"A ghost with warmth in its eyes? If there's warmth in someone's eyes, isn't that just a living person?" Chen Ge couldn't quite make sense of Dr. Sun's words.
"Dr. Sun! Do you have any antibiotics here?" Patient Number Two's voice came from inside the emergency room. "I just finished bandaging his wounds and got the bleeding under control, but the wound on his chest suddenly deteriorated — there's a huge amount of pus pouring out!"
"The wound suddenly deteriorated?" Chen Ge rushed over as well. He felt this couldn't possibly be a coincidence.
Entering the inner room, Chen Ge saw bandages and all manner of debris scattered across the floor. Zhang Jingjiu was unconscious on the operating table, his chest no longer rising or falling.
"He's still alive, he's just lost consciousness, but if we let the wound keep deteriorating, he won't make it through the night." Patient Number Two was panting, both of his hands drenched in blood — a frightening sight.
"Why did the wound suddenly deteriorate?"
"I don't know. It might be because the wound is too deep." Doctor Fang stood beside the operating table wearing gloves, looking very professional. "I need hydrogen peroxide to flush the external wound, iodophor for disinfection — and there are black threads embedded in the flesh around his wound. It could be a fungal infection. To save him, we'll need to operate in a sterile environment."
Doctor Fang was drenched in sweat. "I've never performed this kind of surgery, and the tools here aren't sufficient. We need to find a proper surgeon!"
With that, he turned to Dr. Sun and Dr. Gao. "Let's put our own treatment aside — saving this patient's life is the priority."
"Looking at us won't help. Dr. Gao and I are psychiatrists — our knowledge of surgery is probably worse than yours. We'll head out right now to search other wards. With any luck, we might run into another night-shift doctor." Dr. Sun said this as casually as if discussing the weather.
"There's no other choice. He can't be moved easily. Number Two and I will stay here and treat him. The rest of you go find other night-shift doctors together." Doctor Fang and Patient Number Two tried every means to ease Zhang Jingjiu's pain, but even the cleverest housewife can't cook without rice. Without proper medical equipment and a surgical environment, they didn't dare operate on Zhang Jingjiu recklessly — if it triggered a massive infection, Zhang Jingjiu would be as good as dead.
"We're splitting up?" Patient Number Five felt this was inadvisable. "The killer is still in the hospital. Once we separate, he can pick us off one by one."
"This patient can't take any more rough handling. Carrying him along would only slow us down. The best option is to leave him here temporarily — it's better for his condition too." Ever since getting into medical school, Doctor Fang's teachers had drilled one principle into him: a healer's heart is compassionate. If someone can be saved, you must try, no matter what.
"Number One, think about this carefully?" Patient Number Five wasn't afraid of death himself — he seemed to be worried about Patient Number Four's safety. "It's not just this patient in mortal danger. We're all targets of the killer. To risk all the survivors' lives for one person who might not even make it — do you think that's worth it?"
"What risk is he making you take? We're only separating temporarily — one group goes to find medicine, find doctors, seek help. The other group stays here to guard him." Patient Number Two was visibly displeased. "There's probably only one killer. There are seven of us. There's no need to be that afraid of him."
Patient Number Two had apparently dealt with all manner of vicious criminals in the past, so he didn't show much fear. He was even thinking about catching the killer.
"Three stay, the other four go find medicine. Number One needs to monitor the patient's condition at all times — he has to stay. Dr. Sun and Dr. Gao know the routes outside, and one of them needs to come with us." Patient Number Two's thinking was remarkably clear — he didn't seem like a patient at all.
In just a few minutes, Patient Number Two had already sorted out the teams.
Chen Ge, Dr. Sun, Dr. Gao, and Patient Number Two would go outside to find medicine and other night-shift doctors. Doctor Fang, Patient Number Four, and Patient Number Five would stay behind to look after Zhang Jingjiu.
"Hurry up — the wound is already festering. This rate of deterioration is absurdly fast."
"Lock the door. We'll come back the moment we find someone." In truth, Patient Number Two hadn't initially planned to let Chen Ge go outside, because Chen Ge's legs were still weak. But Dr. Gao and Dr. Sun both seemed unwilling to be separated from Chen Ge, so Patient Number Two had no choice but to let him join the group.
Pushing open the emergency room door, the image of the other Dr. Sun instantly flashed through Chen Ge's mind. He knew the man was hiding somewhere in the darkness — perhaps watching him at this very moment.
"What Number Two needs is on the fourth floor, but I wouldn't recommend going to the fourth floor to get medicine. To be safe, we should check other wards first." Dr. Sun's words seemed deliberately designed to provoke Chen Ge into asking questions.
"Why can't we go to the fourth floor? Is it locked?" Chen Ge played along.
"The hospital director's office used to be on the fourth floor of Ward Four. After the first director committed suicide, the new director moved his office somewhere else." Dr. Sun's expression was calm, but the information he conveyed was enormous.
"The hospital's first director committed suicide? Right here in this hospital?" Chen Ge was growing more and more curious.
"Mm. This is a hospital taboo — very few people talk about it." Dr. Sun lowered his voice. "This hospital used to be Xinhai's largest hospital. It was built in the Xinhai New District, but later, for reasons nobody knows, people kept dying in it. At first it was medical malpractice — the ones who died were critically ill patients. Then cleaning staff started disappearing. After that came nurses and doctors."
"They were murdered, weren't they?"
"If they'd been murdered, then what happened afterward wouldn't have occurred." Dr. Sun said this with deep meaning. "Every single one of the deceased had a clear cause of death. Most of them committed suicide. As for the remaining few, their bodies have never been found."
"You're really making this sound terrifying." Chen Ge felt a chill run down his arm — the doctor beside him, Dr. Gao, had an unnaturally low body temperature, practically that of a corpse.
"The reality is even more horrifying than what I'm telling you." Dr. Sun walked alongside Chen Ge. "I remember the first death that shouldn't have happened was in Ward Four. Strictly speaking, it was a medical malpractice case. The patient's family was furious and came to the hospital to cause a scene. They scared the doctor so badly that he ended up hiding in the morgue. The director personally came forward to negotiate with the family and managed to send them away. But when they went to check on the doctor in the morgue, they found that he was already dead."
"Dead? What was the cause of death?"
"The Xinhai police ruled it a suicide. The scene did indeed look like a suicide — the doctor had hanged himself with a burial shroud. Asphyxiation. His body was hanging from the door frame."
"They ruled it a suicide outright? Isn't that a bit hasty?" Chen Ge felt something was off, but police investigations were based on evidence. Everything rested on facts.
"Well, people could understand why that doctor would kill himself. His life was already a mess, and on top of that he'd been involved in a serious malpractice incident. With no connections or backing, he wasn't just going to lose his job — he might even face a lawsuit. Under that kind of pressure, it's not hard to imagine him losing hope." Dr. Sun seemed to be finding reasons for the doctor's death.
"The second person to die was a night-shift nurse. The surveillance footage showed she'd been lying face-down at the nurses' station the entire night, maintaining the same posture from start to finish. When the morning shift arrived to take over, they discovered her body had already gone completely cold." As Dr. Sun recounted these horrifying events, his voice and expression didn't change in the slightest — as though he were simply telling a story.