Chapter 83
The doctor on the left thought for a moment, then looked at the doctor on the right. The doctor on the right was silent for a moment, then gave the older nurse a not-so-good smile and said, "Why don't we talk about something else? For example, why did the head nurse suddenly become like that? Don't you have any idea at all?"
The elderly nurse was confused by the question. She thought she could get the answer to the question from others, but who knew? Now it turns out that others don't know the answer either. What's going on?
The older nurse was stunned.
The doctor on the right sighed. Seeing her expression, he knew there was nothing more to ask. He turned around and said to her, "Anyway, we should consider how to deal with the body now. We can't let the head nurse's body just lie on the floor of an empty room, right?"
The older nurse asked stupidly, "How do you know the head nurse is lying on the floor of an empty room?"
Her expression gradually turned into one of horror, as if she was thinking of something that she shouldn't have thought of in a horror movie.
The doctor on the right glanced at the older nurse and felt that he could probably guess that the older nurse was remembering something. He couldn't help but show a helpless look on his face. He turned around and said to the older nurse: "Are you wondering why I know this? You just said it yourself, don't you remember?"
He may have taken the old nurse's age into consideration, and also considered that the old nurse was not in good health, and that she was an old employee who had no merits but had worked hard. If she did not work in such a hospital, she could walk around the hospital just based on her working age. He sighed helplessly: "You just said..."
The older nurse nodded slowly, remembering something, and smiled awkwardly: "I remember it now, I remember it, you don't need to say it again, didn't you just say you wanted to clean up the body? Let's go and clean up the body now?"
As she spoke, she turned around and went upstairs, as if she wanted to deal with the body with empty hands.
The doctor on her left called out to her, "Don't worry, we still need to bring some things, masks, gloves, and plastic wrap. If there is no suitable transparent film, I think using plastic wrap will have similar effects."
The older nurse shivered at the thought that she might have wrapped the head nurse's body in plastic wrap with her own hands. She hugged her arms, touched the goose bumps on her hands, and asked in a low voice as if she was afraid of disturbing a ghost: "You, you mean, we should wrap the head nurse in plastic wrap? Why can't we burn the head nurse's body?"
She cried and said, "Anyway, the head nurse is dead. She is an internal staff of our hospital. People outside should have no right to interfere. For the convenience of storage or disposal, we are responsible for burning the employee's body. It is also normal. Even if people outside have problems, they can't do so much. By the time they react, we will have turned the body into ashes and packed it up."
The elderly nurse looked up like a baby seeking shelter. She touched a handful of green, sticky liquid with her pale face, widened her black and white eyes, stared at the two doctors opposite her, and asked as if she was mumbling to herself, "Isn't this good? Isn't this convenient, fast, and simple enough? We don't have to make bad things worse every time, right?"
She seemed to be in desperate need of others' affirmation. She took a big step forward and stretched out her hands to grab the doctor who was not far away, but she failed to grab him. I don't know if she was not feeling well and therefore did not support this action, or if she was worried about something and kept chattering absent-mindedly: "There is such a good solution. We don't need to do that. It's so troublesome. Please help me! I will not repay kindness with enmity. I will be grateful to you. You are all good people. Otherwise, why do you want to be a doctor?"
The elderly nurse smiled as if she had found some comfort in her heart. She looked at the two doctors' faces without focusing her eyes. "Isn't that right? Doctors can't just ignore human lives, right? The dead can't come back to life, but I'm still alive. I don't want to die. I want to live. There are many people waiting for me at home. I want to go home. Please help me!"
She knelt down all of a sudden: "If you don't help me, I will die. I don't want to lose my job. I can't live without a job. How can I live without a job? Please, wuwuwu——"
The two doctors took a step back, keeping a distance from her, and looked at her with a relatively calm expression, as if they were a director checking the work situation on the set, or as if they were observing whether the elderly nurse's tears were really falling.
Or maybe they don't care about the former or the latter, they just think that the older nurses are not in good health physically and mentally. The result of this double combination is that they feel they cannot get close to the older nurses, or they will be caught as gangsters or criminals and sent to prison. That is a dangerous warning.
They carefully followed the warning of their intuition and did not approach the older nurse. The older nurse knelt on the ground, covering her face with her hands, covering most of her eyes and nose. She was crying, her nose was running, and she was almost drooling. She didn't know what was wrong with her. She usually wouldn't drool when she was awake. Besides, she didn't feel hungry.
The elderly nurse cried for a while, then felt it was meaningless and didn't want to continue crying. She wiped her face, stood up, and thought to herself, the hospital is so big, but only a small part of it has electricity, and the rest is dark. Even so, there are still many patients and medical staff in this hospital, and I can't just give up on myself.
Many patients came because other hospitals were either full or unwilling to take the risk of taking over for fear of being affected and going bankrupt.
There are actually many medical staff still here because of the local custom, or one of the tacit rules agreed upon. Everyone believes that a job should end until retirement, so they will not change jobs easily. If they leave before the hospital closes down, most other jobs will be difficult to find, and they may not be able to survive. This is why she doesn't want to leave at all.
The two doctors looked at the older nurse and asked, "You don't look very well, do you? Why don't you go with us to the dormitory and take a shower?"
The older nurse shook her head and said, "No, the dormitory is too far away. It's not suitable. It's still working hours now, right? Besides, I didn't get paid for last month and the month before last. I can't just leave my job like this. I'm afraid I won't even get paid for this month. I don't plan to leave here next month, really."
She smiled at the two doctors and said, "I don't mean to embarrass you."
The two doctors nodded.
The older nurse added, "I apologize to you for my previous behavior. I was so careless that I thought you could help me. It was my fault. I'm sorry. I hope you can forgive me. I was probably not very clear-headed, and I still am, so my words may not sound nice. I hope you don't mind."
As she spoke, she smiled at the two doctors and seemed a little desperate.
The doctor looked at each other and nodded: "We forgive you, we don't mind, and you don't need to care."
The older nurse smiled again, as if ready to start talking nonsense, and nodded, saying, "Then let's go find something now, and then go upstairs to deal with the head nurse's body!"
Although her attitude changed so quickly and directly that people couldn't help but felt confused, the two doctors didn't want to cause trouble, so they nodded and agreed to her proposal.
Originally, the two doctors were the first to come up with the idea, so it was normal for them to agree. The older nurse was expecting this, so she smiled amiably and walked in front of the two men.
The three of them walked forward, found something suitable to deal with, went upstairs, and saw the head nurse's body lying on the ground in a changed position. The two doctors looked at each other, then looked at the older nurse and asked, "Are you sure this is the head nurse's body?"
How can a corpse move on its own?
The elderly nurse nodded and said, "I am very sure about this. You don't have to question me. She doesn't look normal, does she? I am not saying that she is not normal at ordinary times, but she is undoubtedly not normal at ordinary times. At least, most of us are not like her, calculative, self-righteous, chattering, and extremely troublesome..."
She didn't know how, but she started complaining about the head nurse.
"You don't know, the head nurse is so annoying. If it weren't for her, many of us would be more efficient at work and our lives would be much happier. But you can't feel it without experiencing it yourself. I can't say much, or it would be like venting anger at a dead person. Although everyone knows what the head nurse is like, right? There's no need to explain it in detail..."
The older nurse was talking while moving her hands. She rolled up her sleeves, held something, approached the head nurse, and slowly squatted down, holding her breath to avoid accidentally smelling the stench or being infected, and her hands moved very quickly.
She was disposing of the body.
The two doctors came to their senses and prepared to help.
The corpse was quickly dealt with. They found a stretcher with wheels and placed the head nurse's body on it. They covered the surface with a thin layer of transparent plastic wrap, from which a green sticky liquid was dripping out. It smelled like a sewer and was very unbearable.
The older nurse started to chatter again: "The head nurse is such a disgusting person. Nothing good happened to her when she was alive, and she is still like this after she died. Did she do bad things in her last life, and now she is being punished for it? Haha."
As she spoke, she glanced at the head nurse, but did not notice any change on her dead face, as if she had just remembered that the head nurse was already dead. She pursed her lips, as if she did not intend to continue talking. Or perhaps it was because the two doctors did not speak to her and the atmosphere was a little awkward, so she did not want to continue talking and stopped, so as not to end it too late.
The body was placed in an empty room. There was a rickety swing outside the window. There was no one there and it was pitch black. Not far away was a dark red and green ivy with long vines hanging down, probing outwards a little bit, as if a living person was trapped inside seeking help, but no one could notice its plight. It looked desperate and terrifying.
A breeze blew from afar, and the swing was still creaking, like the chirping of cicadas hiding in the dense shade of trees under the scorching sun in summer, which sounded very irritating.
The older nurse spoke again, "It's so annoying. These things are not good at all. I don't know what's going on. I never noticed them before. It's like they didn't exist before. It's strange. Do you think so too? Why don't you say anything? It feels very strange. It's like except for me, you are all dead, and this hospital is dead too. Look!"
She suddenly shouted.
The two doctors looked over following her voice, but there was still nothing outside. No wind, no one was around, the swing was swaying, and it was a pitch-black mass that looked blurry, as if the window glass had been there for a long time and had been covered with a layer of grease from a restaurant somewhere, turning it into a special prop like a telescope that would make people dizzy.
The two doctors looked at the older nurse.
The older nurse took back her hand, covered her mouth and nose, and her voice slowly floated out from the gap: "You don't know, I just saw a little girl in white clothes, with long black hair hanging down, unkempt, without a hair tie or hair band, and tattered clothes. She had no shoes, and her socks were white, but very dirty, with holes, and it seemed like she hadn't been washed for a long time..."
She wanted to describe what she saw in more detail, but after a pause, she suddenly couldn't remember it. Everything felt blurry. She nervously looked at the two doctors beside her and felt that their facial features were also a little blurry. She slowly opened her mouth and froze.
The two doctors didn't know what was going on with her. They opened their mouths to ask, but were afraid of disturbing her memories and thoughts. They looked at each other, shook their heads, and stopped paying attention to her. They lowered their heads and continued to deal with the previous matters.
Keep the head nurse's body for now.
The elderly nurse suddenly had an idea and shouted, "I know! It's a ghost! Don't you know? Ghosts are like this. They come like a gust of wind and disappear like a gust of wind. They make a mess everywhere and sound weird and strange. They are scary, but you can't find them. When they appear, it's very cold. They are a white shadow."
The elderly nurse blinked her eyes and suddenly shouted happily: "Yes! That is a white shadow! You didn't know it, did you? You didn't see it at all, you don't know what it is, I understand, but you can't treat me like this, right? I'm talking!"
She shouted, "You can't be so indifferent to me. If it is a real ghost, you must be careful when you meet it, otherwise you may be killed without knowing it. Then, it will be me who saved your life. You must remember to thank me. In this way, I will repay your kindness, or maybe I will not even have any kindness at all."
However, it is said that ghosts are vindictive, so maybe we can all escape."
The older nurse chuckled.
She looks a little weird now.
The two doctors looked at each other, nodded, and said nothing more.
The older nurse paused and looked at the head nurse. The head nurse's body was still motionless, but she was indeed dead but still alive. The older nurse suddenly felt unhappy about the head nurse's face and murmured, "Don't you think so? This face is neither pale nor green. It looks so weird. It doesn't look like death at all. We have all seen dead faces. It's not like this."
She continued to talk.
The two doctors had already treated the head nurse's body and stopped working, preparing to find water to wash it.
The elderly nurse looked at her hands and said to them, "I don't want to go to the dormitory. It's too dark and cold. If I go, my boss, who may be hiding somewhere, might deduct my salary. I don't want that. I'll just wash in the toilet next door. There's water there. What do you think?"
The doctor said, "If you want, go now. We will find you or the patient later."
The older nurse nodded and smiled, "I'm not worried about you."
She said this and walked away.
The doctor on the left sat down, looked at the doctor on the right, sighed and said, "It has been several months since we have received your salary. Although we have not been very obedient to you before, we have not been inconsiderate in any way. Can you tell me what is going on?"
The doctor on the right stood there, stunned for a moment. He didn't expect that this would be the first question asked by the doctor on the left after the older nurse left. He felt embarrassed, but then he thought that it was only a matter of time before this question was asked in a difficult situation. He hesitated for a moment, wanted to sit on the chair next to him, glanced at the doctor on the left, and stood up again, looking a little restless.
The doctor on the left watched him walk around without urging him.
The doctor on the right took a deep breath, turned sideways and said to the doctor on the left: "I haven't received my salary either. This matter is not just a dilemma for you and me. I am not saying this to shirk my responsibility. Please don't get me wrong. What I mean is that no one is being targeted. We are——"
He turned his back: "Abandoned."
The doctor on the left frowned, stood up and walked around to the doctor on the right, stared at him and asked, "They don't want you anymore? Aren't you usually very proud in front of them?"
The doctor on the right smiled bitterly and said, "Proud? It's useless. It just looks a bit glamorous in front of you, but it's not like that in reality. Don't confuse other people's situations with mine. What happened in the past is in the past. It's useless."
He shook his head.
The doctor on the left asked hesitantly, "What should we do?"
The doctor on the right shook his head: "I don't know. I originally thought that we just needed to hold on for a while, but, as you can see, the current situation is simply unbearable. No one can hold on any longer. The nurses can even fall asleep while standing. Patients are sent in batches. We have clearly sternly refused, but they still want to shirk their responsibility and throw them here, as if the patients have become garbage."
He gave a somewhat sarcastic smile: "Who is the garbage? It's hard to say. If the patients are garbage, what are we? This hospital is a big garbage can, and we are the mold in the garbage can, the mosquitoes and flies in the garbage can, and the stray dogs next to the garbage can. We can't survive without the hospital, and if we don't leave the hospital, we will die sooner or later."
The doctor on the left frowned and asked, "Is this also how infectious patients are sent here?"
The doctor on the right sneered, "Can't you guess? You didn't hear or see anything? Ah, even if you don't know anything, you are very busy anyway and not by my side. It is understandable that you don't know these things. I know that you put all your hopes on me, hoping that I can help you, hoping that I can rescue you from the abyss like a rope.
But I don't have that ability, it's such a pity, sorry, I can't help you, and I can't tell you more unknown news, now it's a dead end, if there is a chance, I won't stay here, this is unavoidable, you should all know, otherwise, who would still be here?"
After the doctor on the right said these words, he looked much more listless, as if he had suddenly lost some energy.
The doctor on the left thought for a moment and asked, "What exactly is going on? Can you tell me more about the infectious patient?"
The doctor on the right spoke up, and now he didn't think there was anything he couldn't say. He sighed and replied weakly, "Someone outside called me and asked me if I could contact my superiors. I said I would try my best, but they said they didn't know. They hadn't seen them for a long time, and they hadn't heard of them. They didn't come back, so they probably abandoned this place, but they didn't believe it.
They didn't believe me, so I didn't say much. It would be useless to say anything anyway, as no one would listen. Instead of wasting time, I might as well do something else.
It's better to treat patients than to waste time. Besides, everyone is so sleepy that I'd rather rest.
But they kept calling me, and you know what happened next. After they couldn't contact the staff more senior than me, they seemed to regard me as the person in charge of the hospital and asked me on the phone whether the hospital could still accept patients.
Originally, there was a special person in charge of answering the phone. However, as you know, the person who answered the phone resigned because of the lack of salary, heavy workload and young age. He was not going to get paid anyway, so he left early. When he was packing up, no one noticed him or stopped him. From then on, whoever saw or heard him answered the phone.
Whenever they took the job, they came to me. As a result, it was like this matter became my job, and I couldn't ask anyone else to take over, so things just got by like this.
I told the person on the other end of the phone that it was not that I didn't want to, but the hospital's resource reserves were running low and it was simply not possible.
They didn’t believe it and kept begging me, saying that if our hospital didn’t take over, there would be nothing we could do.”
The doctor on the right sneered, as if he had exhausted his energy and needed to rest. He paused for a long time but was just gasping for breath.
The doctor on the left blinked and asked, "What else did you say?"
The doctor on the right raised his eyes and asked, "You can't guess? It's nothing more than those words. If we don't treat them, those patients will have no chance of being treated. We are doctors, we can't be so cold-blooded. Even if we are used to seeing people die, we can't leave patients who can be cured alone and let them lose their lives in vain, right? I had no choice but to agree reluctantly."
The doctor on the left asked hesitantly, "What happens after you agree?"
The doctor on the right smiled and said, "As you can see, after we agreed, they drove over right away. They couldn't have been that fast even if they had wings. I think they have decided that we are a hospital that is about to go bankrupt and no one from above will care. Even if they kill us all, it is our fault and has nothing to do with them. This is such a great opportunity."
They can get rid of the burden, but we have to bear greater responsibilities. However, we cannot bear such a heavy responsibility, and they cannot control so much.
As soon as I hung up the phone, they drove over, took us to the gate, and were about to leave. The patients and stretchers were blocking our exit on the road, as if they were afraid that we would run away and not come back.
As soon as I took one look at the patient, I knew we couldn't save him, so I advised them to send him to a hospital that could treat him. However, they told me that other hospitals would not accept him, so there was nothing they could do if they sent him to us.
I didn't want to make things difficult for them, so I could only ask them to check carefully. If they really couldn't treat the patient, we would have to send the patient away even if it was kept here.
They just nodded and said nothing.
I was about to do the examination when someone called me, so I quickly left to deal with the patients with emergencies in the hospital.
Before leaving, I told the person who sent me there that there was no way to treat this patient and asked me to send him to another place for treatment as soon as possible.
The man didn't listen, he just looked at me. I didn't care and left with the people in the hospital. When I came back, the patient was gone, but the stretcher was still there. The person and the car that brought the patient were gone. There were no tire marks left, and the exhaust fumes were nowhere to be found. What should I do? I could only quickly clean up the place and continue to do my work.
The doctor on the left squinted and asked, "Have you ever considered telling us about this?"
The doctor on the right smiled bitterly and said, "Do you think I haven't thought about it? I just thought about it for a moment and then nothing happened. I can tell you this, but what good can it do? What can we do after knowing it? If we know it, can we treat patients? If we know it, will we have more medicine and more electricity? If we know it, can we find the missing patients and send them back? I'm afraid none of these can happen."
He shook his head. "I didn't say anything. I know this is not a good idea, but I can't think of any other solution at the moment. It's like broken glass. After it breaks, we quickly deal with the shards and the ground is clean. But the glass can't just be replaced. That's very laborious and costs money. We are all short of money and don't have any extra energy. I'm also thinking about everyone."
The doctor on the right frowned: "I don't want to excuse myself, but this is the truth. Hiding it is the easiest and quickest way, isn't it?"
He closed his eyes and seemed to be about to fall asleep.
The doctor on the left was speechless. He knew that what the doctor on the right said was true, whether it was lack of resources, lack of money, lack of people, lack of electricity, lack of medical supplies, or inability to treat patients and unable to take care of existing patients. There was no way to solve the problem. It was not that they wanted to shirk their responsibility, but that everyone was helpless and someone had to stand in front.
The doctor on the right is the one standing in the front. He has to stand in the front because there is no one in front of him. He has no choice but to stand out on his own.
The two of them looked at each other in silence for a long while.
The older nurse slowly walked out the door.
The doctor on the left asked: "Have you seen an infectious patient before?"
The doctor on the right answered: “Yes.”
The doctor on the left asked: "What are the characteristics?"
The doctor on the right answered: "He had a weird smile on his face, and his facial features were leaking green pus, which emitted a foul odor. He could not move on his own, his self-awareness disappeared, and his reactions were different from those of ordinary people. His internal muscles and organs were almost dissolved. Theoretically, he was a person who could not move, but his body disappeared. You can tell that this is not normal."
The doctor on the left twitched his lips, trying to resist or perhaps liven up the atmosphere: "Maybe it's just an infectious disease that we don't understand. It's not that scary, right?"
The doctor on the right looked up at him and asked, "If you really think so, I asked you to follow me to find the missing infectious patient. Are you willing?"
The doctor on the left nodded bravely.
The doctor on the right asked with a mocking smile: "Then I want you to dissect the infectious patient with me. Are you willing?"
The doctor on the left asked, "Did you find it?"
The doctor on the right sneered, "If I had found it, why would I waste my time here with you?"
The doctor on the left lowered his head, his face flushed with an inexplicable red, as if he was angry and embarrassed, and muttered, "I didn't send this either."
The doctor on the right laughed and said, "Yes, if you sent it here, I would find the infected person right now, wrap him up like a mummy and put him in your arms. Even if I have to tie you up with the infected person, I will make you take him out. I don't care whether you take out a corpse or a monster. Even if it's a living person, you have to send him out. Do you think you can still sit here and talk to me?"
Although he said this with a smile, his tone was sinister and the meaning of his words was very stimulating. The doctor on the left felt a chill and shuddered. He smiled awkwardly and said, "It was just a joke."
The doctor on the right nodded: "Me too, I hope you like the joke."
The doctor on the left stood up and said, "Let's stop joking and go find the missing infectious patient. Maybe he's hiding somewhere among us? I hope we can find him soon, and then things will be much easier."
The doctor on the right poured cold water on him, "That's not certain. Maybe finding the virus will be the beginning of a new incident. Do you think it's that simple? What if we are also infected? Who will take over the next operation? Who will answer the phone and connect with other people? Who will manage the nurses and the patients? Who will lie down and wait to die? Or, guess who will be infected first after we are infected?"
The doctor on the left stopped talking.
He thought, it would be better for me to keep my mouth shut, so as not to say something unpleasant and affect the overall situation.
The two men walked out. The older nurse was sitting at the door in a daze. When she heard them coming out, she quickly stood up, holding onto the wall.
"Are you done yet?"
The two doctors looked at the older nurse and asked.
The nurse nodded: "Yes."
The doctor said, "Well, you can rest here for a while before going out to work."
The elderly nurse lowered her head and said, "Not so good. Everyone is working, so I won't rest here."
The doctor said, "It's up to you."
The older nurse nodded.
"We have things to do, so we'll leave first. Take your time to think about it. Don't leave too hastily or you'll fall on the road again."
The doctor finished his instructions and walked away.
The older nurse pressed her own pounding heart, feeling a surge of warmth in her chest, and quietly followed.
She wanted to know more about the infected person.
The doctor on the left was walking on the street and asked the doctor on the right: "How are infectious diseases transmitted?"
The doctor on the right said, "I don't know. I didn't go out and didn't see it. But when I called, the person on the other end told me that the infectious disease is spread in a very mysterious way. There is still no clear conclusion. Some say it is spread by will, and you will be infected as long as you are afraid or panic. Some say it is spread by contact, especially □□, which is also those green sticky things."
He shook his head: "I'm not sure. Anyway, when we come into contact, we should be careful, don't be too scared, and don't reach out and touch directly."
The doctor on the left nodded.
The two men found the infected patient who seemed unconscious in the junk room near the gate.
The patient was motionless, hiding in the corner, like a giant human-shaped doll with a layer of sticky green liquid on its surface. A lot of green liquid was also overflowing on the ground. No one knew where it came from, but if all the green liquid was blood, and the blood came from an infectious patient, the patient's body might be empty.
The doctor on the left carefully observed the appearance of the infected patient and indeed found the smile on the patient's cheek. As for the green mucus, he did not need to be reminded, as he could see it with his eyes open. He was just a little confused: "Why does it look normal? Didn't they say that the inside was dissolved? If it was dissolved, the outside couldn't be so intact! Are you sure you remembered it correctly or heard it correctly?"
The doctor on the right stepped forward and said, "I don't think so. You can also call and ask now. If I'm wrong, I apologize. If I can't get through, there's nothing I can do. You can handle it yourself."
The doctor on the left walked over and approached the infected patient and asked, "He's not going to jump up suddenly, is he?"
The doctor on the right laughed: "This isn't a zombie, how can it jump?"
The doctor on the left nodded: "That's right."
They managed to place the infected patient on a nearby stretcher, which was then placed on a wheelchair and pushed out of the utility room and into a nearby appropriate autopsy room.
"Is this okay?"
"Hopefully we can move faster and maybe we won't get infected."
The doctor on the right looked around and prepared to close the door.
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