Chapter 268: Hospital (2)
Everly sat with Misha in the fourth-floor public activity room for a while.
The two of them chatted back and forth, the conversation growing lively, when a blonde nurse suddenly pushed open the door and hurried inside. She paused at the entrance, scanned the room, and quickly locked onto the two girls sitting on the corner sofa. She walked straight toward them.
“Patient Misha Burns from Room 0613, correct?”
Misha looked up curiously. “Yes. And you are?”
“Your X-ray taken this morning showed some issues. Dr. Oliver asked me to inform you to go to radiology for a follow-up MRI to check the bone healing. He needs the results before tomorrow, when he’s back on duty.”
Dr. Oliver was Misha’s attending surgeon.
Misha scratched her head in confusion. “Really? What kind of issue? Is it serious? I feel like I’m recovering pretty well…”
The nurse shook her head. “Sorry, the doctor didn’t go into detail. I was only instructed to tell you to go to the imaging department on the third floor as soon as possible.”
“Oh. Okay, got it.”
“Are you a family member of the patient?” the nurse then asked, turning to Everly.
Everly nodded.
“I’m very sorry, but I still have several patients to notify and can’t leave my post right now. Could I trouble you, as the patient’s family member, to accompany Misha down to the third floor for the examination?”
Everly’s eyes briefly swept over the nurse’s badge. She was a bit far away to read the text clearly, but judging from the photo, logo, and uniform, the woman did appear to be a legitimate ward nurse from the inpatient department.
So she nodded. “Okay.”
“Thank you so much. The examination room is on the third floor. Take the elevator down, turn left, find the medical imaging department, and just report the patient’s name at the front desk.” The nurse thanked them repeatedly, clutching her file folder, and quickly left the activity room, hurrying off to notify other patients.
The inpatient tower had a basement level and twenty-four floors above ground, making a total of twenty-five floors.
The first floor contained the reception desk, storage rooms, and offices for various administrative departments. The entire second floor was dedicated to operating rooms. The third floor was where inpatient examinations were conducted—blood tests, ECGs, CT scans, ultrasounds, and the like were all done there. The fourth floor was the public activity area. Starting from the fifth floor upward were the patient wards.
The MRI scan Misha needed was located downstairs.
Upon hearing she had to go in for a follow-up exam, Misha pushed herself up from the sofa with practiced ease, using her crutch and her arms to spring to her feet, then immediately hopped toward the elevator as if launching a charge.
Everly watched her with alarm, afraid she might slip and fall again. She quickly followed, took one of the crutches from her, and supported her as they walked slowly toward the elevator.
“Slow down. Why are you in such a hurry?”
“I can’t help it—I’m used to it,” Misha replied.
The two of them left the activity room from either side and took the elevator down to the third floor, where they found the radiology department as instructed.
They had originally assumed the scan could be done immediately, but unexpectedly, even at this hour, the waiting area for radiology was quite crowded.
After reporting their names at the front desk, they were told there were still three patients ahead of them and that they would need to wait a while.
Since they were already there, they might as well wait.
Going back up to Misha’s room on the sixth floor would be too much trouble. So they simply sat down in the waiting area, chatting as they waited.
During the wait, Misha casually struck up conversations with other patients and discovered that they were in similar situations—all had been suddenly called in for follow-up exams.
This seemed to be a regular practice in the inpatient department. Doctors would hand a list of patients needing additional tests to the nurses before leaving work. The patients would complete the tests in the evening, and by the next morning when the doctors returned, the results would already be available, greatly improving efficiency.
What they had thought would be just a short wait for three MRI scans ended up taking over two full hours.
Everly had initially been puzzled. In her past life, she had also undergone an MRI scan, and it had taken less than twenty minutes in total. Later, she looked it up online and discovered that MRI durations varied wildly depending on the body part being examined—some could be done in as little as 15 minutes, while others could take over an hour.
Misha was simply unlucky; the three patients ahead of her all required time-consuming scans.
Most of the people around them were there for quicker procedures like X-rays and ultrasounds. As time passed, the waiting area gradually emptied. By around 7:30 p.m., only two or three people remained.
When the last patient in the waiting area finally stood up and was guided into the CT room by medical staff, Misha scratched her cheek awkwardly and said,
“Everly, I don’t know how long this is going to take if we keep waiting. It’s getting pretty late—why don’t you head back first?”
“And what would you do if I left?”
Private hospitals did have good service, but not to the point of providing full-time personal escort care. After the exam, Misha would have to take the elevator alone, then hobble back to her ward on crutches through the elevator lobby. Given how restless she usually was, Everly was not comfortable letting her go back alone.
She had already planned for this visit to require an overnight stay in Sunken City due to the long travel distance, and her hotel booking for the night was already arranged. She was not in a rush.
Misha tried a few more times to persuade her, but seeing Everly’s firm attitude, she gave up and instead pulled out her phone. The two of them passed the time watching videos and shows together.
Around eight o’clock, the patient in front of Misha finally finished the lengthy full-spine MRI. Misha then hopped into the examination room on one leg, supported by her crutch.
About twenty minutes later, the door opened again, and she was helped out by medical staff.
The scan results were not ready yet, and by then both of them were already starving.
Everly supported Misha back to the sixth-floor ward, where they found two steaming hospital meals already prepared on the table—one for the patient and one for the accompanying visitor.
The meals had been pre-ordered in advance. They were mostly vegetarian, with only two pieces of boiled chicken breast added. Healthy, yes—but the portions were clearly on the small side. The two girls finished everything cleanly, but still only felt about seventy percent full.
After eating, Everly glanced at the time: 20:49.
Visiting hours in the hospital ended at 9:00 p.m. Without saying much more to Misha, Everly put on her scarf and knit cap, waved goodbye, and said,
“See you. I’ll come find you again tomorrow morning.”
“Mm-hmm, see you!”
She gently closed the door behind her and turned toward the elevator lobby.
It was getting late. The once-busy corridors were now eerily quiet, with not a single person in sight. When she passed the nurses’ station, she originally intended to ask whether Misha had any scheduled procedures the next morning—but the station was empty.
The nurse on duty had disappeared somewhere. On the cluttered counter sat a stray coffee cup, its rim stained with dried brown residue. The computer was still on; because it hadn’t been touched for a long time, its dark green screensaver was projected onto the glossy tiled wall, casting a strange, eerie green glow.
“Is anyone there? Hello?”
Everly called out twice. Her voice echoed through the empty hallway for a long while, but there was no response at all.
Fine. Even private hospital staff apparently slacked off sometimes.
After waiting a bit longer, Everly gave up. She could just ask Misha via phone tomorrow.
She turned and continued toward the elevator lobby.
The elevator lobby was located at the center of the inpatient building, with corridors extending on both sides. For reasons known only to the hospital, the lobby lights were motion-activated.
With no one around, the entire space was plunged into darkness. Only the elevator indicator lights remained on, casting scattered red reflections across the floor and walls like faint, flickering embers.
The motion-activated ceiling lights were a little slow to respond. As Everly approached the elevator lobby, she deliberately made her footsteps heavier, but the lights still didn’t turn on.
Only when she stepped out of the ward corridor and into the dark elevator lobby did the sensors finally react—slowly, reluctantly—flooding the space with a cold, pale white light from above.
The elevator was parked on the sixth floor. Everly pressed the call button, and with a soft “ding-dong,” the doors slid open.
She looked up—and directly met the gaze of a young girl in a long trench coat standing inside the car.
The girl was staring straight at her through the gaps between a hat and a scarf, her cold blue eyes fixed and unblinking.
Where did someone come from in a parked elevator?!
Her heart gave a sharp, erratic thump in her chest. It took Everly a fraction of a second longer to realize that the “person” was just a reflection of herself, based on the clothing and silhouette.
Right. This ridiculous hospital used mirror-finished stainless steel panels for the elevator interior. The surface was polished so perfectly it was practically a full-length mirror. The moment the doors opened, it simply reflected her image back at her.
Fortunately, Everly had seen enough strange things to have built up a fairly strong heart. Even though she had been startled for a moment, she quickly regained her composure.
What a bizarre hospital…
None of her detection or warning items had reacted, so she remained calm, mentally complaining about the hospital’s terrible design choices as she stepped forward into the elevator and pressed the button for the first floor.
With a soft click, the smooth metal doors closed.
Facing the doors, Everly saw her own face reflected back at her.
The elevator was large, and all four walls—including the interior door—were made of mirrored stainless steel. During the daytime, when it was crowded, it hadn’t felt unusual. But now, alone inside, the reflective surfaces enclosed her completely, turning the space into something like a mirrored box.
Everly found herself, in a dazed moment, like the pistil at the center of a kaleidoscope flower. Around her, countless layers of reflections crowded in—some complete, some fragmented—stacked densely upon one another.
When she moved, even slightly, it triggered a chain reaction. Every mirrored figure, and even the reflections of reflections, moved in sync.
Even the smallest gesture—curling a finger, brushing back a strand of hair—was faithfully replicated by the surrounding shadows. There were simply too many of them. At a glance, it looked as if the elevator were filled with mannequins, all awkwardly mimicking her every movement.
Even knowing it was just a reflection, the scene still made her skin crawl.
Faster. She needed to reach the first floor as soon as possible. She did not want to stay in this disgusting elevator any longer.
Just as that thought surfaced, a sharp, unsettling “sizzle” came from the fluorescent light overhead.
Everly looked up in time to see the ceiling light flicker rapidly twice—then abruptly go out.
Darkness swallowed the entire cabin in an instant.
Her gaze flicked toward the small red dot of the elevator’s surveillance camera in the ceiling, then dropped to the floor indicator panel.
The display was unaffected by the blackout. The bright red numbers continued to change in real time: 3rd floor, 2nd floor, 1st floor…
The elevator reached the first floor. The button she had pressed earlier automatically dimmed—but strangely, even though it had arrived at its destination, the elevator did not stop.
The traction system continued to run. The cabin did not slow. It glided smoothly past the first floor.
On the panel, the red “1” lingered for a moment… then flickered again.
It changed into a bright, unmistakable “-1”.
Ding-dong.
The elevator came to a sudden halt.
With a soft chime, the metal doors slid open silently.
A cold wind seeped in from outside.
In front of Everly, there was only a pitch-black space.
She had arrived at the basement level.