Justice System: I Litigate for the Whole City

Chapter 183 : The Top Button

The gurney went in, and she was stopped at the door.

Double doors with glass upper halves. A "No Family Beyond This Point" sign was taped to the glass, one corner curling up, worn glossy by countless hands. Inside, someone called out a bed number, someone else shouted a blood pressure reading. Through the glass she saw Lin Qi's white coat sleeve hanging off the gurney's edge, one hand half-open against her stomach, a red mark across the exposed wrist.

A nurse in a light blue uniform came over with a registration book. "Family?"

"Representative." Shen Zhixia said. "Her lawyer."

"A representative needs a power of attorney."

"I have one." She braced her bag against her knee and opened it. The General Power of Attorney had been in the second slot of her folder since February. She pulled it out, smoothed the creases, and handed it over.

The nurse flipped through two pages and handed it back. "Registration and tests need to be paid first. The medical records have to wait until the attending physician writes them up."

"I need them today."

"You can't get them today."

"Then I'll file a request." She opened her bag, took out a notebook and pen. "Outpatient and emergency medical records can be requested for copying by the patient or their representative. It's written in the Regulations on the Prevention and Handling of Medical Disputes. I'll write my request properly, and you'll give me a receipt."

The nurse's mouth opened, then closed. "You need to see the Medical Affairs Office about that."

"Fine." She read back the line she'd just written. "April 12th, 11:14, Emergency Department nurses' station. First line: 'You can't get them today.' Second line: 'See the Medical Affairs Office.' Those two sentences came from you. I didn't add a word. What's your name? I'll note you by your station."

The nurse said nothing and went back through the door.

At the registration window, someone asked the patient's name. She gave it. Then they asked for the employer. She paused, then said, "Chengbei Hospital."

A young nurse beside the window let out a soft "ah," then her voice dropped. "Dr. Lin from Obstetrics?"

"Isn't she suspended?" another voice drifted from further inside.

"She's a patient today," Shen Zhixia said.

The payment window announced 327.50 yuan. She paid with her own card, folded the receipt into her notebook, and wrote underneath: registration, ECG, knee X-ray, tetanus shot — 327.50 yuan, noted for now.

Two paramedics came out pushing the empty gurney, a man and a woman. She went up and stopped them.

"Two quick questions about timing."

"Which one?"

"The one brought in wearing a white coat. Dispatch time and arrival time."

"Dispatched 10:48, arrived at emergency 11:06." The man looked at her. "Why do you need to know?"

"That record of yours was done pre-hospital. It's not the same thing as what's in this building." She tapped her pen against the notebook. "Give me the trip sheet number."

The man recited a string of digits. She checked them one by one, read them back, and asked if that was correct. He said yes.

"I may need a written statement from you two in the next couple of days, with all four times written out clearly: dispatch, arrival on scene, loading, and arrival at hospital."

"We cooperate when we're supposed to." He wheeled the gurney away.

The head nurse of Obstetrics, Yan Mei, came down the stairs. Short hair, her nurse's cap clipped to her collar. She stopped at the door and watched through the glass for a while.

"Has her family come?"

"They're in Tongling. Haven't been notified yet."

"Someone has to sign for her."

"The person who can sign is lying in there right now." Shen Zhixia said. "The moment she opens her eyes, you'll be the first person I call."

Yan Mei's lips moved but nothing came out. She turned and walked away. After seven or eight steps she paused, looked back at the door once, then kept going.

Her phone rang. He Xiufen.

"Is she in there?"

"She is. Knee's been X-rayed. She's asleep, blood pressure's a little low. The doctor said it's a stress response. I asked for the emergency records. They told me to go to Medical Affairs."

"Then go. Get a receipt too. Don't just show up with your mouth." The sound of papers turning came from the other end. "Her mother — wait until she wakes up. And keep the Commission out of it today. You've got one job: stay with her."

"What about the stack on the drug line?"

"Don't touch a single word of that today."

She made a sound of assent. The other end paused, then added, "One more thing. When it comes to this hospital's doors, Lawyer Lu knows them better than I do. I called him."

"He withdrew from the case."

"He withdrew, but he still knows the doors."

She spread the notebook on her knee and added a line from the call: Medical Affairs Office, April 12th, emergency records not provided in timely manner. When she finished, she placed a dot after He Xiufen's name.

Ma Jianjun arrived carrying two bags of steamed buns, his helmet tucked under one arm, his work uniform zipped only halfway, sweat still on his forehead. He looked through the door first, couldn't see anything, then turned and pressed the buns into her arms.

"Little Shen, did you pay yet? I've got money here."

"Already paid."

"Then let me keep watch for a while. Go sit on the bench over there."

"Go run your orders." She stuffed one bag back into his arms. "I'll keep one bag. Has anyone asked in the group chat?"

"Yeah. I said she was found, she's in the hospital, no questions."

"If anyone else asks, you stick to one line: she's fine. Nothing more. Don't say which hospital, don't say who she is, don't say what happened to her."

"Got it." Ma Jianjun tucked the buns under his arm. "My mouth's tighter than iron."

"It's not that tight," she said. "Which is why you only get that one line."

Ma Jianjun chuckled and headed for the exit, then turned at the door. "Tang Guo says the posts are all taken down."

"Mm."

The door at the far end of the corridor opened. The man who came in had his jacket draped over one arm, the top button of his shirt undone, his sleeves rolled to his forearms.

The first thing Shen Zhixia saw was that button.

She had faced this man from arbitration hearings to courtrooms. She'd seen him sit at conference tables all day, stand through entire morning sessions. The top button of his shirt had always, always been fastened.

"How is she?" he asked.

Not the case. He asked about her first.

"Soft tissue injury to the knee. X-rays show no fracture. Blood pressure's a bit low, she's asleep. The doctor said observation for now." She said, "I haven't touched the drug line documents."

"Mm."

He stood beside her for a moment, looking through the glass door. Inside, someone was moving a cart, wheels scraping the floor.

"The tip about checking the accompanying shipment documents — you sent it."

She didn't look up, just closed her notebook.

"Mm."

"Why no name?"

"If my name were on it, you shouldn't use it." He said, "Use something from me and this case stops being yours."

She stared at him for two seconds. He didn't look away.

"How much do you still have on the drug documents?" she asked.

"Not a single word."

"You sat over there."

"I sat at that table. Which means I can't take things from that table and give them to you." He said, "That's the rule. You don't need to tally it for me."

"I'm not tallying it for you." She said. "I'm tallying you."

"And what did you come up with?"

"Nothing yet."

He draped his jacket over the back of a chair. "You won't get the emergency records today. What you can get today is something else."

"What?"

"The paperwork from that ambulance. The pre-hospital record was done by him, handed over with the patient. The Emergency Center keeps their own copy too, with a number on their vehicle. Once that document enters this building, it belongs to them. While it's in their hands, it'll always belong to them."

She opened her notebook. The two lines from the paramedic were still there. She hadn't written a single digit wrong.

"Dispatched 10:48, arrived 11:06." She said. "I'll have the nurses' station verify these two lines. Whoever confirms them writes their name."

"Good."

He glanced at the back of her hand. The cut had scabbed black, with grime still around the edges.

"Go wash up," he said. "You'll have people asking questions soon. You show up with blood on your hands, you've already lost half your words."

"That almost sounds like concern."

"Almost."

She rinsed her hands at the ER sink. The water was cold. The cut softened and began to seep again. She found a paper towel and pressed it on. When she came back, he was sitting on the plastic bench, two bottles of water on the empty seat beside him, one with the cap already unscrewed.

She took the opened one and sat at the other end of the empty seat.

The middle seat stayed empty.

A nurse carrying a treatment tray headed for the door. He stood up from the chair to finish saying, "When you go in, first tell her what department you're from, then reach out. She doesn't know you."

The nurse blinked. "Huh?"

"Just say it."

The nurse looked at him, then at Shen Zhixia, nodded, and went in.

He sat back down. The fluorescent tube overhead was flickering, making the eyes sting. She held the water bottle and suddenly remembered how this man looked standing on the other side: cuffs buttoned, papers arranged neatly, questions hammering in one after another. Today he stood on this side, the top button of his shirt undone, sleeves rolled, like someone yanked straight up from a desk.

"Lu Jibai."

"Mm."

"Why are you here? She's not your client. You're off this case."

He set the unopened bottle on his knee, both hands resting on the cap, not twisting it.

"I've stood in hallways like this before." He said.

She didn't respond.

"My sister was four years younger than me." He said, his gaze on the door across from them. "Eleven years ago, at a hospital back in my hometown. She could still talk when they brought her in. By the next morning, she was gone."

The number on the patient-call display jumped.

"My family didn't understand. The hospital said, the rescue records are all here, everything that could be done was done." He said. "My mother put everything away in a cabinet and said, the person's gone. What's left belongs to other people."

"I went to ask for the records. Three times. The third time, they gave me a photocopy. Six pages."

He paused.

"One page missing."

"I still don't know what was written on it." He said. "I was nineteen. I read those five pages for a year and couldn't make sense of a single word."

"Later, I learned how to get documents. By the time I learned, she'd long been cremated, the matter long past, everything in that cabinet gone yellow."

"So when I became a lawyer, it wasn't about winning at first." He said. "I just wanted to know what was written on the page that was missing from those six."

Someone pushed a cart down the corridor, wheels clattering.

She thought of the two photocopied pages on her own family's dinner table, thought of the first half of a sentence. She said nothing.

"You've won so many cases," she said.

"All of them someone else's."

"Mm."

"Do you believe," she said, "that there's a kind of signature a person doesn't want to give but gives in the end?"

He didn't answer right away. After a long moment, he said:

"I do."

Another pause.

"I've given one too."

[Thud. Half a sentence is still a sentence.]

She didn't ask which time. She moved her eyes from his face to the glass door. A figure inside walked back and forth twice.

"The testimony you owe my father," she said. "Does it still count?"

He didn't look at her, his hands still resting on the bottle cap.

"The testimony I owe your father — I remember it."

She heard it clearly.

He didn't say yes, didn't say no. What he said was "I remember it."

She looked down and twisted the cap back onto the already-opened bottle, taking two tries to get it tight. The seat beside her stayed empty the whole time.

The top button of his shirt still wasn't fastened.