Lynn clamped the two arterial branches that were bleeding the worst.
He pressed gauze with his left hand and stitched with his right.
Frank didn't make a sound the entire time.
Not because it didn't hurt.
Lynn could feel the operating table trembling slightly—
It was caused by Frank's muscles contracting involuntarily under the extreme pain.
He gritted his teeth and swallowed every ounce of it.
Repairing the spleen took eight minutes.
Then came the right kidney—the tear in its capsule was easier to deal with than expected, because Frank's body had already formed a thin layer of fibrous tissue around the wound, as if it were trying to stop the bleeding on its own.
It hadn't managed to stop it, but it gave Lynn a better foundation for stitching.
The pneumothorax in the left lung was quicker to treat.
A needle and chest tube drained about 250 milliliters of bloody air, and Lynn stitched the two through-and-through wounds closed.
Then came the shrapnel.
Seventeen fragments embedded in the body, varying in size and depth.
Lynn didn't use forceps to "hunt" for them one by one—Super Senses had already built a complete three-dimensional map in his mind, with the exact coordinates of every fragment down to the millimeter.
His hands moved so fast that even Frank couldn't help turning his head to watch.
One. It clinked into the metal tray.
Two. Three. Four.
When Lynn reached the eighth, Frank spoke.
"You don't seem like an ordinary doctor."
"You don't seem like an ordinary patient, either." Lynn didn't stop working. "Ordinary patients don't watch themselves being cut open without anesthesia."
"I'm used to it."
The fifteenth. The sixteenth.
The last one was hidden behind his left shoulder blade, pressed close to the bone.
Lynn used forceps to pry it out precisely from between the bones.
"Clink."
Seventeen fragments lay neatly in the metal tray.
Along with the two intact bullets removed earlier, that made nineteen pieces of metal in all.
Lynn began stitching the wounds closed.
After tying off the final stitch, he stepped back and removed his gloves.
Thirty-five minutes.
Frank sat up on the operating table slowly, but he was incomparably steadier than he'd been when he came in.
He looked down at his abdomen—the stitches were as neat as if a machine had done them, evenly spaced and uniform in depth.
He rolled his shoulder.
Then he tried taking a deep breath.
"Does it hurt?" Lynn asked.
"Not anymore." There was something in Frank's voice that he probably hadn't even noticed himself.
"You patched up more than thirty holes in thirty-five minutes." Frank looked at Lynn. "When I was in the military, the best medic I knew took four hours to treat the twelve bullet wounds I had."
"He didn't have hands as steady as mine."
Frank stared at Lynn for several seconds, then said nothing.
At the same time, the system notification rang in Lynn's mind—
[ Ding! Treatment complete! Evaluation: S-Class Extraordinary! ] [ Saintly Hands Copy activated... Scanning target's ability library... ] [ Core talents detected: Tenacious Vitality / Healing Factor (B+ rank) ] [ Based on treatment contribution (S rank), automatically copying the highest-quality talent— ] [ Copy progress: 18%...45%...77%...100%! ] [ Ding! Copy complete! Obtained B+ rank talent: Healing Factor (weakened version · 60%)! ] [ Ability details: The body's recovery rate is increased to four times that of an ordinary person. Minor injuries heal on their own within a few hours, and recovery from moderate injuries is greatly accelerated. ]
A warm energy surged through Lynn's body for about five seconds.
He felt a subtle change in his bones, muscles, and tendons—they were firmer and more resilient.
The red mark he'd gotten on his arm while moving equipment that afternoon had completely disappeared by the time he looked down at it.
It wasn't a world-shattering change.
But it meant something important—from now on, he was no longer an ordinary person who would break at the slightest touch.
Frank got dressed.
He bent down, picked up the bullet-riddled bulletproof vest from the floor, looked at it for two seconds, then tossed it aside.
"What's your fee?"
"Do you have any money?"
Frank tilted his head slightly.
The answer was obvious—what spare cash would a vigilante who spent all his time fighting crime alone have?
"No," he answered bluntly.
Lynn leaned against the instrument table and thought for a couple of seconds.
"Stand guard for me for a month."
Frank frowned. "What do you mean?"
"Exactly what it sounds like. Someone's been keeping an eye on my clinic lately. I need someone who'll make everyone think twice before causing trouble here. You're qualified."
"I'm not a bodyguard."
"And I'm not a free charity. You can't pay the fifty thousand for the surgery, so you can pay it off with your time. Stay at the entrance 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 that last night you raided an armory in the southern docks by yourself, killed at least twelve people, then got riddled with bullets by the reinforcements. You passed my street while escaping, saw my sign, and decided to take a chance and come in."
Frank's expression didn't change.
But he was silent longer than he had been at any other point.
"One month," he finally said. "After that, I'm gone. I won't owe anyone anything."
"Deal."
Frank Castle's "employment" worked even better than Lynn had expected.
At eight the next morning, when Lynn came downstairs to open up, Frank was already sitting outside the clinic.
A folding chair he'd found in the storage room, and a cup of black coffee from the convenience store.
He wore a clean black coat—Lynn had no idea where he'd gotten it—and sat there reading a newspaper.
He looked perfectly ordinary.
If you ignored the dark canvas bag at his feet.
The bag's zipper was half open. Lynn's Super Senses swept over its contents: a disassembled Remington 870 shotgun, two pistols, four M84 Flashbangs, and around three hundred rounds of various ammunition.
"You brought an entire armory to my doorstep," Lynn said.
"Precaution." Frank turned a page of the newspaper.
"What if the police come by—"
"The police won't come by." Frank sounded certain. "This is Hell's Kitchen."
Lynn thought about it for a second and decided he was right.
The news that "the Punisher is sitting outside a clinic" spread far faster than Lynn had expected.
At ten in the morning, three residents came to the clinic. They took one look at Frank and stopped dead.
They tugged at each other's sleeves and whispered for a long while, but in the end they mustered up the courage to go inside—one of the men had a knee that hurt so badly he could barely walk.
At noon, a young thug riding a motorcycle passed the clinic. When he saw Frank, he swerved and nearly hit a fire hydrant.
At two in the afternoon, Murphy called.
"Dr. Lynn, I heard Frank Castle is with you?"
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