Justice System: I Litigate for the Whole City

Chapter 140 : The Double-Person Radical

"A court order."

Yan Mei took the page and read it top to bottom: the header, the unit under investigation, the items to be collected, and finally the red seal at the bottom. She pressed her thumb against the edge of the paper, leaving a white crease. The nurses' station window was half open. A cart rolled down the hallway, its wheels dragging long and loud.

"The nursing record logbook," Shen Zhixia said. "December 26th to 31st of last year. The copy your nurses' station kept for itself."

The page had come from the court yesterday afternoon, along with the ruling. When she'd submitted the Investigation Order Application, the presiding judge had asked only one question: "Just this one book?" "Just this one." The order holder listed on the paper was He Xiufen; the accompanying personnel column read "trainee lawyer Shen Zhixia" — which was why He Xiufen had come along today. Her name was on the form.

Yan Mei pushed the paper back. "It's not with me."

"The one you handed in to the Medical Affairs Office on the afternoon of the 4th. Still hasn't come back?"

"No." She paused. "I went to Medical Affairs last week to ask. They said someone took it out again for verification. Never came back."

"What about the transcribed copy?"

"Haven't seen that either."

He Xiufen slapped her gloves against her palm. "Then we go to the second floor."

Yan Mei glanced at Shen Zhixia. "I told you last time — it's not my responsibility anymore."

"That's not what we're here about today," Shen Zhixia said. "Later, I'd like you to come up to the second floor and take a look at some handwriting."

"I'm dispensing medication this morning."

"After that's fine. We'll wait in Medical Affairs."

* * *

The door to Medical Affairs on the second floor was open. Director Xu sat behind his desk on the phone, white coat unbuttoned, sleeves rolled to his forearms. When he saw them come in, he wrapped up the call and hung up.

"Director He." He nodded first, then looked at the Investigation Order. "The nursing record logbook? That's a department memo book, not a medical record."

"Look at the fine print below the seal." He Xiufen slid the paper over. "Review, excerpt, duplicate. The book was handed in to Medical Affairs on January 4th. Last week someone took it out and never returned it. Today I'm looking at the original — not whatever copy someone made for me."

Director Xu read the paper through, then read the seal line again. He stood, walked to the steel cabinet in the corner, and pulled a blue-grid notebook from the top shelf. The page edges were curled; a white label on the cover read, in pen, "Obstetrics Logbook — December." Binder-clipped to the outside were several transcribed pages, edges neat, punch holes clean.

He set the book in the middle of the desk and kept his hand on it.

"Hand off," He Xiufen said.

Director Xu's hand stayed for two seconds, then slid away into his pocket.

The book was one page per day. Horizontal lines, one per half hour; the time at the start of each row, a signature column at the end. Shen Zhixia looked at the clipped transcription first: only the 26th and 27th had been copied, the line spacing as even as ruled paper. The 6:20 entry had been copied too — same numbers as the original page — but those lines were clean, no indentation on the back at all.

"Who copied this?"

"The department organized it."

"How many days did they copy?"

"Two."

"So anything outside those two days wasn't copied." She pushed the pages aside and opened the book.

She turned through from December 26th, checking the times page by page, saying nothing. The pages from the night of the 26th, the early morning of the 27th, were dense with writing, the strokes hurried, rushed.

She turned to the 5:50 row: blue ink, clean finishing strokes. The next row down: 6:20.

She stopped.

That row's ink was darker than the rows above and below, the strokes thicker, the corners especially heavy. She ran her fingertip along the underside of the characters and felt two shallow grooves.

Yan Mei came upstairs just then. She stood by the door, not stepping in.

"Director Xu, look at this row. Head Nurse Yan, come take a look too."

Director Xu walked over and bent down. Yan Mei came halfway and stopped at the corner of the desk. Three shadows fell across the same page.

"Which row?"

"Six-twenty." She held her pencil tip above the three digits at the start of the row, not touching the paper. "The ink is darker than the rows above and below. The strokes are thicker. Two indentation marks under the line. In the transcribed copy, this column is flat."

Director Xu studied it for two seconds. "Pen stopped flowing, so someone traced over it. Happens all the time at the nurses' station."

"Who traced it?"

"How would I know?"

"Head Nurse Yan." Shen Zhixia turned the book half an inch toward her. "This handwriting is from your department's pen."

Yan Mei looked at the row. She didn't reach for it, didn't step back either. "All these years, whatever's written in the book is what happened."

"Then who wrote this?"

"It's not my responsibility anymore."

"Fine." She opened her notebook, copied the passage down, capped her pen, and read it aloud. "January 21st, 10:40 a.m., Medical Affairs Office, Chengbei Hospital. In the December 27th 6:20 observation entry, the ink is darker, the strokes thicker, with two indentation marks beneath the row. The same column in the transcribed copy is flat. Director Xu stated the pen failed and was traced over. Head Nurse Yan was present and did not answer whose handwriting it was. The transcription covers only December 26th and 27th; the copyist is unknown. Recorded by Shen Zhixia; present, He Xiufen."

She held out the pen. "Director Xu, please sign."

"I'm not signing."

"Then I'll note that you declined."

"Write whatever you want."

He Xiufen added from the side: "Note this too: Medical Affairs was present and did not sign." She watched Yan Mei's back as the nurse left, then added, "Head Nurse was present and did not sign."

"The photocopying — I'll go through the process," Director Xu said, setting his phone back on the desk. "You'll have an answer in three days."

"Good," Shen Zhixia said. "Then one more thing. From today, this book doesn't move. Neither do the clipped transcription pages. If you say it's not a medical record, then write one line: 'The Obstetrics nurses' station logbook is not a medical record,' and stamp it with the Medical Affairs seal. If you say it is a medical record, then on January 1st, when everything was sealed, it should have been in that stack. It wasn't."

Director Xu pushed his hands deeper into his pockets. "I'm not taking that bait."

"Then I'll note that: Medical Affairs declined to answer whether the logbook is a medical record." She wrote it into her notebook and read it back.

Director Xu neither nodded nor stopped her.

[Thud. The retraced characters are solid. Indentations can't be retraced.]

She flipped further into the book. A few blank pages remained. She turned to the third-to-last page: a printed table with four columns — Date, Contents, Borrower, Return. One row was filled in: December 26th, contents "medical records," a checkmark in the Return column. All the rows below were empty.

She turned to the next page.

It was gone.

The tear was diagonal. Along the binding, a strip of paper root remained, half an inch wide. She worked her fingernail under it and lifted it to the window light. Ink on the root: one stroke left, one stroke left, one vertical line — the vertical cut off halfway, where the tear ran through. The back too, same spot, broken in the same place.

She pressed the paper root flat and let her finger rest on the torn edge.

"On the night of December 30th, 9:40 p.m., when you took the medical records from the records room," she said, "there was an entry in this book. That page has been torn out."

The color drained from Director Xu's face.

"This book passed through several hands before it reached me from the department," he said. "A missing page — who can say?"

"I'll note that too."

"Note it."

He stood, closed the book, clipped the transcription pages back on, slid it into the steel cabinet, and turned the key.

"Lawyer Shen, we've shown you everything you came to see today. Follow whatever procedure you need to follow. We won't get in your way."

[Thud. On the torn-out page was the name of the person who took the medical records.]

Outside the inpatient building, sunlight fell on the steps. A few holly bushes in the flowerbed had leaves dulled gray by dust. He Xiufen walked beside her, pulling on her gloves.

"That trip was worth three pages."

* * *

12:30 p.m., upstairs at the noodle shop.

The stove downstairs was just heating up. Scallion oil crept up the stairwell, mingling with the rich, faintly fishy scent of bone broth. He Xiufen set a bowl of noodles beside her hand and sat down across the table, pulling three sheets from the stack of papers and laying them side by side.

One was the signature column on the photocopied notice form: 6:20. One was the "Last Modified" field on the printed electronic medical record: 6:20. The third was the on-site record she'd written that morning.

"Three places." He Xiufen tapped them with the tips of her chopsticks. "A family member's signature, a timestamp in a machine, and a nurse's handwritten logbook. Three things that don't reference each other, yet all of them land on the exact same minute: 6:20."

"At 6:20, someone had to be there," Shen Zhixia said.

"Go on."

"That 6:20 on the notice — it's for show. To make people believe that at that moment, someone was talking to the family. But around that time, there were no family members in the ward." She set down her chopsticks. "So someone went back to the nurses' station and retraced the 6:20 row. Tracing one line takes seconds. But it makes it look like at 6:20, a nurse was standing at the bedside."

"It lines up." He Xiufen placed her chopsticks down. "They copied the words, but you can't copy indentation marks. Today you held two versions side by side: one traced, one cleanly transcribed."

"Trace marks can't be used as evidence."

"The trace marks are what you saw," He Xiufen said. "You did half of it right today — you made Director Xu bend over that row in front of Yan Mei. What you wrote, who you read it to, all of it's in your notebook. The other half is this: that logbook has to come out of the hospital through the court. And someone has to hold those indentations up to the light and confirm them."

Shen Zhixia nodded and gathered the three pages, squaring the edges.

"One more." He Xiufen pulled a slip from the corner of the table and pushed it over. "The return receipt for that registered letter from Hengzheng. Arrived this morning. Mailroom stamp, and three handwritten characters beside it: 'Forwarded to handling lawyer.' Small writing, upward-flicking strokes."

She glanced at the three characters, pushed the slip back, and said nothing.

"Day after tomorrow, 9:30 a.m., the court's organized the evidence exchange," He Xiufen said. "The person showing up on their side is Lawyer Lu."

"I know."

"Are you afraid of him?"

"Twelve days ago, in the legal opinion he sent the hospital, he wrote: the rewritten copy shall be preserved intact together with the original." Shen Zhixia lifted a chopstickful of noodles but didn't bring it to her mouth. "Today, those transcribed pages clipped to the hospital's logbook are the copy. The indentations on the original are what they couldn't transcribe. When he wrote that line, he knew better than anyone that we'd reach this point."

He Xiufen picked up her tea mug and blew on it. "Then we'll see which piece of paper he hands over the day after tomorrow."

Halfway through the noodles, Shen Zhixia pulled a blank sheet from her notebook and drew on it with her pencil. One stroke left, then another stroke left, then down — vertical — stopping halfway.

He Xiufen looked at it for a long time.

"The double-person radical."

"A surname with the double-person radical in this hospital —"

"Don't say the name." He Xiufen reached over, flipped the paper face down, and pressed it flat on the table. "That half-character is what your eyes saw. The name is a guess. Once a guess lands on paper, they can use it against you — say you made it up. What you need isn't to identify him."

"It's to get that page back."

"Tomorrow morning, draft another one," He Xiufen said. "Request the original logbook, including the page after the torn one. The previous page holds the writing; the next page holds the impressions. How many strokes the impressions show depends on how the paper took the ink. Have the court hold it up to the light, on the spot."

Shen Zhixia took back the blank sheet. She didn't draw it again. She folded it and tucked it into the back of her notebook.

Only three characters in the notebook: the double-person radical.

The person who took the medical records from the records room at 9:40 on the night of the 30th had written his surname in the nurses' station logbook. That page was gone now. Only the left half of one character remained on the paper root.

The person who'd placed the book in front of her that morning had said: "We won't get in your way."