Advertising Effectiveness

At two in the afternoon, Lynn was on the first floor supervising the installation of soundproofing in the operating room.

Footsteps and laughter sounded from outside.

Three people in white coats approached from across the way.

The man in front was in his fifties, with graying hair. His white coat bore a name badge: "St. Mary Community Hospital · Vice President · Howard Griffin."

Two young doctors followed him, holding takeaway coffees and chatting as they walked.

Griffin paused outside Lynn's clinic, looked over the storefront under construction, then glanced at Lynn.

"Opening another clinic?" he said to the young doctors behind him. "In Hell's Kitchen, one shuts down every three months. They change hands like outfits."

One of the young doctors laughed. "Looks like a Chinese massage parlor, doesn't it?"

The other laughed too. "The kind that can't even tell you where the appendix is?"

Griffin didn't stop them. Instead, he lifted his chin toward Lynn. "Young man, the waters run deep in Hell's Kitchen. If you open a clinic in a place like this without real skills, you won't last."

Lynn stood at the entrance, holding a set of renovation blueprints. His expression was calm behind his gold-rimmed glasses.

He looked at Griffin.

He noted the three words on his badge—"Vice President"—the corner of a prescription slip peeking from his white coat's left pocket, and the grains of disinfectant mat unique to the community hospital stuck to the soles of his shoes.

In half a second, he completed an assessment. There was a small discolored patch on the inside of Griffin's collar.

It had been worn down by years of wearing ties, suggesting he often dressed formally for events outside of work.

There was a faint indentation on his left ring finger, but no ring. He was divorced.

The skin on his right wrist had an almost imperceptible layer of pale yellow pigmentation, a sign of long-term exposure to Betadine disinfectant. That meant he occasionally still worked in the operating room despite being a vice president.

A member of management with real clinical experience.

Not incompetent, but conceited.

Lynn didn't respond to Griffin.

It wasn't that he was holding back.

There was no need.

Super Intelligence had already reached a clear conclusion: arguing with someone like this, in a place like this, would earn him nothing if he won and cost him face if he lost.

The only worthwhile way to strike back was to make Griffin shut up through an overwhelming disparity in ability.

And before long, the opportunity would present itself.

Lynn smiled and nodded, then turned and walked back into the clinic under construction.

Griffin glanced once more at the sign that hadn't been hung yet. It bore three words: "Miracle Clinic."

He chuckled, shook his head, and walked away.

Miracle Clinic opened on an ordinary Tuesday.

The storefront was finished. The white walls were clean and neat, and the floor-to-ceiling windows gleamed.

The sign read "Miracle Clinic" in dark blue, with a smaller line beneath it: "Dr. Lynn · General Practice."

Lynn sat in a chair behind the front desk, wearing a neatly pressed white coat.

A cup of black coffee and a copy of Human Anatomy sat in front of him. He wasn't studying; he was reviewing.

In three days, he had absorbed the entire four-year medical school curriculum without forgetting a thing, but he was used to doing a final cross-check of his knowledge with printed books.

The clinic opened at nine in the morning. By noon, the number of people who had come through the door was—zero.

To be precise, it wasn't zero.

An elderly woman had come in to ask for directions to the Social Security Administration.

And a delivery worker had walked into the wrong place.

As residents of Hell's Kitchen passed the clinic, they glanced inside. A young Chinese American doctor sat in a bright, spotless examination room, smiling warmly.

But no one stopped.

No results came up when people searched for the book title. Maybe try searching for the author instead—perhaps it had just been renamed!

No one came in.

In this neighborhood, new and clean were actually strikes against you.

The people of Hell's Kitchen had seen too many scams behind pretty signs—insurance fraud, illegal pharmacies, and money-laundering fronts.

Who would trust a clinic that had sprung up out of nowhere, run by such a young owner with an Asian face?

Lynn wasn't in a hurry.

He sat behind the front desk, drinking coffee and reading, occasionally looking out the window.

At half past two in the afternoon, he got up and went out to buy coffee.

St. Mary Community Hospital stood right across from the clinic, a gray, four-story building with one or two ambulances always parked outside.

As Lynn turned left and headed toward the coffee shop on the corner, he passed the hospital's emergency entrance.

An ambulance was parked in front of the emergency room, its rear doors open.

Two paramedics were lifting a middle-aged Black man off a stretcher.

The man looked about forty-five and was on the heavy side. He wore dark blue work clothes, like someone who worked at a construction site or in a warehouse.

His face was pale, sweat beaded across his forehead, and he clutched his left chest with his right hand. His breathing was rapid and shallow.

The emergency room doors opened, and a young emergency physician came out to meet them.

Lynn recognized him. He was one of the two young doctors who had mocked him with the "can't even tell you where the appendix is" remark a few days earlier.

The young doctor took a quick look at the man on the stretcher and asked the paramedics, "What happened?"

"Chest pain, heavy sweating, and difficulty breathing. It started suddenly at a construction site fifteen minutes ago."

The young doctor pushed the man into the emergency room, hooked him up to a cardiac monitor, and took an ECG.

Lynn had just reached the emergency room entrance.

He didn't stop on purpose; he merely caught a glimpse as he passed.

In a fraction of a second, he picked up the waveform on the cardiac monitor.

Then the diagnosis triggered automatically.

A red warning appeared in his field of vision:

[Automatic Diagnosis Initiated—]

[Target: Ordinary human male, approximately 45 years old.]

[Condition: Acute anterior wall myocardial infarction! Complete occlusion of the left anterior descending artery! The patient is within the golden treatment window!]

[Warning: The attending physician's diagnosis of "acute anxiety attack" is a serious misdiagnosis!]

[Cause: ECG leads V1 and V2 have been reversed, preventing the ST-segment changes from displaying correctly!]

[Estimated cardiac arrest in 8 minutes! Mortality rate: 87%!]

Lynn stopped walking.

He stood at the emergency room entrance, watching what was happening inside. The young doctor was speaking to the nurse beside him.

"The ECG shows no ST-segment changes. It's a classic anxiety attack. Give him two milligrams of lorazepam IV and observe him for half an hour. If he improves, send him home."

The nurse took the medication and prepared to give the injection.

The man on the bed was still gasping for air, his left hand repeatedly pounding his chest.

He was in too much pain to form a complete sentence. Only a few broken words came out: "Hurts... here... it really hurts..."

The young doctor patted his shoulder, offering reassurance without much feeling. "Relax, sir. You're just very anxious. We'll give you a shot, and you'll be fine."

Lynn looked around.

Four or five people had gathered outside the emergency room—local residents waiting for treatment and passersby.

A few people had also gathered outside the coffee shop across the street to watch.

More importantly, Vice President Griffin had just walked out of the hospital entrance.

He was holding a cup of coffee and chatting with a middle-aged man in a suit.

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