The two of them were strangers, and he owed her no introduction but she felt even more captivated by this man.  He was no normal doctor, and by extension no normal human being. For reasons unknown, he insisted upon keeping his name a secret and while she wasn’t going to pester him as to why, she couldn’t help but wonder. 

“You could call me eccentric. I have shed my binds of identity so I can dedicate myself entirely to my profession,” the doctor didn’t wish to hold earthly ties and his very name was something that defined him as something other than what he felt he was. In his heart of hearts, he was a medical professional.  He would live and die by that title.

“Wait…if that’s true, then why are you offering assistance to me?” It was a little odd for someone who was so dedicated to his job to take on dead weight.

“I have a duty to fulfill,” he didn’t see her as dead weight. He saw her as an asset.

She was a tie to something very important, and she would soon come to see that.

“You haven’t told me what it is,” Roana was curious.

“I simply want you to live,” the answer was short and to the point. He uttered those words with such a dire tone that she couldn’t help but feel disturbed by them.

“To live? That’s it?” It was so simple of a request.

It wasn’t a strange goal for him to have as a doctor to want people around him to live.  Roana could only imagine the amount of death that he had seen. However, she felt as if that line was delivered a little too personally to not take note of.

“To live as a success with my help,” the doctor clarified his earlier statement. “I want you to achieve your greatest goal.”

“Do you know what my goal is?” Roana had spoken to him little, but she felt as if he had a vague idea of what she wanted to do with her life.

“You wish to be a good doctor, like those before you,” the doctor could gather that much from the little information that she told him.  He would be the one to hone her skills and thrust her into greatness.

“I want to surpass my mother’s skills as a doctor. I want to help the ill and dying of this town,” she closed her eyes and her face morphed into an expression of sorrow. “I want to have a full understanding of what it means to be a doctor. What cures are effective? What is it that causes this darkness that has befallen us? Do doctors grow attached to their patients…are they truly helping or are they going about this the wrong way? Does it differ from case to case? I have had theories with no solid evidence. I want to understand these things and know them first hand and live to tell the tale.”

There were so many things that Roana didn’t understand.  Her mother was renowned as a good doctor, and yet she had trouble grasping cures that worked.  Many have died during her treatments and she didn’t go about them in the usual way that most doctors of the era did.  Was she doing it wrong? Was there something that she was missing?

Roana didn’t want to be some medical professional, hanging onto hope’s ledge and hoping her pleas would keep her hand from slipping and casting her into madness.  She wanted to be a success.  She wanted to bring an era of cure and peace to the people of her town.  Everyone had done nothing but suffer since the disease had been cast over them like a black fog of death.  She wanted nothing more than to end all of this.

She only needed to learn how.

With the guidance of someone like this man, Roana was certain that she could learn the new techniques required to be able to make a difference. The man that stood before her was like a saint dressed in crow feathers, a beaked angel of knowledge to bestow the art of healing upon her, and she wanted to accept it.

“Have you ever wondered what it was like to die?” The doctor asked.  

The question seemed off-topic at first, but he continued to explain himself. “Imagine that you’re in pain like you have never been in before. It makes you wish you were dead, but you cannot pass. You already have and now you’re stuck in an infinite state of pain until you decay. They say people can be ‘put out of their misery’. It’s a claim that’s made when souls are put to rest, but you merely bring them to a new plain of pain.”

That notion shook Roana to the core.  It caused her blood to run cold as she mulled over that possibility in her mind. More than ever, she wanted to preserve the life of the dying populace of Conversion Town.  She couldn’t imagine subjecting people to such a horrible fate, or worse being a subject to it herself.

“Is that what you feel the patients who didn’t make it go through?” There had to be a reason he held this ideology.

“I am not your ordinary doctor.”

There were reasons he felt this to be true, reasons that he knew the soul had to suffer far after its expiration in a vessel of flesh, but he would give her no indication as to why. Some things were better left in the dark.

“Strangely enough, I can sense that. You don’t seem to be in agony,” she narrowed her eyes as suspicion overtook her. “However, there are things about you that fascinate me. I have heard that there are those in our profession that are charlatans, but I don’t feel that’s your case. I can’t really analyze you.”

Part of the reason that she had engaged in this conversation with him was in hopes that he would open up, but he had yet to crack in any way.  Aside from the occasional morbid monologue, there was nothing to indicate any sort of emotion out of this man.  There were no keywords she could pick up on, no gestures or reactions that she could go off of.  He was very cold and professional.

Roana thought that perhaps if they spoke about the field that she would be able to gather some sort of personality from him, that he would break out of his cold shell like a shy child and open up but she could see that things would not be that easy.

How cute that she was trying to read him. He had no intention of showing her anything beyond what he deliberately had.  The doctor was a man of privacy, and if she wanted any answers from him then she would have to seek them out herself.

The light from Josephine’s window dimmed and the shadows of the room shifted around them.  Roana had been so lost in conversation that she nearly forgot where she was.  It was pure luck that no one had come in on them and inquired about their presence.

Now that it was in the front of her mind, Roana was a little nervous.

“There are aspects of me that aren’t meant to be understood. However, in exchange for your assistance I can provide you with a look into my world,” the shadows fell over his mask, causing the lenses to reflect the remaining light as his voice lowered an octave. “You should know the consequences of all you seek. Knowledge is frightening and powerful to possess. Fact and fiction are words that are only used to define the separate worlds running parallel with each other.”

Once she desired to seek the truth, Roana’s perception of the world and of him would change. The doctor was mindful of that, and warned her of her curiosity.  He would serve her and provide her with the information that she desired, but in return she would have to deal with all she wished to know. The intellect gained would twist her and make her hardened to the world more than she was.  It would kill her empathy and break her.

However, it was up to her to decide if she was ready for such changes to occur.

“Are you saying everything that exists within the human mind is real?” Roana wondered what he meant.  Knowledge couldn’t be that frightening.  He spoke of it as if he had committed atrocities, and she couldn’t believe something like that.

“Something about this town and the doctors compels you to figure out those riddles and mysteries, but why? What compels you to be so enamored with disease and death? Do you enjoy the thrill of finding out what lurks in hindsight? Was there a noise made you didn’t hear before or was it there all along? Is it different now? Are there things you never noticed originally? Is something out of place? Is it your imagination or was it real? When you gain knowledge, you expand the limitations of your mind,” the doctor explained. “Clear of distractions, it can push your consciousness to perceive at levels one would normally not reach. The longer you learn, the more aware you become of things you never knew. There is a reason why your brain would block these sensations. No one can be sure why. Maybe your mind is trying to warn you. Maybe there are things not meant to be learned. Then you cannot unsee or unknow them.”

The doctor paused his dark speech for a moment and learned down to her, staring her in the eyes from behind red lenses, “there are things that shouldn’t be learned of.”

Yet again, this man who stood before her was challenging her to think of darker outcomes that she had not prior.  There was something about this knowledge of the dark, sinister subjects he knew of that horrified and captivated her. It was a type of knowledge that she had a small look into, a type of knowledge that she felt would be valuable to her in the long run.

There was a reason that the doctor’s mind worked in this manner and she longed to know what it was.  What could make a man think like this? What could form someone into such an emotionless, yet introspective person? Had he gone through more atrocities in his life than seeing plagued after plagued fall at his feet and begging him for mercy?

A plethora of questions assaulted her, accompanied by the nagging feeling that any moment someone was going to walk into Josephine’s room and yell at them to leave.

“You’re right,” she peered deep into his lenses to try and get the faintest detail of a face. Such things were futile. “You have strange philosophies but in many ways, I feel as though I could learn from you. Your years of observation have made you wiser beyond that of most. You truly seem advanced in many ways. It’s as if you mastered a way to know things not meant for us to know.”

She took a breath and closed her eyes as her mind reached its decision on the question he had asked. Opening them again, she looked at him with a hardened expression. “What if I said I accept the consequences of my actions and whatever punishment I receive that results from what I gain? What if I said I wished to know this higher comprehension?”

To her, the risks were worth it.  She may end up being hardened and losing what innocence she still possessed, but she longed to know of this dark world that the doctor knew and she wanted to know what made him tick.  What made this doctor the way he was? What weathered him and eroded the innocence he had to make him come to these realizations about life and suffering?

It was fascinating.

“All you have to do is follow me and I’ll make you the very best,” the doctor’s words dripped with promise. “You will gain knowledge of this world, of life and death…of sacrifice. You will conquer your every desire. My curse will be your blessing and my strength becomes yours.” 

They would work in tandem. He could give the answers to all she desired.  Through their shared profession, she would come to know why he had the views that he did and learn through him about the darkness of the world that stretched far beyond the film of plague that floated in the air and coated the bubo-infested bodies of the dying. 

He would devote himself to making her the professional he was, and he would enjoy her company and intrigue.

The horrible fate that had befallen him would become her greatest tool and inspiration.

She nodded and smiled, feeling a peace wash over her, “I agree to your terms and in exchange you will help me with all tasks I wish to fulfill to the best of your ability. We will live symbiotically and reap each other’s benefits.  I will do as you wish and in return you must do the same for me.”

Roana wasn’t too fond of that ‘my curse becomes your blessing’ line, so she wanted to make it very clear that her involvement in whatever pact that the two of them had would be one of mutual benefit.  He was not to take advantage of her for whatever selfish gain that he might have had.  She could utilize him as much as he could her, and if he got too creepy with his rhetoric then she had more than enough permission to shove him away and tell him to shove his staff up his ass.

“No matter what the other’s say, you must turn a deaf ear to them,” the doctor’s final words were spoken.

“About you, I am assuming.”

What kind of stuff did others say about him? Roana was a little concerned with that line.  Why would he need to tell her that if he didn’t have some sort of modus operandi?

“There are many things society will try to change. If you are to properly discern a situation, then you should figure things out for yourself. Do not lose the sense of gaining knowledge in its purest form. Knowledge is gained from your personal experience, not the misconceptions of others.”

He didn’t know what she was thinking, but he merely didn’t want her to indulge in hearsay and rumors. Those sort of things caused their own types of misconstrued perceptions.  If she could avoid it as much as possible, then her experience in gaining knowledge would be far more enjoyable and rewarding.  The doctor didn’t want her hearing some town gossip and going into town to practice bogus “cures” on town residents and have someone die as a result and be labeled a charlatan.

Such things were counterproductive.

“Even if I do hear anything, I’m going to question you about it,” Roana’s voice sharpened and her tone was serious. “Believe me on that. I never just believe what I hear.”

That was merely the skeptic in her.