Read Novel Full Chapter 149 : The Shift Schedule
Chapter 149 : The Shift Schedule
February 2nd, 8:40 a.m., third floor of the inpatient building at Chengbei Hospital. Shift change had just ended. The hallway still carried the night shift's scent—disinfectant, boxed meals, cold air seeping through a window that hadn't shut properly.
The obstetrics nurses' station window was open halfway. Yan Mei stood inside, short-haired, her nurse's cap clipped to her collar, tapping a stack of lab slips against the counter until they were aligned.
"Head Nurse Yan."
Yan Mei glanced up at her without stopping. "You again."
"Here for a form." Shen Zhixia laid the firm letter and a photocopy of Lin Qi's power of attorney on the counter. "Last December. The obstetrics physician shift schedule. The department's retained copy, or the one they filed."
"Last month's got torn up when the new one went up at the start of the month."
"The one on the wall got torn up." Shen Zhixia said. "What about the one that got filed?"
Yan Mei's hands paused. "Go ask Medical Affairs about that."
"I'm asking you first. You've been in this department for years. Who was on duty when—you read a schedule better than you read faces."
Yan Mei straightened the lab slips and placed them under a glass cup. "A schedule's a schedule; showing up is showing up. Our department fills out the form and sends it upstairs for night shift pay. You don't have an order in hand today, so I've got nothing to say to you."
"No order today." Shen Zhixia spread three sheets of paper across the counter. "I just need you to look at two sets of handwriting."
The three sheets sat in the draft from the window, corners lifting. One was Lin Qi's name, written by her own hand at the Zhengping Firm the day before. The other two each bore the name "Lin Qi."
Yan Mei's gaze landed on them. She didn't reach out, and she didn't step back. The draft nudged the three sheets together, and she reached out and pressed down the corner of the top one.
"Whose handwriting it is, I can't tell." She said. "After all these years, whatever's written in the books is what's written."
"Then can you tell whose this is?"
"I dispense medication in the morning." Yan Mei pushed the three sheets back. "I'm not taking that conversation."
Shen Zhixia gathered the papers, pulled her loose-leaf notebook from her pocket, and flipped to a fresh page: February 2, 8:52 a.m., third floor of Chengbei Hospital, obstetrics nurses' station. Head Nurse Yan Mei viewed three signature samples, stated she could not identify them, offered no opinion, did not sign. She read the entry back from the top.
"Tell me which line is wrong."
Yan Mei didn't answer. She turned and went into the back room. When she came out, she had a laminated sheet in her hand, densely marked in red and blue ink.
"This month's. Take a look."
Shen Zhixia read it left to right. January 1st to the 31st, the obstetrics grid was completely filled, and no square bore the name Lin Qi.
"The December one—"
"Torn up at the start of the month." Yan Mei snatched the sheet back and slid it under the glass. "If you're that good, go find all twelve months."
[Thud. The one they tore down was the wall copy. The person who made the schedule is still here.]
Down to the first floor, east end. The medical records room window came up to chest height. Qi Xiuyun was punching holes in a report, bracing it with a book.
"That notebook from last time—any follow-up?"
"No follow-up." Qi Xiuyun looked up. "You do come around often."
"Then a smaller matter." Shen Zhixia took the stack of papers from her pocket and drew out a page. "You've got a good hole punch here."
"Two. One's broken."
"On the afternoon of January 4th, obstetrics handed a notebook over to the Medical Affairs Office." Shen Zhixia said. "On the morning of January 5th, someone from Medical Affairs came to borrow the hole punch. They also brought a stack of medical record paper."
Qi Xiuyun's hand stopped on the handle of the hole punch. A cart rolled past in the hallway, its wheels dragging long.
"It was January 5th." She said. "Around ten in the morning. I said let me log it, and he said department materials, don't put it in your book."
"The person."
"White coat open, sleeves pushed up to the forearms." Qi Xiuyun thought for a moment. "We don't get many outsiders around here. How far someone's sleeves are rolled up—I remember that."
"Anything else?"
"On the afternoon of the 7th he came again. Put the stack of punched paper on the window and asked me to check if the holes lined up." She moved the report aside. "Said something when he set it down."
"What did he say."
"'The signature line's all set.'"
Shen Zhixia's pen paused on the page. "Which page did he mean by the signature line?"
"That I didn't ask." Qi Xiuyun put the hole punch back in the drawer. "All I know is the sun was good those days—it reached the second row of the window."
[Thud. Working backwards, that name was signed in daylight.]
Descending the stairs, the lobby's heat wrapped around her. Lin Qi sat at the far end of the bench by the window, the collar of her worn-down puffer coat standing up, phone in her hand.
"The schedule?"
"The wall copy's torn up, and they won't show me the filed one." Shen Zhixia sat down beside her. "The one on your phone—that was posted in the group chat?"
Lin Qi turned her screen over. "The schedule comes out on the 25th of each month for the following month. The picture goes in the group. At the end of January they removed me from the group, but the records are still there."
On the screen was a white form with black lines, the header reading: Obstetrics Physician Schedule, followed by (December). Across the top: Day Shift, Evening Shift, Night Shift.
Shen Zhixia looked first at the 26th. In the box after the night shift column, two characters were written.
Lin Qi.
"You were on duty that night."
"I was." Lin Qi's voice dropped. "3:40. That's when she died."
[Thud. The 26th has her name written in it.]
Shen Zhixia's finger moved right, stopping on the 30th. That box had writing too, crossed out with a red pen, with a new name added beside it—two characters, short both vertically and horizontally.
"The 30th was mine, originally." Lin Qi said. "On the morning of the 27th I turned in my annual leave form. By the morning, the revised chart was in the group."
She scrolled down to a message: the same form with several boxes circled in red, and beneath it a line of text—Dr. Lin is on leave; night shifts from the 28th to the 31st are covered.
Shen Zhixia enlarged the two images side by side. The first was posted on November 25th; the second's timestamp was December 27th, 10:04 a.m. On the 30th, the first image showed Lin Qi; the second had her crossed out, replaced with someone else's name.
"On the night of the 30th, the records were pulled from the medical records room." She said. "The person who handled them was on shift that night."
"It wasn't me who altered them."
"I know." Shen Zhixia took screenshots of both images and sent them one by one to her own phone. "Keep these saved first. Don't leave the group. Don't clear your phone. The screenshots only prove we've seen them—in court, the judge needs to look through your phone with their own eyes."
[Thud. The 30th has someone else's name in it.]
Lin Qi stared at the red slash on her screen. Her fingers around the phone went slack for a moment.
"Whatever they have can only stick to you because of the 26th." Shen Zhixia said. "You were on duty, you were on that floor, and every piece of paper that left that ward that night carried your name."
"I didn't sign."
"Right." Shen Zhixia said. "On the 26th, whatever you signed didn't have those strokes. On the 30th, you weren't there at all. Put the two together, and the person whose hand moved isn't you."
At ten o'clock sharp, Lin Qi stood from the bench and pulled her puffer's zipper up a little higher.
"I'm going up."
"I'm not going in that room." Shen Zhixia said. "Listen to how he puts it. Don't write a single word. If they ask you to sign anything, show it to me first."
"I'm not signing anything."
"Don't say that absolutely." Shen Zhixia said. "If they ask you to look at something, look at it."
The elevator was at the end of the hall. Shen Zhixia stood against a pillar in the first-floor lobby, watching the numbers above the elevator doors rise, pause, then fall.
At 10:40, Lin Qi came back down.
"Same room as last time." She said. "There was a printed sheet on the desk. Four lines. The bottom was left blank."
"What did they ask you?"
"Asked how I was doing at home. Asked about my mom's health." Lin Qi's mouth quirked. "Then said if I admitted it, we'd handle it internally. They'd report it to the district as minor circumstances with a self-criticism already made. The licensing issue—the hospital would talk to them."
"Did you write anything?"
"I said my pen was out of ink." She shoved her hands back in her pockets. "He offered me his pen. I said I needed to look it over again."
Shen Zhixia looked at her, not smiling. "What else did they say?"
"Director Xu said that since things had come this far, if I had any sense, I should think about myself."
The Medical Affairs Office on the second floor was open. Director Xu sat behind his desk on a phone call, white coat open, sleeves pushed to his forearms. A stack of photocopies pressed down the corner of his desk; the top page bore a heading in five printed characters: Legal Opinion Letter. Shen Zhixia glanced at it, then looked away.
"Director Xu."
He wrapped up the call and hung up. "You again."
Shen Zhixia placed two pages on the edge of his desk. One was an application, asking for three items only: the final page of the transcribed nursing record copy, the first page of the self-review statement on medical record changes, and the originals of the two signatures, along with written statements from the writers and handlers. The other page read: the original obstetric physician shift schedule from last December, and the night shift handover records from the 28th through the 31st of December.
"The other copy." She said. "I'm submitting it to the district Health Commission's Medical Administration Division this afternoon. This one's for you."
Director Xu read both pages. He pulled the schedule request out and set it beside the keyboard.
"The shift schedule isn't in Medical Affairs."
"Then which copy were you looking at when you wrote the Statement?"
He capped his pen, then uncapped it again.
"Go through the proper channels. We won't block you."
Shen Zhixia took out her notebook and pen and wrote with her head down: February 2, 10:46 a.m., second floor of Chengbei Hospital, Medical Affairs Office. Director Xu did not sign for or accept the submitted application, issued no written response, and stated: "Go through the proper channels; we won't block you." She read the entry back.
"I've written that down." She took her phone from her pocket, screen already lit, the recording timer still running. "Recording here too."
Director Xu's hand stopped on his pen. He stared at the screen for two seconds.
"Go through the proper channels. We won't block you." He repeated it word for word, then added a half-sentence: "Proper channels are for reasonable people."
[Thud. The door's open. The words go on paper.]
"Who had night shift on December 30th?" Shen Zhixia asked.
"That's an internal matter."
"Then once you've verified it, copy me the result."
"Hold on." He stood and walked to the door, voice dropping. "Lawyer Shen, go back and tell the family something—the money the hospital gives them doesn't necessarily have to wait for a judgment."
And with that, he stepped back inside and pulled the door shut.
Lin Qi was waiting for her on the lobby bench. Shen Zhixia had just sat down when her phone rang. The screen showed two characters: Peng Weidong.
"Lawyer Shen." The voice on the other end was tight. "My brother called from home. The hospital's asking again."
"Asking what?"
"Asking whose card the money should go to."
Shen Zhixia held the phone, standing inside the glass doors. The fog outside hadn't lifted. The heat inside the lobby was stifling.
"Don't give it." She said. "Don't take a single yuan. Don't give them so much as one digit of a card number."
After hanging up, she sent He Xiufen a line: The hospital asked the Pengs for their card number.
The reply came quickly, six characters: Money in hand, paper's gone.
Shen Zhixia read those six characters twice, opened her notebook, and added a line: February 2, 10:52 a.m., call from Peng Weidong. The hospital asked his family for a bank card number.
After writing, she looked up at the elevator. The number was stopped at 2, and hadn't moved since.