“Stop joking, now is not the time!” The chief nurse looked around and still no one answered him. By then everyone understood the severity of the situation. If it was not them or the guards, then the only possibility was the patient. The chief nurse gasped, “It couldn’t be one of the patients, could it?”
Right then, a guard shouted, “Not good, come please. A patient has escaped!”
The chief nurse was so anxious he was pouring sweat. As he shouted into the walkie-talkie, he charged into the room. The room was empty. “How did she get out?” The chief nurse turned towards us, “All the rooms are latched from outside. The people inside won’t escape unless someone unlocks the door from outside. The old man’s room is the only one which can be locked from the inside. The other room can’t do that.”
I frowned as I heard the meaning underneath his words. “You mean one of us has left her door open?”
The chief nurse shouted into the walkie-talkie. “Attention, a female patient from Area A has escaped. Currently we can’t confirm her features and number but she is a patient from Area A so she is highly aggressive. I repeat, a patient from Area A has escaped.” Then the chief nurse told us, “Please stop moving around and create trouble for us. You’ve already made me lose my year-end bonus because of this.”
Then he pulled out the stun baton and told the guard around him. “Follow me, she wouldn’t have gone far.”
As the chief nurse rushed away, I was reminded of the woman in this room when we first entered this place. She was lying in bed completely immobile. It looked suspicious and this proved that suspicion correct. However, was this woman’s disappearance related to us and was it related to the case?
I stared at the open door and the empty room. Then I walked towards it. Standing at the door and looking around, the room was actually very small. Other than the bed, there was nothing else. I checked and the bed was welded together from a whole piece of iron board, in other words, the people staying here couldn’t use the bed for anything, not for weapons or to make lock picks.
I noticed some small traces on the wall. I leaned in closer and noticed there were hundreds of horizontal grooves. They lined neatly beside the bed. They looked newly scratched. I walked to the door and studied the lock from outside the door.
“Flashlight!” I told Gu Chen. Gu Chen handed me one and I shone the light at the lock. I noticed there were a few new scratches near the latch. Suddenly an image appeared in my mind. Actually this kind of latch-type lock was not hard to open. I only needed a fish line and a small circular pebble. However, before entering this place, all the visitors and patients would be checked and had their entire inventory removed.
I closed my eyes. Before this, I knew that for the patients at Area A, even their eating utensils were soft because the hospital was afraid that the patients would use normal utensils to harm others or themselves. So how did this patient fool the inspection when she was sent into Area A?
I would have used the fish line to tie a small pebble on one end and then wrap rice around it. I would swallow the rice and then tie the other end of the fish line on one of my teeth. That was how I would have brought the items into Area A. Then facing away from the camera, I slowly pulled the stone out from my stomach.
I would toss the pebble out from the barred window. ‘No,’ I corrected myself. It was not a pebble but a small magnet. That way, the magnet would have stuck right to the iron latch. With that step done, I only needed to slowly ease the latch out from the lock.
When I opened the door, the camera couldn’t be watching. Suddenly I understood the meaning of the horizontal scratches on the wall, it was to mark time. This room was unlike the old man’s room where there was a small window to see the sky outside. This room had no window, not even a light. In other words, the people here wouldn’t know the time, the cycle of day and season.
The scratch mark was to tell time. I observed the length of the scratches and believed 1 scratch equal to one second. I studied the small grooves on the wall closely. There were 30 scratches in one row, and 100 rows would be a unit. There were 3 such units. In other words, there were 9000 + scratches on the wall. That equaled 9000 second, or 150 minutes or 2 and a half hours.
In 2 and a half hours, the woman slowly carved out these 9000 scratches to count time. But why would the woman mark down the time? I believed I knew why. The woman was waiting for the perfect timing. What was she trying to do?
I said, “Come on, Captain Zhao should still be outside, we’ll ask him what happened.”
Walking down from the second floor, we saw that everyone had gone. Only a single guard was left. I walked forward to ask him, “Where’s everyone else?”
He turned back. “They’ve all gone out.”
I turned to look at the CCTV monitor. I realized they were all black, I asked. “What happened?”
The guard shook his head. “I don’t know. Just now, the screens all went down. No one knew what happened. A few of us went to check the circuit. Your Captain Zhao and I waited here. Soon, a person ran out. Captain Zhao tried to stop her but he failed.” The guard told us what he experienced, “Then the 2 ran out, I have no idea where they disappeared to. Then the people who went to check the circuit returned, they told me someone had cut the CCTV line. Then the alarm rang. Then another group of people rushed out and I’m the only one left.”
As the guard explained, I became even more confused. As I tried to make sense of what he said, I pictured the events in my mind. There had to be a bigger plan behind the incident with the female patient. She must have her own reason for getting planted here. Or else without preparation, she wouldn’t have known to prepare magnet and fish line. So why did she purposely get herself admitted here?
“Come!” I told the rest. “Let’s go see what’s happening outside. You stay to continue guarding this place.” The guard nodded. When we exited Area A, the guards outside had all disappeared, they probably went to chase after the female patient. I frowned. Technically, it would be impossible to escape from Area A. The woman charged out straightly so how could she not be discovered? Either she had insider help or there was a secret pathway.
After some time, a group of people returned. It was the chief nurse and the guards. They pulled along a woman with tousled hair. She wore Area A’s patient clothes. They had managed to capture her. The woman struggled endlessly.
I looked at the woman and something didn’t feel right. This woman gave me a different feeling from the woman that I saw earlier. This woman was too agitated while the other woman was completely in control. I strode towards them, “This is her?”
The chief nurse nodded as he turned to glance at Captain Zhao. “Yes, it was Captain Zhao who caught her. I still have no idea how she managed to escape.”
I asked, “What about the surveillance?”
The chief nurse answered, “Someone cut the circuit from outside.”
“I want to see it,” I said.
The chief nurse pointed at a guard. “You, bring them to go check it out. I’ll bring this woman back to her room.”
We parted and a guard led us outside. As mentioned earlier, this was an old building. The circuit was built outside the hospital. The guard pointed it out to us. The main circuit was cut so the monitors lost electricity and thus lost the images as well. I looked around and realized there were no patrols around. So it would be easy for someone to come here to cut the circuit.
“In your opinion, is it possible to escape from Area A?” I asked the guard.
The guard shook his head. “Even though Area A is old, the walls are sturdy. The patients won’t be able to escape. Plus we’re fenced in by an electric net. The jolt will easily knock someone out and it will also trigger the alarm. So even if the woman managed to escape from her room, there is no way she can get out of Area A, so don’t worry. Our chief nurse likes to get worried for no reason.”
I had to disagree. The woman had planned so much to escape from her room, would she not plan the rest? This was a woman who had swallowed a magnet into her stomach, would she not figure out how to escape from Area A?
Suddenly, the image came to me!
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