Seeing the brightly lit lobby, with people in white coats and pretty girls in light green nurse uniforms coming and going, I suddenly felt as if I had returned to the lively hospitals of the past.
Except… no hospital would ever have such an enormous lobby.
Everywhere you looked, there were circles of machines surrounding single hospital beds.
Some of the beds even had people lying on them.
As soon as the elevator doors opened, two pretty young nurses came forward to greet us.
I’ll just call them nurses for now, since I really have no idea what their actual job titles are.
The two nurses seemed very familiar with the white coat leading the group and asked with bright smiles: “How many people this time?”
The white coat with the hood replied, “Four.”
One of the nurses glanced over us, then when her eyes landed on Suo Tian, she immediately tugged the girl beside her and nodded politely: “Captain Suo.”
Suo Tian gave them a look and nodded back in response.
After that, the two nurses stopped joking around and led us deeper into the lobby.
The inside of the hall felt a bit chaotic—not in terms of hygiene, but in terms of how everything was arranged.
There was no clear order to anything.
Besides the various machines and beds scattered everywhere, even the desks of some white coats were placed randomly.
Apart from the few who were checking on patients or writing something down, most of the white coats were clustered in groups of three or five, chatting happily with big smiles on their faces.
The two nurses brought us to a few beds near a corner, where several doctors in white coats were sitting.
When we arrived, they were laughing heartily at some joke they had just heard.
“Doctor Sun,” one of the nurses called out.
The group froze mid-laugh, and a relatively young-looking doctor turned his head toward her, still speaking with residual amusement in his voice: “What’s up?”
The nurse pointed toward us.
Before she even spoke, Doctor Sun had already turned his head to look.
His gaze swept past the rest of us, but the moment he saw Suo Tian, his eyes went wide.
Then—with a swish—he shot up from his stool, waving frantically at the others who were still facing away from us, speaking in an exaggerated voice:
“Guys, quick, quick! Stop your nonsense and look who’s back!”
The others turned immediately.
I noticed an older man among them; the rest looked to be around thirty or so.
When they recognized Suo Tian, they all jumped to their feet, shouting excitedly as they rushed toward him, completely crowding me and Lili to the side.
In an instant, the whole atmosphere exploded with noisy chatter from a bunch of grown men.
“Tian’er! You—damn it, you’re still alive? You’re not dead yet?”
The speaker was a short, square-faced man with a tiny ponytail.
“Song Jiang, can you talk like a human being? Can you be a little more civilized? Tian’er comes back alive, and THAT’s the first thing you say?”
This time the speaker was also short—about my height—with thick lips and at least a normal hairstyle.
Compared to the one called Song Jiang, this guy made a better first impression on me.
“Come on, Huang Jun, don’t pretend to be cultured in front of me. Ask any of the girls here—who doesn’t know how creepy and pervy you actually are?!”
The moment I heard that person’s name, my knees almost buckled.
I nearly fell right over…
What followed was another wave of excited shouting.
Even the people far across the hall—doctors, nurses, and even patients—were craning their necks to look our way, all extremely curious about what was happening.
The person who brought us in finally couldn’t hold back anymore.
After standing there for a long moment, he suddenly yanked off the hood covering his head and shouted at the group of rowdy, image-less doctors who were messing around:
“Captain Suo and the others are here for an examination! Can you idiots act serious for once, damn it?!”
The moment he yelled that, the entire place instantly fell silent.
Just when I naively thought we could finally begin the check-up, Huang Jun suddenly curled his lips into a sleazy grin and said:
“Wang Daxian, you think being a ‘Daxian’ makes you all high and mighty? If you’re in such a rush, go home and find your wife. Why the hell are you yelling at a bunch of grown men? Who the hell are you trying to impress?!”
As soon as he finished, the crowd burst into another wave of laughter.
Huang Jun had a loud voice—this time even the people farther away started laughing along with them.
Wang Daxian glared helplessly at Huang Jun, then said to Doctor Sun:
“I’ll leave Captain Suo and the others to you. I’ve still got things to handle outside, and I’m not wasting time bickering with you clowns. When the shift changes tonight, we’ll grab a drink at the usual place. I’m off.”
He nodded to Suo Tian and turned to leave with his people.
But after taking just two steps, he stopped, turned his head again, and added:
“If you want our big boss Suo to join us tonight, you’d better quit bullshitting and start doing your damn jobs.”
With that, Wang Daxian waved his hand, led his team out, and left the rest behind.
Doctor Sun and the others looked at each other—you look at me, I look at you—and after a few seconds, the older doctor finally spoke:
“Alright, alright. Xiao Sun, Xiao Huang, get the beds ready. Let’s get to work.”
The doctors responded immediately.
After exchanging a glance with Suo Tian, they scattered and started setting up the beds and adjusting the equipment.
To be honest, these guys had just given me the impression of a bunch of thugs and hooligans.
But now, seeing them all focused and serious while arranging the machines, I finally felt a bit relieved.
These people might actually be more reliable than they looked.
A few minutes later, the four of us were lying on the beds surrounded by machines.
When they took Xiao Hu from my arms, he cried out in fear, but Song Jiang quickly coaxed him by making silly faces, and the child was soon laughing.
With that worry gone, I was finally able to lie down and cooperate with the examination.
Each bed had the exact same setup.
The procedures were identical too.
They first used a half-circle device—something like a spotlight—and scanned from head to toe.
When the scan reached Suo Tian’s shoulder, the device stopped and began beeping sharply.
Lili’s scan stopped at her arm.
Xiao Hu’s scan beeped at the location of his old wound.
When it reached me, everything went smoothly.
The machine didn’t react at all.
While the others were checking each wound, the old doctor in charge of me pulled out… an iPad?
“Have you been injured before?” he asked.
“Yeah. A long time ago.”
“How did you get hurt?”
“A female student with… some mental issues bit me.”
“With mental issues?”
He gave me a suspicious look. “You sure it wasn’t a walker?”
His words made me freeze for a moment.
I turned to glance at Suo Tian on the next bed, who had already removed his shirt and was surrounded by several people examining his shoulder wound.
Then I answered the old doctor:
“She was a normal human.”
The old doctor didn’t question me further.
He tapped away on the iPad for a long time, then picked up another device and placed it over my chest.
“Deep breaths. Calm your nerves,” he said, before walking over to Xiao Hu’s bed, where Song Jiang was handling him.
The moment I saw him approaching Xiao Hu, my whole body tensed up.
Xiao Hu’s wound was caused by a real walker bite.
He was bitten but not infected.
If they discovered that…
Would they isolate him?
Would they drag him off like they did in the valley base—subjecting him to those unimaginable, painful examinations?
Thinking that far, my heartbeat began speeding up uncontrollably.
I turned my head, staring at Xiao Hu lying on the bed beside mine, giggling foolishly at Song Jiang’s silly faces.
I quietly curled my fist tight.
But right at that moment, the device on my chest suddenly emitted a sharp beep.
The old doctor lifted his head and glanced at me.
His tone was gentle as he said:
“Calm your nerves. No need to be tense.”
Hearing that, I took two deep breaths and slowly exhaled.
Sure enough, the device stopped making noise.
And just like that—no glass room, no painful procedures, none of the terrifying things I had imagined—we simply lay there for over an hour.
After they drew a few samples of my blood, the old doctor said:
“Miss Chen, you’re very healthy.”
Then he turned and walked away.
Pressing a hand on my old wound, I got off the bed.
The other doctors were still crowded around Suo Tian and the rest.
Soon after, Lili was also declared fine—she was just extremely weakened—so a young nurse hooked her up to an IV for nutritional fluids.
After a series of meticulous cleaning and bandaging, Huang Jun grinned and told Suo Tian that his wound was completely fine.
Just as Suo Tian rose from his bed, a group of people in black uniforms rushed out of the elevator and came straight toward him.
They only stopped when they reached his bedside.
The person in the lead nodded to him:
“Boss.”
“Mm.” Suo Tian responded.
The man stepped closer, leaned in, whispered a few words, then retreated.
Suo Tian frowned, thought for two seconds, then quickly put on his coat.
“Let’s go.”
Halfway there, as if he suddenly remembered something, he glanced at me and said a few words to Huang Jun, who was leaning lazily against a desk, before heading toward the elevator with the uniformed group.
After he left, Huang Jun looked at me twice, grinned weirdly, then dragged two other doctors aside to whisper among themselves.
Judging by their attitude, if someone handed them a bag of sunflower seeds, the scene would’ve been truly perfect.
Lili’s IV finished quickly.
While she lay there resting with a hand pressed against the needle site, I stood up and walked to Xiao Hu’s bed.
I asked Song Jiang, “Excuse me… how is the child doing?”
There were at least four or five doctors around Xiao Hu, and they were using several machines that hadn’t been used on us earlier.
Hearing my question, Song Jiang stiffened slightly.
He turned toward the old doctor and asked:
“Dad… what do you think?”
Dad?
This old doctor… is Song Jiang’s father?
— The end of the Chapter–
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