"Aye-aye, Captain." Dorian's eyes crinkled, and he rubbed Anat's muzzle warmly. "I think she's getting to like me, [i]aren't you, sweetheart?[/i]" he added in Arabic. "[i]We're going to be the best of friends, yeah? Of course I'll clean up after you.[/i]" Because what were friends for if not scraping apples off the hospital room floor?

He flung himself to his feet and stretched, and he gave the doctor a kind smile. "Thank you, Doctor. I know Zahi is in the most capable hands this side of the galaxy." Dorian liked her quite a lot -- there were few people he felt compelled to talk to so freely, who didn't think he was insane -- and a few times he'd considered asking if she'd like to tour the Peregrine, to peek into a few other worlds, to see all those tantalizing and colorful places of his stories -- but, maybe selfishly, he liked to know she was here, safe, a reliable constant in a life of chaos. He knew she wouldn't abandon her patients and her practice for the promise of the universe -- but he continued to withhold that decision from her, for both their sakes.

He swung to his feet and gently drew Anat away from Zahi's bedside. "If you happen to be here when he wakes up," he told the doctor, "tell him:" and he spoke in slow Arabic, "[i]Anat is safe and you are alive. Please trust us to help you.[/i] And then come get me because I really don't know how he'll react."

He waved with a laugh, and he walked with Anat down the hall, to where he knew the spare apartments were. It was a bit of a walk down wide white corridors, quiet out of respect for the sleeping and the pained. When he reached the reception desk he begged for a bucket of carrots and apples and crunchy things from the cafeterias to be brought to the room at the end of the hall, and he led his new friend to the door in question and into a big spartan room.

While Dorian was in the shower, the door opened again and a cafeteria worker peeked in with big curious eyes. She caught sight of Anat, blinked, smiled, and laid a pail of greens and vegetables on the floor before she crept out again into the hall. Dorian, meanwhile, sang an aria to the bathroom walls.

He emerged in a hospital-issue gray sweatsuit, rubbing a towel through his hair, and he patted Anat's neck and flopped back onto the bed with a news tablet he'd found on a table.

"You don't suppose he'll be terribly disappointed, do ya think?" he asked of Anat, and he made an uncertain face at her. "I mean, he came all this way to find a place to [i]die[/i] -- and instead he finds a hospital. I'm not sure he believed me when I told him there was a healer. He's not going to be [i]mad[/i], is he?" He could only imagine the dying heroic prince, having completed the task set to him, ready to die a hero's death in peace -- only to be saved and forced to consider what to do with the rest of his long life. Dorian shook his head and scanned the tablet for pictures, but really he was thinking of Agatha.