My Girlfriend's a Monster - Chapter 52

First People’s Hospital in Shen City, the top hospital in the city, rich in clinical projects, was the workplace of Ms. Luo Meihua.

The traces of time marked the hospital building with mottled signs, yet it still wasn’t hard to see the prosperity it once held. First People’s Hospital, once one of the top hospitals nationwide, still holds an unshakable position in medical civilization, despite possibly being surpassed by other hospitals in terms of facilities and appearance in recent years.

An old van parked in front of the hospital building, and the two occupants got out one after another. The hospital’s plants brought a fresh scent, albeit a bit overgrown, giving off a slightly eerie feeling.

Zhong Qingxiao tried not to pay attention to the blood traces obviously formed by dragging, as he searched nearby for Yan Cheng’s SUV.

Luo Ke walked straight in. There were over a dozen steps at the entrance, and the door had not been replaced with an automatic one. The wooden-framed door was filled with a retro vibe.

Zhong Qingxiao felt a bit guilty. Perhaps he should have brought a flamethrower today. The feeling of entering an unknown territory unarmed left him completely insecure.

The first floor housed the reception lobby, with the nurse station on the left and the registration and payment area on the right, adjacent to a long, seemingly endless corridor leading to various areas.

Because of Luo Meihua, Luo Ke was somewhat familiar with the structure of this hospital. She said, “The commonly used refrigerated medications should all be on the third floor in the Cold Storage Room, half of which is for cold storage, and the other half for adolescent vaccinations.”

She could see Zhong Qingxiao hesitating, but she didn’t give him a chance to ponder further. After she spoke, she headed straight for the stairs, forcing Qingxiao to follow.

It was very quiet. Bloodstains splattered on the walls of the corridors were visible everywhere, dried to a deep brown color, not very pleasant smelling, but still bearable due to good ventilation.

The fear of hospitals is probably embedded in genes. All horror-themed movies and shows like to use hospital settings. Disinfectants and medical staff in white uniforms inherently trigger human nerves.

Zhong Qingxiao could only follow his girlfriend to the second floor. As he stepped on the staircase and was about to round the corner to the second floor, a broadcaster suddenly made a noise, a soulless electronic female voice echoed through the empty building.

“Ding-dong, please, Qingxiao, come to window 1 for your medication.”

Hearing his own name made Zhong Qingxiao’s scalp tingle. He quickly turned back and indeed saw his name on a black long electronic screen: window 1, Qingxiao.

Fear stopped his heartbeat, his blood seemingly froze. Why… was his name appearing here?

Ah, there was that bewildered and adorable expression again. Hehehe. Luo Ke’s eyes deepened with amusement. The machine was not hard to operate after all. She tried a little and succeeded, somewhat surprised that there was still electricity.

Amusement parks, cinemas, dining, and shopping are indeed typical dating scenes, but isn’t a haunted house adventure the most thrilling in terms of stimulating nerves and hormones?

This is a completely real scene, with completely real NPCs waiting to be rescued and real monsters. And his dear wife will have a date here escaping with her.

“Don’t worry, I’m here with you,” Luo Ke stepped forward in time, holding Zhong Qingxiao’s hand warmly.

Zhong Qingxiao turned his head, closed his eyes briefly, no longer paying attention to the text, and hurried up the stairs with his girlfriend.

He consciously searched for Yan Cheng and the others. The second floor was a health check center, with doors either open or firmly closed, yet there was still no trace of any humans, only disordered and mottled bloodstains, even discernible from some bloodstain shapes how those people had died.

There was still no sign of anyone. Yan Cheng and his team should be in this building, but why was there no sound at all?

“Let’s go,” Luo Ke continued up to the third floor, quite pleased. The scenario was about to begin.

On the third floor, the Cold Storage Room and the adolescent vaccine center were on the left and right, respectively. Upon reaching the stairs, they were greeted by a row of enamel human figures, wearing festive doll-like head masks, standing at the door of the vaccination room, their large eyes smiling but worn, obviously very vintage.

Zhong Qingxiao remembered these figures; they seemed to be a donation from a businessman in the 1990s, having been here for a long time. He had seen them before but hadn’t paid much attention at the time. Now, however, these figures felt incredibly creepy.

It was as if he had entered a hospital-themed horror house, everything emanating a strong sense of unreality, yet his consciousness was very clear that he was indeed in the real world. The split feeling kept Zhong Qingxiao on edge.

He shifted his gaze and looked towards the Cold Storage Room on the left-a sturdy iron door was tightly locked, clearly not something that could be easily broken by human force. This old-fashioned iron door was very robust and could only be opened with the corresponding key.

There were signs of human tampering on it, and if you sniffed carefully, there was a rust smell. It seemed Yan Cheng and his team had tried to break in but hadn’t succeeded.

Perhaps they went to find tools or keys? Hence they were not in the building.

It looked… as if they hadn’t encountered any danger.

Suddenly, footsteps came from upstairs, walking hurriedly yet sturdily. Although Zhong Qingxiao couldn’t explain how two contradictory descriptions could be combined, he just had this feeling, an instinct that arose spontaneously. He immediately grabbed his girlfriend’s hand and hid behind a nearby service desk.

Down from the fourth floor came something that looked very much like a giant potato, its body vastly oversized, with a head covered in a ring of hair, resembling a Mediterranean hairstyle, but that ring of hair was far wilder than human hair.

Zhong Qingxiao’s eyes trembled, realizing why he had felt the footsteps were hurried-it was because this bizarre monster had several legs, moving as fast as a crab. Compared to its massive, bloated body, those legs were like those of a baby.

It was wearing clothes, though stained to a filthy gray, but still recognizable as a lab coat, giving Zhong Qingxiao a rough guess about the monster’s identity-a doctor.

A very strange one, with a potato head and a bloated body like a huge water bag, even faintly audible water sounds inside, and two long arms hanging all the way from the shoulders to the ground.

There were monsters in the building, and Zhong Qingxiao clenched his lips, hugging his girlfriend a bit tighter.

He made no sound, extremely cautious as he watched the monster outside. He realized the monster seemed to be looking for something.

It seemed likely that Yan Cheng and his team had encountered this monster, but they had three flamethrowers.

Hadn’t they inflicted any damage on the monster?

This monster was intact, without any signs of injury. Its overly steady build even gave Zhong Qingxiao a feeling that it was quite leisurely.

“Hello?”

A voice rang out. Zhong Qingxiao took a deep breath. He saw the monster take out a cellphone from the pocket of the lab coat and mumble into it.

They… could still make calls?

“Ah, Zhang, I’m on duty.”

The monster’s voice sounded like a drunken mailman, mumbling and not very clear.

“So many surgeries today, I’m dead tired,” the monster complained to the person on the phone. “Tomorrow morning I have two more, reportedly also in the afternoon.”

“So many surgeries, way too many.”

The phone call gradually shifted from an actual conversation to mere complaints and venting. Zhong Qingxiao gradually realized that the monster was not really talking to someone but was more like simulating a part of its human life before the mutation.

Perhaps during some time before it mutated, it was talking on the phone, complaining about the many surgeries it had performed.

Its voice became increasingly unclear, from the clear speech of a human to the low mutterings of a monster, yet the phone call continued. Zhong Qingxiao listened very carefully, barely making out a few key words.

“Received five, patients, five… new, patients.”

“Ah, where did all the patients go? Why aren’t they waiting on the operating table? Where are the patients…”

It kept muttering under its breath, the sound getting closer, as if it was coming closer to the service desk.

Zhong Qingxiao tensed up, moving further and further back, almost ready to crawl under the desk.

Then he saw a box of tweezers near his foot.

Instinct told him that the monster was looking for this box. He stretched out his foot and nudged the tweezers away so the monster could see them at a glance.

He had just withdrawn his foot when a voice came from above, “Ah,” and a large hand, looking capable of easily crushing an adult male’s skull, reached for the box and took the item away.

The footsteps slowly receded, and Zhong Qingxiao’s tense body finally relaxed a bit. He realized he was sweating, and just as he was about to look at his girlfriend, he found that Luo Ke was gone.

She had been right beside him just a moment ago. How could she suddenly disappear?

Zhong Qingxiao quickly stood up, but the third floor was empty. Nothing was there.

Could Xiao Ke have gone to find the monster? The feeling akin to a paranormal event made Zhong Qingxiao quite uncomfortable. He looked at the stairs leading to the fourth floor and stepped up.

That monster had mentioned seeing five new patients.

Was this senseless babbling, or… Before he could think deeply, Zhong Qingxiao had already found the answer. The fourth floor was filled with beds, some regular hospital beds, others surgical ones. Yan Cheng was crouching under one of the beds. Seeing Zhong Qingxiao, he seemed somewhat startled, then quickly made a “shush” gesture.

The thick smell of blood and the foul stench hit him as Zhong Qingxiao finally saw-each bed had a human corpse on it, with the abdomen completely opened up. The faces still held the expressions of horror they had in life.

Some seemed still alive, constantly gasping or making unconscious screams: “Ah-ah-”

The tone was drawn out, light and powerless, very eerie.

Zhong Qingxiao’s vision was clear enough to see the monster take the tweezers from the box, pick up a large piece of cotton, and dab it with iodine from a large bottle onto a human body.

And that human, his eyes open, watched all this happening alongside Zhong Qingxiao, his gaze somewhat blank and dull, his body motionless.

And at the monster’s feet, several empty vials were scattered. Zhong Qingxiao looked down and saw the English letters on them: PROPOFOL.

A commonly used anesthetic in clinical settings.