Chapter 12 - Rejected?

"I can't believe she died. She was new to Beijing. She didn't have any friends nor family here and she didn't seem to get along with the other nurses, so I offered to do some furniture shopping with her. We were supposed to meet at 3pm that day, but something came up and I couldn't make it. I can't believe she was murdered at 4pm that same day," Lily sobbed. "If I was there, would she have been fine?"

"Don't blame yourself. If you were there, maybe you would have died as well," one of the men said.

"She was so sweet. I felt like she honestly cared about us. She often asked me about my life and how everyone else was doing. I can't believe she left like that," Lily sighed.

From Halia's point of view, it seemed like Sara was interrogating them. But, obviously, the doctors had no idea.

At that moment, Halia reached the four doctors. "What's wrong Lily, why are you crying?" she asked.

"A colleague passed away, so I'm just a little shocked," Lily replied as she wiped away her tears. "I'm fine now. As a doctor, I've seen my fair share of death."

"I'm sorry, I don't think we've met," one of the male doctors said at this time as he looked at Halia.

"This is Halia," Isaac immediately introduced. "She's a new nurse here."

"Halia, this is Dr. Ivan Tang and Dr. Vincent Su," Isaac told Halia.

Halia smiled, "Nice to meet the two of you."

She recognized these two names. They were both on her suspect list. Dr. Tang was an intern like Lily and Dr. Su was a brain surgeon.

"We are going out for a few drinks after work today since none of us are working or on-call tomorrow, would you like to join us Halia?" Isaac suddenly offered.

"Yeh, come join us. It can be our way of welcoming you," Dr. Tang said.

Halia realized it would be a good opportunity to ask more questions so she nodded her head.

That entire day, Halia practically stuck to the head nurse like a shadow. Whenever she got the chance, she would ask the other nurses what they thought about the doctors. Especially the ones on her suspect list.

"Dr. Yan's really popular with the women. Even patients swoon over him. I mean, look how handsome and talented he is," a student nurse said with admiration.

Halia watched as the young nurse blushed. She was right, Isaac was indeed handsome and talented. But, maybe that was how he lured his victims...Some of the most famous serial killers were known to be good looking and charming.

Halia kept her guard up.

...

Finally, the shift ended and Halia went to change out of her uniform. As she walked out of the locker room, she ran into Alex, the student nurse that she met the previous day. He had just finished as well.

"Alex, I'm going out to have a few drinks with Dr. Lin, Dr. Tang, Dr. Su and Dr. Yan, would you like to join us?"

"No, I don't really get along with the doctors. You should be careful around them. They are very pretentious. They may have invited you, but they actually look down on us nurses," Alex replied.

"Why would you say something like that?" Halia asked.

"Well, you know the nurse that passed away? I heard she was rejected by a doctor because she was a nurse," Alex explained.

Halia looked at Alex in surprise. Did Sara actually have a thing going on with one of the doctors? But, according to her memory, Sara rejected someone, not the other way around. Was that a different incident? Or was it somehow related?

...

Halia soon met the doctors outside the entrance of the hospital. They were visiting a bar nearby, so there was no need for driving.

As soon as they walked in, Lily headed straight for a booth in the back corner. "This booth unofficially belongs to the hospital staff. We always sit here when we visit this bar," she explained.

"What do you want to drink?" Isaac asked Halia. "The first round is on me."

Halia smiled and waved her hand, "It's alright, I don't want anything."

"Oh come on, just one, we want to welcome you properly," Lily urged.

"Fine, just a gin and tonic," Halia replied.

Isaac nodded and headed over to the bar.

As Halia watched Isaac walk to the bar, she caught a glimpse of one of the private room doors opening and a familiar figure caught her gaze. The man's cold eyes quickly scanned across her. "Did he see me?" Halia wondered.

It was Jackson Wu!

As the door closed, Halia noticed there were two beautiful women next to him. He glanced at one of them and smirked as she fed him a shot of alcohol.

"I wonder what he's doing here," Halia thought.