Justice System: I Litigate for the Whole City

Chapter 148 : The Attachments Submitted

The smell of scallion oil from the noodle shop downstairs drifted up the stairwell, fading by the time it reached the third-floor landing. The fluorescent tube at Zhengping Firm buzzed once before flickering to life.

Shen Zhixia laid the eleven photocopied pages across the long table in order, anchoring the corners with glass cups. The print shop's receipt was tucked into the first page—five yuan fifty cents, the red stamp crooked.

"Read it out loud." He Xiufen set the case file box on the corner of the table and wiped her hands on her apron. "You read. I'll look."

The first page was the hospital's Explanatory Statement—one sheet of paper saying the same thing three times over: the alterations were the on-duty physician's individual conduct, and the hospital had fulfilled its management and reporting obligations. Shen Zhixia finished reading it and pushed it to the left side of the table.

The next two pages were the transcribed nursing records. In the lower right corner of the last page sat a "Lin Qi" circled in pencil, with a note beside it in her own handwriting from last month: supplementary signature, after the 6th.

She skipped the middle pages and pulled out the very last one, the one submitted later: Self-Review Statement on Changes to Medical Records. A single thin sheet, four lines of text, ending with "I voluntarily bear corresponding responsibility," signed "Lin Qi," dated the 28th.

Lin Qi sat across the table, her canvas bag still on her shoulder. She'd barely spoken since they'd left the District Health Commission. The chilblains on her knuckles glowed red.

Shen Zhixia pulled a sheet of paper from the file folder—Lin Qi's handwritten name from yesterday noon at this very table, photocopied once. She laid the three pages side by side and used the plastic ruler He Xiufen kept for shoe soles to line them up.

On the copy written in front of her, the three horizontal strokes in the right side of her name slanted upward, and the final stroke tapered off lightly, as if the hand knew the motion by heart.

On the last page of the transcription, the three strokes were so flat they might have been drawn with a ruler, and the final stroke stopped with a downward press.

On the self-review statement, the same three strokes, the same downward press.

"See anything?" He Xiufen asked.

"These two look like the same hand." Shen Zhixia moved the ruler away. "Compared to yesterday's, they're different hands."

[Thud. This page bears her name.]

[Thud. Not a single character on this page is in her handwriting.]

Lin Qi's fingers curled against her knee. "I didn't write this." Her voice stayed low. "On the morning of January 5th, they had me write those characters for the first time in the Medical Affairs Office. The morning of the 27th, they had me write them again. I didn't. Not a single stroke."

"What time on the 5th?" Shen Zhixia asked.

"A little after nine. By the long table near the window. There was a printed sheet on it—four lines of text, the signature line blank. They wanted me to write eight characters after the last sentence."

"Who handed you the paper?"

"One person gave me the paper, another gave me the pen." Lin Qi thought for a moment. "Both had their badges flipped around. I couldn't see their names."

Shen Zhixia held the self-review statement up to the window. "On the 5th they wanted you to sign. On the 27th they wanted you to sign again. You didn't either time. On the 28th, someone signed for you."

"I believe you." He Xiufen straightened the three pages, speaking slowly. "But you telling me that doesn't count for anything."

"Then who does it need to come from?"

"The district needs to pull the originals out and make the person who actually wrote those characters say it themselves." He Xiufen tapped the three horizontal strokes with her finger. "Remember this—don't go around saying 'this isn't Lin Qi's handwriting.' Say it a hundred times, it still doesn't mean anything. What you say is this: in the same file, the same person's name doesn't look like the same person wrote it. Either she changed how she writes in two days, or someone else wrote these for her."

Shen Zhixia picked up the self-review statement and touched the signature date. "And there's one more thing that doesn't need any handwriting analysis. This page is dated the 28th. At 4 a.m. on the 28th, she was at Tongling. She sat in the waiting room until 5:30. At 7:20 that evening, I called Tongling from this office. She answered."

"The bus ticket?" He Xiufen asked.

"Thrown away," Lin Qi said.

"Doesn't matter." Shen Zhixia flipped the page over. "You remember the bus number. I remember that phone call. Long-distance call records can be pulled. And she bought that overnight ticket with her ID."

He Xiufen nodded. "Put all that together and you don't need handwriting analysis. A clock alone does the job—on the 28th, she wasn't in Chengbei. That name on the Chengbei paper is someone else's doing."

Shen Zhixia pulled another item from the file folder: the photocopy of the Statement of Defense the hospital submitted on January 17th. She flipped to page two, to the line she'd circled in red long ago—"the department reorganized and transcribed the shift handover records per internal management requirements." She'd copied that half-sentence onto a piece of loose-leaf paper and now placed it next to the transcribed copy.

"They wrote 'the department' in the document they filed themselves." She laid the two lines side by side. "But the two pages submitted to the district say 'the individual.' Three people's hands got written as one. 'Reorganized and transcribed' got changed to 'individual alterations.'"

"I handled a similar case years ago." He Xiufen fished her key ring from her pocket and set it on the table. "A missing crate from the workshop. The custodian denied everything. Eventually they found out the shift leader's signature was forged. The thing that cracked it wasn't handwriting—it was the date on a material requisition slip. On the day it was signed, he was at the hospital with his wife, who was in labor."

The transcribed copies went back into the file folder. Underneath lay three more pages, and below those, the pages of the Disposition Decision, which she didn't read aloud again. Shen Zhixia pulled the three pages out. The first page bore a five-character header: Legal Opinion Letter. Addressed to Chengbei Hospital.

Three sections, short sentences, neatly ordered numerals. One: available materials support a finding that the medical record alterations were the individual conduct of the on-duty physician. Two: the hospital has fulfilled its verification and reporting obligations under internal management regulations. Three: it is recommended that the physician in question be disciplined and the relevant circumstances reported to her practice registration authority. The signature line read: Jiangzhou Hengzheng Law Firm, Handling Lawyer, Lu Jibai. Dated January 26th. At the very bottom, a line in small print: This opinion is provided solely for your institution's decision-making reference.

She read it twice.

The first time, she read the content. Every conclusion was prefaced with "available materials." There wasn't a single adjective in the whole document, not one extraneous verb. It only asked one thing: can this be established.

The second time, she looked at the date. January 26th. That morning, she'd been in the third-floor mediation room at the Chengbei District Court, verifying the originals of the shift handover records. She'd signed her name on the attached photos. That same day, this opinion letter had been signed and sealed at Hengzheng.

The signature was written small, pressed just above the line, never crossing it. In her first month at Hengzheng, she'd watched him edit drafts—anything wrong got a single straight line through it, never a blot, and whenever anyone asked why, he'd say "easier for the reader to identify." Not one straight line on these three pages.

She didn't reach for her phone.

He Xiufen took the three pages and read them beginning to end, her finger stopping on the line that said "available materials support a finding."

"He knew the originals weren't submitted," He Xiufen said.

"He knew," Shen Zhixia said.

On the 23rd of last month, in that small reception room at the courthouse, when the judge asked about the original shift handover records, he'd said it himself—not submitted. When he said it, he was looking at the judge.

"You want me to ask him for you?" He Xiufen asked.

"No." She folded the three pages in half. "If I ask, he either can't say or he'll say something I can't use. Either way, I'd be guessing which one he is."

He Xiufen didn't push. She slid a hard-shell folder across the table. It had two compartments. The left one had a label reading "This Case." The right one was empty—it had never had a label on it. Shen Zhixia placed the folded pages inside, closed it, and fastened the clasp.

"Leave it there," He Xiufen said. "Opening day, he'll see it himself."

The noodles had been brought up from downstairs and were already clumping. He Xiufen ate with her chopsticks while arranging three things in a row on the table: the photocopies from the district, the retention log obtained through the investigation order, and the photograph of the torn edge on page eight of the nursing records.

"The district's papers say she altered the records. The original filed with the court shows three lines got copied as five. And in the retention log, the 6:20 entry has ink darker than the surrounding lines, strokes thicker, and two shallow indentations at the end of the line." She lined the three items up. "Put them together, and the first question isn't whether she altered anything. It's who wrote that line."

"Where's the weak point?"

"The person who signed isn't Lin Qi. It's whoever organized the recopying." He Xiufen set her chopsticks down. "Tomorrow you make two stops. One: Chengbei Hospital, Obstetrics Department. Pull the December shift schedule and the shift handover records. On the night of the 26th, she was there. On the night of the 30th, she wasn't. Get it written down on paper. Two: the District Health Commission. File an application for one thing and one thing only—the originals of the signature on the last page of the transcribed copy and the one on the self-review statement. Then have the actual person who wrote them produce their own statement."

"Will they hand them over?"

"At the investigation stage, it's a defensible request." He Xiufen pushed her bowl aside. "Whether you file it is your business. Whether they give it is theirs. Once you file it, every piece of paper they produce from now on has to carry a name."

"Keep the application narrow," she added. "Don't write 'please provide all case materials.' Write about this one page, this one pen, this one person. Go broad and they'll brush you off with 'under investigation.'"

Shen Zhixia nodded and jotted the application notes on her loose-leaf paper. Then she remembered something. "Peng Weidong called this afternoon. Asked when the baby in the incubator could come home. He said the cremation can wait—he wants the appraisal first."

"He can afford to wait. The hospital can't," He Xiufen said.

At 7:50, Lin Qi came up from downstairs holding a bowl of noodles, the scallions on top untouched. Just before eight, her phone rang.

The screen showed an eight-digit landline, a Chengbei Hospital number block. She looked at it for two seconds, then took the phone down to the stairwell. Three minutes later she came back and set the phone face-down on the table.

"The Medical Affairs Office," she said.

"What did they ask?"

"Asked if I'd come in to the hospital tomorrow morning for a chat." Lin Qi rubbed her knuckle against the rim of her cup. "To fill in those characters I didn't write on the 5th or the 27th. Accept responsibility, and the disciplinary action goes internal. They'd report it to the district as 'minor circumstances, self-criticism already completed.' And the practice certificate—the hospital would handle it."

"And if you don't accept?"

"If I don't—" She paused. "He said the hospital would have no choice but to follow regulations and submit all the materials."

Shen Zhixia pulled a sheet of loose-leaf paper from the file folder and wrote four characters at the top: Interview Record. Below that, line by line: time, incoming number, caller, summary of content. She wrote slowly, reading each line once before committing it to paper.

"You're recording this too?"

"Recording it." She capped her pen. "Their words never reach paper on their own. From today on, I don't miss a single line."

He Xiufen came up the stairs with her tea and stopped at the doorway. "Admitting fault and being pinned down are two different things." She said. "What he wants isn't your confession. He wants your own hand holding that page in place."

Lin Qi stared at the loose-leaf page for a long time. "Should I go tomorrow?"

"Go," Shen Zhixia said. "You need to hear what he has to say—hear it yourself. I won't go into that room. Your words have to be your own."

"Then where will you be?"

"Downstairs." Shen Zhixia said. "You walk out, you'll see me."

Lin Qi turned her phone over, then set it face-down on the table. A second later, she reached over and flipped it back, saved the number, and typed in a name: The Hospital.