The treatment room that
He rubbed his eyes. When Chen Ge looked again, Dr. Gao had grabbed his arm and pulled him around the corner.
"Was I seeing things?"
Five patients and two doctors had already walked out of the treatment room — how could seven people still be sitting inside?
"Could it be that we're still in the room, and the ones who walked out are our consciousness or souls?" Shaking his head, Chen Ge felt that was too incredible. He didn't dare go back alone to check, so he had no choice but to follow the others forward.
The priority now was to get Zhang Jingjiu to the emergency room and stabilize his injuries.
Dr. Sun, Patient No. 1, and Patient No. 2 walked at the front. They had found a stretcher at the nurse's station and were carrying Zhang Jingjiu downstairs.
Patient No. 4 seemed terrified. She held the torn paper butterfly in her hands and kept close to Patient No. 5.
At first glance, everyone appeared completely normal. If they took off their hospital gowns, no one would suspect that five out of these seven people suffered from severe mental illnesses.
"I've been to the fifth floor before. The patients in the critical ward were all incredibly noisy — even at midnight that floor was always full of commotion. But now there's not a single sound coming from any of the rooms on the entire fifth floor. Have all the patients been moved out in advance?"
The only answer Chen Ge could come up with was this. He didn't believe anyone could kill every last patient, nor did he think a murderer could make all the critically ill psychiatric patients fall silent.
"Unless the murderer is a doctor, and tonight he fed all the patients large doses of sedatives."
He glanced sideways at Dr. Gao, feeling the man was becoming more and more unfamiliar: "The one who wanted to drive me mad is him, the one who twice tried to force that drug on me is also him — and yet, why do I feel an inexplicable sense of familiarity toward this doctor? Could it be that the Dr. Gao in my memory and the Dr. Gao standing before me aren't the same person?"
To avoid triggering old memories, Chen Ge carefully sorted through the clues in his mind: "There were seven chairs in the treatment room. That number probably wasn't chosen at random."
The patients and doctors carried Zhang Jingjiu down to the first floor. The nurse's station, the duty room — not a single person was anywhere to be found. The entire building was pitch dark, as though the hospital had been abandoned for a very long time.
"What's going on? If it's just a power outage, the patients should still be in their rooms!" Patient No. 2 was getting anxious. He was worried about Zhang Jingjiu's injuries and felt that every corner of tonight's hospital was oozing with strangeness.
"Everything was still normal when I entered the treatment room." Dr. Sun led the way at the front, his pace brisk, as though something were chasing him.
"It's only been a few minutes — there's no way this much could have changed!" Patient No. 2 was still somewhat rational, despite the hospital's diagnosis of delusional disorder.
"Exactly! This is way too weird!" Patient No. 5 was also frightened, but he still stayed beside Patient No. 4. If real danger arose, he would be the first to grab her and run.
The patients chattered on and on. Perhaps growing irritated by all the questions, Dr. Sun, who was leading at the front, suddenly stopped in his tracks. He turned back and glanced at Dr. Gao. After confirming that Dr. Gao was currently expressionless — like a dead man — his gaze shifted to Chen Ge.
"In fact, there's an urban legend about this hospital. They say that if you push open a certain patient room door after midnight, you'll see the hospital's other side!" Dr. Sun kept his eyes locked on Chen Ge as he said this, as though the words were actually meant for Chen Ge alone.
"Push open the door? See the hospital's other side?"
"What does that mean?"
"Dr. Sun, are you really a doctor at this hospital?"
The patients all talked at once, but Dr. Sun said nothing more, as though his previous statement had been an enormous risk.
For the patients, this was their first time meeting Dr. Sun. The only one who knew Dr. Sun's true identity — Dr. Gao — was currently in a very strange state.
Utterly silent, body ice-cold. To put it precisely, Dr. Gao was slowly becoming like a corpse.
The patients had many questions, but none received answers. The hospital's doors and windows were all sealed tight, and there was nowhere for them to escape. They could only follow the doctors forward.
Chen Ge pushed open the door to the third ward's emergency stairwell. Two dim, lengthy corridors appeared before him — a place he had been before with Zuo Han, when he had played the role of his second personality.
"Hurry up. Don't linger in the corridor too long."
Dr. Sun chose the corridor that Chen Ge had not taken last time and walked inside, constantly urging them on. Chen Ge, at the end of the group, quickened his pace as well.
When they emerged from the emergency stairwell, the door at the far end of the corridor behind them slammed shut on its own with a bang.
"Is someone following us?" Chen Ge was growing confused too. There were far too many unanswered questions.
First they had encountered the gravely wounded Zhang Jingjiu. Then after they left, Chen Ge discovered that seven people were still sitting inside the treatment room. And now the door behind them had closed on its own, indicating that someone was once again following them.
Still not fully recovered, Chen Ge felt his head beginning to ache once more.
"This is the Fourth Ward. All kinds of critical and terminal patients are sent here." Dr. Sun swept his gaze over Chen Ge and added almost offhandedly: "Many people have died here."
No one knew what Dr. Sun meant by that last remark, and he had no intention of explaining. He simply picked up his pace.
The hospital's entire electrical system appeared to have collapsed. They could only advance by the brief flashes of light provided by lightning outside the windows.
The internal layout of the Fourth Ward was completely different from the Third Ward. There were very few patient rooms; the ground floor was entirely made up of various specialized departments.
"There's no one in this ward's duty room either." Patient No. 2 was getting anxious. "We have to stop this patient's bleeding immediately, or his life will be in danger!"
"Why are all the photos on the duty room wall in the Fourth Ward of men?" Dr. Fang looked at the faces on the wall and instinctively took a step back.
"Is it strange that they're all men?" Patient No. 5 asked quietly.
"I used to be a surgeon. There was a period when a lot of patients at our hospital committed suicide, and everyone was on edge. To protect the female doctors, we only scheduled male doctors for night shifts." After walking out of the room, Dr. Fang still hadn't calmed down. He kept glancing behind him for no apparent reason, as though worried someone nearby was going to hurt him.
"You used to be a surgeon?" Patient No. 2 blinked, then immediately turned to Dr. Sun and said: "We have a surgeon right here. Whether there's someone in the duty room or not doesn't matter much. All we need now are tools and we can save this patient's life."
"I'm an ENT specialist…"
"It doesn't matter. I'm a forensic pathologist — I also know some surgery. I can assist you." Patient No. 2 had a decisive personality. Although he wasn't much different in age from Patient No. 1, he was clearly better at handling emergencies.
Dr. Sun looked at the patients and simply said: "Follow me."
They walked through the dim hospital corridor, and Dr. Sun stopped outside a certain department. He didn't go in directly — instead, he did something very peculiar.
Raising his arm, Dr. Sun gently knocked on the door.