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Chapter Two: Sugar is Sweet

In the summer, the sky's up and at 'em way too early. The clock on the table just hit seven, and the gaps in the city skyline, not yet swallowed by skyscrapers, were already glowing with a faint golden light.

James was never one to sleep in. Groggy as hell, he stretched out, kicked off the warm covers, and with a sleepy shuffle, made his way to the bathroom in his slippers. He squeezed some toothpaste onto his brush and, using the fresh tap water, started brushing slowly.

For some weird reason, the second the toothbrush hit his mouth, he got this strange feeling.

The toothpaste foam on his tongue tasted super sweet.

James glanced at the toothpaste box next to him, confused. It was just regular old toothpaste.

But this stuff tasted way sweeter than usual. It made him wanna swallow it down.

He shook his head hard and rinsed his mouth with clean water. James opened a drawer and pulled out a piece of milk candy from a small bag. He unwrapped it and popped it into his mouth.

A colleague had given it to him last month.

James was never into candy, so he had just tossed it into the drawer back then.

The sugar in a normal diet is enough to keep you going. Eating too much can mess up your teeth and pack on unnecessary pounds. He didn't wanna turn into a greasy, chubby dude at his age.

If he hadn't suddenly remembered, that bag of candy might've stayed there forever until it got moldy.

Chewing the softened milk candy, he grabbed his lunchbox from the table, opened the door, and headed towards the employee cafeteria, where thick white steam was rising from the roof in the distance.

At 8:05, it was breakfast time at the hospital cafeteria.

Sixteen food service windows had lines stretching as long as 32 feet. The head chef was a retired military cook. Naturally, the hospital cafeteria kept the biggest feature of military food—while it wasn't exactly gourmet, it was plentiful, filling, and cheap.

Bread for five cents each, free porridge and soup, and a stainless steel basin full of side dishes prepped the night before sat beside the windows. Of course, if you were into pasta for breakfast, you could spend the same amount of money to get a bowl bigger than your head from the chef, enough to keep you stuffed until lunch.

This was a perk just for hospital staff.

South of the inpatient department, there was a restaurant open to patients and their families. The food there was more varied and fancy. Even high-quality dishes like chicken soup, French onion soup, and beef stew, which took five or six hours to cook, were available 24/7.

But medical staff, including James, never ate there.

They knew the deal—the chicken had been reheated in the pot for almost a week.

The broth in the onion soup? Not the original stuff anymore. It had been watered down with MSG and water a hundred times over.

And the beef stew? Forget about finding chunks of beef in there. It was all tendons, offal, or something like diaphragm or intestines. It smelled alright, and the tomato sauce gave it a nice red color, but it wasn't the fresh taste your mouth was craving. It had this weird, funky odor, like cow hooves.

The food in that restaurant was crazy expensive: a simple veggie salad was thirty bucks. Nutritional dishes like chicken stew? A whopping hundred and fifty dollars a bowl.

This ridiculous menu had been slammed more than once.

Of course, these issues had nothing to do with the hospital—the restaurant was contracted out, and the pricing was the contractor's problem. As long as the food didn't kill anyone, nobody cared.

Looking at the steaming kitchen, James felt his stomach rumble.

He felt like he hadn't eaten in forever. The sudden smell of food made him want to chow down.

Holding a lunchbox full of porridge and eight hamburgers, James, under the surprised stares of others, blushed a bit and slowly walked to a table by the wall.

Even he thought it was weird; usually, two hamburgers were plenty for breakfast. But today, he felt like even if he finished all the food in front of him, he might still be half full.

Grabbing the condiment tray from the table, James scooped out a big spoonful of sugar and piled a thick layer on top of his porridge. Normally, he wouldn't dream of doing this. But today, he couldn't explain it; he just craved something sweet.

The sweeter, the better.

"Morning, Dr. Smith."

Suddenly, a voice beside him interrupted his actions. Turning around, he saw Michael, grinning widely, sitting down with a bowl of porridge. His plate also had eight hamburgers.

Nodding politely, James looked at him, puzzled but silent.

He remembered that Michael had chronic stomach ulcers. According to medical advice, he could only eat small, frequent meals. His usual food intake was tiny, typically one hamburger or a small portion of pasta.

He often couldn't even finish that.

But today, his surprisingly large appetite, similar to James's, was clearly odd.

Michael pulled out a chair and sat down casually. He took the sugar container from James's hand and dumped the remaining sugar into his own porridge. While stirring the porridge with a spoon, he leaned in close and whispered mysteriously, "Did you hear? The patient we brought in last night took a turn for the worse and died early this morning."

"Died?"

James was shocked. Ignoring the hamburger he was chewing, he quickly asked, "What happened exactly?"

"Not quite sure. The on-duty doc said it was probably long-term malnutrition leading to organ failure."

Michael took a few sips from his bowl, blowing on the hot steam that scalded his lips, and said, "Luckily, we gave him glucose on the way back yesterday. Otherwise, if anything had gone wrong, we would've been in deep trouble. But then again, could there have been something off with that bottle of glucose?"

James brushed off the last part and asked, "When did this happen?"

"Around three in the morning, I think. The body's already been sent to the morgue, just waiting for the family to claim it."

"What? The person from last night still hasn't shown up?"

James was startled again.

"Nope."

Michael chewed on his hamburger, talking with his mouth full, "But the twenty grand he gave me was enough to cover the emergency costs. As for the rest, we'll have to wait until someone shows up. The deceased's family might demand compensation from the hospital because of this. It could turn into another damned medical dispute."

Whenever someone dies in the hospital, the institution is expected to cough up a hefty sum to the deceased's family. This has become an unofficial norm. Because of this, the hospital has a clear policy: any department or individual facing such issues must investigate thoroughly. Whoever started it must see it through to the end.

James frowned and shook his head unconsciously. Slowly swallowing the food he was chewing, his gaze shifted to the half-eaten hamburger in his hand. At first glance, it looked like a curved, irregular arc, reminding him of the mysterious patient's cracked lips and eerie smile from last night, for reasons unknown.

After starting work, James first accompanied the attending physician on rounds to check on all the patients in their ward. Then, he compiled the rounds records into a booklet and entered them into the computer database. By the time he finished, the clock's hands pointed to ten-thirty.

As per usual, unless there were special circumstances to handle, James had free time until lunch.

He was just an intern, so the hospital wouldn't assign him official consultations. The attending physician responsible for mentoring him would only give him unrelated tasks, never truly teaching him experience and knowledge. Most of the time, he did trivial chores under the guise of "letting young people gain experience in various aspects."

As for the patients, they judged doctors based on appearance.

Youthful and handsome attributes were synonymous with inexperience in the eyes of patients. They'd rather pay ten times more to consult with wrinkled, toothless, bald-headed experts than accept a cheap appointment with a young doc fresh out of school.

Even those creeps on the streets, whose eyes always followed young women's chests and butts, calculating their cup sizes, would change their tune in the clinic, eagerly seeking out "old experts" old enough to be their mothers or grandmothers.

On a normal day, James would sit in front of the computer, idly playing games for over an hour, waiting for the cafeteria to open. But today, he had no such inclination.

He felt that the patient's death was super suspicious.

Thinking about it, James subconsciously pinched the finger he had injured last night. The spot where the needle had pricked left only a faint gray mark, but it emitted a vague, intermittent pain.

Like all large public places, Auroravale General Hospital had a vast underground parking lot. However, few people knew that beneath the third basement level, there was another floor accessible only by the hospital's special elevator.

This was the deepest underground level, used for two purposes: storing medications and housing bodies of those who had died from various incidents.

Stepping out of the elevator, the first thing James saw was a narrow T-shaped corridor. On the left, a prominent red arrow was painted on the pale green wall, indicating the pharmacy.

To the right, there were no signs, just a dim incandescent light on the ceiling casting his shadow on the grayish-yellow wall. Maybe due to unstable voltage, the light flickered occasionally, accompanied by faint buzzing sounds as small insects circled the bulb.

"Young man, which department are you from? What brings you here?"

As he reached the corner, a raspy voice suddenly came from a half-open door nearby. An elderly woman, about sixty years old, wearing a white coat, short and thin, with black rubber-soled wooden slippers, and a face devoid of any expression, appeared before him.

Her name was Hestia Sharp, the caretaker of the underground morgue.

It was said that she had been the most beautiful among the young nurses in the hospital in her early years. However, Hestia had a tragic life. First, her husband had an affair, leading to a divorce. Later, her only son died in a car accident, and she herself suffered from multiple chronic illnesses. Out of consideration, the hospital had assigned her this seemingly eerie but actually lucrative job.

Whenever a deceased's family came to claim a body, they would give the caretaker a generous tip. However, this money was considered unlucky by most people. Especially when Hestia went to the cafeteria, people would avoid her, and no one would talk to her unless necessary, as if she were a soulless zombie.

Looking at Hestia's cold expression, James instinctively pulled a note with the department's stamp from his pocket. "The department sent me to check on the body that arrived early this morning, to prepare for archiving."

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