Card Room

Chapter 313 - Testimony of the Deceased

Long Sen, Qu Wanyue, Old Mo and Ye Qi almost simultaneously told Xiao Lou that someone had died. Four people died at once. After Xiao Lou hung up the phone, he had a splitting headache. He only had four hours of sleep last night and at his time, his brain seemed to be repeatedly stirred by an electric drill. The vein on his temple bulged and his vision was a bit confused.

Yu Hanjiang sensed Xiao Lou’s discomfort through the mind channel. He frowned and turned away from the window to head to Xiao Lou’s side, gently pressing a hand against his shoulder. “Don’t worry, deaths in hospitals are very common. They aren’t necessarily related to the case.”

Xiao Lou turned to his senses and found that Yu Hanjiang had actually come down from the bed. He was worried. “Can you get out of bed?”

“Yes, the wound is recovering well. During the rounds this morning, the director said that proper activities can be carried out to avoid intestinal obstruction caused by long-term bed rest.” Yu Hanjiang endured the pain from his wound as he spoke. “Go to the wards and take a look. First briefly investigate the causes of death and we will investigate again if there are any doubts. You are going to have to work hard again today.”

“It’s fine. It is nothing more than running errands.” Xiao Lou smiled and stood up. “I’ll go to pediatrics first. Walk around the ward and be careful not to exercise too vigorously. We don’t want your wound to reopen.”

“Don’t worry, I know.” Yu Hanjiang gave Xiao Lou a reassuring look. Once Xiao Lou left, he picked up his mobile phone and called a colleague at the police station. “Immediately help me check someone called Liu Renyuan. He is male and 35 years old. I need his detailed social relations information.”

“Yes, Group Leader Yu.” The young police officer’s clear voice came from the other end of the phone.

Yu Hanjiang was hospitalized due to a gunshot wound but his identity was a criminal investigations police officer. He could use his phone to contact the police department. The previous investigation of the ‘Cheng Shaoyu Dismembered Corpse’ case was sent to colleagues in the police force and he should fully utilize the resources at hand.

Xiao Lou went to the pediatrics department first. Ye Qi was sneakily hiding behind a door and rushed over the moment Xiao Lou arrived. Xiao Lou looked at Ye Qi who only came up to his thigh and asked softly, “What is the situation?”

Ye Qi spoke nervously. “The moment I came out of the bathroom at 9:30 in the morning, I saw a group of doctors and nurses rushing in the next room. The door of the room was closed and I’m too short to see what had happened. I only saw Chen Yuqing’s mother sitting at the door of the room and crying. After 10 minutes, a doctor walked out and said, ‘Sorry, we tried our best’.”

These were the last words that family members wanted to hear in a hospital—Sorry, we tried our best.

This sentence made it obvious that Chen Yuqing had died. No wonder Ye Qi was in a hurry to notify Xiao Lou.

Xiao Lou asked in an incredulous manner, “Chen Yuqing was fine when I had a consultation on her yesterday, Why so sudden?”

Ye Qi obviously looked guilty. “I don’t exactly know. It is too inconvenient to be a child. The nurses don’t let me run around. Just now, they forced me to return to my room. I secretly ran out to wait for you while the doctor and nurse weren’t there.”

Xiao Lou nodded. “You go back first. I’ll investigate.”

He still remembered the 7 year old girl he saw yesterday. She had pale skin, a thin body and a cute smile. She said ‘thank you Uncle’ at the end of the consultation. At the time of the consultation, the patient’s condition was fairly stable. Since Chen Yuqing had congenital gallstones, Xiao Lou helped make an appointment for her to have surgery the next morning.

Xiao Lou turned and headed to bed 18. Chen Yuqing was dead and her skin was as pale as paper, with her mother sobbing beside her. The attending doctor was a capable woman of around 30 years old with a neat ponytail. Xiao Lou had a consultation with her yesterday and had written down her name—Lin Ting.

At this time, Lin Ting’s eyes were a bit lost as she stood by the bed holding the medical record with a solemn expression. Xiao Lou walked over and asked in a low voice, “Dr Lin, what happened? Wasn’t she fine yesterday morning?”

Lin Ting sighed lightly. “I planned to send her to the operating room this morning. I didn’t expect that she would suffer a heart attack before being sent for anesthesia. We tried our best to rescue her but unfortunately, her heartbeat wasn’t able to recover.”

Xiao Lou was stunned. “I reviewed her case carefully when I came for a consultation yesterday. Didn’t she have congenital gallstones? There is no history of heart disease. How could a heart attack occur?”

Lin Ting glanced at the girl’s mother with a complicated expression and whispered in Xiao Lou’s ear, “I suspect that the family members concealed the condition.”

Xiao Lou, “......”

The concealment of a condition was very common.

For example, there was once a female classmate in obstetrics and gynecology who mentioned such a thing in the group chat.

Family members were afraid that the hospital wouldn’t perform surgery and concealed a history of coronary heart disease in a pregnant woman. The pregnant woman had a normal ECG and Color Doppler ultrasound examination and the results were normal. However, in many cases of coronary heart disease, these tests couldn’t find it. A professional coronary CT had to be done to find narrow blood vessels and pregnant women couldn’t do a CT because of radiation. The doctors believed the family members and pushed the pregnant woman to the operating room. Who would’ve thought that the pregnant woman would have a heart attack during the caesarean operation? The rescue was ineffective and she died.

Discussion in the alumni group was very intense regarding this matter. Xiao Lou saw that many doctors had encountered family members and patients who concealed their medical history, especially AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. Concealing it was serious.

At that time, someone joked with Xiao Lou and said, “It is more comfortable to be a forensic doctor who deals with the dead. There is no need to worry that the dead will lie. The living are terrible and their hearts are too complicated.”

Xiao Lou couldn’t help sighing when he thought of this and told Lin Ting, “Don’t blame yourself too much. You have done your best.”

Lin Ting was silent for a moment before saying softly, “Yuqing sent me a card she personally made yesterday. She was very obedient and sensible. It really is a pity. If her heart disease was discovered earlier and she was transferred to cardiac surgery then she might’ve been saved...”

Xiao Lou wondered, “When I came to the consultation yesterday, her mother was with her. Why didn’t I see her father?”

Lin Ting answered, “Yuqing has been staying in our pediatrics ward for half a month and I’ve never seen her father. I asked her mother but her mother refused to say anything. It is a matter of privacy so I couldn’t ask any further.”

Chen Yuqing’s mother seemed to stabilize her mood. She wiped away her tears and covered her daughter’s body with a white cloth before walking over. “Dr Lin, my family is in a foreign country and I have to make arrangements for my daughter’s funeral. It might take a few days. Can her body be placed in the hospital morgue first?”

Lin Ting nodded. “It can be temporarily placed in the hospital morgue until you claim it.”

The mother said thank you and turned away in a lost manner. Suddenly, Xiao Lou asked, “Ms Chen, has your daughter ever had a heart check-up?”

The woman was stunned and looked back. “What do you mean?”

“Yu Qing’s cause of death is a sudden heart attack. Did you know previously that she had a heart disease?”

The woman paled and shook her head. “I didn’t know.”

She left in a hurry. Xiao Lou noticed that her eyes were evasive which meant she must be hiding something. However, the specific situation still needed to be carefully checked. The daughter had just died and it wasn’t good to stimulate the mother.

Xiao Lou went to the doctor to get her contact information. Then he turned around and headed to the rheumatology and immunology department to find Qu Wanyue.

As a child, it wasn’t convenient for Ye Qi to investigate but Qu Wanyue had already found the ins and outs before Xiao Lou came. She saw Xiao Lou and immediately walked over to whisper in his ear, “The deceased was a 28 year old woman with lupus erythematosus. I heard she also had lupus nephritis. I saw that she wasn’t in a good state mentally yesterday and she died of acute renal failure this morning.”

Xiao Lou inquired, “Has her family been here?”

“Her parents came to see her yesterday afternoon. When she became ill this morning, her parents had just come for a visit. The doctors tried their best to rescue her but failed. Her family members were calm after receiving the death notice. They didn’t sob and just silently shed tears. It should be that her disease is difficult to treat so her family members had long been psychologically prepared.”

Lupus erythematosus was an autoimmune disease. Xiao Lou didn’t know much about it. He just remembered that the disease progressed slowly. If it was well controlled then the prognosis was good. However, once there were complications with multiple organs or multiple systems through the body then it was difficult to manage.

In the final analysis, there were no specific drugs for immune diseases. It could only be controlled by special stimulating autoimmunity. Once the immune system collapsed, it was difficult for even the gods to save them. Judging from Qu Wanyue’s description, the young woman who died in the rheumatology and immunology department had little to do with the case they were investigating.

Xiao Lou wrote down the name of the deceased and exchanged a few words with Qu Wanyue before leaving.

In the endocrinology department where Old Mo was staying, the deceased was an 80 year old elderly woman. The cause of death was diabetic ketoacidosis. There was no problem with the cause of death of this patient. It was difficult for an 80 year old elderly person to be involved in an organ trafficking case.

Xiao Lou stopped by to check on Old Mo. He had just finished surgery yesterday and his mental state was much better today. Although his wrinkled and old appearance was distressing, Old Mo at least had a look in his eyes that showed he completely accepted his setting.

Xiao Lou let him rest in bed for the time being.

The last stop was the orthopedic surgery department. Long Sen was waiting for Xiao Lou in the corridor in a wheelchair. Once Xiao Lou came in, he pushed the wheelchair over and spoke in a low voice to Xiao Lou, “The deceased is a 35 year old young man. Qi Zhaoming was pushed for surgery yesterday. After the operation, he was unconscious and sent to the ICU ward. He was gone this morning and his family members couldn’t be contacted. The doctor sent the body to the morgue.”

Xiao Lou was surprised. “The body was taken to the morgue? Didn’t any of his family members come?”

Long Sen scratched his head. “I just asked his roommate and it was said that not one family member has visited Qi Zhaoming since he was hospitalized. The surgery consent form was signed by himself. He died this morning and none of his family members could be contacted. He is very pitiful.”

The deceased’s body wasn’t claimed by the family and could only be sent to the morgue. This made Xiao Lou puzzled.

Xiao Lou wrote down the name of the deceased and returned to the general surgery ward. Yu Hanjiang was out of bed and sitting on the sofa reading through information. He saw Xiao Lou come in and wondered in a soft voice, “What is the conclusion?”

Xiao Lou sat down on the sofa, picked up a glass of water and took a few sips. Once the dryness of his throat was reduced, he said, “The 80 year old elderly woman in Old Mo’s ward died of diabetic ketoacidosis. The young woman in Qu Wanyue’s ward had advanced lupus and died of renal failure due to multiple organ damage. These two patients should be interference items and can be ruled out. I need to carefully check the medical records of the remaining two.”

He paused before adding, “The little girl’s heart attack was sudden and the doctor was caught off guard. It should have nothing to do with the hospital. Her mother is suspicious and probably concealed the medical history. The patient in the orthopedics department wasn’t claimed by any family members. These two corpses have been sent to the morgue.”

Yu Hanjiang looked gently at Xiao Lou. “Fortunately, you are a medical professional. You understand these common diseases and can quickly eliminate the interference items.”

Xiao Lou smiled helplessly. “If I wasn’t a medical professional then the keepers probably wouldn’t have arranged this hospital instance for us. However, I would rather the keeper give me corpses in a morgue and let me perform an autopsy one by one. That is my profession.”

Yu Hanjiang, “......”

A roomful of corpses—it was estimated that their teammates would feel uncomfortable psychologically.

Xiao Lou found that Yu Hanjiang was holding a stack of documents and couldn’t help looking over curiously. “What are these documents?”

“A colleague from the police force sent it. It is Liu Renyuan’s information.” Yu Hanjiang was very satisfied with the efficiency of his colleagues. He handed the information to Xiao Lou and explained, “The suspicious body you found in the morgue, Liu Renyuan was a security guard in the Jincui Community before his death. I asked my colleagues to check the community where he worked. Both his parents are dead, he isn’t married and no relatives can be found. According to the other security guards at the community, he usually likes to smoke and drink and his personality is relatively withdrawn. He didn’t have many friends.”

“......” Xiao Lou was surprised. “No relatives and no friends. Does this mean we can’t find out about his past experiences through social relationships? By the way, the person who died in orthopedics just now also wasn’t claimed by any family members.”

Xiao Lou thought of a possibility and couldn’t help a chill going down his back. “Can it be that the perpetrator specifically picked patients who have no relatives? Even if they died accidentally, no one will investigate the cause of death?”

After someone with relatives died, the family members would definitely ask the doctor to find the cause of death. If difficult family members were encountered then perhaps banners would be hung up at the entrance of the hospital the next day.

However, a patient who had no relatives died after going through surgery. The corpse could only be left in the morgue for a few days before being cremated. Or it would be taken to medical school to be used as materials for students studying human anatomy.

How did he die? No one would care God didn’t care and ghosts didn’t know.

Yu Hanjiang also thought of this possibility and narrowed his eyes. “Moreover, the Jincui Community where Liu Renyuan worked is the high-end villa community where the suspect Cheng Shaofeng lives. I was shot there when I went to investigate the case.”

The deceased in the dismembered corpse case, the rich second generation Cheng Shaoyu; the suspect, his missing brother Cheng Shaofeng; the suspicious deceased, Liu Renyuan who was found in the morgue; the suspicious deceased Qi Zhaoming who died in the orthopedics department this morning and the little girl Chen Yuqing from the pediatrics department...

What connected these people together?

The even more troublesome thing was that the rest of Cheng Shaoyu’s body hadn’t been found, Cheng Shaofeng’s whereabouts were unknown and the two deceased, Liu Renyuan and Qi Zhaoming had no family to investigate!

Without the testimony of relatives and friends, there was no telling who they had offended and what they experienced.

The only thing left were the two bodies in the morgue.

Xiao Lou took a deep breath and told Yu Hanjiang, “I will go to the morgue again tonight to dissect the bodies of the two suspicious deceased. I believe that the dead won’t lie. They will definitely tell me the situation.”

Proofreader: Fictional Reality