Elihu really tried his best to distance himself from all forms of life. Not so much out of spite or grief, but from a rather platonic resignation from the world. It was peopled by fools, himself included, all was worthless and fleeting, and he would rather just live as he'd like then have to conform to anything.

So one wouldn't have expected him to care when bright flashes started to pop into existence in front of his eyes. And indeed, he didn't. His particular set were largely vestigial at this point in his life. Anything he had to do, from measuring new specimens for his anthropological archive or navigating Brunnhold or writing his journals, he did with a combination of reflex, touch, and logic.

He very well would have continued without thinking about the flashes that now perpetuated his view, until pressure started to develop in his head. Even this would have been ignored if said pressure didn't become so bad he was immediately throwing up anything he put into his stomach.

Rather bemused with the idea of dying, he decided he might as well find out what would be the death of him. So he started off, counting steps by instinct, until his trudge finally found himself in front of the Infirmary in Ameter. Stepping inside, he was sure he saw a human shape in front of his constantly shifting eye sight. He turned to it and said with resignation, "pardon me, I believe I'm dying. Do you know if anyone's in who can diagnose the cause for me? It's purely out of personal curiosity."

The shape Elihu spoke to was one Abeline Ixbridge, healer, backstabber, and certified coward. But nevermind all that nonsense. She was on duty. Her focus had to be (preferably) on the patients, or (at the very least) anywhere but the kidnapped file still held within her bag.

Presently, her concentration was arrested by a teacup and the delicate balancing act of keeping an abundance of tea from escaping its porcelain prison. Unknown to the outside world, which would only see an accident-prone young woman, the cup had been intentionally overfilled. The attention required to steady her hand was funneled off from other, less productive anxieties. Abe knew her obsessive tendencies well enough that she could take advantage of them.. in the rare moment they weren't getting the best of her.

Only a few steps into her odyssey, the healer heard a voice calling to her somewhat reluctantly. Her eyes swiveled to espy the speaker. One of the professors, it looked like, and she was fairly certain she'd taken one of his classes. One doesn't easily forget hours of staring at a drunken stick topped with a cotton ball.

"Professor.. Sturmvos. You don't appear to be dying with any haste," she said, her tone more gentle than truly biting.

She made a small bow, momentarily disregarding the outbreak of a few drops from her cup. People were more important than tea, one had to remind oneself. Who would cultivate the tea, harvest it, and transport it to Anaxas if no other people were about? She couldn't possibly do all that herself. Thus, humanity's existence was justified.

"There is yet a chance your curiosity may be satisfied. Come with me, and we'll take a stab at it." Abe stepped gingerly to an examination room, holding the door open for her patient. "I'm Healer Ixbridge, by the by."

The voice was vaguely familiar to him, floating through his memory. He squinted to push aside the flashes of light and to take a more detailed survey of the person waving him into a patient's room.

Hmm, fairly ordinary face all around. Small clues started to piece themselves together in his head. Color distinction was failing, no surprise. Still, he was able to measure the spaces between her eyes, height of the cheekbones, breadth of the mouth, even the shape of her forehead. The girl was becoming more and more familiar under scrutiny, he was sure she had taught her before. His memory was fed all the information, as if he was doing an analysis on skull fragments from the new shipment of specimens. Then he came to the nose and remembered her, almost at the same moment she said her name.

"Ah, Abeline Ixbridge. You took my class before. Hmmm, you were in the top..." his brain practically clicked as he input the numbers. "Eighty four percent of my students. And now you're a healer." He kept his tongue bit on his position of a healer's job. Not as worthless as his, but worthless still. Nonetheless, her expertise was going to grant him a small distraction from the girl. It wouldn't kill him to be polite. Now to find out what actually was going to.

"Well then, Healer, what would you like to know about me first? Besides the obvious?" With those words, he took a long pull from his bottle.

"Beside the obvious," she echoed, wondering what exactly it was that he considered obvious. Eventually, the dim light of comprehension crept into her eye, tardy and already marked absent. She frowned at the inexcusable stupidity her present distraction caused. "Ah. Right."

Take it in stride, Abe.

"Well," the healer said, casually leaning on a cupboard that surely contained medical equipment of the unfathomable and extremely pointy variety. "I'd like to know what's brought about your preoccupation with your own mortality. We're all fighting the good fight against entropy, good sir. Daily and with nary a thought on it, we conquer that which would prefer to be inert and purposeless. What leads you to believe you're losing?"

She waved affably, offering the aged professor a chair. "And, though I may be something resembling a lady, please don't spare a single gory detail."

Her smile, if he could see it clearly, might have resembled a jaunty hatcher's.

Squinting a bit, Elihu saw the young lady was offering him to sit. He nodded and limped over to the seat before sagging down into it. "Eeerrgh. Well, spare no detail, eh? Very well then."

Elihu tapped the dark tip of his cane on the floor as he thought about this. "Well, I have horrible headaches, bright flashes of light dance in front of my eyes, I have severe chest pain, though that is documented I'm certain. Hmm, I am starting to suffer from a cocktail of vitamin deficiency diseases, mainly because anything I eat is currently coming up just as quickly as it goes down. Hmmm, I think that's just about-" At this moment, Elihu felt the familiar feeling of a valve opening up in his throat. He breathed and tried to halt the flow he knew was coming up. Finally keeping it at bay, he forced himself out of the seat with his cane, calmly went to the closest window, opened it, and let a torrent dark maroon liquid escape from his mouth. "Hmmm. Healer, we can also add vomiting blood to my list of symptoms." He took some gauze from one of the desks and carefully wiped the sides of his mouth and checked his robes. No stains still, good. That small bit of damage control done, he took another long drink from his wine bottle.

She watched the old man cross to the window, alarm crashing into her system. The feeling came so quickly that it overshot the little healer, passing by her like a stiff gust of wind. In its wake, her exhausted mind wheeled away, fixating on the mechanics of the problem at hand. That he was a person, like all people, worthy of compassion and care was a fact far from her consciousness. Something was broken that needed to be fixed, and she was not one to tear her hair out when something more productive could be done.

"Ye-yes," Abe said, her eyebrows shooting above her spectacles. "I can see how that might cause one to wonder."

She reached out, tentatively, and snatched the gauze from Elihu's hand. Rather than disposing of it, she looked at it abstractedly. A blood sample might be useful.

"There are several things this could be, Professor Sturmvos, of varying degrees of fatality. Though, in all likelihood," she said, peering at his wine bottle, "it's related to your friend there."

"Ha, a friend?" The laugh came out a bitter bark. Of course, she thinks he's a broken old man who turned to drink from stress or mental break down. An idiot thought, but one that was understandable. "This is merely my medicine, Healer. I assure you I would have died much sooner without it. However, you are right that it has been slowly destroying my body. My curiosity is merely what has been happening within, you see."

Looking at Abeline, he examined her again. She was not the smartest student he had by any means. But she was certainly sensible. It made sense that she was a healer. Such a shame. One of the few people he didn't completely and utterly hold in contempt, and even she saw him as just an old drunk. Which he was fair enough, but still.

"So, Healer, besides stating what I have already deemed to be obvious, what can you tell me?" The tone he asked the question wasn't condescending, just tired and biting, like a cold draft.

Her eyebrows fell slowly, and she answered his tired tone with a long, pinched hum from her nose. Though not the most difficult patient she'd ever had, he was proving to be a challenge. It was times like these that she wished she'd chosen to be an engineer, or a librarian like she had hoped to be before coming to Brunnhold. But she chose to help people.. and people rarely actually wanted that.

"I can tell you, from the information that I have, that your ailment, or ailments as the case may be, are most likely caused by an inflammation of the pancreas, nerve and brain damage, and, as you suspected, a vitamin deficiency. Thiamin, to be specific."

After rattling off a first year's list of illnesses associated with prolonged alcoholism, Abe tugged at her stiff sleeve, frowning in thought. She opened the cupboard, revealing not rows of metal tools, but folders. Lots of folders.

"The chest pain is disconcerting, of course," she said, plucking Elihu's file from the pack. One good thing about her habit of reading intellectual novels all night, other than providing a delightful excuse for avoiding tiresome young men, was that Abeline had developed a knack for taking in big words quickly. Barely any time passed before she glanced at the professor again.

"If you want a more complete diagnosis, there are two ways we can get it. The first, and easiest, is that I cast a spell, the mona relate to me whatever they care to, and I send you on your way." The healer pushed up her glasses, smirking slightly. "And the second, though more work, is more fun for me."

"Healer, I have absolutely no interest in what would be more amusing to you. Though I assume the second option would give me more information, which is the distraction that I desire. So by all means, I give you full permission to splash around as much as you like in my insides."

He hobbled over to the old armchair and sat down. This was becoming much more of a chore than he thought it would be. "In case you are wondering about the chest pains, it is already documented, as I have said." He said the last four words in a tone that said "Stop wasting my time, fool."

"I have strictures in many major blood vessels. My last healer said it might be something that runs in my family. As it is, it's the new symptoms that interest me. Now then, by all means, Healer Ixbridge, have your fun."