Chapter 113 – New Employees Onboarding
Monday at the clinic was quiet in the specific way Mondays sometimes were — the weekend's momentum still bleeding into the morning, patients making the calculation about whether their problem was urgent enough to address today or could wait until they'd had a few more days to hope it resolved itself.
Ethan had a gap between appointments. He leaned back in his chair, looked at the ceiling, and let his mind do what minds did when they weren't being directed.
He was thinking about the poker session.
And then, for reasons that weren't immediately clear, about Paige Swanson.
He remembered something Mary Cooper had mentioned once — that Paige had ended up in Las Vegas, doing well for herself, making real money. Not showgirl money, not cocktail waitress money. Real, sustained money.
Ethan worked through the odds and landed at roughly eighty percent certainty: Paige Swanson was a professional Texas Hold'em player. It fit everything he knew about her — the specific combination of intelligence, competitive drive, and the particular satisfaction she took in being right at someone else's expense.
The thought produced a secondary image: Sheldon Cooper being informed of this development. The expression that would cross his face — the specific cognitive offense of discovering that someone he'd spent years in academic competition with had found a way to apply those same cognitive resources to something he couldn't classify as legitimate achievement.
A weekly home game, Ethan thought. That was achievable. The poker club Saturday had reminded him how much he'd enjoyed the game — not the money, not even winning exactly, but the specific quality of attention it required.
Getting the group together: Sheldon could be motivated by the intellectual challenge once the competitive frame was established. Penny could be convinced to deal — she had the social fluency for it, and the tipping was reliable income on top of whatever she made waitressing. With Penny confirmed, Leonard would follow without requiring any separate persuasion. Howard and Raj would need mild encouragement but nothing that required actual strategy.
He was running through the logistics of this with genuine satisfaction when—
Knock knock knock.
Ethan sat up immediately, straightened the items on his desk that hadn't needed straightening, and said:
"Come in."
Helen opened the door and stepped slightly to the side.
A man in black followed her into the consultation room.
The silhouette was unmistakable even before Ethan fully registered it. The specific quality of stillness. The deliberate economy of every movement.
John Wick.
"Hey, Doctor." His voice was the same — low, even, the voice of someone who had decided long ago that words were expensive and spent accordingly. "Been a while."
Ethan stood up.
"John." He smiled, and it was the genuine kind. "You're actually back."
They shook hands, and then — because John Wick had been resurrected in this clinic, and because Ethan had spent an evening demolishing a basement floor next to him, and because certain experiences created a specific category of relationship — it became a brief hug.
A moment. Not long.
But long enough for Ethan to register something.
"You're hurt," he said.
"Minor," John said.
To you, Ethan thought, still breathing probably qualifies as minor.
Helen, from the doorway, with the specific patience of someone who had been waiting for this moment:
"It's not minor." She looked at Ethan. "Fractured right calf. Gunshot wound to the left arm — bullet's out. Extensive abrasion damage across his chest and back."
She held Ethan's gaze for one second.
"I'll leave him with you, Doctor."
"I've got it," Ethan said. "Go ahead."
"I'll make coffee," she said, and pulled the door closed behind her.
Ethan ran through the examination.
The gunshot wound was exactly as Helen had described, and exactly as he'd expected from John's self-removal of the bullet: functional, crude, effective, and medically appalling. The abrasions were extensive — the pattern suggested a surface impact at speed, probably asphalt, probably at a moment when staying upright had been more important than protecting skin.
"Were you in a wreck?" Ethan asked, moving to the abrasion coverage on his back.
"Someone took my car," John said, eyes closed, perfectly still. "I went to get it back."
Ethan paused his examination. "And?"
"While I was there, I addressed the situation so it wouldn't recur."
"All of it?"
John was quiet for a moment. "I resolved some of it directly. The rest I had a conversation with."
Ethan looked at him. "And you're confident the conversation part holds?"
"Yes."
Ethan processed this briefly. Given John's track record on these assessments, it was probably accurate.
"Okay," he said, and went back to work.
The Healing Spell came in the way it always did with John — cleanly, without resistance, the light finding purchase immediately. There was a specific quality to treating someone whose body had been subjected to this kind of damage repeatedly: the tissue responded quickly, as if it recognized the process and had been through it before.
John's breathing changed. Deepened. Steadied.
Within a few minutes, he was asleep.
Ethan continued working while John slept — the Healing Spell running steadily, the restoration moving through the fracture, the soft tissue, the abrasions. He watched John's face, which had the specific, complete relaxation of someone who had been operating in a state of sustained high alert for an extended period and had finally found the one environment where the alert could be suspended.
He thought about Marcus — the other person he'd treated who had fallen asleep during recovery and woken up ready to function. There was a type, apparently.
John opened his eyes.
He sat up, moved each limb in sequence, turned his neck, rolled his shoulder. The assessment was brief and completely automatic — the morning inventory of someone who had learned to verify every morning that the previous night's damage had been fully addressed.
He stood.
Ethan had seen John Wick walk into this clinic in three separate states of damage. Each time, the post-treatment version had the same quality — the specific, quiet lethality of someone operating at full capacity rather than managing around injury. It was, every time, slightly startling.
Helen came back with the coffee.
Three cups. She sat in the chair beside John's — close, easy, the specific geometry of two people who had come back to something they'd been missing.
Ethan looked at them.
"Everything's wrapped up?" he asked.
"Yes," John said. "Helen and I can go home today."
He was quiet for a moment.
"Thank you," he said. "For looking after her while I was gone."
Helen's hand found John's arm. The gesture was small and completely unconscious.
"Congratulations," Ethan said. He meant it.
A moment of quiet.
"So," Ethan said. "You're heading out now?"
"Why would we leave?" Helen said. She gave him the specific look she produced when he'd said something she found slightly confusing. "There might be patients this afternoon."
John indicated with a minimal gesture that he was following her lead on this.
"Then — " Ethan paused. "You're both coming back tomorrow?"
"Obviously," Helen said. "Are you firing me?"
"Absolutely not." He said it fast, which was the correct speed. "I would never. Genuinely."
John said: "I'll drive her in tomorrow. And I can look at the clinic's security setup while I'm here — check if anything needs updating."
"As a security consultant?" Ethan asked.
"Part-time security consultant," John said. "Drop off, pick up, periodic review. That works."
"That works extremely well," Ethan said.
He opened his desk drawer and removed a set of documents. He stood, walked to the table, and placed two separate stacks in front of John and Helen respectively.
They both looked at him.
Then at the documents.
Then back at him.
Helen was the first to speak. "Are these—"
"Employment contracts," Ethan said, with the studied naturalness of someone who has pre-decided not to apologize for something. "Standard format. Clear terms. Nothing unusual."
John picked his up and read it with the complete attention he brought to most things.
Helen scanned hers faster. She looked up. "Is this really necessary?"
It was very necessary.
He'd learned the lesson once and had no interest in learning it again. Before Helen had arrived, he'd been running the clinic alone for months, burning time and energy on tasks that had nothing to do with medicine. Having her at the front desk had changed the entire character of the workday. Losing her to an undefined, informal arrangement would be — he didn't want to calculate what it would be.
And John's periodic security review was the kind of thing that, in the absence of a contract, would happen whenever John decided it happened and stop whenever other things became more pressing.
Structure was the point.
"My former intern — who is currently completing her residency — told me that a verbal offer lacks professional sincerity," Ethan said. "She showed up to the conversation with a contract already drafted." He set his hands on the desk. "I've updated my approach accordingly."
He paused.
"Also, look at line fourteen."
Helen found it. John located it in his copy.
Employee benefits include complimentary medical care for the employee and their immediate family members.
"Not a bad package," Ethan said. "And the clinic is fully equipped. Mary — our incoming physician — will have joined by the time it's relevant, and she'll handle anything I'm not the right person for." He kept his tone practical. "For any family health matters, the coverage is complete. Including — " He paused. "Including if you decide to start expanding the family."
Helen looked at him.
John looked at him.
"I'm not saying anything beyond standard coverage," Ethan said, with the dignity of someone who has realized they've started a sentence they can't exit cleanly and is going to finish it anyway. "Just that the benefit is there. The clinic has delivery capability, though for anything of that nature Mary would be the primary — I'd be the backup. Strictly the backup."
The consultation room was quiet.
Helen and John exchanged the specific look of two people who have developed a private communication system efficient enough that an entire conversation can happen in two seconds.
Helen sighed. "Fine."
"Fine," John agreed.
They signed.
Ethan accepted the contracts with both hands — the specific two-handed receipt that was, in certain contexts, a gesture of genuine respect — and filed them with the care of someone securing something important.
He looked at both of them.
"Welcome to Rayne Clinic," he said. "Officially."
A pause.
"Employees two and three."
Helen raised her coffee cup. "Does that mean you're employee one?"
"I'm the owner," Ethan said. "Different category."
"In a three-person operation," Helen said, "those are the same category."
John, who rarely commented on workplace dynamics, nodded once.
Ethan decided this was a conversation he was not going to win and picked up his own coffee.
"Welcome aboard," he said again, and left it at that.
[Support Goal: 500 PS → +1 Chapter]
[Support Goal: 10 Reviews → +1 Chapter]
Your review helps the story grow.
P1treon Soulforger (20+chapters ahead)