Staring at himself on the surveillance footage,
"Is that really me?" Chen Ge's voice was laced with doubt and uncertainty. His gaze darted away, unable to even look at the screen.
"The footage can be faked, but the injuries on your arms and fingers won't lie." Dr. Gao put away his white-cased phone. "No one wants to believe there's another person living inside their body, but sometimes we have no choice but to face it."
Chen Ge sat motionless on the bed, his expression so pitiful that no one would have the heart to disturb him.
Dr. Gao watched him for a while before finally offering a word of comfort. "The more unhinged your second personality acts, the more effective our treatment is becoming. He's afraid. He's worried that one day he'll disappear. Don't be too hard on yourself. Get some rest here and don't put too much pressure on yourself. Treating mental illness is a very slow process — it can't be rushed."
Chen Ge nodded slowly, still seemingly trapped in shock. He didn't appear to have heard a single word Dr. Gao said, merely obeying the doctor's instructions on pure instinct.
"For tonight, stay in the isolation ward. Once your condition stabilizes, we can discuss moving you back to the general ward." After feeding Chen Ge three white tablets, Dr. Gao prepared to leave.
"Dr. Gao…" Chen Ge turned to look at the doctor, who had already reached the doorway. "Can my illness really be cured?"
"Of course it can. You need to have faith — in the hospital, and in yourself." With that, Dr. Gao walked out, leaving Chen Ge alone in the isolation ward.
The wounds on his arms had been treated. They wouldn't get any worse. Perhaps because of the black powder medicine he'd taken, the sensation was slowly returning to his broken leg in its cast.
After Dr. Gao was well out of earshot, Chen Ge lay back on the hospital bed. The pain and anguish on his face gradually faded away, replaced by calm.
If anyone had looked into his eyes at that moment, they would have been startled. Chen Ge's pupils were slowly contracting. "The hospital is lying. They don't want to cure me — they want to turn me into a monster that meets their requirements."
Resting his head on the pillow, Chen Ge glanced sideways at the restraint straps. "I need to get out of the isolation ward as soon as possible and make contact with Zuo Han. Last night, he seemed to have made some very important discoveries in the security room and the night-shift doctor's office."
Under the hospital's watchful eye, two patients had risked their lives to put on a show together. They had temporarily fooled the hospital and obtained some valuable clues.
"Zuo Han is clever. He should be able to fool the doctors." Chen Ge had done everything he could. From the moment he'd lost consciousness, the stage had been handed over to Zuo Han.
In truth, their division of labor was clear-cut, and neither could afford a single misstep. If one of them slipped up, the other would be dragged down as well.
But judging from Dr. Gao's attitude toward Chen Ge, things on Zuo Han's end seemed to have gone smoothly — no major blunders.
There were no clocks in the isolation ward rooms. After nightfall, Chen Ge fell asleep again.
He had no idea how much time had passed when the door of the isolation ward was suddenly struck.
Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock.
Four consecutive knocks. By the time Chen Ge opened his eyes, the knocking had already stopped.
"Knocking again in the middle of the night?"
The doors in the isolation ward were special. To prevent dangerous patients from escaping, all the locks in the isolation ward were installed on the outside of the doors. In other words, anyone with a key could enter freely from outside, but those inside had no way to leave.
Chen Ge's heart slowly clenched. He had always been curious about the identity of this knocker. "When I was in the general ward, I could hear knocking at night. Now that I've been locked in the isolation ward, that knocking has followed me here! What is the knocker trying to tell me through these sounds? Just knocking alone doesn't seem to convey any useful information!"
The fact that the knocking resumed right on schedule after his ward change meant the knocker had to have an extremely thorough understanding of what was happening inside the hospital.
"A patient probably wouldn't be able to pinpoint my exact room. Could it be that the one knocking at my door every night is one of the doctors?"
With limited information, Chen Ge could only reason this way.
"This knocker seems to be on a different side from the other doctors. Could it be that some of the hospital's doctors are actually willing to help me? They can't show their face, so they're using this method to tell me something?"
"The hospital hasn't had a peaceful night in several days. Aside from me, someone else must be drawing the hospital's attention."
Once he knew someone was helping him, Chen Ge grew even calmer.
He began trying to gradually piece together fragments of his past memories. The previous night, he had deliberately recalled things related to his parents and the haunted house in order to trigger a blackout. Before the pain knocked him unconscious, fragmented images had actually surfaced in his mind. "When I was very young, my parents told me that no matter what, I must never go to… the Eastern Suburbs?"
With his limbs restrained, Chen Ge couldn't even run. He didn't dare fall asleep either. He simply stared at the ward door and, without overexerting his brain, tried to sort through the memories of the past few days.
Truth and illusion were woven together like two different voices arguing inside his head, neither willing to admit it was the fabricated one — because to do so would mean being discarded forever.
Long after the sun had risen the next morning, Dr. Gao entered the room with two orderlies.
"Did you have any nightmares last night?" It seemed that every time Chen Ge woke from a blackout, Dr. Gao would ask this question.
"No. After taking the medicine, I slept very deeply."
"Good." Dr. Gao and the two orderlies brought some medical equipment into the room and gave Chen Ge a simple checkup. When he noticed that some black particles still clung to Chen Ge's arm, his expression relaxed considerably. "Chen Ge, would you like to move back to the general ward?"
"Of course. In the general ward, I can see that amusement park and that haunted house. And her." Chen Ge answered without a moment's hesitation.
"But in your current condition, I simply can't convince the other doctors, and no patient would be willing to room with you."
"I just want to go back to my original room. I can look at the amusement park outside the window from time to time. You don't have to remove the restraints — that way I won't be able to hurt anyone…"
"You still don't understand." Dr. Gao sat down on the edge of the bed. "The root of the problem isn't you — it's your second personality. You represent good; he represents evil. You need to use your own willpower to shake off his influence over you, to reject him from the bottom of your heart, and to cast him off completely. Don't worry about him affecting you. We doctors will always be your strongest support."
Chen Ge nodded. "I know what I need to do."