Watching the Door to Settle the Bill

Lynn's hemostats clamped onto the two most severely bleeding arterial branches.

His left hand pressed down with gauze, while his right hand sutured.

Frank did not make a sound throughout the entire process.

It was not because it didn't hurt.

Lynn could feel the operating table vibrating slightly—

That was caused by Frank's entire body musculature contracting involuntarily under extreme pain.

He bit all his agony into his jaw.

The spleen repair took eight minutes.

Then came the right kidney—the tear in the renal capsule was easier to handle than anticipated because Frank's body repair mechanism had already formed a thin layer of fibrous tissue around the tear, as if the body were trying to stop the bleeding on its own.

Although it hadn't stopped the bleeding, it gave Lynn a better foundation for suturing.

The pneumothorax in the left lung was handled even faster.

The puncture drainage removed about two hundred and fifty milliliters of blood and air, and the two penetrating wounds were sutured shut.

Then came the shrapnel.

Seventeen pieces of shrapnel were embedded in his body, varying in size and depth.

Lynn did not use forceps to "search" for them one by one—his Super Senses had already built a complete three-dimensional map in his mind, with the coordinates of each piece of shrapnel accurate to the millimeter.

His hand speed was so fast that Frank couldn't help but turn his head to look.

One. A "clink" sounded in the metal tray.

Two. Three. Four.

By the eighth piece, Frank spoke.

"You aren't like a normal doctor."

"You aren't like a normal patient, either," Lynn said, not stopping his hands. "Normal patients don't watch themselves get gutted without anesthesia."

"I'm used to it."

The fifteenth piece. The sixteenth.

The last one was hidden on the back of the left scapula, pressed tightly against the periosteum.

Lynn used tweezers to precisely pry it out from between the bone sutures.

"Clink."

Seventeen pieces of shrapnel lay neatly in the metal tray.

Adding the two complete bullet heads he had cut out earlier, there were nineteen metal items in total.

Lynn began to suture.

After finishing the final stitch, he stepped back and took off his gloves.

Thirty-five minutes.

Frank sat up from the operating table slowly, but he was much steadier than when he had walked in.

He looked down at his abdomen—the sutures were as neat as if done by a machine, with even spacing and consistent depth.

He moved his shoulders.

Then he tried taking a deep breath once more.

"Does it hurt?" Lynn asked.

"No more pain." There was something in Frank's voice that perhaps even he hadn't realized.

"Thirty-some holes, and you patched them up in thirty-five minutes." Frank looked at Lynn. "When I was in the military, the best combat medic took four hours to treat twelve bullet holes on me."

"He didn't have my steady hands."

Frank stared at Lynn for a few seconds without responding.

At the same time, a system notification chimed in Lynn's mind—

[Ding! Treatment complete! Rating: S-Class Extraordinary!]

[Saintly Hands Copy initiated... Scanning target's ability library...]

[Core talent detected: Tenacious Vitality/Healing Factor (B+ Grade)]

[Based on treatment contribution (S-Class), automatically copying the highest quality talent—]

[Copy progress: 18%... 45%... 77%... 100%!]

[Ding! Copy complete! Obtained B+ Grade talent: Healing Factor (Weakened Version · 60%)!]

[Ability details: Body recovery speed increased to four times that of a normal person; minor injuries can heal within hours, and recovery time for moderate injuries is significantly shortened.]

Warm energy surged through his body for about five seconds.

Lynn felt a subtle change in his bones, muscles, and tendons—they were firmer and more resilient.

A red scratch on his arm from moving equipment that afternoon had completely faded by the time he looked down at it.

It wasn't an earth-shattering change.

But it represented something very important—from now on, he was no longer an ordinary person who would break at a single touch.

Frank put on his clothes.

He bent down to pick up the bullet-riddled tactical vest from the floor, looked at it for two seconds, and then dropped it again.

"What about your fee?"

"Do you have money?"

Frank tilted his head.

The answer to this question was obvious—a fugitive who spent his life fighting crime alone, where would he get spare cash?

"No," he answered bluntly.

Lynn leaned against the instrument table and thought for two seconds.

"Watch the door for me for a month."

Frank frowned: "What does that mean?"

"Exactly what it sounds like. My clinic has been targeted recently. I need someone who makes everyone afraid to come in and cause trouble. You happen to be qualified."

"I'm not a bodyguard."

"And I'm not a free charity. You can't pay the fifty-thousand surgery fee, so just pay with your time. Stay at the door during the day; do whatever you want at night, I don't care. One month."

Frank looked at Lynn.

"You've got guts," he said. "Do you know who I am?"

"I know you wiped out an armory in the south district of the docks alone last night, took out at least twelve people, and then got riddled with holes by the reinforcements that arrived. You passed by my street while on the run, saw my sign, and decided to try your luck coming in."

Frank's expression didn't change.

But he remained silent for longer than at any point before.

"One month," he finally said. "I leave after a month, and I won't owe anyone anything."

"Deal."

The "onboarding" effect of Frank Castle was even better than Lynn had expected.

At eight o'clock the next morning, when Lynn went downstairs to open the door, Frank was already sitting at the entrance of the clinic.

A folding chair pulled from the utility room, a cup of black coffee bought from a convenience store.

He was wearing a clean black jacket—Lynn didn't know where he had gotten it—and sat there reading a newspaper.

He looked perfectly normal.

If one ignored the dark canvas bag at his feet.

The zipper of the canvas bag was half-open, and Lynn's Super Senses swept over the contents—a disassembled Remington 870 shotgun, two pistols, four M84 Flashbangs, and about three hundred rounds of various types of ammunition.

"You brought an armory to my doorstep," Lynn said.

"Protective measures." Frank turned a page of the newspaper.

"If the police pass by—"

"No police will pass by," Frank's tone was certain. "This is Hell's Kitchen."

Lynn thought for a second and decided he was right.

The speed at which the news that "the Punisher is sitting at the door of a clinic" spread completely exceeded Lynn's expectations.

At ten in the morning, when three residents came to see the doctor and reached the clinic door, they took one look at Frank and stopped dead in their tracks.

They tugged at each other's sleeves and whispered for a long time, but eventually gathered the courage to walk in—because one of the older men's knees hurt so much he couldn't walk anymore.

At twelve noon, a young punk on a motorcycle passed by the clinic, saw Frank, jerked his handlebars, and nearly crashed into a fire hydrant.

At two in the afternoon, Murphy called.

"Dr. Lynn, I heard Frank Castle is with you?"