"I really don't think we need you to be casting Stabilize every six seconds! He's fine! ...I mean, I think it's a good idea to have one of either you or Shavri here all the time, because if I notice anything that even might be wrong I can tell you to start casting Stabilize every six seconds just in case. But I really think we've got this and we know what's wrong with him and it's not getting worse fast." 

....Fine. It's a pretty good point that Leareth is the most stable right now that he's going to be until the next Restoration is available, and Shavri had better be in good enough shape to watch over him for the last few hours of the night, not the first few. She can be persuaded to leave the room, eat food, and go lie down in the on-call room, where she expects to lie awake worrying and instead is asleep within less than thirty seconds. 

It's 6:45 pm. They should do some more labs and if nothing is unexpectedly worse they can start decreasing sedation. 

...Okay, none of that is surprising. Some numbers are a little better! Some are a little worse - blood counts, it looks like, his bone marrow is not continuing to recover - but not, like, catastrophically worse. At this rate of decline they should be okay through the morning. Probably. In any case they should definitely be okay through the next two hours. 

"Dr Harrison, are we ready to start weaning the sedation?" 

"Yeah, let's go for it. Take it slow." 

...That's not a very specific instruction but Marian is capable of using some of her own judgement. She confirms that Leareth is still not even slightly reacting to a painful stimulus, then eases the rate down to 45 mcg/kg/min, which is still insanely high, and settles in to stare at him for the next ten minutes until it makes sense to repeat the neuro assessment. Man, things are really going better, at some point this jumped straight from 'overwhelmingly heavy patient with zero time to think' to 'mostly standing around observing and waiting.' 

She smiles at Samora, to try to convey that now would not be a terrible time for conversation, but she cannot herself think of any conversation topics she wants to delve into. 

"Did I ever explain to you how alignments and the afterlives work? Also, did anyone figure out whether I ought to leave the country soon or can stay for a while to learn things?"

Oh god right that thing. Ugh. 

“…I don’t think we figured out an exact answer on your legal status here or how to address it, because everyone’s been really distracted," and nobody wanted it to be their problem or sign up to do extra frustrating bureaucracy or phone calls, "but it’s not like you entered the country illegally on purpose - I don’t know, I think there probably just - isn’t really a clear policy on your situation - we should try to figure something out, since we’ve got three people from other worlds here now, but I don't think it's an emergency."

They are drawing more attention to themselves, what with the radiation medicine expert FLYING HERE FROM TENNESSEE, but...probably...the radiation medicine expert will not report their magic healer to ICE? ...Honestly she's a little worried that Dr Harrison is bending the rules enough that Dr Chen might decide to report it to, like, the medical board, but probably she wouldn't try to screw over Samora on purpose? Surely nobody who's met Samora for more than three minutes is going to want to do that.

Maybe the hospital social worker knows things? Including if the answer is 'no absolutely do not try to go through any formal immigration channels that's insane'; they do get actual illegal immigrants as patients and Marian thinks she would have heard if this resulted in them getting deported. It'll have to be tomorrow, though, because all of sudden it’s past business hours. 

"- Anyway, sure, this is a pretty good time to explain more about alignment and afterlives? If we got into it at all before I didn't, like, take notes." And it was almost twelve hours ago and has since then been entirely replaced in Marian's brain by 5823834524 lab results. 

"Alright! Alignment is a pair of axes, the Good/Evil axis and the Law/Chaos axis. It's possible to be any of Good, Neutral, or Evil and any of Lawful, Neutral, or Chaotic, independently of each other. People and gods and outsiders and some spells all have alignments. Humans all start out Neutral and acquire alignments based on their actions. Actions that help other people and make the world a better place are Good; actions that hurt people and make the world worse are Evil. Keeping your commitments and obeying the law and having predictable consistent policies is Lawful; breaking promises and neglecting your duty and freedom and deciding what to do about things case by case are Chaotic."

"When people die, they go to a trial where it's determined what alignment they are; lawyers from the different planes argue that the dead person is that plane's alignment and a judge decides. Then the dead person goes to the plane associated with their alignment, which pushes them further in the direction of that alignment until they turn into outsiders. Lawful Good people go to Heaven, which is a paradise of peace and prosperity, or you can join the army of Heaven and fight to liberate Hell. Nirvana is a paradise where everyone turns into animals and gets shapeshifting; they focus on saving people from the Evil afterlives by sending someone to every trial even if it's hopeless. Elysium is the Chaotic Good paradise of endless beautiful wilderness; they do all sorts of different things. Axis is the Lawful Neutral City of Cities, you can buy anything there. The Boneyard is the True Neutral plane; it has the judges but is otherwise boring and sends people to anywhere else as soon as they develop an alignment. The Maelstrom is the Chaotic Neutral plane of constant change and inconsistency and I don't understand how anyone does anything there but I've heard they do. And then all the Evil afterlives are horrible and either torture people or eat their souls."

"Heaven and Elysium have their disagreements but a lot of shared goals and can cooperate even though their methods get in each other's way sometimes. Heaven and Hell are at war but can work together on things like preventing the universe from being destroyed. All the other pairs of corners just hate each other and fight."

Marian listens intently and takes diligent notes on the backside of one of the various ECMO-related cheat sheets that they happen to have printed out and in the room. ...In English, so she can share them. She writes down the proper-noun names for each plane phonetically, as best she can, and then labels them as the appropriate alignment and adds a description. It feels like her making-assumptions understanding of the afterlives wasn't wildly off, at least? 

She doesn't run into any questions until the end. "...Wait, I think I'm not picturing this right. If they're all different planes," she's translating this to English as something like 'alternate dimensions', "they're not - touching like countries that share borders - are they somehow like countries with borders? How does it actually work that they fight? I guess you did make it sound like there's magic to travel between planes but not like it's easy -?"