<strong>"You should see the other guys,"</strong>Joe Smith had said at the reception desk when he came in to, trying to bring some levity to the situation,<strong>"can you pencil me in so I don't get too much uglier?"</strong><br/><br/>He had been glad just to get some gauze passed over before he sat down.<br/><br/>He looked about as bad as he usually did, though he was proud of the hair cut that kept his short brown hair from looking too scruffy.<br/><br/>The big, fair-skinned badlander sat at his usual spot, back to the wall near the AC unit.  The black eye wasn't unusual, but the bleeding cut down his face that he was holding gauze on was not.<br/><br/>Even though he did his best to hide it, his history as 'Fighting Joe' and 'The Steel Shogun', always seemed to catch up with him when someone said, "I bet I could whip that guy's ass."<br/><br/>He wasn't one to turn down a fight.  If he ran, they'd just chase.  Of course, most people thought they were tough until he put one of their friends on the ground, and then they usually got ugly if people didn't run for the hills.  This time it had been a knife.  A few times ago, a gun.  The time before that, he had had to duel another wielder of the blade, and took the thug's life.<br/><br/>He kept his katana, his lifeline, close at his side, still wary as he waited to be seen.  This clinic wasn't as bad as some of the place he had had to go before, to be sure, but he stayed wary.  Even though he was just here to pay for a service, he liked to keep watch.  It was the least he could do to keep his favorite sawbones from having to deal with someone too stupid to pick a store to rob instead of a clinic...