Chapter 15
In the air-conditioned elevator room, the cool wind whistled down from the top of his head.
Lian Xi glanced at the young guy and shook his head with a smile, “No, I went out to do some errands.”
The young man was surprised: “Going out to work so early?”
Lian Xi didn’t explain much, “Yes.”
The two of them chatted casually for a few more words, and soon, the elevator arrived at the first floor. Lian Xi had just left the elevator door, when the guy’s exclamation came from behind him, “Ah, I didn’t take my phone!”
Lian Xi turned his head back, only to see the young guy helplessly throw up one’s hands, he he laughed, “Bro, see, memory, I’ll go up to get my phone.”
Lian Xi nodded, “Okay, good bye.”
When Lian Xi arrived at the entrance of the neighborhood, Didi driver had been waiting for a long time.
Sitting on the car, blowing the cold air-conditioned wind, he remembered in a trance: wasn’t it a bit too extravagant?
It seems that recently this month, he always took a taxi when he went out, and didn’t take public transportation much.
But then he thought, on such a hot day, suffering himself is not necessary. Not to mention that it is still a demolition household, even if it really just sitting and eating, one can deplete even a mountain of wealth (idiom)…
The family still have a golden light big brother right?
Lian Xi thought in a daze, and soon arrived at the hospital.
The industrial hospital is the largest hospital in Suzhou City.
Lian Xi is an old Su City resident.
Back then, he was considered a premature baby, not yet due, and was scheduled to go to the hospital the next day. Who knows he was in a hurry to come out, the amniotic fluid broke that night. His father rushed his mother from the suburbs district using a motorcycle and sent her to the Park Hospital to deliver the baby.
More than twenty years ago, the Park Hospital was only two small three-story buildings. Today, it covers an area of one hundred acres, with many high-rise buildings.
Lian Xi waited in the lobby on the first floor of the hospital for a while, and a young man with glasses dressed as an intern came over.
Lian Xi stood up.
Dr. Glasses: “Are you… Lian Xi?”
Lian Xi: “Yes.”
Dr. Glasses looked him up and down, gently voiced,”Oh”
“Zhao Wei told me about you, you are the one who used to know people in the hospital, and now you want to find it? He didn’t make it clear in WeChat.”
Lian Xi explained, “I was born in the park hospital back then, and now I want to find the nurse who delivered me back then.”
Dr. Glasses was dumbfounded, “You want to find the nurse who delivered you in the first place?”
“That’s right.”
“Eh, that’s hard to do ah…”
Lian Xi graduated from the University of Suzhou City, and the medical department of the University of Suzhou City was somewhat famous in all of China.
Looking for the old nurse who gave him the bell back then, Lian Xi naturally couldn’t just come out of nowhere with two eyes. He purposely went to the alumni group and asked around, and found a classmate whose relationship was quite good. Then he asked this classmate to help him contact the intern doctor who graduated from SUU in front of him.
Dr. Glasses pushed the frame of the mirror, showing a difficult look: “In this case, I interned in the obstetrics and gynecology department last month, and there is an old nurse there with quite a lot of seniority, so maybe she knows something. I’ll take you there to ask.”
Lian Xi: “Okay, trouble you and thank you.”
Lian Xi was lucky enough, when the two of them arrived at the maternity department, this old nurse happened to be on duty today.
However, when Lian Xi asked about the nurse who delivered her twenty-three years ago, this old nurse rolled her eyes and said breathlessly, “Who the one who knows about this kind of thing?”
Dr. Glasses: “Sister Qin, her.”
The old nurse known as Sister Qin frowned: “Little King ah, it’s not that I don’t want to help you out, this happened in twenty-three years in the past, 97 years kind of matter eh! Although I came to this hospital’s obstetrics and gynecology department in ’95, do you know how many people we have to deliver every day? Do you know how many nurses have left and come back in these twenty-three years?”She then looked at Lian Xi, “What day were you born?”
Lian Xi immediately answered, “November 27, 1997.”
Sister Qin thought for half a day and sighed, “Don’t tell me if I know which one delivered you, I don’t even remember if I was on duty that day! Twenty-three years ago, who can still remember!”
Lian Xi also felt worried.
Indeed, twenty-three years ago, for him it was the day he was born, the most unforgettable day for his whole family. But to these nurses and doctors, it was just another ordinary day.
Sister Qin looked at the two of them, ”Alright, for Xiao Wang’s sake, I’ll turn around and ask in the retirement group for you guys. But don’t get your hopes up, how can you possibly find one? Even if the doctors and nurses who delivered you saw my message, none of them would remember! By the way, do you remember anything special that happened that day? Tell me, it might be useful.”
Lian Xi: “That day, there was an old nurse who gave me a bell.”
Sister Qin was surprised: “Gave me a bell? That’s strange. Okay, I know, you guys go first, I’ll ask it for you.”
Lian Xi and his team returned in defeat.
Leaving the obstetrics and gynecology department and coming to the elevator, Dr. Glasses: “I still have to go upstairs to do experiments, if Sister Qin has any news, I’ll let you know later.”
Lian Xi nodded, his tone was gentle, “Thank you, when you’re free, I’ll treat you to dinner.”
Dr. Glasses had a face that didn’t wake up, and didn’t be polite with Lian Xi, he waved his hand casually, turned around and entered the up elevator.
Lian Xi came early.
The hospital opened at six o’clock, and he arrived at six thirty.
However, even at six o’clock in the morning, the hospital was already crowded with people.
There are those who come to the city from the countryside overnight, carrying a plastic bag of laboratory tests from the township hospital, just to find a specialist to see their father; there are those who hold their feverish daughter, touching her head with pain while waiting anxiously in front of the pediatrics department; there are also those who are alone in the city, visiting the doctor, conducting tests, paying the bill, and holding down a cotton ball while sitting in a plastic chair, staring blankly at the…
This is the world in a hundred different ways.
There is no place like a hospital to see the world and understand that people have their own destinies.
Those who dressed in gold and silver or be gorgeously dressed and richly ornamented those who shabbily dressed.
After entering this door, all of them have only one appearance left: they all beg to be alive and step out of this door peacefully.
“Ding Dong——”
The elevator arrived.
Lian Xi stepped into the downward elevator, and the next few who came to see the doctor glanced at the elevator and didn’t go in.
They were waiting for the upward elevator to go upstairs to see the doctor.
Lian Xi took out his phone and prepared to call a taxi. However, he tried a few times, the signal in the elevator was extremely poor, and it was not in the service area.
It seemed that he could only wait until he got out of the elevator before calling a taxi.
“Ding dong——”
Lian Xi was about to go out the door when suddenly, his footsteps stopped.
He slowly raised his head, his gaze froze, looking towards the long-haired woman who walked into the elevator.
In the empty, whitened corridor, there were no windows on either side, and only the high wattage overhead lights shone on the polished floor, glowing a layer of deathly grayish white.
A dark haired woman with a lowered head and stiff steps walked from the hallway… into the elevator.
She walked slowly to the corner and then stood still.
With a click, the elevator door closed.
Lian Xi looked up at the display.
Fourth floor.
“Which floor are you going to?”The youth’s voice was calm and cool.
The elevator mirror reflected the long-haired woman standing behind him, she didn’t say anything, she just kept her head lowered, hiding her face behind her thick, long hair.
Lian Xi quietly gazed at the other party, and a red color flashed in his afterglow. Lian Xi looked down.
On this woman’s wrist, there was a thin red rope tied.
Unlike the red rope on Lian Xi’s left wrist, this rope was a bit thicker and did not have a bronze bell tied to it. It was just a bare red rope, unattractive, but it was tied on the pale and bloodless hand.
In the cold elevator, the floors went down one by one.
Lian Xi watched expressionlessly as that elevator number jumped to the 2nd floor, then … was the negative first floor.
Skipping the first floor.
“Do you know that in the hospital’s morgue, there is a rule.”
In the long dead silence, suddenly, the woman’s hoarse, monotonous voice rang out. Lian Xi raised his head, his gaze meeting the woman’s.
At some point, she also raised her head, her long dark hair sliding down both sides of her cheeks, revealing a miserably white face.
“You, do you know?”
In the elevator mirror, this woman slowly tilted her head and looked at Lian Xi, slowly grinning and smiling.
Lian Xi looked at her in silence and faintly said, “I don’t know.”
“On the body of the dead, all have to tie a red rope, tied to know….. that it is to be sent to the morgue ah.”
“……”
A long silence.
The woman just grinned wordlessly, yet a laugh that seemed to come from her bones echoed continuously between the metal walls of the elevator.
Thud thud thud——
Thud-thud-thud——
The entire elevator seemed to tremble.
The elevator kept going down and down!
“Ding dong–”
Lian Xi looked up quickly ……
The eighteenth floor of the underground!
At this moment, the elevator door opened abruptly. The cold and miserable white light squeezed out of the door’s gap and poured down!
Lian Xi’s gaze narrowed and his lips pursed as his hand pressed on the bronze bell on his left wrist. But just as he was about to ring the bell, suddenly, the person standing outside the door was illuminated by the light.
Lian Xi’s movements stopped.
A short old man in overalls with a mop in his hand stood outside the elevator, looking at Lian Xi in surprise before looking at the elevator numbers above his head.
“Young man, how did you get here?”
Lian Xi didn’t let go of his grip on the bell, he carefully sized up the other man for a moment, “The elevator seems to be having some problems.”
The old man slapped his thigh: “The elevator is broken again! This is the morgue, you’re going the wrong way, hurry up!” Saying this, he saw the person behind Lian Xi and his gaze flinched, “Xiao Lin! Why are you here, are you here to scare people again?” While saying this, he reached out and pulled the woman standing in the corner over.
The short old man looked at Lian Xi and smiled apologetically, “This colleague of mine, she always likes to scare people. Did she also tell you that all the dead people in the morgue would tie a red rope, and then show you the red specified number on her wrist, you are also tying one ah, young man.”
Lian Xi: “….”
Lian Xi silently hid his left hand behind his back.
The short old man patted the long-haired woman’s head, “What are you doing you, not apologizing to others.”
The long-haired woman smiled cheekily.
Short old man: “You don’t listen to her nonsense, nowadays there is no one to tie a red rope to a dead person. Then ..,” the old man’s eyes rolled, “If there’s nothing else, we still have to go clean up, so we’ll leave first.”
Lian Xi glanced at the two of them, didn’t say anything, and nodded.
The old man sighed in relief, seemingly afraid that Lian Xi would go to the hospital leadership to complain about them.
Through the gap in the gradually closing elevator door, Lian Xi saw the old man keep reprimanding the young woman, accusing her of not scaring the hospital patients all the time.
“I’ll let you scare people again!”
“Do you still want this month’s salary?”
“Young people nowadays, I can’t control them!”
“Ka-da…”
The elevator door closed completely.
Lian Xi looked up at the display.
Negative three floors.
It should have been a misreading just now.
He pressed the elevator button for the first floor, and the elevator slowly headed upwards.
The cool breeze from the air conditioner blew gently, Lian Xi turned on his phone and found that there was a signal again.
The elevator was going up one floor at a time, yet the short old man’s curses in the corridor of the hospital’s morgue on the negative third floor were getting softer and softer. In the end, he completely lost his voice, and only the woman’s hee hee hee hee laughter echoed between the corridor walls.
The woman lifted her foot and the hem of her skirt slipped open, revealing a skinny, bony left ankle.
Tied there was a plastic tag——
『B-07.8.14』
“He he he…”
“He he he he he…”
Author’s Message:
Turning General (Lie Chen):??? Is there a word about me?
CC: 金、光、大、佬 (Big Boss Golden Light)! Four words!