44: Chapter 44 Hospital Night Shift

The night shift at City Second Hospital didn't get any easier just because the auction in the West District had ended.

The emergency hall was still packed with people. A young man who had fallen while drunk was clutching his forehead and making a scene, a mother with a feverish child was pacing back and forth, an elderly person suffering from chest tightness was wheeled into the emergency room, and at the end of the corridor, family members were arguing over the registration order. Xu Minglan stood at the doorway of the consulting room, watching these ordinary yet chaotic scenes, and suddenly felt that the real world itself was like a mission that would never end.

The only difference was that the dangers here had medical records, indicators, and procedures.

Abnormalities did not.

Just as she changed her gloves, the Mark of the Torch on the inside of her wrist suddenly grew slightly warm. It wasn't the sharp, burning pain of a mission summons, but just a faint reminder, like someone knocking on a door beneath her skin.

A patient transferred from out of town was wheeled in. The young man was in his twenties, with a normal temperature and slightly low blood pressure. He had no obvious external injuries, yet he kept clutching the bedsheets, repeatedly saying that he had been sent back to yesterday by a bus with no driver.

The nurse on duty whispered, "Post-accident stress? He had a head CT done at the other hospital and it was fine, he's just been babbling nonsense."

Xu Minglan did not immediately dismiss it. She checked his pupils, breathing, and heart rate according to standard procedures, and then saw a faint grayish-black line on the back of his hand, like a mark left by a ticket punch.

The Mark of the Torch grew warm again.

She didn't panic, nor did she treat the abnormality as a ghost story. First, she stabilized his vital signs, then had the nurse move the patient to an observation bed further inside, citing the need for a quiet environment. Only when there was no one else around did she press the mark on the inside of her wrist and open the Xin Huo Interface.

[Suspected residual trace of an out-of-town abnormality.]

[Manifestations: Chronological displacement narrative, transportation vehicle imagery, puncture mark on the back of the hand.]

[Requesting low-level observation advice.]

Zero replied quickly.

[Do not make contact with the core for now.]

[Record symptoms.]

[Prevent the sample from entering routine examination.]

[Basic Purification Patch can be used for marginal stabilization.]

After reading the reply, Xu Minglan actually felt a bit more settled. She took a Basic Purification Patch from her small bag and applied it next to the grayish-black puncture mark on the patient's hand. A faint fire pattern flashed; it didn't burn his skin, but it stopped the puncture mark from spreading toward his wrist for the time being.

The patient's breathing slowly steadied.

He said in a half-dreaming, half-waking state, "That bus... it's not from our city."

Xu Minglan stopped her recording pen.

"Where is it from?"

"I don't know." The young man's lips were pale. "There was no driver on the bus, and it was raining outside the windows. It stopped at every station, but the station signs didn't have place names—they had people's names. Whenever someone got on, there was one less seat. Whenever someone got off, there was one more ticket."

Xu Minglan recorded all of this in her private encrypted notes. She didn't write 'ghost bus' or 'supernatural event,' but instead labeled it: Suspected out-of-town transportation-type abnormality trace.

Late at night, she finally sat down in the duty room. The incandescent light made everyone's faces look cold, and the instant noodles on the table had become soggy. She opened her observation record of abnormal injuries; the first few pages contained entries for low-temperature contamination, auditory hallucinations of crying, and loss of life status. On a new blank page, she wrote "driverless night bus."

After writing it, she looked at these four words and suddenly realized something.

The abnormalities in Qinghe City were suppressed by Torch, but that didn't mean abnormalities outside would stop at the border. People move, old items move, and contaminated traces move along with tickets, luggage, hospital transfer documents, and second-hand packages.

She opened the Xin Huo Interface again and submitted the record to the Grey Net.

This time, the interface didn't close immediately, but instead popped up a background notification.

[Out-of-town abnormality trace sample has been recorded.]

[Can be used for the establishment of transportation-type abnormality archives.]

[Can be used for the supplementation of mobile-type rule analysis.]

Xu Minglan was slightly stunned.

Mobile-type rule analysis?

She didn't know that Lu Chen was organizing new standard techniques in the background, but she instinctively felt that the Xinhuo Council seemed to be turning the residue of every abnormality into something useful. If an abnormality wanted to drag people onto a bus, Torch would learn from the ruts it left behind how to arrive at a scene faster.

This thought was a bit absurd, yet it fit the style of the Xinhuo Council perfectly.

It wasn't being scared off by abnormalities.

It was about recording them, dismantling them, and pressing them into order.

The sound of a nurse calling for her echoed outside the duty room again. Xu Minglan closed her notebook and, as she stood up, tossed the instant noodles into the trash can.

She hadn't redeemed an Ability Seed for medical skills yet, and her contribution points weren't enough, but this night, for the first time, she felt that she was no longer just someone passively waiting for missions.

She was guarding the hospital line in reality.

And Torch needed such lines.

She checked the young man's wrist once more, confirming that the purification patch hadn't caused skin necrosis or deepened the puncture mark, before daring to extend the monitoring time to two hours. The regular nurses only thought she was being extra cautious with a patient transferred from out of town; no one knew that what she was really worried about was whether that puncture mark would suddenly turn into a bus ticket, or if a station name that didn't belong to the hospital would emerge from his skin.

This sense of fragmentation made Xu Minglan very tired. She had to sign documents, communicate, and explain things according to the procedures of a regular doctor, while simultaneously using the Xin Huo Interface to record the residual echoes of contamination. When the patient's family thanked her, she could only smile; she couldn't tell them that what had truly stabilized the situation wasn't the medicine she prescribed, but the Mark of the Torch hidden beneath her cuff.

After the patient fell asleep, she added a sentence at the end of her notebook: Abnormal medical care cannot be separated from real medical care, otherwise one cannot even find a reasonable excuse for observation.

She also set a rule for herself: Any patient on the edge of an abnormality must first still be treated as an ordinary patient. She could not ignore shock, suffocation, infection, or family anxiety just because the Mark of the Torch was heating up. Abnormalities could kill, but ordinary diseases could kill too. If she forgot even this, she was not fit to pursue the medical path.

At 4:00 AM, the young man's temperature finally stabilized. Xu Minglan leaned against the wall and closed her eyes for a brief moment; the Mark of the Torch was still slightly warm. She suddenly felt that the hospital was like a narrow bridge between reality and the abnormal. She stood on this bridge, and she could not let either side collapse.

She didn't show this exhaustion to anyone. After closing the Xin Huo Interface, only the sound of instruments and the muffled crying of family members in the distance remained in the duty room. Xu Minglan washed her hands again and returned to the corridor. Reality would not stop just because abnormalities existed; on the contrary, abnormalities loved to hide in the busiest, most chaotic, and most easily overlooked places in reality.

Therefore, she could not stop either.