Chapter 146: Karma
A man who could have been cured died.
And the world kept turning as if nothing had happened.
The street where the accident occurred was still jammed with traffic the very next day.
The stock market continued opening and closing on schedule, as it always did—
Only now, one star trader no longer existed within it.
Over the following days, a family-backed capital firm that had operated in the financial world for decades became trapped inside a highly complex trading structure.
A slight directional shift triggered a chain reaction.
At first, it was only a single hedge fund aggressively building a reverse position against them at any cost.
It didn't look like open warfare.
It looked more like a cold, patient squeeze.
There was no rush for profit.
No concern over short-term volatility.
The sole objective was simple—
Continuously increase the other side's financing costs.
Inside the trading world, behavior like this barely even counted as malicious.
There were no violations.
No illegal manipulation.
Just precise pressure applied entirely within the rules.
The family firm initially absorbed losses that weren't fatal.
On paper, they could still withstand them.
Liquidity remained sufficient.
Then the risk-control systems began generating abnormal alerts in rapid succession.
Shortly afterward, those warnings evolved into real settlement pressure.
Margin calls started arriving simultaneously from multiple channels—
Exchanges.
Clearing banks.
Custodial institutions.
Obligations buried within contracts began stacking together, rolling forward, amplifying themselves.
The debt figures exploded within days.
The numbers passed beyond the point of "shocking" so quickly that they eventually stopped feeling real altogether.
Only numbness remained.
At that scale, any attempt at damage control became meaningless.
And so, just as the market expected—
They initiated bankruptcy liquidation proceedings to deal with debts they could no longer cover.
That family name—
A name that had survived countless financial storms, long considered "stable," "conservative," and "too established to fail"—
Was quietly erased from the market.
And through all of it…
Ethan's life appeared completely unchanged.
Ethan still woke up on time.
Still left for work on schedule.
Still saw patients.
Still treated illnesses.
Inside the clinic, the familiar scents remained unchanged—
Disinfectant.
Coffee.
And the faint sweetness of the small cakes.
Helen handled reception.
Ethan handled treatment.
Everything seemed exactly the same.
And yet, in subtle ways that even Ethan himself barely noticed…
Something had changed.
Sometimes, in the middle of a consultation, he would briefly drift off, staring at an empty corner of the room for no reason.
Sometimes, he found himself repeatedly double-checking data that had already been confirmed.
A few times, after parking in the garage, he didn't get out immediately.
He simply sat alone in the car for a while.
Ever since he was young, Ethan had known he would become a doctor.
Back then, even after mastering nearly all of a priest's abilities, he had still imagined failure countless times—
A patient dying on the operating table.
The heart monitor flattening into a single unbroken line.
A doctor standing there, forced to accept a painful outcome he could not change.
That was the kind of failure a doctor was supposed to face.
But reality had shown him something different.
No one had died on his operating table.
No one had died inside the Rayne Clinic.
Sheldon's father, George Cooper, had died in Houston from a sudden heart condition.
Ethan had been completely powerless to help.
The only conclusion he could reach was that his Holy Light simply wasn't strong enough yet.
And Donnie Caan…
Donnie had died on the way to the clinic.
A random car accident.
If Ethan had learned about it immediately instead of the next day, perhaps he could have rushed to the scene and brought him back.
Both men had died outside Ethan's world.
Theoretically, their deaths had nothing to do with him.
But Donnie Caan's accident forced Ethan to confront another idea for the very first time.
Karma.
Most people understood karma in the simplest possible way:
Do good things, receive good outcomes.
Do bad things, receive punishment.
But a more accurate interpretation was this—
Every choice pushes a person into a new field of probability.
From a medical perspective, Donnie Caan was not Ethan's failure.
His cancer had been reversible under Holy Light.
The treatment had worked.
If not for the accident, continuing the planned course of treatment would have led to a guaranteed recovery.
The problem existed outside medicine.
And suddenly, karma itself seemed to step forward and mock Ethan.
If Donnie had never come to Rayne Clinic…
If he had simply continued along his original path, receiving conventional treatment…
Then perhaps the accident would never have happened.
Maybe he would still have remained a dying man.
But—
He might have lived another month or two.
Ethan had given him hope for a cure.
Yet he hadn't changed—
And perhaps had even accelerated—
Donnie's path toward a worse ending.
Maybe this was what people meant by the unpredictability of fate.
Fate didn't stop Ethan from saving lives.
It simply chose to answer from outside the boundaries of treatment.
Ethan wasn't angry.
Nor did he drown in guilt.
What he felt instead was something heavy.
A slowly forming understanding—
His existence was changing, and perhaps had already changed, the destinies of certain people.
And those changes would not always move in a better direction.
One weekday afternoon, the clinic moved at its usual pace.
After the final patient left, silence settled across the building.
Ethan remained inside the examination room, finishing up paperwork.
Helen stood quietly at the doorway without speaking.
She waited until Ethan had changed clothes before finally saying:
"I received the notice."
"Donnie Caan's funeral is Friday morning."
Ethan paused.
"I don't like funerals," he said.
Helen nodded.
"No one does."
"But sometimes, if you want something to truly pass…"
"…you need a goodbye."
She paused, then added softly, perhaps trying to comfort him:
"It wasn't your responsibility."
"I know," Ethan replied immediately.
He looked out the window.
"That's not the problem."
"The problem is…"
"…I don't know what role I'm supposed to have there."
A doctor?
He hadn't completed the treatment.
A friend?
He had barely known Donnie at all.
A bystander?
Wouldn't that feel cold?
Helen looked at him quietly.
"You don't need to represent any role."
"You only need to show up as yourself."
"…Alright."
Ethan smiled faintly.
Then suddenly, as if remembering something, he turned back toward her.
"Oh, right, Helen."
"The promise Bobby Axelrod gave us is obviously void now."
"What do you think…"
"…should we return the hundred thousand dollars too?"
Helen thought about it seriously.
"That's up to you."
Then, almost casually, she added:
"Although hospitals normally wouldn't refund it under circumstances like this."
"They charge you whether the treatment succeeds or fails."
"Fuck hospitals," Ethan said instantly.
"We refund it."
Helen laughed softly.
"That's my boy."