The smell of disinfectant in the hospital corridors had always seemed so pungent. Yet when the cold wind blew through, it made Li Xiao sneeze and wake up a little.
She pushed a treatment cart, having just changed the dressing for a patient in Room 307, and was on her way back to the nurses' station to write up the records.
The fluorescent lights in the emergency department buzzed overhead, casting a cold white glow across the floor.
The young nurse pushed her cart briskly through the third-floor corridor alone, her rubber soles repeatedly rubbing against the polished floor with faint squeaks.
The floor had clearly just been mopped and was still wet. At times like this, those large tiles always felt slippery underfoot.
She glanced at the time. It was already ten at night.
The registration hall and hospital corridors had gradually fallen quiet. Even most of the inpatients should have been settling down to rest by now.
Some said a quiet hospital was often far more frightening than a busy one, and Li Xiao wholeheartedly agreed.
...Though that did not stop her from planning to finish the horror movie she had only watched halfway through yesterday on her phone later, if no additional patients called for help during the night.
After all, at this hour, only the occasional ringing telephone in the emergency department or nurses' station would break this rare silence.
She had just passed the reception desk when the elevator doors opened. Two figures emerged in the blink of an eye and, without much hesitation, headed with clear purpose straight toward the director's office at the end of the corridor.
The two wore ordinary jackets, but their postures were upright, their steps steady, and their eyes constantly swept over both sides of the corridor, the decorations on the walls, and every potential blind spot.
Li Xiao's heart suddenly skipped a beat—she had seen this familiar style and habit many times in her uncle, who had once worked as an auxiliary officer at a police station.
They were most likely from the public security system.
But it was so late. If they really were police officers, what were they doing at the hospital?
As she thought about it, her feet did not stop moving. She suppressed her curiosity and expertly returned the remaining medication.
When she wheeled the cart back to the nurses' station, she saw her colleague Xiao Wen yawning at the computer the moment she stepped inside.
"Did you see that?" Li Xiao lowered her voice and jerked her chin toward the director's office across the loop-shaped corridor.
Looking out through the window, she could see an unusual light still shining behind the frosted glass of the director's office.
That was the strange part.
At this time under normal circumstances, the hospital leadership should have gotten off work long ago.
Xiao Wen immediately perked up and leaned closer. "Those two who just went over? I saw them. Who were they?"
"They went straight into the director's office too. So mysterious. Could they be people causing trouble over medical treatment, or some other kind of problem?"
Young people always loved a spectacle, no matter how big the trouble was.
"Who knows?" Li Xiao answered aloud, but Xiao Wen's words set her thinking.
Those two... were probably plainclothes officers, right?
But if they really were people causing trouble over medical treatment, or someone with bad intentions, then with Director Zhang's beer-belly physique, could he suddenly get his mouth taped shut in his office and be hung up like a punching bag for someone's workout?
Just as her thoughts began to run wild, the internal phone beside the head nurse rang.
"...Mm, all right."
After ending the brief call, the head nurse's expression became somewhat serious.
"Xiaoxiao, the director's office just called. They want electronic copies of all the ambulance dispatch records from the past half month. Organize them, print them out, and deliver them immediately."
"Okay, Head Nurse." Li Xiao responded, though the doubts in her heart only deepened.
They were pulling emergency ambulance dispatch records? And in such a hurry?
That was not common.
But doubts were doubts. Work still had to be done.
She sat before the computer, quickly logged into the head nurse's account, and began searching the system. After selecting the dates and scope, she waited as the old printer slowly spat out report after report, like an old smoker blowing out one smoke ring after another.
Once the thick stack of documents had finished printing, Li Xiao sorted them out and clipped them together. She could not help letting out a long yawn before carrying the materials toward the director's office.
The door was still closed, but the corridor was quiet enough that she could vaguely hear voices inside. She softened her steps and instinctively paused before knocking.
Then she heard a calm male voice speaking inside—
"...It would be best to have paper copies, photocopies, or photographs, especially ambulance dispatch records involving cases where people 'suddenly fainted,' along with the specific medical files..."
The other voice seemed to belong to the director. Listening carefully, she could even hear traces of hesitation and confusion in it. "Officer, the hospital's dispatch records themselves aren't a problem, but these specific medical records may involve patient privacy. We need to follow certain procedures..."
The first man interrupted him directly.
"Special circumstances, Director Zhang. This concerns public safety, and it is not just your hospital. We hope to receive the full cooperation of every hospital in this city and county..."
"...Especially all files from the past three days involving cases of people 'suddenly fainting,' regardless of age..."
"Also, someone may come later to specifically look into the related circumstances..."
Li Xiao's heartbeat inexplicably quickened.
She did not dare listen any longer and hurriedly knocked on the door.
...As though someone had pressed pause, the conversation inside abruptly stopped.
"Come in."
It was the director's voice.
Only then did Li Xiao push the door open, wearing the earnest, straight-ahead expression of a student unexpectedly called on by a teacher in class. "Director, the materials you asked for are ready."
"Good, just put them here. Thank you for your hard work." The overly round director nodded kindly at Li Xiao, his tone perfectly normal as he motioned for her to place the documents on the desk.
But the sharp-eyed young nurse noticed a faint sheen of sweat on his broad forehead.
At that moment, the atmosphere in the office... carried a strange, subtle tension.
The two visiting plainclothes officers sat on the sofa nearby, their expressions calm and their mouths shut. Yet as she put down the documents, their eyes discreetly swept over the stack of papers, then quickly returned to her face with a hint of professional scrutiny.
"Okay, then I'll leave you to your work. If there's nothing else, I'll head out first." After placing the materials on the director's desk, Li Xiao tried to keep her expression natural. She then turned and left the office, gently closing the door behind her.
Only after the deliberately heavy sound of her footsteps had clearly moved several paces away did faint voices resume in the office behind her.
When she returned to the nurses' station, Xiao Wen immediately questioned her with her eyes. Li Xiao only shook her head and said nothing. She simply sat down and pretended to organize documents, though her heart felt as though a cat were scratching at it.
Plainclothes officers visiting in the middle of the night, ambulance records being investigated, information on "sudden fainting" cases...
Several scattered and abnormal fragments of information kept circling through the young nurse's mind, yet she could never piece them together clearly.
And still, an indescribable sense of wrongness quietly began to spread through her thoughts.
Unable to stop herself from shivering, Li Xiao completely lost any desire to continue the foreign horror movie she had planned to watch.
Come to think of it, was the air conditioning at the nurses' station set a little too low?
She casually picked up the remote on the desk and raised the temperature by two degrees. It seemed to feel much better afterward.
Yet the things she had heard earlier continued echoing in her mind.
Even if she could not make sense of it, her intuition told her that what these two plainclothes officers had come to investigate did not seem to be an ordinary public security case, or merely a medical issue...
Sitting in her chair, Li Xiao took off her nurse's cap again and hung it up, then casually glanced out the window.
The city nightscape remained bustling and peaceful. The supermarkets and restaurants outside the hospital were still lit up, immersed in the nightlife of customers coming and going, no different from usual.
Yes, there was absolutely nothing visibly different.
—Don't scare yourself. Maybe I'm just overthinking it.
She comforted herself like that.
Even after signing the shift records, the young nurse still felt oddly downcast as she lay facedown on the desk, not even looking at her phone again.
...What she did not know was that beneath this calm surface, perhaps something incomprehensible truly was quietly happening.
Some people had merely happened to hear the first crisp crack from beneath the iceberg.