When Ma'ar has been on the unit for a week, the staff quarantine is officially lifted, and Marian goes HOME for the first time. 

At which point she immediately discovers that she failed to take out her compost bucket before the unexpected absence, and her apartment now has the worst fruit fly infestation she has ever seen. 

Compost bucket goes out on the snow-covered back porch. At this point she's inclined to let it wait until spring to deal with. 

She takes a SHOWER and luxuriates in checking Facebook on her laptop rather than her phone, and makes it an entire three hours before she calls Nellie, on night shift, to check in on how Ma'ar is doing. 

(She's not expecting any major change, and indeed there isn't one. Their resident alien wizard is heavily sedated; it's now been an entire four days since they last needed to paralyze him in order to get adequate oxygenation but they're certainly not risking letting him wake up and get agitated, yet. He's off all the pressors except a low-dose dobutamine drip, and the last time he spiked a fever was two days ago.) 

Marian takes her entire four days off, despite getting calls every single day asking about overtime, and by the time she's back in, Ma'ar is tolerating having the sedation weaned. He's still not capable of telepathy - he was on a lot of midazolam, which has a long half-life, it's going to be a while for it to clear his system - but he opens his eyes to speech he presumably can't understand, and makes eye contact with her, and when she squeezes his hand he squeezes back. 

At around the two-week mark for his hospitalization, Ma'ar is able to make carefully supervised use of the picture board to convey that he's thirsty. 

Marian does not read any of the news about the quarantine or the alien. During the first week, the charge nurse or nurse administrator for ER and ICU, or Bert, were the ones to field all the phone calls. Several reporters managed to somehow get Marian's personal cell phone, but since that was during Nightmare Week while she was sleeping on the floor of some manager's office and showering in an unused patient bathroom on the 5th floor and mostly living off Tim Hortons muffins, Marian hung up immediately each time and then blocked the numbers in question. 

On her next block of days off, nobody calls to bother her at all. Except for Nellie, who has scheduled time off plus some traded shifts, and is about to fly to Texas to see her family. 

She promises that the unit is actually really quiet! "Oh, and you've got a great lineup tomorrow. Rick and Pascal are back on days, and management finally approved the extra staffing budget so there'll be seven nurses on. Want me to scheme for you to get Ma'ar again? We really need to try to get him off the vent, soon, it's coming on three weeks." 

Marian is on her laptop in bed, headphones plugged into her phone so she can keep absently scrolling Tumblr. "Uh, is he still iso?" 

"He's not! We fiiiinally got results back on all those tests that had to go to special labs and stuff, everything was negative except for the flu test and he's been on Tamiflu long enough." 

"Woo! Yeah, sure, I'd like to have him back then, if that works out assignment wise. Who's got him tonight?" 

"Isobel." 

"Hey, taking a report from her isn't nearly as bad as giving her a report!" 

"Yeah, but what if she's back tomorrow night?"

Marian grits her teeth. Takes a deep breath. "I can manage." 

"Marian, you've just got to quit letting her get to you–" A muffled phone ringing. "Oh jeez. Uh, sorry, gotta take this." 

Pause. 

"- Gotta go, we're getting an admit. See you in ten hours!" 

...Well, if she's getting Ma'ar tomorrow and also needs to take report from fucking Isobel Gagnon, Marian is going to go to BED EARLY like a reasonable adult. 

The unit has had substantial turnover since Hell Week. 

Pneumonia lady in 201 was extubated and transferred out; the room is empty now. COPD poopful guy in 200 was extubated, went to the floor, had more respiratory issues, and came back on BiPAP, though he's now in 198, since the asthma girl recovered and was transferred; 200 instead has a sweet, lovely, pleasantly confused 98-year-old lady being treated for sepsis from a bad UTI. 199 is STILL the 61-year-old post-ulcer-repair lady, now with trach; she's being weaned off the ventilator and can handle up to an entire 4h at a time just on oxygen, now, but her kidney function is declining. 

197 is still the important businessman who made questionable choices regarding his flu problem. He's off dialysis and off the vent and still in the ICU because his kidneys aren't in amazing shape and his fluid and electrolyte status need a lot of troubleshooting, and on top of that he's both incredibly deconditioned, and has bad enough peripheral weakness and numbness that they're suspecting Guillain-Barré syndrome. He's also taking phone calls from his company every hour. Nellie does NOT envy his nurse. 

196 is empty. For now. 

Down Syndrome guy in 195 was extubated and went home. The room now hosts a 37-year-old man post cooling protocol after his cardiac arrest from a heroin overdose. He's not brain-dead but he's definitely brain-something'd, rather thoroughly. And just for additional drama, he broke his parole conditions or something and so is now technically under arrest? And thus handcuffed to the bed with a police offer extremely pointlessly guarding him. 

Patrick Stewart in 194 eventually got a permanent pacemaker and went home, apparently with no longer-term effects of his adventures. In his place is a 74-year-old frequent flyer, a lady whose COPD and CHF, exacerbated by her poorly-controlled chronic hypertension, make for a bad combination. The funniest thing about her is that she looks great; she could easily pass for 60, she's not even slightly overweight, and her silver hair is always perfectly coiffed even when she's on BiPAP and so unable to keep up with her traditional tasteful lipstick. 

192 is still open abdomen guy, though his intestines are no longer in plastic wrap; he went back to the OR to have the wound closed properly five days ago. He's had a trach for a week and he's been mostly off sedation except for pain medications for almost that long. Probably the reason he's still so out of it is because midazolam, in addition to its long half-life, is fat soluble and known to accumulate in adipose tissue. Of which he has...plenty. 

190 is still the Crohn's patient. She's trached as well, down to minimal doses of phenylephrine, starting to respond to her husband and children when they visit. She's on parenteral feeds, which are playing hell with her liver, but her poor abused GI tract continues not to tolerate tube feeds at ALL; they've fallen back on trickle feeds at 10ccs an hour, and her gastric residue is still often more than 400ccs even though it's very unclear where this can possibly be coming from. 

Stroke guy in 188 was transferred out directly to rehab a while ago; the room has, since then, hosted several patients including most recently a temporarily-unidentified homeless man brought in with alcohol poisoning. For the obvious reasons, related to their recent experiences, the unit staff spent several days wondering if he too would turn out to be a lost wizard. He didn't, though. 188 is now, also, empty. 

That makes 3/12 empty rooms, 9 patients for 7 nurses. A gloriously quiet night. Though this is guaranteed not to last for long. 

Mayumi is quietly prepping 196. 

"Heard there's an admit," Nellie says, sidling in and checking drawers to see how well they're stocked. The answer is pretty well, actually; they've had enough quiet nights this week for the care aide to get caught up. "What is it?" 

"Chantal took report - swimming pool near-drowning, they're suspecting drugs were involved. Male, early twenties. I don't know more." 

"Fun stuff. Are they actually at the ER yet, or was it a report from the paramedics en route?" 

"Paramedics, I think. Chantal said I would have time to prep the room and finish my eight o'clocks for '97 first." 

"Ah. Well, I should have time to swing by the ER if they want someone to pick him up. I've got 195 and 198, nothing complicated, and our cop buddy for the night is a sweetheart, he helped me turn him." 

"I would appreciate that. Our poor man in 97 is so - I don't want to say anxious, quite, but - high-strung? Every five minutes he needs his phone or his iPad or his laptop or his headphones or his palm-pilot..." 

"A real type A personality, huh?" That does go a long way toward explaining how he ended up not doing anything about the flu until he passed out on his office floor. "Don't worry, I got you covered. Where's Chantal? I want a run-down on this admit if I'm going to be picking him up for you." 

"I think I saw her go to help Esther get 194 up on the commode."