, yanking down the patient's gown to slap defibrillator pads on her chest and hook them up to the machine - someone else is already yanking open the emergency medications drawer - 

"Should we call a code?" 

     "- She's got a pulse, let's hold off - page the resident -" 

"Just a sec, I've got his cell number." 

     "Ooooh la la, have you been having some fun and not sharing -" 

"Shut up." 

    A cell phone rings, elsewhere. "I - what - fuck - I'll be right there. Push 0.5 of atropine stat–" 

The other nurse is already prepping the syringe, it's pretty obvious what med is going to be ordered for absurd bradycardia. The syringe goes into the patient's IV. 

     "Should we stop the propofol?" someone says worriedly. 

"Uh, do you want her waking up and kicking someone?" 

Atropine? What atropine? 13 bpm it is and 13 bpm it will stay, apparently.

Well that's just RUDE. 

In the process of trying to clear some table space, the other nurse accidentally knocks a plastic bag of the patient's regular clothes, plus - what even is that, some sort of rod that isn't a gun oh whatever it's probably fine - onto the floor. 

"Fucking day shift, not cleaning up properly," he mutters, retrieving it and shoving it into the bedside cabinet instead. "Blood pressure?"

     Blood pressure is retaken. 

Still low, but stable.

Her heart rate dips to 9 for a beat or two, then picks up, settling in at 24.

Huh. That's...better...at least? 

The resident arrives. "- Still bradying on us? Wow, that's a decent BP given things. Push another 0.5 of atropine, I guess...?"

The nurse does this. 

Still 24.

The staff stand around awkwardly for a minute, waiting to see if anything else is going to happen. They take another blood pressure. 

Her heart rate starts rising again, and her blood pressure is headed back to normal, too, when the machine gives its report.

"- Well, whatever that was, she's stabilized now," the resident says finally. "Uh, I...guess call me if she goes brady again? And keep the defib in the room just in case." 

The nurses disperse. 

The rest of the night is quiet.

The night shift nurse is in a very pissy mood by morning shift report, less because of this patient in particular and more just how the night's been going in general. 

"Mostly boring. She did the black-blood thing again. Your IVs were no good, I put in a new one, old ones I kept around." She shows Marian the black-pearl-stuff clogging the ends of the little plastic catheters. 

Ohhhhh gooood she is going to DIE of HUMILIATION she totally didn't check those IVs for...most of her shift... 

"Oh. I'm really really sorry about that -" 

"Whatever. She got another litre of fluids for low urine output, it bumped up after that but - hmm let's see what's in the bag since midnight..." 

10 ccs an hour times however many hours is... yeah, they're getting out almost exactly what they're putting in.

"Well, there's that. Electrolytes were beautiful though - I got them at midnight when she wasn't black, uh, just an FYI the lab won't run blood for her anymore if she's doing the black veins thing. What else - oh right she did a brady episode on us around four am. She responds bizarrely to meds but she stabilized. That's why the defib's at the beside." 

"- Huh. I don't get her body at all, she did a tachy episode for me but never brady. Why's she on propofol? She didn't have any sedation my last shift." 

"Huh– oh, that, I nearly forgot. She woke up on me a bit? Sat up, looked like she was about to bite someone's head off, then passed out again. I got the sedation order just in case. Resident came by at six and did a full neuro eval at the bedside, though, and no change from before. I think it's almost got to be a weird psych issue, don't you?" 

"...Nnnno? I have no idea what it is." Marian is trying very hard to tell her imagination that 'possessed by demons' is DEFINITELY NOT a real disease. "Anyway, thanks - looks like I've got your other two as well?"

Coma Guy and Leg Lifts Lady. Hopefully not as - interesting - as 113. 

The nurse gives report and flees in relief. 

Marian starts doing an assessment. Realizes she completely forgot to ask about GI stuff. She listens to the patient's bowel sounds, expecting to hear some more activity now that they're feeding her. 

...nope.

Uh oh? 

She gets out the 60cc syringe to pull back from the feeding tube and check the residual amount in the patient's stomach. 

She fills the tube.

Ummmmmm. 

After a few seconds of blankly staring at the contents of the syringe, which looks exactly like the tube feeds did when they went in, Marian goes and finds a clean plastic measuring-jar and dumps the contents into that. She tries pulling more into the syringe - can she get another 60ccs out? 

Yep.

...Concerning and kind of gross? Though it helps a bit that there don't even seem to be the usual stomach juices or bile mixed in, it's literally just...completely unmodified, undigested tube feeds formula. 

Marian dumps that into her measuring jar as well, and keeps pulling out syringes and adding them to the jar until she can't get any more. 

There's just over 250cc, all told.

Blehhhhh. 

She leaves it on the counter, and goes to find Dr Millinger, currently chatting with the exhausted-looking night resident. "I, uh, my patient in 113. Doesn't have any bowel sounds. And her tube feed residual was - everything that went in, I checked. She's, uh, just not digesting things. At all." 

"Oh. Well, hold feeds until rounds today, I guess." He clearly does not want to have to think about this right now. 

"Uh, sure." 

She goes back, discards the gross contents of her jar into the sink, and finishes her assessment. Anything else weird? 

Nothing weird; her heart rate and blood pressure were on the low side last night and they're up a bit, into the solidly normal range, now.

Well. Her day could be going a lot worse. Over in the other pods, people keep trying to die; all she has to deal with is weird horror-movie crap and Leg Lifts Lady. 

Who is currently having a poopmergency, so Marian sighs and runs off to recruit someone who can help her deal with that situation. 

All is quiet from Forty-One, Orange for another hour and a bit, and then her heart rate starts rising again.

Ughhhh. Marian is going to keep giving meds to Coma Patient while watching the monitor out of the corner of her eye to see if it goes high enough to set off the red alarm (currently set to trigger for >150bpm). 

It's rising slowly, and still in the 130s when she's done, but it hasn't leveled out by then.

She parks her butt in a chair and watches it. 

It levels out right around 140; her blood pressure and breathing rate are also up.

When this doesn't let up after another minute, Marian hauls herself out of the chair and steels herself to interrupt Dr Millinger in between rounds on two of the sicker patients. "Uhh. My patient's vitals are wonky again. Tachy this time. She might be in pain, can I try giving her something?" 

"Sure, whatever, fentanyl drip the usual and please don't bother me again until I round on her." 

Marian cringes slightly, thanks him quietly, and runs off to do this. (Aaaaaaaaah why is he MAD at her.) 

(Intellectually she knows he isn't mad at her, he's just like that.) 

She gets Elaine to sign off on fentanyl with her, and hangs it. Teeechnically it's not supposed to share an IV with propofol, but she'll start it in the same line and then put another IV in once the patient is already getting something for pain. 

She starts the drip. Any change in the patient's heart rate? 

Nope.

She will try to be patient and WAIT for it to take effect. Though after a couple of minutes she gets restless, and digs out supplies to place a second IV in the patient's other arm. 

Her heart rate stays at 140 through the whole process.

....Wow treating this patient is so frustrating. 

Marian finishes, switches IV lines around. Sits down and starts charting, still eyeing the monitor suspiciously. Probably it'll mysteriously go away, just as mysteriously as it started, that seems to be the kind of thing happening here. 

This one is particularly persistent, but eventually her heart rate starts falling back to normal, much more quickly than it rose.

Sure. Whatever. At this point Marian will take any opportunity she can get to give Elaine a report and go get herself some COFFEE. 

Some time later, there's a loud thunk from the clean storage room, as if something large and heavy has fallen.

Ack! Elaine nearly falls out of her chair. 

After a moment of nervous hesitation, she gets up to go investigate the sound. 

The... thing... that came in with their mystery patient is on the floor, currently moving one of its legs in an odd - but not inhuman - sort of way. It pauses after a moment and asks a question, politely but not in English at all.

Uhhhh whaaaat aaaaaaaah. 

She sprints out of the room. "Help call security or something I think the Burning Man robot was a person in a robot suit -" 

It doesn't follow immediately.

The charge nurse half-turns her head. "That makes...literally no sense...?" 

Marian makes it back to the unit while Elaine is still trying to fumblingly explain. 

"- It's what?" 

She honestly would NOT be SURPRISED if her weird patient's humanoid robot is possessed by demons. 

Probably if an art project is possessed by demons, the thing to do isn't to go look??? But what else is she supposed to do??? She can't call security for that, they'll laugh at her. 

Marian heads for the clean supply room. Creeps up to it, pressed against the wall, and peeks around the doorframe. 

It's still on the floor, looking pretty incapacitated, now moving both legs through what might be range of motion exercises if that made any sense for a demon-possessed robot.

What. 

It continues to be the case that the robot is moving. 

"- Hello?" Marian says hesitantly. 

It pauses and repeats its question, just as politely and just as incomprehensibly the second time.

This is so. incredibly. awkward!!!!! 

"I don't understand you," Marian says anxiously. And then repeats this in French, just in case for SOME REASON this works. 

Does the robot-person's voice sound like a robot or like a person? 

It sounds pretty persony! Noticeably female, actually, moreso than the robot's body, though you'd guess female for that too if you needed to.

It says something else, polite and short but a statement rather than a question this time, and starts making odd exercise-like movements with an arm.

Marian can't think of anything useful to do about this bizarre situation!! So she's just going to stand there awkwardly for a minute!!! With her best pasted-on reassuring smile, which is...not very convincing right now. 

It goes through the arm exercises with each arm in turn, then a brief set with both together, and then says something in a reassuring, deferential tone before slowly gathering itself up to stand.

Marian still isn't sure if - she - is a person dressed up in an art costume - who for some reason has been completely out of it for the last day, including not having to pee, what - or a literal actual smart humanoid robot that can talk. (If she can talk? Maybe she just repeats the same things like a recording?) 

After a moment of standing frozen, she smiles again and - gestures for the robot-woman to follow her in the direction of the patient's room. Because what else can she do. 

She follows amiably until she spots her companion and rushes ahead to her bedside, checking her over briefly and then pointing to her hip where the mysterious rod was and asking a question.

Marian doesn't understand the actual question, of course, but she thinks she got the gist of it? (A moment of flaring hope, that maybe the rod is - what, a high-tech translator of some kind, like this is Star Trek?) 

She's trying to be helpful here, and it always makes her really happy when her patients have family or friends arrive, and also she doesn't really want to antagonize the new person in case she really is some sort of super-smart super-powerful scifi robot?? 

She looks around for the bag of patient belongings, doesn't see it, briefly feels panicked, and then thinks to start checking drawers and cabinets, and shortly finds it. "In here," she says helpfully, holding up the bag. 

The robot takes the bag, clearly broadcasting her intent and lack of hostility with her body language as she approaches to do so, looks through it, visibly pauses, and then very carefully and reverently takes the rod out of the bag and returns it to its spot at her companion's hip; the gesture and assertion when she turns back to Marian almost certainly mean 'leave it there'.

Uh okay sure she will leave it there! She tries to show via gesture that she intends to do this! 

Probably at any second Dr Millinger is going to walk past and think she's completely insane! 

The robot looks around the room, next; what is there in the way of text, here?

There's not a huge offering! The heart monitor screen has a little bit of text on it; so do all the various machines hooked up to the patient, mostly logos and related product information but the ventilator has a little packet of laminated instructions hanging beside it. There's a 'Welcome to Renown Hospital' little dossier on the side table, untouched. 

She points to a long section of of product information on one of the machines and asks a question, then picks up the dossier and finds a long bit of text in that to point at and repeats it.

Marian is WILDLY GUESSING here but she...can read off the text? While running her finger along it to show where she is? 

She waits to see if the robot-person seems approving. 

She says something short and approving, then something apologetic, then points to the dossier text and gestures expandingly.

Marian starts reading through this as well, again running her finger under each line. 

She shakes her head, though doesn't otherwise interrupt.

....Ohhhh does she want MORE books. 

Marian nods, holds up a finger, makes some gestures that she hopes convey 'stay here in this room', and then darts out and hunts around the nursing station, grabbing every book or random printout she can find that isn't literally confidential patient information. 

(One of these is a pharmacology manual which she yanks out from under a med student's nose; the med student squeaks, but doesn't manage to actually object, and Marian is WAY too distracted and stressed to even notice this.) 

Books!!! Marian runs back into the room with an armful of them! 

The robot says something approving and deferential and takes the stack, setting most of it on the dresser and keeping the topmost piece to read - apparently she's going to do this standing right there by the head of her companion's bed.

Cool! Marian will hover nearby for a couple of minutes, watching the patient's vital signs and waiting to see if robot-lady needs anything else, and then...discreetly and politely start inching her way out of the room to see if she can squeeze in checking on Coma Guy and Leg Lifts Lady... 

The robot has nothing to say about it.

Then Marian is going to tug the curtains mostly-shut so that none of her colleagues slow her down with questions she can't answer about 'why is your patient's visitor a metallic humanoid robot thing', and try to get as much done with her other two patients as she can before something ELSE crazy happens. 

The robot is still reading when she comes back, but has turned her companion, and looks up from her book when the door opens. "Hello."

Ack what - how - okay just what. 

"H...ello?" Marian manages, with only a bit of a stammer. "Do you, uh, speak English after all -?" 

"I'm learning English. These have insufficient vocabulary, may I have one with all the vocabulary?"

"I - uh - wait you just learned English from reading those - uh sorry I should, uh, wait until..." 

Marian has no appropriate social scripts for this encounter, which is the worst feeling, but, also, whatever, 'you have no social scripts for Situation X and this is awful' kind of happens constantly when you're an ICU nurse. 

"...Uh, I can - find you some things to read on the computer..." 

Her hands are shaking a bit because WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK, but she manages to log on to the room console, and, hmm, what to google... 

She pulls up Wikipedia. Starting with the page on Human because it was the first thing to pop into her head. 

"- Uh, you're welcome to read this - anything blue-and-underlined you can click with the mouse, like this, and open it in a new window and read that next..." 

She has neither 'thank you' nor 'ma'am' in English yet and that's kind of awful too. "Yes. First, is there anything-?" she gestures to her companion.

Marian has very little idea what the robot-lady is asking! "I, uh, think she's all right for the moment -"

"-yes." Well, if there's nothing urgent enough for the half-formed question to prompt her to say it, Wikipedia is the next priority; she gets started on it, scanning a few pages to figure out the layout - leaving them in place only barely long enough to register to the eye - before going linkhopping to look for the 'dictionary' page and its external links, moving through the site nearly as quickly.

Marian is trying to extract herself and go back to charting, but she spends thirty seconds captivated by the robot-woman...all right, fine, probably a superintelligent robot given - that - racing through webpages at absurd speed - 

It doesn't take her long to find a dictionary site, but she's not quite that quick with it. Marian will be left to her charting.

At least until the beeping starts: her patient has stopped breathing.

Marian glances over but isn't especially worried; her patient is still on a ventilator and if she doesn't start breathing again then the backup rate will kick in. 

She doesn't, not right away.

Her sats stay high for surprisingly long considering, but then start to fall even with the ventilator's help.

(The robot has stepped away from the computer but is also just watching.)

Once her sats are visibly dropping, Marian hauls herself up and heads into the room to tap the "two minutes of 100% oxygen" emergency button on the ventilator. 

"Do you, uh, know why she's doing that?" she asks the humanoid robot friend.

"Not precisely, ma'am. It shouldn't be dangerous."

"I, uh, sure - wait, right, do you know what happened to her and why she's not waking up?" 

"I'm not sure whether your language has the exact word for it yet, ma'am, but she's in something like a deep trance or hibernative state, healing from previous injuries. She'll wake when she's well; she expected that to be sometime today but she wasn't sure exactly and your treatments may have affected it. I can wake her sooner but it's very dangerous."

"Uhhhh please don't then?" Marian is so incredibly confused. She goes back to fidgeting and watching the ventilator screen. 

"Yes ma'am. Can you tell me what these machines are doing, please?"

The woman's sats have risen slightly but not really to an acceptable level.

"One second." She's so confused; the ventilator should be pushing 100% oxygen into the woman's lungs, which don't on the X-ray appear to have anything wrong with them, how are her sats still low.

She would call the respiratory therapist in but, by the sound of it, they're still pretty busy in the other pod across the unit. Instead she grits her teeth and then fiddles with the settings, bumping up the set backup respiratory rate from 12 to 16. 

"Uh, right, machines. This one is helping her breathe, she stopped breathing a few times when the paramedics were transporting her over, also she's in a coma so having the breathing tube helps prevent her from aspirating. The IVs are for giving her fluids and medications - this tube was for feeding her but we stopped it - the catheter is so we can monitor more closely how well her kidneys are working."

And also because comatose people will otherwise pee in the bed but that might be too much information. She has no idea if robot lady is squeamish. 

Raising the rate helps but, again, not as much as Marian would expect.

"Thank you, ma'am. Has anything else been done to her?"

"Uh, let me think - we did a lot of tests but that shouldn't have affected her body directly, though some of the tests were blood draws, it's only a tiny bit of blood you take for that though. There were two other IVs and the previous feeding tube that we took out because they were blocked– oh, speaking of that, do you know why her blood is black sometimes?" 

This is a surreal and absurd conversation to be having but wow it sure does seem like she's having it. 

"I'm sorry, ma'am, I don't know."

"Uh, that's all right. Other than that, I guess we gave her a handful of other drugs - she seems to metabolize drugs really weirdly - and some fluids, but I think that's it?" 

"Are you sure the drugs were affecting her, ma'am?"

"Huh, what? I...guess I'm not sure? The problems we were treating did go away though. Just - not usually when we'd just given her drugs for them." 

"Thank you, ma'am. It's a good sign if they weren't. What were the drugs?"

The woman takes a breath, separately from the rhythm of the machine, and her sats start to rise, quite quickly.

Marian sags slightly with relief. 

"Drugs were, hmm - some painkillers and sedatives, which we have going now - but I guess maybe aren't doing anything, she was unconscious before too and it was more just-in-case - also we gave her a few doses of some drugs to increase or decrease heart rate, when that was going wonky." 

"Thank you, ma'am. I recommend you stop the sedative, Master Deskyl will notice it when she wakes and it's likely to upset her."

"Mmm. Why do you think it'd upset her? Uh, in general people on ventilators have some sedation, because it's stressful and scary to wake up with a breathing tube in you." 

"I expect her to take it as a threat, ma'am. She's not going to expect to wake up in a medical facility, and her guess at the meaning of any kind of restraint will be that she's been captured by someone dangerous."

The wrist restraints have been opened, too, Marian will see if she looks.

"Oh. Crap. That - makes sense, I guess. I, uh - is there - someone specific she'd be expecting to capture her...how did you two end up in the desert...?" 

"It will depend on how disoriented she is when she wakes, ma'am. We arrived here by magic while escaping her master but she may not remember it."

"Her...master...?" Marian rubs her eyes. "Um. Can you - back up and start at the beginning and tell me what happened to her. To both of you, it sounds like?" 

"Yes ma'am. Master Deskyl is a Sith; Sith are able to see and manipulate a part of physics called the Force, to produce magical effects, and have received specific kinds of training in doing so; Master Deskyl received her training from Lord Pritruth, who she also worked under once she was done with her direct training. Almost a year ago he was complicit in having her injured, potentially fatally; we don't know why, or what was done to her, but it was repeated every few months, without enough time for her to fully recover between instances, until three days ago, when he and a group of other Sith attempted to take her for it again. She panicked, which sometimes allows a Sith to use Force abilities they otherwise can't, and teleported us here; we don't recognize the planet, and we appeared in the desert with no signs of civilization nearby. My line of robots isn't designed to operate in high temperatures and she didn't believe she could find her way out of the desert alone while injured, so instead she found a cave to shelter in, instructed me to deactivate until shortly before she expected to wake from her healing trance, and went into the trance, expecting to be able to get to civilization once she woke."

What. 

What??? 

...Okay, she's either crazy or dreaming or robot lady is...making this up...? Or she's in a completely different genre of horror movie than she thought. 

"Wow," she manages eventually. "I - that sounds awful, I'm sorry." This is the closest she has to an appropriate script that doesn't require thinking, which she can't do yet because her brain is busy spinning in circles. 

"Thank you, ma'am."

"What, uh. Kind of injuries. Did this person - do to her -" 

"I'm sorry, ma'am, we don't know very much about it. She would be taken from her rooms, probably out of Lord Pritruth's compound but we can't be sure of that, and be returned three or four days later completely unresponsive and immobile aside from breathing. She was unable to sleep for the first day after being returned, and consistently had a minor seizure on the second, after which she would begin regaining function starting with the ability to sleep and to swallow foods the consistency of oatmeal but never progressing to the point to the point of regaining her full attention span or the ability to speak fluently. We did believe that she would regain them given enough time, though, and it's very possible that she'll be fully recovered when she wakes from the trance."

"That's - good to hear - uh, are you a medical professional or something..." 

Marian's mind is still skidding around in little circles. Mostly, right now, around the fact that she's pretty sure she has some sort of mandatory legal requirement to report abuse and this CLEARLY COUNTS but also she's supposed to, what, make a police report or something that her patient was abused by their magic teacher and then escaped by teleporting? 

Also the magic teacher sounds like a pretty scary person to cross, if there were any way of them finding out, but honestly the hypothetical threat to her safety is miles behind the dread of social awkwardness. 

"No ma'am, I'm a servant robot with some minor programming for handling basic medical care of humans. Master Deskyl does have some medical Force powers, though, including a very good sensory power; I expect her reports of her state to have been accurate."

"Mmm. ...You're a...servant robot? Are there, uh - are there lots of robots like you where you're from?" 

The part of Marian's brain that feels that she's landed in some bizarre movie is kind of bouncing off the fact that this plot seems to contain both 'magic teachers' and 'intelligent robots'??? She's pretty sure those are usually different genres. 

"Servant robots are common in Master Deskyl's society, and Lord Pritruth's compound had several of us from my line and a heavier-duty line, yes ma'am. Medical robots are considerably rarer; there was one in the compound but he was used for research and never saw Master Deskyl that we know of."

"Mmm. Uh, thank you for explaining." Marian takes a couple of deep breaths. "I - guess I should go ask Dr Millinger if I can stop the sedative. When do you think she would wake up?"

"If your treatments haven't slowed her recovery I'd expect an eighty to eighty-five percent chance that she wakes in the next sixteen hours and a ninty-seven percent chance that she wakes within the next three days; if it's safe to roll her onto her side I can check whether her recovery has been slowed."

"Sure, rolling her over should be fine - uh, just let me help make sure we don't yank on any tubes." 

"Yes ma'am, thank you."

She rolls her over to check on the burn on the back of her shoulder, asking for permission to remove the bandage there once she sees it. When she does, the burn is revealed to have healed to barely-discolored smooth skin; it would be hard to even notice that there'd been a wound there if Marian didn't already know. "That's good, ma'am, she's healing as expected."

Whooooooa. Okay, that's...actually quite a big strike against the theory that robot lady is making this up and is actually a normal person in a costume. (Which seems implausible anyway, it'd have to be an absurdly good costume for it to look and move so naturally.) 

"Uh," Marian says after a moment, "what's - your name? And hers? I'm Marian. I'll be her nurse for another, uh..." glance at the clock, it's still not much after nine am, "ten hours or so." 

"She's Xaari Deskyl, ma'am, Xaari is a Sith rank and Deskyl is her personal name. My designation is DZ-twelve-Q."

"Right, um, give me a second and I'll write that down..." Marian scrabbles for her clipboard and does this. "Do you happen to know how old she is? Uh, normally we'd put in a date of birth but I don't know if you'd know our calendar." 

"I've seen it, ma'am; her date of birth is March 25th of 1990 and she's twenty-six Earth years old."

Marian scribbles this down; she keeps to herself that Deskyl is almost exactly her age and this is a bit weird, it seems like the kind of thing that probably isn't professional to say. 

She does feel a lot steadier now that she's back on a familiar script. "Right, thank you. Any other medical history that you know of? Is she allergic to anything? Was she taking any medicines before?" 

"No ma'am, Sith don't have chronic medical problems as a rule."

"Huh, that's convenient. Does she have any family? Other than, uh, you?" 

"According to her records her parents and two younger brothers were alive when Lord Pritruth took her as an apprentice, eleven earth years ago, but she wasn't close to them at the time and doesn't appear to have been in contact with them since."

Nod. "She would've been, er, fifteen? Is that a standard age for this sort of apprenticeship?" 

"Yes ma'am."

Nod. 

"Is there anything else that seems really important for me to know before I go talk to the doctor about her?" 

"I'm concerned about her reaction if she wakes late and I'm not available to explain the situation to her, ma'am, and my charge is a bit low; would it be possible to have an engineer make a charger for me? It should be very easy, I'm designed to accept a wide range of power inputs."

On the one hand Marian doesn't have the faintest idea where to start with this request; on the other hand, letting your patient's only friend/family/whatever run out of battery is approximately as horrifying as letting them die of thirst. Albeit a lot more annoying to avoid, logistically speaking. 

"I'll, uh. See what I can do. Not sure the hospital is, uh, really very prepared for that? I guess I can show you all the sorts of chargers we have already?" 

"Thank you, ma'am." That'll be a research project, translating the units into something she's familiar with, but she should have the time.

"I'll do that first, then." It's urgent, which is convenient because it's also a lot less nervewracking than approaching Dr Millinger and trying to explain...literally any of the everything that's happened in the last half-hour. 

She spends five minutes ransacking both the clean utility room, the nursing station, and the lost-and-found box in the nurses' break room, and comes back with an armful of assorted chargers; there are cables for several varieties of cell phone, a lost laptop charger, and the charging cords for four different kinds of medical devices. 

"- Uh, power point is in the wall here, I'm - guessing you know how to be careful not to shock yourself but I should check?" 

She examines the outlet and the wall end of one of the chargers. "Yes ma'am, thank you."

She then checks them for writing, and takes the laptop charger over to the computer to start the translation process.

And Marian takes a minute at the desk to procrastinate on talking to Dr Millinger via, instead, transferring all of the patient information she just got from her clipboard to the computer, while she finishes her still-lukewarm coffee. 

Eventually there's no more reasonable procrastination, and she groans and hauls herself up and - damn it he's still rounding, he already told her not to interrupt him, but at this rate he's not going to make it to her pod until noon and that might be too late to avoid a horrible disaster... 

She hovers nearby until he finishes his current spiel to the med students, and then clears her throat. 

"What." 

"I, ummm -" And her courage fails. She is absolutely not going to try to explain everything in front of half a dozen med students plus all the specialist staff on the entire unit. "Can I stop my patient's sedation, I don't really know why the resident on night shift started it, she's totally unresponsive and she's already got pain control with the fentanyl just in case." 

He scowls and waves a hand vaguely. "Sure, whatever, do what you want." 

Aaaaaaaaaah why is this AWFUL.

Marian quietly slinks away, feeling obscurely bad about blaming the resident who was probably being reasonable given what they knew at the time. 

She heads into the room and stops the propofol pump. "Uh, the doctor is really busy today and I'll...try to explain things properly to him once he's actually doing rounds here and not distracted with other patients. Most of the patients here are actually a lot sicker than her, so..." 

"Yes ma'am. Is there anything nearby that I can help with?"

"Ummmm -" 

Marian is torn between automatically refusing and being so so tempted to take DZ-something up on the offer. Also she suddenly feels a lot more fond of the robot person. 

"...You don't have to? You're here for her, it's fine if you want to focus on her."

There is a very loud silent 'but' hanging after that, which Marian manages not to say. 

"Yes ma'am, but I expect that it will be better for her if you're less busy when she wakes."

"I guess?" Marian anxiously twists the hem of her scrub top between her hands, then catches herself and lets go of it with a sheepish look. "Uh, sure. You - could help turn patients with me? Everyone in this pod is due but it looks like Elaine is too busy." 

"Yes ma'am." She's a very attentive helper, matching her technique carefully to Marian's.

Then they can make a round through the pod and turn all the patients! 

Coma Guy and Gunshot Tattoo Artist Fight Guy are straightforward. 

Leg Lifts Lady is somehow almost sideways in her bed, despite the wrist restraints limiting her mobility, and seems to be trying in vain to front-kick the ceiling lights. 

Sigh. Marian glances around the pod to see if anything else urgently needs her attention. 

"Er, if you don't mind, she's really overdue for a bath and having her linens changed? It'll take longer though." 

"I'd like to check on Master Deskyl first, ma'am, but then I can take care of her myself if you'd like." There are lots of reasons not to have humans doing droid work but risk of injury is an important one, not that she's going to bring it up.

"She's my patient, I don't mind helping! I like this part, it's nice when we have time for it. I can get things ready while you're checking on Deskyl?" 

"Yes ma'am." She's not long at it - there's not much to check - and then she comes right back.

She's been very deferential, so far, following Marian's lead despite the fact that she clearly knows her way around a hospital bed and could most likely handle the work perfectly well on her own, but now she's taking more initiative, still doing as she's told without hesitation or complaint but not waiting to be cued and making a point of taking any tasks that involve being near the woman's legs before Marian has a chance to start them, when she can.

Awwww. She's so helpful and Marian appreciates her a lot. And doesn't fail to notice that DZ knows what she's doing. (Marian herself isn't very worried about injuring herself; she's in good shape, the horrible bike ride to and from her apartment sees to that, and she regularly solo turns patients when the unit is short-staffed.) 

"You're good at this," she says, when they finish up. "Is that, uh, something that comes with the kind of robot you are, or did you have practice at some point?" 

"I have programming for it, ma'am. Most servant robots don't but Lord Pritruth wanted us to be useful in a variety of situations."

"Mmm. Well, I'm glad." Marian smiles brightly at her. "We could see if the rest of the unit needs help? Although, uh, then I - guess I maybe need to explain that you're a robot from another world?" This sounds agonizingly awkward and stressful. 

"I shouldn't go very far from Master Deskyl, ma'am, but if it's just nearby, that's fine."

"The unit's not very big. Uh, maybe you can keep an eye on her for a few minutes and I'll go round and see what's happening and if anyone wants help?" 

"Yes ma'am."

In the immediately-adjacent pod, Alice seems to be thoroughly trapped in her dialysis patient's room. Said patient is now also on ECMO. Needless to say, it doesn't look at all like he's going to make it, but he's young and previously healthy and no one wants to give up before they've tried literally everything first. 

Alice looks up distractedly when Marian approaches and asks if the pod needs help with turning patients. "Hmm? We can't move this guy, he's way too sick. Are you sure you're caught up, or are you just feeling bad again and putting off all your charting to be helpful -" 

"I've done my charting!" Most of it. She is maaaaybe behind on some of the really boring parts. "Uh, and it's not me who's offering, it's my mystery patient's, er, family member. She knows how to do turns and stuff and she really wants to be useful." 

Marian ducks her head and mumbles very fast at the floor tiles, "alsoshe'saservantrobotfromanotherworld." 

Alice starts to raise her eyebrows at this, and then the ECMO machine dings loudly and she lunges for it, apparently forgetting entirely about Marian's presence.

"...You know what, sure, whatever," she says thirty seconds later, eyes and hands still intent on the screen settings. "Our other folks are all overdue. 108 desats on his left side, just put him on his back. 109 will try to put his catheter out if you give him half a chance, so don't, also he's got a bedsore dressing that needs checking, I think that's all the relevant stuff..." 

An IV pump starts screaming, on the other side of the bed from where Alice is. 

"- Oh shit that's my epi, it's empty - fuck - can you program in another 5 ccs and mix me a new bag -" 

This is the hazard of going near another pod which has unstable patients in it. "Yes, of course." Marian hurries to do this. 

"Mix it quadruple strength! He's super duper fluid overloaded and his BP won't tolerate us taking much fluid off with the dialysis -" 

Okay FINE here she goes. 

Marian does manage to dart past the other pod and inform DZ that she's helping another nurse but the patients in these room numbers could use turns and here's the relevant context also it's fine if DZ wants to wait for Marian to get back to the pod before leaving Deskyl. 

Then she runs off to grab a liter of saline and pull sixteen vials of epinephrine out of the Pyxis med machine, which involves ramming the override button multiple times because it super does not want to believe her that she really means 16, yup, 1 6, vials. It might be excessive to mix so much at once since the patient is sick enough that he might just code and die in an hour, but whatever. 

She turns them, checks 109's restraints and, after confirming that she can find the replacement bandages, his dressing, which she ends up replacing, and then follows the beeping to check on that situation, pausing just outside the door to look.