When he envisioned those serving in the name of medicine, the first images that popped into his senses were white-coated doctors and scrub-clad nurses, pressing the cold disc of a stethoscope on a frail chest or rushing a stretcher down the sterile hallways with tennis shoes squeaking across the linoleum. The expected scenes after staring at technicolor screens, watching dramas and documentaries and everything in between. While he understood the uses of herbal remedies and how to treat with their fragrant leaves, the boy was far more accustomed to the modern techniques and their hospitals. Yet he didn't only observe from in front of a television.

    During his decades of wandering, more than once was he lured towards the dense energy of a hospital, its walls crowded with spirits waiting to be birthed into wailing newborns and spirits waiting to ascend the heavenly staircase, leaving sickly or mangled bodies behind in their gowns. A manmade gateway beyond the veil, as he often heard others dub it. Even if the poltergeist preferred to haunt alone, loneliness quickly became unbearable, resulting in Beck tentatively visiting the local hospitals where many, old and young, claimed as the ground they died on. He was far more interested in the mortal activity rather than his phantom cousins, even if eavesdropping on their lamenting confusion or hysteric denial was amusing. Afterlife rookies were always amusing, but gawking at nurses as they yanked people away from the brink of death greatly intrigued the boy -- almost as if he wanted to believe that the miracle-workers before his eyes could have saved even an ill-fated creature like him. Albeit smeared with the fogs of time and tucked within the darkest corners of his mind, Beck still remembered the unnatural scent of healing chemicals mixed with spilled blood and the urgent voices ordering instructions over mechanical beeping.

    It was nowhere close to what he volunteered for. As expected, there was no fancy equipment or even a dedicated building for patients. Yet the work would be just as fascinating, he hoped. Beck would be useful for once, as long as he focused on learning. Hell, maybe one day he would even save someone just as he witnessed many times from afar so many years ago. Which was an ironic scenario, considering his lack of any pulse. A nervous giggle crawled its scratchy way up his throat as he slunk past the library doors, blurred vision struggling to discern the rows of book spines from the wooden shelves they nested on. Thankfully, the scrawny feline seemed to be alone for now, excepting the imagined ants weaving their way over his bandaged paws. Shaking the hallucination away, Beck stumbled forward on his quest, uncertainly sliding musty encyclopedias and anatomy books from the lower shelves. Delivering the last of his literary harvest to a mildew-ridden corner where he had scraped together blankets and cushions into a comfortable heap before settling onto it, he dragged the first book closer and nosed aside its worn cover. With a whistling sigh, he turned his attention to the first diagram he could find, a chart of the major body systems within a generic mammal.

    Hours passed with the dizzying letters of an unknown alphabet fighting his brain to no avail; he wasn't able to register the ebbing pain of a resulting headache. Rubbing his eyelids with grimy paws after the fifth time trying to decipher what name designated the system of hormone-producing organs, Beck groaned in frustration. English was terribly different than Romanian, and while he naturally began to understand snippets of the more popular language over the centuries, most of its grammar and spellings he still failed to comprehend. Fatigued eyes glued to the nine squiggles that threatened to leap off the pages and dance around just to spite him, he mumbled to himself as he strained to piece it together. The first was an 'e', recognizable as the second letter of his name and the next was an 'n', right? Then 'd', 'o', 'c'... endocrine? How was he supposed to pronounce that? Gritting his teeth, Beck flipped to the next page, intently studying the familiar structures meant for blood circulation currently nameless to him in written form. Maybe he wasn't meant for any role in medicine, he could barely read! Hatred directed at the pitiful urchin without a grave darkening his freckled features, he traced the outline of arteries branching from the heart to the body's limbs with a fuzzy pawtip, forcing himself to remain focused instead of wallowing in self-loathing.