My daily work as a doctor: My treatment value is increasing.

That evening, Lu Renxin received a call from his mother. Lu Huaishan's interventional treatment had been successfully completed, and his father, after a period of recuperation, was discharged from the hospital that afternoon.

The weight on his heart finally lifted; his father's health was fine, which was a stroke of good luck amidst misfortune.

It was worth it for him to take on so much debt. He had 100,000 yuan in online loans, divided into twelve installments. He had to pay back about 10,000 yuan each month, which was equivalent to 100 healing points.

The remaining amount isn't enough to buy precision sutures, so I need to save up for a while longer.

……

At midnight, Lu Renxin walked out of the ward after treating a patient in bed 1 who had suddenly experienced pain.

The hospital is always bustling with people during the day, but deserted at night when people retreat to their wards to rest.

The empty corridor was deserted except for Lu Renxin, with only the electronic clock hanging overhead emitting a faint red glow.

This is how the hospital is laid out. Bed 1's ward is located at the end of the corridor, next to the fire escape.

Beneath the green fire exit sign are dark red wooden double doors, which are usually closed.

Occasionally, patients and doctors who can't resist will sneak in a couple of nebulizers to "nebulize" their lungs, but this always happens during the day.

Tonight, in the middle of the night, for some unknown reason, someone opened half of the door.

Recently, two lights here have broken down, probably due to poor contact. They flicker on and off, giving off a Hong Kong horror movie vibe.

Lu Renxin wasn't initially scared. After working in a hospital for a long time, he stopped believing in ghosts and spirits.

We are all materialists; we pray, we make Coca-Cola arrays, we avoid certain words and phrases... but we are not superstitious.

But he could faintly hear sounds coming from the stairs inside the fire escape: "Whoosh...whoosh..."

The sound was extremely soft, like a sob, almost imperceptible, as if someone was trying their best to cover their mouth so that others wouldn't hear it, but sobs still leaked out from between their fingers.

The sound, spreading intermittently in the empty corridor, made even the usually daring Lu Renxin's hair stand on end and his skin crawl.

"Holy crap, stop it! It's the middle of the night, don't be so scary."

Lu Renxin's heart was pounding. He didn't believe it, but the atmosphere was too strong for him to resist.

Hospitals are inherently places with a heavy yin energy, where people die every day.

It has always been a common setting for various eerie and supernatural novels, such as "Ward 404," "The Morgue Watcher," and "Shadows Under the Operating Light"...

Especially at this time, he raised his wrist and glanced at the time displayed on his bracelet—0:44. His heart skipped a beat; something was wrong.

The more Lu Renxin thought about it, the more horrifying it became, and he tried his best to suppress his inner fear with reason.

"Let's get out of here, let's get out of here quickly."

He knew he couldn't afford to be reckless and that running away was the best of the thirty-six stratagems, so he planned to slip away as quickly as possible.

However, in his haste, the hem of his white coat accidentally snagged on a sanitizing hand sanitizer bar hanging on the railing.

With a "thud," the plastic hand sanitizer bottle fell to the ground. Lu Renxin froze in place, muttering to himself:

"Oh no, oh no, will this backfire? Prosperity, democracy, civility, harmony..."

My mind keeps replaying horror movies I've watched, where there's always a little kid who makes a noise to attract a ghost when they encounter one.

Who would have thought that when I encountered a problem, I would also become clumsy and inept.

"Who...who's there?" The crying stopped abruptly, and a clear, sweet female voice, slightly nasal, came from behind.

"It's a human voice! I knew it, there are no ghosts, you're just scaring yourself."

Lu Renxin recognized the human voice and instantly relaxed.

He hesitated for a moment, but still went inside. The motion-activated light above his head turned on and off instantly, then turned on again, repeating this several times.

In the instant between light and shadow, he saw the scene on the stairs clearly.

At the turns of the zigzag staircase, there is a platform on each half-floor.

On the platform near the window, on the last step, sat a figure wearing a nurse's cap and uniform.

Hearing Lu Renxin's footsteps, she looked up at the door, her face still wet with tears, her legs neatly together, and her hands hugging her knees.

"Oh, it's you." Lu Renxin recognized her; she was the nursing intern that He Ping had singled out as a target that day.

Lu Renxin remembered that her name seemed to be... Ye Ting.

Out of concern for the girl and sympathy for her having been criticized by He Ping, he walked over to Ye Ting, took out a tissue from his pocket, handed it to her, and comforted her:

"Here's a tissue, wipe your tears."

He turned and walked up two steps, keeping a safe distance from Ye Ting, before asking, "It may be presumptuous, but I still want to ask what happened to you?"

After he finished speaking, he suddenly realized that his words were inappropriate and quickly tried to correct himself:

"No, there is something that's bothering you. I'm not trying to pressure you, and you don't have to tell me if you don't want to, but you seem so sad that you might need to talk to someone..."

"Wait, no, if you want to talk to someone, you can talk to me..."

Ye Ting, who had been wearing a mournful expression and was enveloped in sadness, couldn't help but smile through her tears when she saw Lu Renxin frantically adjusting his manner of speaking. She murmured her reply:

"Thank you, I know you care about me."

Her eyes were large but unfocused, staring blankly at the dark ceiling of the stairs. Her neck was fair and slender, conveying a sense of dazedness and fragility.

"That day I was asked to write a self-criticism..."

His voice was very soft and nasal, as if he were talking to himself: "I quickly wrote a self-criticism that day and handed it to Director He, but he threw it on the table and said that I was not sincere and that it was unacceptable."

"I kept writing, but it's not up to standard! It's all not up to standard! I have to rewrite it." Ye Ting's tears rolled down her cheeks like pearls.

"I wrote five self-criticisms, and none of them were good enough." She continued, forcing a smile that looked more like a grimace. "The format was wrong, the attitude was not right, and the understanding was not deep enough... Every time I went to submit one, I was called out and criticized in front of everyone."

Her eyes remained vacant, as if she were back to the moment she was publicly humiliated, recalling the suffocating scene.

Lu Renxin frowned. Five self-criticisms—writing one was not enough, writing one was not enough; this was pure torture for her.

He Ping is far too petty; he went to great lengths to humiliate a student, a young girl.

He was speechless, filled with sympathy, and for a moment he didn't know how to comfort her.

"I don't know what to do anymore." Ye Ting leaned down, pressing her thighs together, her tone even more erratic. "I still need to keep writing."

"I was so anxious every day that I couldn't sleep, and I lost more than ten pounds in a week." She raised her hand to wipe away her tears with a tissue. "I really don't want to go anymore, and I've even thought about dying."

Lu Renxin's heart sank.

He looked at the young girl in front of him and spoke in a soft voice, like a feather, but it carried a tremendous weight and struck his heart.