To My Pretender [BL]

Prologue

To save something, you needed to give up something else.

Although it was freezing outside, it was even more bitter within the hospital. Depression, anxiety, burnout, hopelessness, lethargy, anhedonia, worry.

Looking around, all the workers rushed around with their fatigued brains and legs. 

Nurses clicked on their keyboards, looking up an email alerting them of the number of discharge summaries that hadn't been completed and the various computer-based modules they needed to complete—hand washing, privacy, lifting patients.

Interns were still awake, trying to keep their eyelids open as they looked for an autistic child that ran away. The computer shut down and wasn't logging in. The diabetic patient was hypoglycaemic. Clinic nurses were not happy. Patients were not happy and started to yell. Interruption between phone call after phone call.

Around twenty patients with various travel forms, certificates, and scripts that need completing came in, even though they could've come in the morning. All to be done via the electronic health system, clunky, and took a long time to log in.

Surgeons had no say in who got on the operating list and the order of patients, so parents were not happy with not knowing when their child was going to get their surgery. A neurosurgeon was being wrongfully blamed for an infection after surgery.

Click.

Click.

Click.

Dying patients that the doctors desperately tried to save. Then, when humans were pushed to their limits, something would hit a raw nerve. Suicidality. They lost control of their days. They lost support. They lost meaning.

By this time, everything was set up for failure.

*EEEE OOOO EEEE OOO

11:43 pm, SH Hospital.

The sirens of the ambulance pierced through the evening sky while the pungent scent of hospital disinfectant forced itself into the air.

As the ambulance rushed its way through to the entrance of the ER, a couple of doctors bolted down to tend the injured person within the ambulance.

Within the group of doctors, was a tall man whose gracious and comely form remained amongst the weight of tension. His full sleeve tattoo become visible when he rolled up the cuffs of his shirt, while his ink-coloured eyes darkened even more.

This man was SH Hospital's Director.

No one dared to make a noise in the presence of the Director until the paramedics jumped out of the ambulance. Their faces paled.

"Director... The Chairman is..." the paramedic uttered to the tall man, his eyes trembling from fear.

They opened the back door to the ambulance. There, laid a lifeless old man in the bed. The old man's cheeks were hollow, and he was growing older with each hour, minute, seconds. The man's hair had already lost its brightness, and his throat wrinkled up like a leaf placed under the scorching sun. The twisted body, broken bones, and a bloody body.

A woman sat beside the unconscious, battered man, rubbing her forehead with tears running down her face.

"Take the Chairman in now," the Director ordered.

Another night, another disaster.

The doctors and paramedics pushed the bed out of the ambulance and rushed into the ER. The Director stood under the gloomy moon. He suddenly started up, and, closing his eyes, placed his fingers upon the lids, as though he sought to imprison within his brain some curious dream from which he feared he might awake.

If patients prayed to doctors for their recovery, then who could doctors pray to? The Gods? Did they need to cling onto this false hope of a being that they couldn't even see?

The Director followed the paramedics in, and they started treating the Chairman with special care.

"How did this happen?" the Director asked the woman, who was the wife of the Chairman.

The old man laid like a cold corpse while the doctors tended to his injuries, trying to stitch him up as fast as possible before handing him over to the department of surgery.

"He, he got into a car accident... I was waiting for him across the road... and... while he was crossing, a truck just came... it came..." his wife explained, but her voice continued to crack up.

The Director could barely keep his eyes open. It was already past 12 am, but the noise within the rooms was only growing louder. From what the wife explained, the Chairman had gotten into an accident with a drunk driver, but this story only made the Director's mind drown in an endless train of thoughts.

He was tired. Everyone was tired. They were hungry. Dehydrated. Sleep deprived. Brain dead.

The Director gazed at the woman who was crying by the Chairman's side, only to feel a sour abscess course throughout his heart.

What ugly cries.

With that, the Director left the Chairman and his wife alone. If word was to get out that the Chairman of SH Hospital was on the verge of death after a car accident, it would only cause an uproar. Yet, he was already at an age where death was approaching, so perhaps no one would care as much.

However, what the Director knew clearly was that it wasn't an accident. Someone tried to murder the Chairman.

⋆✬❍◐⬤◑❍✬⋆

The woman left the ER, wiping her tears of distraught. Her thick scent of lavender perfume clashed with the fragrance of disinfectant, while the sound of her accessories cluttered against each other.

While she made her way to the elevator and past the hallway, she kept her head hung low, unable to make eye contact with anyone.

She arrived at a small, dark office. Going inside, she opened the lights. Walking towards the nameplate, she sat on the edge of the table and glided her dirtied finger across it.

[Chairman of SH Hospital, Shen Yao]

The reflection of her reddened eyes on the nameplate forced her to remain still. As she looked at the gracious form she had so skilfully mirrored in her art of acting, a smile of pleasure passed across her face, and seemed about to linger there.

"Ahahaha..."

A smile, so horrid, corrupted her scrunched face as she thought about the unconscious Chairman.

"How could he not die after that?" she laughed to herself. "The truck really just ran him over!"

Suddenly, a few knocks sounded on the door.

"Come in," the woman ordered, clearing her throat.

A doctor came in and bowed once. His face was pale, but he hid his shaky hands behind his back in guilt.

"How is that old man doing?" the woman asked.

"He will be transported to the OR soon. As you have instructed me to do, I'll be the lead surgeon for the operation. The Chairman's heart is extremely weak now."

"Good. Ensure he has no chance of waking up ever again. Mess up the surgery. Stab his heart. Do whatever you must to make a mess," she grinned before mumbling, "After I get rid of him, I'll get rid of that nosey son of his. He is probably onto me."

The longest night in the hospital was perhaps only just the beginning of a dreadful, endless nightmare.