Hospital
Where beatings, overdoses, and bad decisions get slept off.
Plenty of roads lead to a hospital bed. The common ones: losing a beating, an overdose at the nightclub, or an STD from the whorehouse. But a job gone wrong can put you there too - a failed car theft, a special crime that collapses, or a kill operation that backfires or leaves you wounded. Hospitalization blocks ordinary gameplay actions while it lasts; Private Care is the state-exit exception. The stay scales with your level, and a gang Medical Wing shortens it.
Unlike jail, nobody can bust you out of a hospital bed. But money can.
Private care
Skip the rest of any stay by going private. VIPs can settle the bill in cash - the hospital quotes it on your own wealth, so the richer you are the more the discretion costs. Everyone else can pay 1,000 $CRIME instead.
The pharmacy
The hospital sells four stat boosters, no prescription asked. Every dose adds 1% of your average stat (the mean of your four, at least 100 points), whichever bottle you pick, so a dose of your weakest stat is as big as a dose of your strongest. The price is what changes: a point costs $75 for a stat at your average, less below it and more above it. Your weakest stat is always the cheapest to top up, and your strongest the most expensive.
Every dose bites back. It shaves 0.3% off one other stat, but never more than 30% of what the dose just gave you, so you always come out ahead. And since these are drugs, each dose adds 1% addiction. A top-up for the desperate and the rich, never a training replacement - and bulk-buying stacks addiction fast enough to send you back to the detox center.
The pharmacist also fills one order every 30 minutes. The wait covers all four medicines, so switching bottles does not skip it. Detox, methadone and the surgeon never make you wait.
The detox center
When addiction starts eating your takes, the detox center offers two treatments. Full detox clears addiction to zero; the bill scales with your level, your total wealth, and how far gone you are - a broke street thug pays a few thousand, a rich addict pays a fortune. Methadone costs 40% of the full price and cuts your addiction in half instead of clearing it.
The plastic surgeon
The surgeon gives you a new face - every Gangsters Seen record involving you is wiped, in both directions, along with any record of which venues you've been haunting. The people hunting you lose their trail; so do the people you were hunting. The fee climbs steeply with your level and with your total wealth: a street-level nobody pays a few thousand, a seasoned kingpin pays millions - so a new face stays affordable while you're finding your feet and becomes a real decision once you have something to hide. City events can move the price.