Extreme germ phobia

Chapter 80 Key Node
There is no surveillance camera in the ward, and we can only see the situation in the corridor through the camera.

Garrison skillfully operated the surveillance equipment, forwarding, rewinding, and playing the images, then forwarding, rewinding, and playing again, over and over again.

The doctors, nurses, patients and their families in the picture come and go, but they can never find the most critical time point.

Ou Yang noticed that the images stored in the system only went up to the early morning of July 7. Judging by the time, he should still be at the airport at that time.

Fortunately, it only lasted until the 17th, otherwise the surveillance system would have recorded in a loop and the previous surveillance footage would have been overwritten by the later data.

Unable to find any clues on the day of the incident, Garrison made up his mind to move the time forward two days. Finally, at around 7 a.m. on July 2, he found several doctors and nurses appearing at the bottom of the surveillance screen, walking along the corridor on the 7th floor.

He immediately changed the playback mode to fast forward, and the medical staff entered the wards on both sides one by one at an extremely fast speed, including wards 1219.

"Found it!" Garrison said excitedly.

Emily was the only one living in room 1219. Since the doctor entered the ward during the rounds, it meant that Emily was still in the ward at that time.

Ou Yang didn't know much about how hospitals operated, but he had just watched the video from the morning of July 7th. During the same time period, the medical staff on rounds did not enter Room 5.

Therefore, the most critical time point is between the morning of the 2nd and the morning of the 5th.

Garrison was worried about missing the most important information, so he didn't adjust the timeline, but played it in fast forward mode. Several people stared at the screen with wide eyes, not daring to miss any details.

But after just over ten minutes, the monitoring time had reached around 4 noon on the 12th. A group of hurried nurses appeared on the screen and transferred all the patients except 1219, leaving only 1219.

Garrison quickly canceled the fast forward, and about a minute later, the doctor on duty rushed to 1219.

At 12:44, seven or eight doctors entered the camera and trotted into room 1219.

Ou Yang found that there was nothing special about the medical staff during the morning rounds, but personal protection had been strengthened during this time.

From this, it can be inferred that the hospital has discovered something unusual about the fungus.

Based on his understanding of fungi, this level of protection is meaningless. Moreover, the medical staff have been in contact with patient zero for so many days, and the infection would have been transmitted long ago. It is meaningless to strengthen the protection.

For more than half an hour, only medical staff came in and out of the ward on the entire 12th floor.

Ou Yang already knew that 1219 was the intensive care unit. It was conceivable that the medical staff who entered it were working hard to save Emily's life.

Unfortunately, the usual rescue methods are useless in the face of F fungus.

At 14:22 during the monitoring period, the medical staff left one after another. At around 15:12, several nurses pushed a body bag out of the ward. The hospital then carried out a comprehensive and detailed disinfection of the entire th floor.

During this period, no one took anything suspected to be the patient's belongings.

Ou Yang couldn't help but ask, "Are Patient Zero's belongings also in the body bag? When was the last time the phone was located?"

Garrison shook his head. "I don't know. I only know it's somewhere near 1219."

Ou Yang really doesn’t know how to comment on this. If there is only a location but no time, what’s the point of setting a location?

But his words reminded Garrison, and he immediately started operating on another screen, tracking the entire process of the hospital transporting the body.

The nurse pushed the flatbed cart into the elevator and went directly to the third underground floor without any stops along the way.

There weren't enough surveillance cameras on the third floor below ground level to track the entire process. But that didn't matter. After carefully calculating the speed, Garrison concluded that the caregiver didn't stop at any point along the way.

The nurse did not put Emily's body into the refrigerator, but just placed it against the wall. Then the nurse left the morgue. The picture seemed to be frozen, and only the time in the corner of the screen was still changing.

Ou Yang suddenly pointed at the screen and said, "Look, that thing in the door looks like Patient Zero!"

The location where the body was placed was highly consistent with the human-shaped object in the morgue. He was the first one who didn't believe it was a coincidence!

"Does it matter whether that thing is Patient Zero?" Garrison kept his eyes fixed on the screen. "Strange, why isn't the body in the freezer?"

"Are you planning an autopsy? Patient Zero isn't an ordinary patient," Sanova guessed. "Besides, the temperature on the third underground floor isn't too high. If the body doesn't need long-term preservation, there's no need to put it in a freezer."

Garrison nodded without saying anything, but Ou Yang asked curiously, "How do hospitals usually deal with patients' belongings?"

The key time was found, but the problem is that there is still no clue about the more critical relics. This is really frustrating.

"Let's return it to the family," Sanova said uncertainly. "Patient Zero is special. Even if we return it, we have to disinfect it first."

Several people continued to stare at the screen, but after the hospital sent Emily's body away, the medical staff left quickly. For the next period of time, the entire 1219th floor was empty. It was not until the evening that the medical staff returned one after another and new patients were admitted one after another, even Room was no exception.

Ou Yang was very skeptical about whether the hospital's disinfection methods were effective and expressed extreme sympathy for the patients admitted to the 12th floor.

"No, no, I must have overlooked something!" Garrison adjusted the timeline forward, hoping to find new clues in earlier surveillance.

On another screen, images of the morgue were always playing.

Garrison had no new discoveries, but the morgue's surveillance time had reached the morning of the 5th. A slightly plump middle-aged white woman entered the morgue accompanied by medical staff.

This abnormal situation immediately attracted everyone's attention.

In the picture, a doctor stood next to the body bag and turned to say a few words to the middle-aged woman.

The latter nodded slightly with tears in his eyes.

With approval, the doctor unzipped the body bag. The moment Emily saw the light of day again, the middle-aged woman suddenly fell backwards and sat on the ground.

The doctor was so shocked that he took a few steps back and stared blankly at the stretcher.

"Pause!" Sanova patted Garrison on the back. "Zoom in!"

Garrison did as he was told immediately, and the details in the camera zoomed in. Everyone was shocked to see that after a whole night, Emily's body and face were covered with white mycelium, as if she was wrapped in a human-shaped cocoon.

The middle-aged woman ripped off the mask on her face and yelled at the doctor.

Even through the screen, I could feel her collapse.

A doctor stepped forward to stop and persuade her, but the woman pulled off his mask.

The other doctors were horrified and, without paying any attention to the middle-aged woman, covered their faces with masks, turned around and ran out.

Ou Yang couldn't help but complain: "The hospital is too careless. Knowing that Patient Zero's condition is special, how could they take him to the morgue?"

(End of this chapter)