Justice System: I Litigate for the Whole City

Chapter 131 : The Scratch on Page Eight

New Year's Day. Two rows of flower baskets sat at the base of the outpatient building, red ribbons lifting and falling in the wind. Water seeping from the floral foam traced dark lines across the sidewalk. The inpatient wing was quieter—a crate of oranges and two new quilts sat stacked by the stairwell, left behind by visitors.

At 8:50, Shen Zhixia and Peng Weidong arrived at the east end of the first floor. He'd switched the blue cloth bag to his other hand. The circles under his eyes were dark; he said traffic hadn't been bad.

Qi Xiuyun shook her head the moment she saw them. "Still not back."

The register lay open on the counter. The entry was still there: the 30th, 21:40, Obstetrics. The return column stood empty.

"I already called." Qi Xiuyun picked up the receiver and dialed again. Short call—she recited the department and bed number.

At 9:15, two people came down from Medical Affairs. The one in front was in his forties, white coat unbuttoned, sleeves pushed to his forearms—the same man who'd signed on the second floor yesterday afternoon. Behind him walked a woman from records, carrying two rolls of seal tape. Someone down the hall called out "Director Xu." He answered without turning around.

"Seal tape's here." He set the rolls on the counter. "Once the right people are present, we seal. By the book."

"The medical records are still in Obstetrics," Shen Zhixia said.

"I've been pressing them." Qi Xiuyun didn't look up.

At 9:40, a record cart rolled out of the elevator. A young nurse lifted a stack of hard-cover charts onto the counter, opened to the first page, and wrote in the return column. Shen Zhixia leaned closer: yesterday's entry was thin, the final stroke hooking inward; today's was thick, the final stroke flaring out. She noted both samples separately in her notebook.

The count began at 9:50. Qi Xiuyun called out sheaf by sheaf; Shen Zhixia ticked off line by line: admission record, labor observation record, partograph, six fetal heart monitoring strips, three pages of rescue records, eleven pages of nursing notes, doctor's orders, two informed consent forms, one page of death records.

The nursing notes—she counted them twice.

She had yesterday's thirty-four photocopied pages in hand. She found page eight in the photocopy, then turned to page eight in the original stack, and laid the two side by side on the counter.

The page numbers didn't match.

On the photocopy, the "8" was thicker than the "7" and "9" around it, shifted half a character to the right—as if added afterward. On the original, that corner of the page was slightly grayed, with an extremely faint white mark along the edge, like something had been lightly scraped across it. She pressed her fingertip to it. The paper hadn't torn, but a fine fuzz rose under her touch.

She held the page to the window light. Page eight was whiter than pages seven and nine. Its right trim edge was ragged, showing a small strip of rough paper; the pages before and after were clean-cut.

"Done counting?" Director Xu asked.

"Done." She closed her notebook. "Nursing notes, eleven pages. Matches."

"Then seal it."

"Wait." She spread the photocopy flat and pressed her finger over the number on page eight. "The page number here—there are scrape marks. This section of the original is a different paper color from the pages around it. Both of these go into the sealing inventory."

Director Xu glanced down, then looked up. "You want to write that?"

"Just this page. Page eight. I'll write: 'Page eight, lower right corner, page number area shows abrasion marks.' Under the regulations, sealing requires both parties present, a face-to-face count, and signed seals. Whatever is observed during the count gets written down."

"You can't write something like that." He said, "You're accusing us of tampering with records."

"I didn't say tampering." Her pen point pressed to the paper. "I'm writing what my eyes saw. Whether anything was tampered with—that's not up to my pen."

Director Xu stared at her for two seconds. He pulled the inventory sheet back half an inch, and his tone actually softened: "Let me tell you something. The printer paper for those nursing notes was changed over recently. The whiteness isn't consistent. And if a page ever had to be reprinted, the trim edge wouldn't necessarily line up either."

"So page eight was reprinted?"

"I didn't say that." He clicked his pen cap back on. "See for yourself."

"I'm writing that down." She opened her notebook and wrote: Director Xu of Medical Affairs stated that the nursing note printer paper had been changed in batches, that whiteness varied, and that an uneven trim edge did not necessarily indicate reprinting. When she finished, she read it aloud to him. He neither nodded nor moved to stop her.

He pulled a pen from his pocket. The inventory was his to write. When he reached the line for page eight, the pen point hesitated, then came down: Nursing notes, eleven pages total. Page eight, lower right corner, page number area shows slight abrasion.

"Remove the word 'slight.'"

"Does it make a difference?"

"Yes. 'Slight abrasion' is an estimate. 'Abrasion' is what I saw."

He said nothing, blacked out the character, and rewrote beside it. On the correction, he signed his surname and added the character for "amended."

The same-day printout of the electronic medical record was sealed along with the rest. Qi Xiuyun printed a sheaf from the system—every page immaculate, except that the "Last Modified" column didn't appear on paper.

The sealing was completed at 10:20. Kraft paper archive envelope, two seal strips, perforation seals pressed across the flap and paper edges. She copied the seal numbers into the inventory. On the final page, in the family member's line, Peng Weidong wrote his name, pressing so hard the pen point left a small indentation in the paper. He folded his copy twice and tucked it into the innermost layer of the blue cloth bag.

[Thud. Page eight's paper is newer than the pages beside it.]

She glanced up at the counter. Director Xu was sliding a pair of scissors into the pen holder.

The third sheet of paper was submitted just after 10:30.

"The electronic medical record's operation log," she said. "From admission on the 26th through today—who logged in, when, what content was altered, and what the changes were. I'm requesting access. Applicant: Peng Weidong. Agent: Jiangzhou Zhengping Law Firm."

Director Xu read the paper through, set it on the counter, and made a phone call. Less than five minutes later, a young man came down from the fourth floor—gray hoodie, work badge on a lanyard around his neck.

"Electronic records aren't my area." He stood two steps back. "We run one system for the whole hospital. The logs are on the server."

"They can be printed out."

"Can't." He said, "Last month we switched systems. The old server was dismantled. Old logs weren't migrated to the new system."

"What do you mean, weren't migrated?"

"Meaning they're gone." He spread his hands. "When we migrated, we only moved the record content."

"Which day was the switch?"

"The cutover was done the night of the 26th."

Shen Zhixia wrote the line down. She paused for two seconds after finishing. The admission form showed the patient was admitted at 9:10 p.m. on the 26th.

"Then the logs after the switch still exist," she said. "The 26th to today. Six days."

The young man glanced toward Director Xu.

"New system logs are for internal troubleshooting only." He said, "Outside access requires approval from the hospital office, plus someone from the software company to extract it. It costs money."

"Then I'm applying for hospital office approval." She pushed the paper forward. "Take this. Record the time of receipt and the handler."

Director Xu signed and wrote the time: 10:52. He started to write "received"; she asked him to write the full title—Application to access electronic medical record operation logs, one copy.

"One more thing." She said, "The old system was dismantled and the logs weren't migrated. Write that down."

"I'm not writing that." Director Xu said, "Technical matters aren't my field."

"Then I'll take it as if you never said it."

She opened her notebook and wrote: 10:52, the person from the fourth floor stated the old system was removed last month and logs were not migrated; Director Xu said he didn't understand technical matters and declined to put it in writing. When she finished, she read it aloud to him. He pushed the sealing inventory back to her without adding a word.

Outside, on the inpatient steps, she called He Xiufen and reported two things: the originals were sealed, with page eight's issue noted in the inventory; the log request was received, but the response wasn't put in writing.

"Writing it down is enough." He Xiufen was chopping something on her end. "Don't argue technical points with him—you won't win. You've got three things in hand: one inventory, one signed receipt of submission, and your own notebook. That's enough. Next step is to find the person who did the writing. She was the only one signing on the night shift. She matters more than that page."

On the third floor, Obstetrics, the south-facing room with rows of incubators behind glass. Peng Weidong stood before the second incubator. A nurse, speaking through the doorway, told him Peng Nianman had taken thirty milliliters today—five more than yesterday—and still needed observation. His hand pressed against the glass. The gray ink from the printing plant worked into the back of his hand would never wash out.

"How many days until she's out of the incubator?" he asked.

"Depends on feeding. Depends on weight gain."

He nodded, pulled out the old candy-bar phone, scrolled to a note in the memo, looked at it, and pocketed it again—the child's name had been copied from there.

Shen Zhixia went to the nurses' station.

"Is Dr. Lin working today?"

The nurse clicked through the computer. "Not her shift today."

"Which days does she work?"

The mouse moved again. "She's… on leave."

A laminated January shift schedule hung on the wall, densely marked in red and blue pen. She read from the first of the month, name by name: the 3rd, 5th, 8th, 11th—she finished the entire sheet. Lin Qi wasn't on it.

"When does she come back?"

"Ask her yourself."

A woman emerged from the inner room—mid-forties, short hair, nurse's cap pinned to her collar. The badge on her chest read two characters: Yan Mei.

"The family's looking for Dr. Lin," she said. "She turned in an annual leave form on the morning of the 27th. She's off until next month."

"The leave form was submitted the morning of the 27th."

"Yes."

"In the early hours of the 27th, she was on night duty."

Yan Mei closed the chart folder in her hands. "You're family, right? Matters concerning the doctor are for her to discuss. I can't give out her number. If you need to find her, check with Medical Affairs first."

Shen Zhixia's gaze drifted to the back of the counter. A blue-grid notebook lay there, edges curled, one row per half hour, each row with a fetal heart rate column, a blood pressure column, and a signature at the end. Her eyes scanned down: the row for 5:50 was in blue ink; the 6:20 row was darker, nearly black, its strokes thicker than the rows above and below, with two faint grooves pressed beneath the ink.

"This notebook belongs to the nurses' station."

Yan Mei's hand landed on it first. She closed it and tucked it into a drawer beneath the counter.

"Not for outside viewing."

[Thud. That row has been traced over twice.]

She took out her notebook and added a line below yesterday's entry: Obstetrics nurses' station retains a logbook; the 6:20 row shows darker ink, with visible tracing marks beneath the writing; head nurse immediately withdrew it. That was all she wrote. No point pressing further. If she couldn't get it, she'd write down the process of trying—He Xiufen's words from yesterday's call.

Before heading downstairs, she stopped at the shift schedule and examined the small print in the header: January 1–31, Obstetrics.

"What about last month's sheet?"

"Torn off." The nurse said, "New one goes up at the start of each month. The old one gets thrown away."

Peng Weidong came out from the incubator room holding a payment notice, unopened. He stopped only at the elevator.

"And her?" he asked.

"Not here."

He folded the payment notice and tucked it into the blue cloth bag. The sealing inventory lay pressed in the bag's innermost layer. The January shift schedule hung behind glass, dense with red and blue marks—from the 1st to the 31st, not a single box bore the name Lin Qi. And last month's sheet had been torn off at the start of the month.