PM to join No time to rest(Philomena)

[Adnaj]

Adnaj stared at Philomena, silently. He spent a second or two in the quiet gaze. This was blatant enough of a sign for him to identify. He may not have had the aptitude to pick up on subtle cues of mood and demeanor, but he recognized the hopeless sort of frustration in her voice. He detected the hint of a depressive manner.

Despite the fact that he was able to recognize her emotional state, he relinquished."I suppose not." He knew that pressing the issue would only make things worse for his patient. He did not want her to retreat further into sorrow and hopelessness. Most importantly, he did not want to create any kind of environment where an adversarial relationship could interfere with his ability to help her. "I know the nature of the trauma and I imagine that that information should suffice.

He stood up, gesturing for her to follow. "We will proceed with treatment in room number 3."

The hallway that he led her down was poorly lit, mostly because the main source of light was a multitude of windows along the left side of the hall. There were a few candles mounted against the wall but now, during the daylight hours, they were unlit. The hall was bare, devoid of any decoration and gave a sterile, impersonal impression. Due to the lack of any paintings, rugs or furniture, their footsteps bounced off of the cold marble floors and resonated through the entire clinic.

Adnaj opened a door with an iron "3" nailed into it and led her to a white table. As he allowed her time to gather herself and take a seat on the table (which looked relatively comfortable for what one could expect to find in a medical clinic) Adnaj gathered a handful of needles which looked far, far to thin and small to have had any kind of traditional, medical usage.

[Philomena]

Minnie frowned darkly, suspiciously almost as she was led, but her powers of protestation were long past at the moment.

"I haven't hardly any money left, Doctor, so you'd best just let me go out the front door. How long does this take? I di' nae come to Goody for treatment, but on business. If I'm t' be dying, and I dunny think there's much you'll be doing to stop that, doctor, I've much to do before the end of it."

Her voice is cold and standoffish, not angry or cruel, but guarded, distant. And yet, nonetheless, she does nothing to stop the progress. The surroundings get a passing glance, but most of her mentality is so internalized that, now, she hardly recognizes its sources. She hunkers down very small and cringing in the office, like a child awaiting a beating she knows is coming, and meekly went into the room.

Minnie stepped on the stool beside the examination table, and was still a bit too short to comfortably just slide up onto the surface of it. The climb, therefore, was a bit awkward, with a weakened body, and only one good hand, but with the delicacy of one who tries not to be too much visible in the eyes of those around her, she attempted it just as the man turned to gather his peculiar supplies, so that when he turned, she was wriggling up, with one hand pulling her forward with the opposite side of the bed, the other tucked protectively to her chest, and he legs waving ineffectually and ridiculously behind her. Her satchel still hung on her back, as she began to turn herself over.

[Adnaj]

Adnaj turned around, to see the human female's futile struggle to get herself onto the bed. Though he he had a hand full of needles, he still approached her. "May I help you?" The chuckle that accompanied his question was not any sort of mock or jest, it was merely an attempt to inject a little bit of humor into the situation.

"Whether or not you've come willingly or been brought... Adnaj tipped Philomena's legs up and onto the table with a free hand. "You now find yourself in the office of a physician. And so attending to your physical needs is exactly what I intend to do. I have no ambition to let you pass into the cycle. I'll stride forward, with you, in the same way that I have with every patient who has entered these halls: I'm going to use every method, at my availability, to cure you.

After she was up and on the table, he would need to insert the needles at strategic points. The needles were inserted very shallowly, rarely going beyond the depth of the hypodermis. How their insertion was felt would depend on a number of things including: current mood and mindset, stress level, past experiences with sharp objects, any possible fear of needles, physical health of the skin and body weight and composition and finally resting muscle tone. With this combination of variables, acupuncture needles could have been felt as anything from joyously pleasant to horribly painful and anything in between.

He asked the patient to lay on her right side so that he could place these needles along specific protocols to help boost her immune system. One needle was placed on the outside of her lower left forearm, just short the hand near the thumb. Another needle would bee placed directly between her shoulder blades, near the most prominent bony prominence in along the spine. A third needle was going to go in the front of her lower leg, about a third of the way from the knee to the ankle. The final needle would have to go along her back, once again. this one would be a few inches below and to the left of the third needle.

More importantly he burned some dry, black, fuzzy substance near the front of her lower leg, immediately below the knee. The stuff smelled strange, it evoked the neutral tone of formal, heady incense. It was neither pleasant nor unpleasant but just seemed exceedingly dry. Although the substance was on fire, Adnaj controlled the heat enough to create smoke without causing any unpleasant or hot sensation on the skin.

"I learned these techniques from a few healers at Mura. This will boost your immune system and its not a technique system that many people are familiar with. Let these needles sit for a while. The moxa and the needles will take about 20 minutes to run their course and then I will come back for you. Before I leave, is there anything else that I can do for you?"

[Philomena]

Minnie lies on her side with no real complaint, laying the damaged hand out on the table before her. She sighs, softly, as the Nuit's cold fingers touch the skin of her arm. Her skin is rough, both from the use of harsh lye soap, and form a general disrepair of ill health, poor sleep, and imperfect hygiene. No fleas are visible at the moment, but there are the marks of their past presence around her. When the needle enters, the skin tenses, and she holds her breath just for a moment, but then releases it soundlessly.

The man's hand then goes the clasp of the back of her dress, just below her neck, though, and Minnie's good hand leaps back to grasp the dress away. She waits a beat, then with a slow and shaking hand, she undoes the buttons herself, down to the small of her back, and peels the cloth back carefully, nervously. Across the middle of her back, between the shoulder blades, a name is written. It is not a tattoo, but simply painted on in black ink: Evalin. The hand that wrote it is swooping and graceful and very carefully lettered. Minnie cringes, now, quite visibly, her face growing young and a little frightened, but she closes her eyes, says nothing, waits. The needle entering makes a few small, hot tears come out, less pain then strain on her nerves, but she breathes a few times, and then feels another needle coming, and breathes faster, faster.

She stays tense now until the man speaks again, and her breath comes weak and frightened and small, as her eyes stay shut, "No... no, sir, thank you sir... no sir." her voice is tight, and smaller, even slightly higher in pitch, and the burr of a brogue thickens it.

[Adnaj]

Adnaj left the patient to relax in the serene, quiet darkness. While he was gone, he had retreated to the herbal dispensary where he had kept a large number of his therapeutic herbs. A stack of textbooks was resting on a cold, stone table. The place looked like a mess. Yes, Adnaj had been busy with patient care but it looked more like an experimental laboratory. The hardships of the Blight had driven him headlong back into his textbooks. In regards to medical knowledge, Adnaj was confident and knowledgeable. With herbs, however, he was barely a novice. He had spent countless hours in those books, almost practicing straight out of them. Of these mixtures, however, he was sure. The literature had suggested a number of specific remedies for many, many specifically designed purposes. He was not skilled enough, however, to mix and match remedies on this expert level. The two remedies which he was able to furnish were classic, "textbook" remedies for immune stimulation.

He spent most of Philomena's acupuncture treatment time preparing these two specific herbal remedies. Huang lian jie du wan was meant to increase her ability fight off the infection while a second preparation, bai hu tang wan would help make the symptoms of the infection more tolerable. Though helpful, neither mixture would taste particularly pleasant.

It looked like an odd form of medicine, too. To the untrained eye, the ingredients really appeared to be just a bunch of twigs and dried leaves. The pungent smell would have given it away, though. These herbs were too aromatic to be simple roughage in the forest. Powerful anatomical effects were locked into, along with the overwhelmingly bitter taste and smell, those ingredients.

Roughly twenty minutes later, Adnaj would break the silence of Philomena's treatment room. The door opened slowly at first, warning her that he was about to return.

"Alright, that's enough, I'm going to get those out of you now." Quietly and systematically, Adnaj removed the needles that he had placed into her. After that, he turned to the, now warm, mixtures which he had created. Two white, clay cups contained two thick liquids of a "mostly brown with a dark, dark green" coloration. The smell would have been apparent at 4 or so inches from the mug. It was an indicator to the particularly unpleasant sensation of bitterness which was about to come.

"You may not enjoy the taste but this will make you feel better, in both the short and the long term," trying to coax her into drinking the formula, he smiled warmly as he informed her of the fact.

[Philomena]

The Minnie Lefting that the doctor returned to was a subtly changed woman. Where before, she had been sullen, empty, hollow, she was different now. The needles were withdrawn, and she sat up quickly, leaning painfully on the injured hand, and clumsily, with shaking fingers doing her buttons back up. The eyes that looked at the Nuit were still ringed in wrinkles, but they were frightened, and not with the experienced horror of the old. They were wide and uncomfortable, with the tinge of a plea in them that child offers to an adult that she hopes will not beat her. Her hand pulls the satchel into her lap, quietly, saying nothing, but maintaining a pitiful, hopeless eye contact with the doctor behind her spectacles, the black-hand clumsily wiping loose hair from her broad forehead.

The smell of the medicine was... unpleasant. But then, Minnie Lefting, once upon a time, had scraped barancales from the ship-scuppers and sucked them out raw, had gnawed on the ends of rotten soup-bones, had eaten the btiter leaves of over-wintered turnip green, slimed and fouled. Flavor... was a luxury. Obedience, that was a necessity. Her hand lifted up, the one good hand she had - the problem she has was not willingness, but ability. She was calming, slowly, now with her dress rebuttoned, but still her hand shook slightly, and she took the cup very slowly.

It touched her mouth, and she gagged slightly. But gagging, as they said in the Kennel in her youth, was a luxury of the wealthy. Calories were calories. She breathed quick, shallow breaths form the corners of her mouth, and flattened her tongue to hide from the bitterness, as she'd discovered to do as a child, and she took the tea quickly, letting it burn down her throat as quickly as she could get it in her stomach.

//Do not complain. Do not complain. You always agree, always nod politely, always let them have what they want. Always, always. The rebel, the complainer, she is... no, no, do not think. Do not think of the last few nights.//


She tipped her head back, and scooped a finger in to get the leavings of the herbs, the bits and corners and seeds of leaves, and stuck the finger quickly into her mouth, sucking off the bitter leaves. Then breathed, slow, and closed her eyes.

"Water... please sir... please, may I... may I have some water... I am trying very hard to be good."

[Adnaj]

Adnaj took note of how Philomena's body had visibly relaxed. She even took hold of and sipped from the cup differently. He identified, in her, an obedient, child-like eagerness to please that he hadn't noticed before. Was this her natural personality shining through the effects of the plague? Was it an effect of the medicine? Was it, in truth, a side-effect of her illness? He couldn't tell just yet but he monitored her, more closely now, as he continued his treatment.

"Absolutely," he smiled into a nod as he turned to bring her another cup, this one with some cool water to wash the bitter taste from her mouth.

He returned with more than a simple cup of water. In his left hand was a glass jar containing some sort of fabric strips. With his right hand, he handed her the water and then placed the jar on the table.

"How are you feeling, Philomena?" The doctor asked her. "You appear to be in better spirits now, no?" He lifted the lid off the jar, still looking at her and asking his question, to remove one of the fabric strips. Now, separated from the others, it was visibly clear that this was a bandage.

"This is a linament. Its been soaked in a mixture of various healing substances. We're really going to focus on inhibiting that infection, right at the sight. He gently lifted her arm at the wrist, knowing that most sensations would be interpreted as painful. There were analgesic elements in the linament for that very reason. The friction of the fabric touching her skin would be mildly painful but overall, the material was soft and he had used great caution in applying this treatment. The bandage was moist but it was not thoroughly wet. It didn't leave droplets or liquid streaks on her arm, it was only saturated enough to detect the presence of some wetness against the skin.

The wrapping was snug but it was not uncomfortably tight and it was not restricting like a cast. "I'm going to send you home with a few of these. Wear one once a day. They should stay on for a few hours at a time."

[Philomena]

Minnie breathed shallow, expecting it to hurt, but maintained the compliant, frightened compliancy of her eyes. When it didn't hurt, she looked almost suspiciously at the bandages.

"I am fine, sir, yes. Y'are too kind... I... yes. I will, sir... yes."

She closed and opened her eyes several times, and managed a weak, frightened little smile, "Sir is very kind. How much am I owing, then?"

Her knees wer epulled close, and her good hand clung close to her belly. She sighed softly, as the cool wetness soaked into her arm, closing her eyes and rocking ever-so-slightly.

[Adnaj]

"For this service?" Adnaj mused. "Four Mizas. And if you cant afford that, then pay me what you can or what you think would be a fair comparison with Zeltiva's other healers...whichever of those is less expensive."

Adnaj authoritatively began to lead Philomena back toward the clinic's entrance. As they reached the front, he would have one last friendly smile for her. He had noticed her timid, weakened manner and wanted to send her out in the highest, healthy spirits that he was able.

It was with a friendly, informing tone, not a commanding one which he instructed her to eat a great deal of garlic with her meals because it was a natural antibacterial.

"Make sure you get back in here to see me tomorrow, understand?" The command was firm but it was also warm and invitational. It was only firm because Adnaj was genuinely worried about her. He didn't want her to leave here and then immediately fall out of his sight.

"You won't have to pay for anything else that we do. Consider those 4 to be the full cost of your treatment. Just make sure that you get back in here, alright?"

[Philomena]

Minnie returned to her feet, and resettled her coat on her shoulders meekly. Her mind reeled at all the instruction - she was too frightened to be reasonable at the moment and think throughthe directions clearly.

"Garlic... four mizas... tomorrow... yes... alright... yes."

She murmured the words softly, compliantly, a bit desperately perhaps.

//Leave, run, run Minnie Lefting. Run. Run away somewhere that noone will see you, hide, Minnie Lefting.//

She maintained her composure in spite fo the feeling of heavy, childlike fear, and looked at the healer more as a child would look to a parent, nearly, as he gave her instruction.

"Yes, sir, as you say, sir, of course, I promise, I will. I'll be good about it."

She stumbeld along, and out the door, fumbling a clumsy curtsy with her one good hand, "I'll do just what you say, sir, yes sir."