Finding a free operating room was easy enough, the other doctors and nurses were more than glad to and so was restraining the patient on the operating table. What was challenging was trying to get the man to talk at all, since he was completely unconscious. His wounds had stabilized with the elixir I gave him earlier, but the amount of punishment that the patient’s body had suffered was too much for his mind to handle. It seemed like the man, who I found out was named Henry, simply didn’t want to wake up again.
I was even left with four very nervous interns and a half dozen nurses, all on standby awaiting their instructions. Alice wasn’t allowed in the surgical theater, much to her disappointment, but after I promised that I’d meet up with her to go see her mom at the end of the workday, she cheered up immediately. For now, she went back to the cafeteria to play. Additionally, news that the illustrious Dr. Walter had subdued the escaped patient had already spread through the hospital, and a few curious hospital staff even popped in to congratulate me.
That’s no good though, I wanted to see what this man knew about the Trial, and more importantly, the situation with the other Aspirants. Any information I could find out about the patient’s ward would be immensely useful for me, as I still needed to meet up with Jae-Hyun to figure out what to do. Plus, I was very curious about what the normal Aspirant’s clear conditions were, and how much they differ from the weird corrupt version we’re experiencing.
Unfortunately, that also meant that I had to wake him up, but the problem was that I wasn’t an actual physician, so there was only so much I could do before the others in the room could start suspecting me of being a fraud. But why do my own work when I have idiots to work for me? The interns here made a great scapegoat to blame for all of my problems! They could be in charge of simply waking the man up, and I’ll say it was due to my brilliance that I was able to stabilize the patient in the first place!
“Alright!” I said in my most commanding voice as I addressed the room, “As you can see, I have successfully captured the escaped patient, and I have even stabilized his condition so that he could be in prime condition to meet the Director. In other words, I have done all the hard work already! But his man is destined for a meeting with our lovely Director, and I don’t have to say what would happen if he meets her in his current state, do I?”
Everyone present quickly shook their heads, beads of sweat dripping down their brows.
“Good,” I continued with a smile, “Which is why I am allowing you interns to help out today with a simple procedure.”
The four people gathered here looked nervous.
“Now now,” I added, “I know that you’re not supposed to work on actual procedures until much later, but that doesn’t mean you should just sit around and observe! All you have to do is figure out a way to wake this patient up with his mental capabilities intact. Simple, right?”
They nodded as one.
“It’s 5:30 pm right now,” I stated, gesturing at the old clock hanging on the wall, “And I have to present today’s findings to the Director at 8, but I still have to question the patient once he’s awake. I will give you a full hour and a half to do this task; it’s more than enough time. Do it well and I’ll put in a good word for you, but fail…”
“We will do our best!” one of the male interns shouted, “Sir!”
I nodded, “Good, I’ll observe. Don’t mess this up. You’re allowed to use any method you think will help.”
I took a seat in the corner and watched the half-panicked interns go to work on Henry. Knowing that these were Aspirants, and not actual physicians (or at least I don’t think any of them were doctors prior to all this bullshit), I wasn’t too surprised when they made almost no progress with waking up the unconscious man. They were very creative with their approach, in any case, using everything available to them in the room to the best of their ability.
It wasn’t until an hour and 15 minutes had passed that the interns got really nervous and impatient. With the deadline fast approaching, one of the interns resorted to using his class ability. That was a big mistake.
A soft glow appeared on one of the female intern’s hands and I could feel a surge of healing energy wash into Henry. He was getting better by the second, and even showed signs of waking up, but everyone else in the room, aside from the other interns, stopped what they were doing to stare at the woman.
“An imposter!” one of the nurses said.
“Imposter!”
“An imposter is among us!”
The other interns slowly backed away from the woman, leaving her alone and isolated. Not wanting to look out of place, since I was also an imposter myself, I pointed at the poor intern and joined in the chants. Then the strangest thing happened, the woman who was deemed an imposter simply… vanished. It was like she just disappeared into thin air. The hospital staff quickly went back to normal and acted like she had never existed in the first place.
I gulped.
Was this the consequences of breaking character in this damn creepy hospital? Thank god I didn’t have any flashy skills like the nonexistent intern and only used a potion to stabilize Henry. I don’t think it would be too strange for a renowned physician to be carrying something like that… but I’ll make damned sure that I don’t take any further risks in the future.
One of the other interns was able to collect themselves and hurriedly reported the condition of the patient, “Dr. Walter, t-the patient seems to be coming to.”
Right, let’s not acknowledge the existence of that imposter and pretend that Henry was able to recover by himself.
“Good!” I said as normally as I could, “You’re lucky that he was able to recover by himself. The interns are dismissed.”
Without further prompting, the Aspirants all quickly left the room, leaving me with just a handful of nurses on standby. I turned my attention to the now awake patient.
“Why hello Patient 755,” I said to the wounded man, “Or should I call you Henry?”
The man looked at me with weary eyes but otherwise didn’t say anything.
“Now I’m going to ask you a few questions, and I want you to answer them as best you can.”
He spat in my face, or at least tried to. Henry was still so weak that he couldn’t muster the energy to do that properly, and only managed to make a mess.
“That’s not very nice,” I said, shaking my head, “Now let’s try that again.”
“Go to hell you damn abomination!”
I sighed. Why did they always have to make my life so difficult? It would have saved everyone a lot of time and effort if this patient just listened to my instructions.
I turned to one of the nurses waiting on the sidelines, “The patient is being unreasonable and is refusing to follow orders, please help him understand the errors of his ways.”
They did so, and it was an unpleasant experience for everyone involved. But for all the agony that Henry endured, he didn’t cave in and was giving me a death stare the entire time. I turned my attention back to the patient once the nurses were done.
“So, do you want to answer my questions now?” I asked again, “Or do you need another session with the wonderful nurses in this facility?”
“Go fuck yourself.”
I shook my head as the nurses were already getting into position to help me again.
“Suit yourself, Henry,” I said, “Nurses, please do your thing.”
And they did. I will give the Aspirant this, the man was a tenacious soul. No matter what the nurses and interns did to try to persuade him to talk, Henry did not mutter a single word to me after, well, that wasn't completely true, he did say some quite rude things about me and my mother, but nothing useful outside of that. It was like he was doing this just to spite me, and I was afraid that any more sessions with the nurses would cause him to expire.
“Enough,” I said finally, “Your methods are not going to make the patient talk, that is quite clear to see. We’ll need a new approach.”
“I apologize, Dr. Walter!” One of the nurses said, “W- we can try harder.”
“No, that will not be necessary,” I said, shaking my head, before facing one of the nurses in the room, “You, go get me Father Marcus, that’s one of the new priests that joined us today. Perhaps the patient will change his mind with a more spiritual approach.”
The priest arrived a few minutes later, his schedule was a lot less strict than mine and he had already finished his duties for the day. The nurses quickly filled him in on what I needed and he agreed readily. He gave me the gentlest smile as he observed the patient, looking over him as if Henry was a particularly interesting piece of furniture. All the while, a continuous swarm of horrible insects were gathering above the priest's head; where they came from, I had no idea nor did I want to find out.
“Do not worry, Dr. Walter,” Marcus said with his now trademark smile, “Give me a moment alone with the patient, and I guarantee that he will cooperate. It is surprising how much a man is willing to say when you... inject the right dose of enthusiasm into their brains.”
Yeah, that's definitely not what he's going to do, but I nodded anyway and told the nurses to do as the good priest says. We all left the priest alone with Henry. There was a horrible buzzing sound as I closed the door, followed by the desperate whimpers of the patient. Whatever Marcus wanted to do with the patient wasn’t something that I wanted to know about. What was even more surprising was that the Father came out not even 2 minutes after, all smiles and good humor.
“The patient will talk, Dr. Walter,” he assured, “but only with you.”
“Alright,” I answered, “Everyone else, you’re dismissed. Make sure you thank the good Father for his work.”
Henry was a much more cooperative man when I rejoined the operating theater, in fact, he seemed like he couldn’t wait to begin telling me his whole life story. Whatever the Father did to him was effective and I was only too glad to have been outside the room. Sometimes ignorance was bliss.
“Alright Henry,” I said once again, “Please tell me how you managed to escape, and why you’re trying so desperately to do so.”
I wasn’t sure if I could talk about the Trials blatantly so I asked in a roundabout manner. There wasn’t any rules that said I couldn’t, but I remembered Jae-Hyun being very adamant that I don’t break character, and Dr. Walter would certainly not know about any Trials of Ascension process.
“Yes, Dr. Walter,” the patient said in a daze, “I was trying to escape because the system-”
Henry started to spasm as if he was having a stroke the second he attempted to mention the system. Could he only communicate these facts with other members of his own party, or was there some kind of failsafe that the Trash Matrix put into place so that it’s interference in these strange dimensions could be contained? Either way, I best steer clear of any talk about clear conditions and Trials.
“Never mind that last question, Henry, just tell me how you managed to escape from the patient’s wing.”
Henry’s condition started to improve and he continued, “My teammates and I devised a plan for me to escape. Only one of us needs to get out for the whole party to clear the Tr-ial.”
More spasms, albeit not as harsh. There were also a few huge hairy flies that buzzed out of his ears and nose then, but I don’t think that was because he broke some kind of hospital rule… yeah, I’m glad I didn’t see how the kind Father convinced Henry to be more cooperative.
There seems to be something in place that makes it difficult for the Aspirants to share information about the Trash Matrix. My own rulebook stated that if I heard any of these patients talk about Trials and whatnot, then it was a sign of an incurable disease, so perhaps they only had limited capacities to talk about the Trial between each other. That’s useful information to have.
“And who are these teammates who helped you?”
“You will know them as Patients 756, 757, and 754.”
“But you seemed to know the layout of the hospital quite well, did you get outside help from say, interns or nurses?”
“No,” he said again, “I used my... mutations to leave at night after stealing the key out of the ward."
“Good, and what did you find out on those nights out?”
And he told me everything he knew then.
Want to read ahead? Check out my Patreon! It's what's keeping this project alive and well!
It's currently 29 chapters ahead with a new chapter uploaded daily!
Check it out if you want to support the author, and as always, thank you for reading!
Finding a free operating room was easy enough, the other doctors and nurses were more than glad to and so was restraining the patient on the operating table. What was challenging was trying to get the man to talk at all, since he was completely unconscious. His wounds had stabilized with the elixir I gave him earlier, but the amount of punishment that the patient’s body had suffered was too much for his mind to handle. It seemed like the man, who I found out was named Henry, simply didn’t want to wake up again.
I was even left with four very nervous interns and a half dozen nurses, all on standby awaiting their instructions. Alice wasn’t allowed in the surgical theater, much to her disappointment, but after I promised that I’d meet up with her to go see her mom at the end of the workday, she cheered up immediately. For now, she went back to the cafeteria to play. Additionally, news that the illustrious Dr. Walter had subdued the escaped patient had already spread through the hospital, and a few curious hospital staff even popped in to congratulate me.
That’s no good though, I wanted to see what this man knew about the Trial, and more importantly, the situation with the other Aspirants. Any information I could find out about the patient’s ward would be immensely useful for me, as I still needed to meet up with Jae-Hyun to figure out what to do. Plus, I was very curious about what the normal Aspirant’s clear conditions were, and how much they differ from the weird corrupt version we’re experiencing.
Unfortunately, that also meant that I had to wake him up, but the problem was that I wasn’t an actual physician, so there was only so much I could do before the others in the room could start suspecting me of being a fraud. But why do my own work when I have idiots to work for me? The interns here made a great scapegoat to blame for all of my problems! They could be in charge of simply waking the man up, and I’ll say it was due to my brilliance that I was able to stabilize the patient in the first place!
“Alright!” I said in my most commanding voice as I addressed the room, “As you can see, I have successfully captured the escaped patient, and I have even stabilized his condition so that he could be in prime condition to meet the Director. In other words, I have done all the hard work already! But his man is destined for a meeting with our lovely Director, and I don’t have to say what would happen if he meets her in his current state, do I?”
Everyone present quickly shook their heads, beads of sweat dripping down their brows.
“Good,” I continued with a smile, “Which is why I am allowing you interns to help out today with a simple procedure.”
The four people gathered here looked nervous.
“Now now,” I added, “I know that you’re not supposed to work on actual procedures until much later, but that doesn’t mean you should just sit around and observe! All you have to do is figure out a way to wake this patient up with his mental capabilities intact. Simple, right?”
They nodded as one.
“It’s 5:30 pm right now,” I stated, gesturing at the old clock hanging on the wall, “And I have to present today’s findings to the Director at 8, but I still have to question the patient once he’s awake. I will give you a full hour and a half to do this task; it’s more than enough time. Do it well and I’ll put in a good word for you, but fail…”
“We will do our best!” one of the male interns shouted, “Sir!”
I nodded, “Good, I’ll observe. Don’t mess this up. You’re allowed to use any method you think will help.”
I took a seat in the corner and watched the half-panicked interns go to work on Henry. Knowing that these were Aspirants, and not actual physicians (or at least I don’t think any of them were doctors prior to all this bullshit), I wasn’t too surprised when they made almost no progress with waking up the unconscious man. They were very creative with their approach, in any case, using everything available to them in the room to the best of their ability.
It wasn’t until an hour and 15 minutes had passed that the interns got really nervous and impatient. With the deadline fast approaching, one of the interns resorted to using his class ability. That was a big mistake.
A soft glow appeared on one of the female intern’s hands and I could feel a surge of healing energy wash into Henry. He was getting better by the second, and even showed signs of waking up, but everyone else in the room, aside from the other interns, stopped what they were doing to stare at the woman.
“An imposter!” one of the nurses said.
“Imposter!”
“An imposter is among us!”
The other interns slowly backed away from the woman, leaving her alone and isolated. Not wanting to look out of place, since I was also an imposter myself, I pointed at the poor intern and joined in the chants. Then the strangest thing happened, the woman who was deemed an imposter simply… vanished. It was like she just disappeared into thin air. The hospital staff quickly went back to normal and acted like she had never existed in the first place.
I gulped.
Was this the consequences of breaking character in this damn creepy hospital? Thank god I didn’t have any flashy skills like the nonexistent intern and only used a potion to stabilize Henry. I don’t think it would be too strange for a renowned physician to be carrying something like that… but I’ll make damned sure that I don’t take any further risks in the future.
One of the other interns was able to collect themselves and hurriedly reported the condition of the patient, “Dr. Walter, t-the patient seems to be coming to.”
Right, let’s not acknowledge the existence of that imposter and pretend that Henry was able to recover by himself.
“Good!” I said as normally as I could, “You’re lucky that he was able to recover by himself. The interns are dismissed.”
Without further prompting, the Aspirants all quickly left the room, leaving me with just a handful of nurses on standby. I turned my attention to the now awake patient.
“Why hello Patient 755,” I said to the wounded man, “Or should I call you Henry?”
The man looked at me with weary eyes but otherwise didn’t say anything.
“Now I’m going to ask you a few questions, and I want you to answer them as best you can.”
He spat in my face, or at least tried to. Henry was still so weak that he couldn’t muster the energy to do that properly, and only managed to make a mess.
“That’s not very nice,” I said, shaking my head, “Now let’s try that again.”
“Go to hell you damn abomination!”
I sighed. Why did they always have to make my life so difficult? It would have saved everyone a lot of time and effort if this patient just listened to my instructions.
I turned to one of the nurses waiting on the sidelines, “The patient is being unreasonable and is refusing to follow orders, please help him understand the errors of his ways.”
They did so, and it was an unpleasant experience for everyone involved. But for all the agony that Henry endured, he didn’t cave in and was giving me a death stare the entire time. I turned my attention back to the patient once the nurses were done.
“So, do you want to answer my questions now?” I asked again, “Or do you need another session with the wonderful nurses in this facility?”
“Go fuck yourself.”
I shook my head as the nurses were already getting into position to help me again.
“Suit yourself, Henry,” I said, “Nurses, please do your thing.”
And they did. I will give the Aspirant this, the man was a tenacious soul. No matter what the nurses and interns did to try to persuade him to talk, Henry did not mutter a single word to me after, well, that wasn't completely true, he did say some quite rude things about me and my mother, but nothing useful outside of that. It was like he was doing this just to spite me, and I was afraid that any more sessions with the nurses would cause him to expire.
“Enough,” I said finally, “Your methods are not going to make the patient talk, that is quite clear to see. We’ll need a new approach.”
“I apologize, Dr. Walter!” One of the nurses said, “W- we can try harder.”
“No, that will not be necessary,” I said, shaking my head, before facing one of the nurses in the room, “You, go get me Father Marcus, that’s one of the new priests that joined us today. Perhaps the patient will change his mind with a more spiritual approach.”
The priest arrived a few minutes later, his schedule was a lot less strict than mine and he had already finished his duties for the day. The nurses quickly filled him in on what I needed and he agreed readily. He gave me the gentlest smile as he observed the patient, looking over him as if Henry was a particularly interesting piece of furniture. All the while, a continuous swarm of horrible insects were gathering above the priest's head; where they came from, I had no idea nor did I want to find out.
“Do not worry, Dr. Walter,” Marcus said with his now trademark smile, “Give me a moment alone with the patient, and I guarantee that he will cooperate. It is surprising how much a man is willing to say when you... inject the right dose of enthusiasm into their brains.”
Yeah, that's definitely not what he's going to do, but I nodded anyway and told the nurses to do as the good priest says. We all left the priest alone with Henry. There was a horrible buzzing sound as I closed the door, followed by the desperate whimpers of the patient. Whatever Marcus wanted to do with the patient wasn’t something that I wanted to know about. What was even more surprising was that the Father came out not even 2 minutes after, all smiles and good humor.
“The patient will talk, Dr. Walter,” he assured, “but only with you.”
“Alright,” I answered, “Everyone else, you’re dismissed. Make sure you thank the good Father for his work.”
Henry was a much more cooperative man when I rejoined the operating theater, in fact, he seemed like he couldn’t wait to begin telling me his whole life story. Whatever the Father did to him was effective and I was only too glad to have been outside the room. Sometimes ignorance was bliss.
“Alright Henry,” I said once again, “Please tell me how you managed to escape, and why you’re trying so desperately to do so.”
I wasn’t sure if I could talk about the Trials blatantly so I asked in a roundabout manner. There wasn’t any rules that said I couldn’t, but I remembered Jae-Hyun being very adamant that I don’t break character, and Dr. Walter would certainly not know about any Trials of Ascension process.
“Yes, Dr. Walter,” the patient said in a daze, “I was trying to escape because the system-”
Henry started to spasm as if he was having a stroke the second he attempted to mention the system. Could he only communicate these facts with other members of his own party, or was there some kind of failsafe that the Trash Matrix put into place so that it’s interference in these strange dimensions could be contained? Either way, I best steer clear of any talk about clear conditions and Trials.
“Never mind that last question, Henry, just tell me how you managed to escape from the patient’s wing.”
Henry’s condition started to improve and he continued, “My teammates and I devised a plan for me to escape. Only one of us needs to get out for the whole party to clear the Tr-ial.”
More spasms, albeit not as harsh. There were also a few huge hairy flies that buzzed out of his ears and nose then, but I don’t think that was because he broke some kind of hospital rule… yeah, I’m glad I didn’t see how the kind Father convinced Henry to be more cooperative.
There seems to be something in place that makes it difficult for the Aspirants to share information about the Trash Matrix. My own rulebook stated that if I heard any of these patients talk about Trials and whatnot, then it was a sign of an incurable disease, so perhaps they only had limited capacities to talk about the Trial between each other. That’s useful information to have.
“And who are these teammates who helped you?”
“You will know them as Patients 756, 757, and 754.”
“But you seemed to know the layout of the hospital quite well, did you get outside help from say, interns or nurses?”
“No,” he said again, “I used my... mutations to leave at night after stealing the key out of the ward."
“Good, and what did you find out on those nights out?”
And he told me everything he knew then.
Want to read ahead? Check out my Patreon! It's what's keeping this project alive and well!
It's currently 29 chapters ahead with a new chapter uploaded daily!
Check it out if you want to support the author, and as always, thank you for reading!
