The fifth floor of the hospital is the intensive care unit. There are protective railings outside the windows and the ward doors have been specially reinforced.
"It is now 12:30 in the morning. Our treatment will begin at 12:44 in the morning." Doctor Gao opened the medicine bottle on the table: "Before the treatment begins, please take one pill for each patient."
There were only four pills in Dr. Gao's medicine bottle. Excluding the two doctors who didn't need to take the medicine, there was still one pill missing for Chen Ge.
Putting the empty medicine bottle on the ground, Dr. Gao took out a new bottle of medicine from his pocket.
From the appearance, there is no difference between the two bottles of medicine.
While Dr. Gao was unpacking the medicine, Dr. Sun, who was sitting next to Chen Ge, took out a bottle of medicine from his pocket and said, "I still have some left."
He poured out a pill from his medicine bottle. The surface of the pill was pure white, but dense black lines could be vaguely seen inside the pill.
After seeing this, Doctor Gao reached out to stop him: "Chen Ge's condition has improved. He only needs to take half a tablet."
"Half a tablet?" Doctor Sun looked at Doctor Gao in confusion. He should know the treatment steps in advance.
"Yes, only half a tablet is needed." Doctor Gao seemed to have some concerns.
"This is different from what the dean asked for." Doctor Sun shook his head expressionlessly: "Although you are his attending physician, the dean still has the final say on some matters."
He stood up and stuffed the pill into Chen Ge's mouth. Chen Ge could feel the pill rubbing against his lips, but what made him feel strange was that Doctor Sun did not feed him the pill, but just blocked his mouth with his hand. The pill was still stuck between Doctor Sun's fingers.
Doctor Sun withdrew his hand, and Chen Ge swallowed subconsciously.
The medicine with the thin black line can make people crazy and lose their minds. Chen Ge knows this clearly. Now Dr. Sun doesn't want to feed him the medicine, and he secretly deceives Dr. Gao and other patients.
This made Chen Ge quite concerned. Doctor Sun, who was sitting next to him, did not seem to have any intention of hurting him.
"Since I entered the hospital, someone would knock on the door every night. The knocks corresponded to the number of days I spent in the hospital. It was as if the other party was worried that I would get lost, so they came to remind me every night."
"He knocked five times yesterday, so he should have knocked six times today. Coincidentally, when Dr. Sun entered the room, he knocked six times."
"Is this his way of telling me that he is the one who knocked at the door?"
There were thunder and lightning outside the window, but the ward was eerily quiet. Seven people sat in a circle. Except for Chen Ge and the two doctors, the other patients all lowered their heads as if they were asleep.
"They should be taking normal white medicine. The bottle of medicine that Doctor Gao has placed on the table is a replacement medicine that contains a thin black line." Before the treatment began, Chen Ge had already sensed something was wrong.
As Dr. Gao said before, if a patient has an attack, the others should work together to feed him the medicine on the table.
But it was obvious that the bottle of medicine on the table was not normal white pills, but medicine mixed with black threads. The more the patient took that kind of medicine, the more out of control he would become.
If the treatment continues in this way, the final result may very well be that the patient who takes medicine crazily will kill everyone in the house.
Chen Ge narrowed his eyes, and he suddenly remembered a detail. When Doctor Gao entered the ward, he casually hung the key next to the door, which was as if he was encouraging the patient to take it.
"After swallowing a large amount of the drug with black lines, the patient, who has completely lost control, kills everyone in the ward and leaves with the key by the door..."
The more Chen Ge thought about it, the more horrified he felt. If Doctor Sun had not stopped him, Doctor Gao would have fed him the drug with the black line at the beginning, but he would definitely be the first person to lose control.
The first one gets out of control, and then is controlled by the patient again, fed more drugs with black threads, and then becomes even more insane.
The end result is that Chen Ge will kill all the patients in the house, and then take the key and start hunting patients crazily.
If Chen Ge really did this, his humanity would be completely wiped out, all his persistence would become an indelible sin on him, and he would no longer be the same person he was before.
"All patients have taken their medication. Next, please remember the number on your chair. The number is your name." Doctor Gao took off his watch and placed it next to the medicine bottle: "Treatment will begin at 12:44:44 a.m."
All the patients and the hospital were looking at the metal dial. The room was very quiet, and gradually only the sound of the moving pointer remained.
"Tick-tock, tick-tock..."
The moment the pointer passed a certain number, Chen Ge felt an indescribable drowsiness surge into his mind.
His eyelids became heavy and he closed his eyes involuntarily, but he soon realized that he absolutely could not fall asleep now and had to stay awake.
As soon as he closed his eyes, he opened them again. The whole process took less than a second.
But in just this one second, a big change seemed to have taken place in the ward.
He himself couldn't tell what was different, but he felt vaguely uncomfortable, as if the ward they were in now was not the same ward as the previous one.
"It is now 12:44:44 in the morning. The treatment officially begins." Doctor Gao's voice seemed different from before. It was stiff and cold, like an emotionless corpse.
"You all suffer from severe paranoia. I called you here today because I want to treat you all together."
"Don't be nervous. I will play a little game with you. You just need to make a choice based on what you really want in your heart."
There was no emotion in Dr. Gao's voice. He first looked at Dr. Fang who was sitting in Room 1. "On April 1, you were on night shift at Xinhai Central Hospital. You were restless these past few days, always feeling like someone was watching you. At 12:45 in the evening, you stood up for the seventeenth time, walked to the window, and looked outside."
Doctor Gao suddenly paused for a long time, then pointed to the window of the ward and said, "Go and see what's outside the window?"
After taking the medicine, Dr. Fang, whose eyes looked a little abnormal, stood up from Seat No. 1. He held onto the wall and walked to the window.
The moment he opened the window, a flash of lightning flashed across his cheek, illuminating the inside of the ward and the hospital downstairs.
"Ah!" Doctor Fang screamed, and he held on to the edge of the windowsill tightly with both hands, as if he was afraid that he would jump down by accident.
"You got up and walked to the window for the seventeenth time, and then what did you see?" Dr. Gao's tone did not change at all. At this moment, he was like a corpse mixed among the living.
"There's a madman downstairs who's laughing the whole time. He's waving at me! He wants me to jump down!" Doctor Fang's voice was not loud, and he felt like he was almost out of breath when he spoke.
"You have two choices now. Jump down and find him? Or let him come up to you?" In Chen Ge's opinion, there was no choice between the two choices mentioned by Doctor Gao. This was the fifth floor. If he jumped down, he would surely die. If he wanted to survive, he could only choose to let the other party come up.
There was no need to hesitate about the question, but Dr. Fang began to think seriously about it, with drops of sweat sliding down his cheeks.
His body continued to tremble, and in the end he did not make a choice, but collapsed to the ground.
Doctor Gao did not speak until Doctor Fang got up again and looked outside from behind the curtains. Then he asked again, "Is that man still downstairs?"
"He's gone, he's gone." Doctor Fang looked horrified and he sat back in chair number one.
No one knew where the monster downstairs had gone, and Dr. Gao did not ask Dr. Fang any more questions, but Dr. Fang stared at the ward door, as if the madman would knock on the door soon.
Doctor Gao looked at Patient No. 2 again. "At 12:46 p.m., you came to Xinhai Central Hospital to investigate an old case. You have been looking for clues for the past few days, and finally all the information points to this hospital. You are sure that the murderer is hiding in the hospital. When you stood downstairs and looked up, you saw a doctor hurriedly closing the curtains."
Dr. Gao's eyes wandered between Dr. Fang and Patient No. 2: "Take a closer look and see if the doctor's face looks the same as his."
The patient sitting in chair number two raised his head. He was pale and looked much older than his actual age.
Patient No. 2 stared at Dr. Fang for a long time, then shook his head.
The room was calm again. The sound of the mechanical watch pointer moving rang in my ears. I didn't know how long it had been before Dr. Gao spoke to Patient No. 2 again: "At 12:47 p.m., you found a letter asking for help outside the hospital building. A boy's sister was stabbed by a patient, who was hiding in a ward. The description in the letter was somewhat similar to the case you had been investigating. You took the letter and entered the hospital."
Patient No. 2's condition was not very stable. He shook his head mechanically, as if he was unwilling to believe anything.
"Put your hand into your sleeve and see if the letter is still there?" Doctor Gao's voice rang out as the pointers crossed. The middle-aged male patient No. 2 subconsciously reached his hand into his sleeve and pulled out a crumpled piece of white paper.
Looking at the contents on the white paper, Patient No. 2 grabbed his hair fiercely. His eyes gradually turned red, and it seemed that he might lose control at any time.
"What's written in the letter?" Doctor Gao didn't care about the condition of Patient No. 2, and his tone of voice did not change.
Patient No. 2, with red eyes, placed the letter on the table. The entire piece of paper was filled with the three words "Save me" written in a crooked manner.
Those words should all have been written by a child. When Chen Ge saw those words, he felt a familiar feeling in his heart, as if these words were written by him when he was a child.
"You now have two choices, enter the hospital and save him, or enter the hospital and kill him."
After Dr. Gao said this, he no longer paid attention to Patient No. 2.
He himself was sitting in chair number three, and now he looked at the patient in chair number four.
Sitting on chair number four was a female patient. She looked very thin and her hospital gown seemed very loose on her.
"At 12:49 in the evening, you were attacked by a patient in your brother's ward, and he strangled you." Doctor Gao took the butterfly folded with tissue paper from Patient No. 4's hand and pinched the wings of the paper butterfly.
He slowly exerted force with both hands, and the body of the paper butterfly was slowly torn apart.
Looking at the butterfly being torn apart bit by bit in Doctor Gao's hand, Patient No. 4 seemed to be suffocating, as if Doctor Gao was not tearing the butterfly, but tearing her neck.
Her face was completely pale, and Patient No. 4 made a dying struggle sound in her throat. She waved her hands desperately at Doctor Gao, but she did not dare to snatch the paper butterfly from Doctor Gao.
"You are in great pain, and you long for someone to save you, but you dare not ask for help because the murderer said that if you open your mouth, he will kill you and your brother." Doctor Gao put the paper butterfly that was about to be torn apart on the table: "Now you have two choices in front of you: actively run into the murderer's sharp knife and let your brother escape and ask for help; or push your brother onto the tip of the knife and run out of the ward yourself."
Patient No. 4's breathing became rapid, and she seemed to be really trapped in this problem. She was in great pain and discomfort.
Dr. Gao stroked the wings of the paper butterfly with his fingers and looked at Patient No. 5 again: "At 12:50 at night, you stood outside a ward. The person you loved the most and her brother lived in the ward."
Patient No. 5 is about the same age as Chen Ge. He is a quiet person with calloused hands. He seems to be very good at making props.
"You struggled for a long time and finally made up your mind to go into the ward to see her. But when you pushed open the door, you saw a madman holding a sharp knife and trying to kill the brother of the person you loved the most, while the person you loved the most was begging the madman desperately."
"You now have two choices. Pull away the person you love most and take her away. Or rush over and fight the madman and die in place of her brother."
Doctor Gao observed the changes in Patient No. 5's expression. When he was about to look away, Patient No. 5 suddenly said, "I choose to rush over and fight the madman."
Among the several patients, Patient No. 5 was the only one who actually made a choice.
"Are you sure? You might actually die."
"I'm sure I think I did this once before." After saying this, Patient No. 5 fell silent again. He clenched his hands tightly together, and tiny wounds on his palms were bleeding.
Doctor Gao finally looked at Chen Ge: "At 12:52, you stabbed No. 5 in the heart with a sharp knife. After killing No. 5, you also killed No. 4 and her brother."
With force of his fingers, Dr. Gao tore the paper butterfly on the table into two pieces: "Then you clenched the bloody knife and rushed out of the ward. You saw No. 2 in the corridor. After killing No. 2, you saw No. 1 in the night doctor's duty room."
The ticking sound of the mechanical watch lingered in his ears, and Chen Ge's vision gradually became blurred. He pressed his hands tightly on the table, but his body stood up uncontrollably.
The mechanical watch on the table was still moving, and the time on the dial was 0:51:44.