Night Shift and the Hospital

The smell of disinfectant in the hospital corridors had always seemed just as pungent in her memory. When a cold draft swept through, Li Xiao could not help sneezing, which woke her up a little.

She pushed a treatment cart. Having just changed the dressing for a patient in Room 307, she was preparing to return to the nurses' station to write up the records.

The fluorescent tubes in the emergency department buzzed, casting a cold white light over the floor.

The young nurse pushed her cart alone through the third-floor corridor at a brisk pace, her rubber soles repeatedly rubbing against the polished floor and producing faint squeaks.

The floor had clearly been mopped not long ago and was still wet. At times like this, the large tiles always felt slippery underfoot.

She glanced sideways at the time. It was already ten o'clock at night.

From the registration hall to the hospital corridors, everything had gradually quieted down. Even most of the inpatients should have been settling in to rest by now.

Some said that a quiet hospital was often far more frightening than a bustling one, and Li Xiao firmly agreed.

...Though that did not stop her from planning to finish the horror movie on her phone that she had only watched halfway through yesterday, provided there were no extra patient calls later that night while she rested at the nurses' station.

After all, at this hour, only the occasional ringing of phones in the emergency department and nurses' station would break this rare tranquility.

She had just passed the inquiry desk when the elevator doors opened. Two figures emerged from the elevator in the blink of an eye. Without much hesitation, they headed with clear purpose straight toward the director's office at the end of the corridor.

The two wore ordinary jackets, but they stood tall, walked steadily, and constantly swept their gazes over both sides of the corridor, the wall decorations, and every possible blind spot.

Li Xiao's heart suddenly skipped a beat—she had seen that familiar style and habit many times in her uncle, who had once worked as an auxiliary police officer at the local 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 pondered this, her feet did not stop moving. She suppressed her curiosity and expertly returned the remaining medication.

When she pushed the cart back to the nurses' station, she saw her colleague Xiao Wen yawning at the computer the moment she entered.

"Did you see them?" Li Xiao lowered her voice and tilted her chin toward the director's office across the loop-shaped corridor.

Looking out through the window, they could see an unusual light still shining behind the frosted glass of the director's office.

That was the strange part.

At this hour under normal circumstances, the hospital's leadership should have left work long ago.

Xiao Wen immediately perked up and leaned closer. "Those two who just went over? I saw them. Who are they?"

"They went straight into the director's office too. So mysterious. Could they be troublemakers or something?"

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 troublemakers or people with bad intentions, could Director Zhang, with that beer belly of his, suddenly have his mouth taped shut in the office and get hung up like a punching bag for someone's workout?

While she was letting her imagination run wild, the internal phone beside the head nurse rang.

"...Mm, all right."

After the brief call ended, the head nurse's expression grew somewhat serious as well.

"Xiaoxiao, the director's office just called. They want electronic files of all the hospital's emergency dispatch records from the past half month. Organize them, print them out, and deliver them immediately."

"Understood, Head Nurse." Li Xiao responded, but her doubts only deepened.

They were retrieving ambulance emergency dispatch records? And in such a hurry?

That was hardly common.

Still, 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 setting the date range and scope, she waited as the old printer slowly spat out sheet after sheet, like smoke rings puffed from an old smoker's mouth.

Once the thick stack of documents had finished printing, Li Xiao organized them 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 the voices inside could faintly be heard. She lightened her footsteps and instinctively paused before knocking.

A steady male voice inside was speaking—

"...It would be best to have paper copies, photocopies, or photographs, especially ambulance dispatch records and detailed medical files involving people who 'suddenly fainted'..."

Another voice seemed to be the director's. Listening carefully, Li Xiao could even hear traces of hesitation and confusion in it. "Officer, the hospital's dispatch records alone aren't a problem, but detailed medical information may involve patient privacy. We need to follow certain procedures..."

The first male voice cut him off directly.

"This is a special situation, Director Zhang. It concerns public safety, and it isn't just your hospital. We hope to receive the full cooperation of every hospital in the city and county..."

"...Especially all files from the last three days involving people who 'suddenly fainted,' regardless of age..."

"Also, there may be others coming later to learn more about the situation..."

Li Xiao's heart began beating faster for no reason.

She did not dare listen any longer and quickly 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. She wore the serious, straight-ahead expression of a student unexpectedly called on by a teacher in class. "Director, the materials you requested are ready."

"Good. Just put them here. Thank you for your hard work." The director, whose figure was showing rather excessive signs of roundness, nodded kindly at Li Xiao in his usual tone and gestured for her to place the documents on the desk.

But the sharp-eyed young nurse noticed a faint oily sheen of sweat on his broad forehead.

At that moment, the atmosphere in the office... carried a vaguely strange tension.

The two plainclothes officers were sitting on the sofa nearby. Their expressions were calm, and neither said a word. Yet when she set down the documents, their eyes discreetly swept over the stack of papers before quickly returning to her face, carrying a professional air of scrutiny.

"All right, then I'll leave you to it. If there's nothing else, I'll be going now." After placing the materials on the director's desk, Li Xiao tried to keep her expression natural. She turned and left the office, gently closing the door behind her.

Only after the deliberately heavy sound of her footsteps had 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 merely shook her head and said nothing. She simply sat down and pretended to organize documents, though inside she felt as restless as if a cat were scratching at her heart.

Plainclothes officers arriving in the middle of the night, checking ambulance records, information on cases of "sudden fainting"...

Those scattered and unusual fragments of information kept circling through the young nurse's mind, yet she could never piece them together clearly.

And yet, an indescribable sense of wrongness quietly began spreading through her thoughts.

Unable to stop herself from shivering lightly, Li Xiao no longer had any desire to finish that foreign horror movie she had been planning 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 from the desk and raised the temperature by two degrees, which seemed to make things feel much better.

Yet what she had overheard earlier still echoed in her mind.

Even if she could not make sense of it, her intuition told her that whatever the two plainclothes officers had come to investigate did not seem as simple as an ordinary public security incident or a mere medical issue...

Sitting in her chair, Li Xiao casually removed her nurse's cap again and hung it by her station, then 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 nighttime comings and goings of their customers, no different from usual.

Yes, there was absolutely nothing that looked different.

Don't scare yourself. Maybe I'm just overthinking it.

She comforted herself that way.

After signing the duty log, the young nurse still felt inexplicably downcast as she lay sprawled over the desk, not even looking at her phone again.

...What she did not know was that beneath this calm, something incomprehensible might indeed have been quietly unfolding.

Some people had merely happened to hear the first crisp crack coming from beneath the iceberg.