Geisterbestattung

Kapitel 19

Li Hui asked the nurse to help her sit up and lean against the headboard. This time the nurse did as she was told.

She wanted to wait until the nurse was gone to peek through the curtains and see what was outside, but the nurse seemed to have read her mind and refused to leave the room. Finally, Li Hui couldn't sit any longer and had to lie down.

She felt dizzy and wanted to sleep.

Li Huimeng saw herself walking on the street in Maowu Township, wanting to buy a bag of biscuits. She felt as if she hadn't eaten for years and was so hungry that she could hardly walk.

She went from house to house knocking on the doors of those dilapidated houses, but everyone who opened the doors was dressed in rags and stretched out their begging hands to her, which frightened her so much that she quickly ran away.

A dog was chasing closely behind her, its eyes fixed on the flesh on her leg. She knew the dog must be starving too, and she screamed in terror, but her legs felt weak and she couldn't run anymore.

She heard a rustling sound of voices beside her. Opening her eyes, she saw a group of dark figures huddled together in the dimly lit room, seemingly discussing her. Seeing that she was awake, one of them spoke: "How are you feeling?"

"Have...did my friends arrive?"

"Not yet. She said she was coming, but she hasn't come yet. I don't think she'll be able to come," said a male doctor whose age was hard to guess.

"What...do you mean by that?"

"It's already dark. If she wanted to come, she would have arrived long ago." His voice was somewhat cold.

"She has to go to work during the day." Li Hui thought that Zhang Lili might be at work.

"What time is it?" an elderly woman interjected in a hoarse voice, "It's past nine o'clock at night!"

"Yes, Shanghai isn't that far from here, it's only a two or three-hour drive!" the nurse said.

"Call her! Call her now!" Li Hui suddenly felt pain all over her wound. She groaned and tried to turn over, but she couldn't.

"But she didn't even leave a phone number," the old woman said.

"This person is really strange. She's so beautiful and speaks so sweetly. I never expected her to be like this!" the nurse muttered to herself as she walked out. Then, the other two people also left.

One of them turned back and turned off the dim light bulb.

Li Hui was left alone in the room. She lay blankly on the bed, seemingly not understanding what the three people had said. She pondered the implied meaning in their words: Zhang Lili had abandoned her, injured, at a small village clinic, and more than ten hours had passed, and she still hadn't returned! Moreover, she had no money for medical treatment, no food, and no water. In short—Li Hui, injured and unable to move, was left unattended!

Is this true?

No! Zhang Lili must have run into trouble on the road! She must have been driving by herself again, and maybe she was in an accident! Otherwise, why would she ignore Li Hui?

Her biggest worry right now is, if Zhang Lili really has an accident and doesn't come, what will the medical staff at this small clinic do to her? Will they continue to treat her injuries and take good care of her so she can recover quickly, even without medical fees? Will they hold her hostage here until someone comes to pay the outstanding medical bills before they release her?

Li Hui felt a terror of being abandoned—far from Shanghai, sleeping alone in this dark, dilapidated little room, with no one caring about her…

She wanted to call for help, but what was behind that half-open door? It could be a road or a yard that anyone could pass through, or it could even be a wilderness where wild animals roamed!

She had no idea where the doctors and nurses were sleeping.

What if shouting attracts bad guys?

Li Hui lay there, too afraid to move. The darkness felt like a giant cauldron, trapping her inside. She felt terrified, suffocated, and as if she were confronting an immense pressure from the darkness, her nerves on the verge of snapping.

She needs to get up and lock the door first!

But when she moved her leg, the pain made her sweat. She tried, and she could move her other leg, but it was just as excruciatingly painful.

She struggled to sit up with her hand, which was still aching from the needle pricks during the day, only to fall back onto the bed with a groan.

There was a noise outside the door! It sounded like someone walked by quietly. Li Hui listened intently for a long time, but couldn't make out where the person went. She thought to herself, "Maybe it was just a gust of wind."

She lay back down, thinking of a way to escape. The only solution was to have someone call the maternity and infant hospital after dawn the next day and ask Director Chen to come and pick her up!

Now, the hospital will be the talk of the town again tomorrow. But rather than wait to die in a small clinic whose exact location is unknown, she would rather accept everyone's gossip and disdain than live in a place where she doesn't know the exact location or exact spot.

It's so hot! Li Hui lifted the covers, trying to cool off. She knew her fever hadn't subsided, so she forced herself to sleep, hoping everything would be alright by tomorrow morning. However, the unlocked door remained a worry, making her want to sleep but afraid to.

Li Hui was in a daze, half asleep and half asleep, as if she were dreaming again.

Li Hui saw Da Dun'er bend down towards her, and there was an unfathomable meaning in his eyes, as if he needed her, yet also as if he rejected her.

His face was very strange; the boundaries between his nose, mouth, and eyes were blurred, as if he had been covered with a patch of yellow mud. No, it looked like a freshly sculpted clay figure whose features had been accidentally ruined, making him look quite terrifying.

He slowly reached out his hand to her.

Li Hui was terrified, but her body defied reason, craving his touch.

She wanted to ask him, "Do you want to cancel the 'death timetable' plan?" But Li Hui couldn't see Da Dun'er's expression; she only felt his hands scratching and clawing at her neck and chest. Her ribs ached unbearably, and she finally screamed...

Li Hui woke up. In her terror, a blurry shadow flickered in front of her, and she felt it was the "mud figure with a ruined face" she had seen in her dreamlike state!

Li Hui smelled a pungent, fishy stench, then heard footsteps moving slowly and hesitantly toward the door before disappearing without a trace.

The lights came on, and Li Hui heard a flurry of footsteps and an impatient nurse's voice: "What's wrong? What's wrong? What are you yelling for? You scared me to death!"

"There's a ghost! There's a ghost!" Li Hui only managed to utter these two sentences before she fainted in a daze.

The high fever caused Li Hui to have all sorts of terrible nightmares. When she woke up the next day, she couldn't remember whether what she had experienced the previous night was a dream or something that actually happened.

She glanced at the nurse's face; it seemed as if nothing had happened. But she vaguely remembered that bad people had come in last night, though she couldn't be sure. However, the pungent, fishy stench still seemed to irritate her senses—a smell only a demon crawling out of a grave could possess!

But Li Hui is a doctor, and she knows perfectly well that "ghosts" are not credible.

This place is absolutely terrifying! Li Hui couldn't stay here for even a minute longer.

She gave the nurse a phone number and asked her to call the maternity hospital quickly, but the nurse said that the phone at the clinic had been broken for a long time and that she would have to go to the township five miles away to make the call.

Good heavens! What kind of place is this? Could it be Sun Erniang's shady inn?

Li Hui felt that despair was like a huge black vortex that swallowed her up all at once.

Zhang Lili's Story

The maternal and infant hospital received the call from Maowu Township three days after the incident.

Director Chen, carrying the exorbitant medical fees quoted over the phone by the local health clinic and an ambulance from the maternal and infant hospital, rushed to the so-called "Maowu Township".

It turned out to be a small mountain village bordering Jiangsu province, with only a dozen or so residents, all of whom were leprosy patients. The small clinic was actually where leprosy patients received their daily medical treatment.

As the ambulance drove into the village, several leprosy patients, their faces ravaged by the terrible disease, were sitting sparsely in front of a few small houses, basking in the sun, dragging their mangled limbs.

Director Chen was stunned when he saw this scene.

He carefully opened the car door, sniffed, frowned, and then steeled himself to jump out of the ambulance, rushing into the dilapidated ward of the small clinic with a speed he had never seen before.

Once inside, Director Chen threw the money on the table, forgetting to ask for the receipt. He then pulled Li Hui towards the door, causing Li Hui to scream in pain.

Just as the car was about to leave, the nurse caught up and handed him a piece of paper: "This is the medical bill receipt." Director Chen held the paper between two fingertips, turned around, and wrapped it tightly in a piece of sterile gauze.

From the moment he got in the car, he began disinfecting Li Hui. No longer caring about modesty, Li Hui was stripped down to her bare bra and panties. All the clothing removed from her was carefully placed into a plastic garbage bag by Director Chen, like a criminal investigator handling evidence, and then the bag was tightly sealed.

Along the way, he was busy running alongside the car. Before even reaching Shanghai, he had used up all the bottles of disinfectant alcohol and disinfectant solution he had brought with him. At this moment, Director Chen's hands, gloved with rubber, were still hanging awkwardly in the air, hesitant to put them anywhere.

He glanced around the ambulance compartment, muttering to himself with a somewhat neurotic air:

"This vehicle needs to be thoroughly disinfected before it can be used. Oh, and this stretcher too! All the clothes and disinfectant cotton should be burned! Don't worry about the clothes..."

At this moment, Li Hui was the most frightened; Director Chen's emotions had severely affected her. The "mud man with a ruined face" from last night turned out to be a leper! He had come to her room and secretly touched her body! He might have even kissed her!

Oh my god, Li Hui wished she could peel off every layer of skin on her body, but even that wouldn't guarantee she wouldn't get infected!

Li Hui lay on the stretcher, looking at Director Chen's restless and helpless appearance, and thinking about her own miserable situation, she felt like crying but had no tears.

An even greater terror gripped her tightly.

After being taken back to Shanghai from the hospital, Li Hui was immediately placed in quarantine and disinfected.

After examination, apart from a rib fracture, there were no other fractures. The reason why the "Maowu Township Health Center" tried to exaggerate the severity of her injuries was simply to manipulate the medical expenses and extort more money.

Now, Li Hui is in pain all over her body and is not sure if she has any signs of infection, so she has to stay temporarily in a room specially vacated next to the duty rest room on the third and a half floor of the hospital, which is convenient for treatment, observation and care.

On that very day, Zhang Lili also returned.

Upon hearing the news, Li Hui, unsure whether to feel joy or fear, suddenly turned pale and cried out in a trembling voice, "Director Chen! Quick! Disinfect Zhang Lili!"

During the day, while everyone else was busy, Li Hui, having slept enough, lay in bed lost in thought.

She hadn't been home for the past few days, and her emails had probably piled up. The contents of those emails were no longer important; now, the threat of leprosy to her was more terrifying than a death sentence.

She might get infected, and together with Zhang Lili, the two of them would end up like the infected people in Maowu Township, with only half a nose, a lip, two crippled legs, and hands deformed like chicken claws. Then, they would live out their miserable lives, half-dead, in a remote mountain village.

Thinking of this, Li Hui felt a chill run down her spine.

Zhang Lili came yesterday. She said that she didn't know why, in a panic, she drove onto a highway. It was pitch black, and one of her headlights was broken. There wasn't a single intersection on that road, and Li Hui, who was lying in the car, was seriously injured and on the verge of death. She was extremely anxious! Fortunately, there wasn't a single car on the road, so she had to step on the gas and keep driving, as if led by a ghost. She didn't know how long she drove, but she finally arrived at the "Maowu Township Health Center".

Thankfully, the broken-down Santana that had crashed down the mountain was still drivable! Otherwise, she really wouldn't know what to do. In the darkness of the hills, she was all alone, facing the unconscious and uncertain Li Hui, surrounded by complete darkness. And outside the high wall, there was no village in sight, no shop in sight. Needless to say, Li Hui could fully understand that helplessness of being utterly helpless.

However, what moved Li Hui the most, and what she most wanted to know, was what Zhang Lili's situation was during the two days after she was taken to the clinic. But Zhang Lili simply told her that she took the wrong road on her way back, got lost, drove around until dark, and ran out of gas, so she had to wait by the roadside for dawn.

"My God, that was a real escape from death!"

Zhang Lili summarized the adventure of that night in just one sentence, then said that she had something to do in the office upstairs and would tell her the details later, before leaving the room.

Now that she knew Zhang Lili hadn't stayed in the leprosy village, she realized that her visit to Li Hui was risky. Therefore, she forgave Zhang Lili for her hasty arrival and vague explanations.

Fortunately, Zhang Lili came to see her again the next day. As soon as she entered the house, she pulled an IBM laptop from her bag: "Look what I brought you!" Zhang Lili smiled mysteriously, "Now you can spend your time surfing the internet in bed!"

Li Hui was only excited for a moment as a conditioned reflex before she immediately felt her breathing become uneven.

She felt that the shadow she had been trying to escape had returned. She knew that the computer Zhang Lili had sent was exactly what she wanted most and feared most right now!

As soon as Zhang Lili left, she eagerly opened her email. Today was the 10th day, and six emails signed "SW" were waiting for her there!

She didn't know whether she should open them, or which one to open first.

"Today is the [number]th day!"

"Consider yourself lucky; you've escaped another catastrophe!"

"But you can't always be this lucky! Look out the window, you'll be surprised!"

This was her first day in the leper colony of "Thatched Hut Village"! That day, the nurses insisted on not opening the curtains or letting her open the door, using the excuse that "the curtains were broken." If she had actually seen outside the window, she would have been "startled"! But how did the creator of this "death schedule" know?

Moreover, the "catastrophic disaster" the previous night must have referred to the car plunging off the hill. How did he know that?

"Today is day [number], I hope you are satisfied with your situation, and wish you a pleasant mood!"

That day was when she was driven almost crazy by the conditions at the Maowu Township Health Center.

"Today is day one. In a few more days, you and your happy life will be over!"

If she continues to stay in Maowu Township and contracts leprosy, the consequences will be unimaginable, and her future life will definitely be completely different.

...