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- Cradled in Caretaker’s arms, head heavy against their shoulder (good for exhausted whumpees who shouldn’t be woken)

- Over Caretaker’s shoulder, arms swinging limply with every movement (good for when they need to escape fast)

- Under one of Caretaker’s arms like a piece of luggage (good for stubborn whumpees who need to accept tough love)

- On Caretaker’s back, arms wrapped around their neck with as much strength as they can muster (good for Smol Whumpee and Tol Caretaker)

- With one arm around Caretaker’s neck, leaning more and more heavily on them by the minute (good for dragging Caretaker down too in a collapse)

Give me the collective panic when the whumpee voluntarily sleeps...

whumper gestures to a side room and caretaker goes in wordlessly. they flip the light on and set their bag down on the floor before kneeling next to whumpee.

"i'm here to fix you up, not to hurt you. i'm sorry this has happened to you, but there's nothing i can do to stop it. let me know if i need to stop, i'll be going quick."

"who are you?" whumpee asks. "please help me."

Healing potions that speed up the natural healing process, but require the same energy expenditure from the person being healed (if not more energy) relative to healing naturally. This can look like pulling someone back from the brink of death, but at the cost of weeks of mental and physical exhaustion or extensive sleeping. Muscle weakness or pain that lingers even after the physical damage is repaired.

Healing with a high metabolic cost, making the person incredibly hungry and need way more food than normal. If they can't eat enough to compensate, they lose weight proportionally.

Healing that can mend tissues (broken skin or bones knit back together) but not restore blood volume or reverse other types of trauma (like head injuries).

Energy or stamina potions that have a similar metabolic cost, acting more like an adrenaline rush that blinds the body to pain temporarily but can easily result in overexertion. Maybe it borrows the energy from the future too, so that when the character crashes, it's twice or three times as hard as they would have crashed had they not taken the potion.

Magical healing that takes a toll on the caster, beyond just expending their magic. Referred pain taken on by the healer, bone deep aches that nothing but time can relieve, physical stress and strain, feeling too hot or too cold (symptoms similar to heat stress or other conditions resulting from extreme physical exhaustion), fever, needing to sleep or eat more, weight loss, tiring faster in other activities, elevated heart rate, headache, dizziness, etc.

Potions that have a level of toxicity to them. You get the desired effect, sure, but the plants needed to make it are very slightly toxic. There are strict dosing guidelines to avoid negative effects, but side effects can range from nausea and headache at low doses to full on poisoning (vomiting, passing out, tachycardia, and even death). Different potions have different toxicity levels and tolerated doses.

How long a potion's effects last, how intense it is, how effective, etc can all be influenced by a person's body size and metabolic rate (among other factors), just like modern medicine.

Potions can be diluted by adding water, or strengthened by steaming off some of the water already in it, to various effects. They can also spoil or be ruined by some conditions (heating or cooling past a specific temperature, expiry date, etc).

Different application methods--drinking a potion vs injecting into muscle or into the blood stream vs applying it on a cloth or mixing with gelatin/other ingredients to form a salve or lotion.

Potions that are healing on their own but become toxic if taken together.

Potions that function like modern pain medication--relieving the pain, but at the cost of numbness, fatigue/drowsiness, or altered consciousness.