CH 5

Help, or ignore? While QiLeren hesitated, Dr Lu rushed to the girl’s side. “Are you feeling alright?” he asked. “Where is the pain?”

“My belly…I think…” the girl forced through gritted teeth, face devoid of colour, “I think…it’s a miscarriage.”

The two men froze, QiLeren swearing inwardly; she was screaming about abortion as a gift to her boyfriend earlier, but this was on a whole new level of misfortune. Was there anything worse than experiencing miscarriage in a haunted hospital? Actually, running into a serial killer was probably not much better…

“Do-Do you want to keep the baby? I can give you a shot of progesterone if need be,” Dr Lu said, enquiring about the needs of his patient with an air of professionalism.

The girl looked at him as if he had grown a second head. “Keep the- Who the fuck would want to be pregnant inside a haunted hospital?!”

…Can we please keep the foreboding comments to a minimum, lady? QiLeren thought.

“Stop daydreaming and help me lay her down over there!” Dr Lu called, interrupting his thoughts. They each slipped an arm of the girl over their shoulder and walked, step after laboured step, into the abortion room. The girl collapsed onto the bed, panting like she was about to asphyxiate.

“There are…ghosts here…” she groaned, surprisingly unpanicked. “I ran out from this room.”

“Where are they now?” Dr Lu fretted, looking around nervously.

“They got scared away by all the blood coming out of my ass.” Her words started slurring from pain. “Fuck, this hurts so bad…”

“…I-I’ll go find some sanitary pads for you.” The room was thankfully well-stocked, Dr Lu noted as he quickly located some sanitary pads and disposable underwear that he handed the girl. QiLeren poured a cup of water, gently helping her up so she could drink.

“Thanks,” the girl said after catching her breath, ripping open a sanitary pad with trembling hands. “I’m XueYingying. What’s your name, handsome?”

“I’m QiLeren,” he replied, averting his eyes from the somewhat awkward scene.

“We’ll wait outside,” Dr Lu interrupted, agitated by the show of illicit interest before him, and dragged QiLeren away by the arm. “Holler when you’re done!” This was an emergency, goddamn it, at least pick a better time to hook up.

“This abortion room has a pretty complicated floor plan,” QiLeren noticed.

“Yeah, everyone gets confused on their first time here. The entrance we doctors go through is separate from the one for patients, and the waste chute is on another side entirely. Have you noticed that there are actually four smaller rooms inside the large one? Let’s see…there’s the break room, surgical room, doctor’s office, nurse’s station…and a closet compartment between those last two. It’s really easy to get lost. It’s also the ideal setting for a chase scene.”

“…Mate, can you stop jinxing us? Have you forgotten about the serial killer wandering around the very hospital we’re in? He could appear at any second.”

Dr Lu glanced at him sideways. “You just did it as well.”

“…Oh.”

The two fell silent, contemplating the next plan of action. QiLeren tried his best to bring up a topic that would not jinx them, “Can you perform surgical abortion?”

Dr Lu levelled him a look that spoke volumes more than words ever will. “Are you kidding me? I’m a physician! The most I can do is probably an ultrasound – you want me to go perform an abortion?”

“…”

“I guess I could give it a shot if she’d definitely die without it though…” Dr Lu muttered to himself, earnestly considering the possibility.

“Speaking of – is she okay? She hasn’t made any noise for a while now…” QiLeren obviously didn’t know what was going on behind the door, but surely changing pads wouldn’t take this long?

His question was answered soon after as a bloodcurdling scream tore through the silence – “SOMEBODY HELP- THERE’S A GHOST!” The two wasted no time in throwing the door open, charging in to the scene of XueYingying scrambling away on the ground. On the bed she previously occupied was a semi-transparent figure, wild hair swishing as it crawled towards the girl in twisted movements. Before it could grab her, QiLeren darted forward and yanked XueYingying aside, operating entirely on instinct. Dr Lu looked seconds away from making a break for it, but a fierce gust of wind slammed the door closed before he could do so. He desperately rattled the doorknob, but to no avail – holy shit, we’re all going to die in here.

The ghost had already crawled onto the ground. The fluorescent lights overhead winked out with a series of popping explosions amidst XueYingying’s screams, raining shards of broken glass down upon its occupants and plunging the room into pitch darkness.

The meagre light from outside did little to illuminate the chilling gloom, but it was enough to make out the translucent silhouette shifting and contorting as it drew nearer to the three. In the midst of imminent danger, Dr Lu let out a yell, “Blood- Someone try using blood!”

Blood? From where? Now? QiLeren’s brain was surprisingly still functioning with all the tension in his body, but XueYingying’s brain evidently functioned better than his as she swore, reaching into her underwear to rip something out. The two men watched in shock and awe as she slapped the bloody pad onto the face of the ghost centimetres away from her ankle.

The ghost’s anguished wail snapped QiLeren out of his shaken stupor; he picked up the chair beside him and threw it down as hard as he could onto the ghost – yes, it connected! He brought the chair down again and again, fuelled only by the adrenaline running through his veins, until the ghost dissipated in a wisp of crumbling dust.

The room fell silent, the sound of heavy breathing and quickened pulses roaring in their ears. QiLeren dropped the chair and collapsed onto the ground with a long sigh.

It wasn’t as hard as he’d thought.

After helping a moaning XueYingying onto another bed with shaky limbs, Dr Lu carefully approached QiLeren, who was still on the ground and staring into the distance. “Are you okay? Any injuries?”

QiLeren came back to reality at the sound of his voice and stiffly shook his head. He had no injuries but was a little shaken up by the flurry of events from before. It seemed almost surreal, the way his world narrowed down to nothing but his weapon and the ghost. The way her screams tore through his mind. The way her face twisted into something truly gruesome, harmonising with the screams to form what was ironically the most irrefutable proof of the reality they were trapped in.

The room was no less dim than before but thankfully retained none of the stressful atmosphere. XueYingying laid on the bed, half-dead from the scuffle, staring up at the ceiling in despair as she begged feebly, “Please tell me that was the only one.”

“There probably should be a cooldown,” Dr Lu said, ever the optimist. “Are you hungry? I can go find some food for you. Also some weapons, since being unarmed is kind of…ahem, disadvantageous.” He swallowed down the word “dangerous”, remembering how a ghost actually appeared after his jinxing session with QiLeren.

“You know your way around the hospital better than I do, so I should probably stay here to look after XueYingying,” QiLeren suggested hesitantly. It wouldn’t do to leave a patient alone.

“I… I… I…” It took many iterations of “I” for Dr Lu to continue his sentence, “I’m scared…”

The room once again fell into silence.

“Don’t worry about me, staying here might actually be safer. I’ll just fight it off with some blood if another one shows up!” XueYingying said selflessly, valiant in the very room where they fought a ghost not minutes before. Ignoring the fact that she also screamed her head off not minutes before, that is. Dr Lu flitted around the room, leaving with QiLeren only after finding her two scalpels to use for self-defence.

The hallway was predictably quiet and brightly-lit with stark white lighting despite it being daytime.

“The cafeteria’s behind the outpatient block, but let’s focus on weapons for now,” Dr Lu babbled to no one in particular. “We’ll go find XueYingying some food and drinks afterwards, since miscarriages use up a lot of energy. What do you think’s up with the weird fog? We could probably go to check it out later – oh, but, we don’t know if the door’s open or not, if not we’d have to go find the key…”

The two arrived at the carpentry workshop, which was stocked with a variety of tools they could use but sadly no chainsaws. There were only normal hand saws, as well as other equipment such as electric cables, files and drills. After much effort, Dr Lu bounded back with two crowbars in tow and proudly presented them to QiLeren. “Look, I got us some legendary Physics Holy Swords!”

…Stop playing around.

Since tools could be stored in their inventory, the two robbed the workshop and the adjacent electrical room of almost everything that could potentially come in handy before taking a crowbar each and preparing to look for food. Dr Lu rambled on about supernatural happenings that occurred during his night shifts.

“Quiet,” QiLeren hissed suddenly, heart skipping a beat. Dr Lu blinked confusedly before startling at QiLeren’s intense expression.

The quiet tapping of footsteps approached from the far end of the hallway, calm and unhurried. It didn’t take long for a man to turn the corner – chainsaw gripped in his hands and a glint of crazed malice in his stare.