All Arranged

After a polite handshake, Bucky ignored Strange, who had collapsed unconscious on the ground. He cleaned up the scene, erased every trace that might reveal their whereabouts, and even removed robot Sean's central processor before leaving.

Since they were putting on an act, they had to see it through. There was no reason to clean up every minor detail while leaving behind the biggest piece of evidence.

Pain shot through all ten fingers, and Strange fainted from the agony. When he woke up, he found himself lying in a hospital bed, his hands wrapped in layers of gauze and suspended in midair by splints pierced with steel pins. He felt...

Thanks to local anesthetics, he felt nothing at all, as if the hands before his eyes belonged to someone else.

"God! If this is a dream, please wake me up already..."

Strange desperately wished those hands were not his. He closed his eyes in anguish, unable to face reality.

People said it was better to live poorly than die well, but Strange would rather have been dead. As one of the top neurosurgeons in the field, he could tell at a glance that the surgeon who had operated on him was trash. His hands were ruined, his career was over, and so was his life.

"Stephen, you're awake?"

The female doctor Christine Palmer pushed open the door. Seeing Strange staring blankly from his hospital bed, she set down the medical chart in her hand, poured him a cup of warm water, and offered it to him.

Palmer and Strange were colleagues, and they would still be colleagues several years from now. There was no possibility of their relationship progressing any further.

Strange's character was utterly terrible. His talent had made Palmer admire him and feel fondness for him, but his