Chapter 6: The Clinic’s Rot
1779 Words
Zhang Chi dragged his suitcase, half-caked in mud, staggering through the groaning iron gates.
THUD!
The wind slammed the gates shut behind him with a heavy, sodden sound.
No sanctuary within.
Only—
A stench so thick it punched into the brain.
The foul reek of rancid slop, ammoniac seepage from ancient latrines, and… the bitter char of herbal medicine burnt beyond salvation.
What hellhole?!
Cement floors? Cracked, rotting, softened by seepage!
Lighting? Pale, sickly! Cheap bulbs, flickering erratically with defective contacts! Casting ghastly shadows!
Walls!
Blackened! Thick mildew, like putrid moss feasting on damp plaster!
*SCRAMBLE!*
Huge, dark shapes erupted from behind cardboard piles!
Rats. Fat as kittens. Green, venomous eyes gleaming in the gloom! They darted straight toward Zhang Chi’s feet!
Zhang Chi recoiled instinctively!
“God damn!” he cursed under his breath!
His feet slid!
He caught himself on a rickety bench edge—narrowly avoiding a face-plant in filth!
Glancing down:
A puddle of yellow-green, bubbling vomit beside the bench leg! Viscous, fetid! His stomach convulsed violently! Acid surged!
Clinic?!
A damn abandoned junkyard more like!
Worse than last night’s mildewed hostel!
Rage and humiliation, pent-up all journey, ignited by this squalor!
“Duty office! Anyone here?!” Zhang Chi’s roar echoed in the cavernous “lobby”! Flaking posters proclaiming Serve the People vibrated!
“Shut yer racket! Chasin’ coffins?!” A shrill, razor-edged woman’s voice scraped from a blacked-out cubbyhole labeled Registration.
The cubby’s wooden flap banged open. A face emerged—painted dead-white with cheap powder, slanted eyes, lips slashed scarlet. She puffed cheap cigarette smoke, squinting at the mud-caked man in her doorway.
“Patient?” she sneered, smoke curling contemptuously. “Wait! Doctor’s not in! Scream your head off later!” Voice like nails on slate.
“Transfer reporting! Doctor Zhang Chi! City Health Bureau dispatch!” Zhang Chi reined in his fury, voice cold, hard.
“Transfer?” Her brows shot up as if hearing a cosmic joke. “You?” She spat the pronoun, eyes raking his filth, battered luggage, swollen temple lump. Disgust dripped. “Doctor? Mud-digger, more like! Wrong door!” The flap started closing!
“Stop!” Zhang Chi lunged, nearly hitting the flaking, green-painted frame! He yanked a crumpled, damp letter from his pack—slapping it on the grimy counter! Mud-caked finger stabbed the text: “See! Zhang Chi! Reporting to Linshan Beiling Town Health Center!”
The woman hesitated before the force of his presence and the “official” document. Reluctantly, she reached out—fingers capped in scarlet polish, grime under the nails—pinching the soggy paper with distaste.
Squinting under the sputtering bulb, she strained to read. Ash dropped, singeing a hole in the sodden page!
“Oh… Zhang Chi…” She drawled, recognition flickering. Her expression grew bizarre—mocking, dismissive. “Wait! Director Qin… is occupied.” She tossed the letter back into the counter’s muddy water. She screeched toward a shadowed corridor behind her:
“Li Pockface! Chen Hunchback! City’s fancy doctor’s here! Roll out the welcome wagon?!”
Pure derision hung in the damp air.
Slap! Slap!
Scuffing rubber soles echoed from the corridor depths.
Two figures materialized under the sallow light.
One—elderly, cadaverously thin, gait lurching. Face like shriveled walnut hide. Clad in a yellowed, stained, threadbare white coat.
The other—slightly younger, spine bent, face cratered like a pitted moon. Short, wearing another coat of indeterminate hue, smeared with yellowish blotches and dark red… spatter? He picked his teeth with a broken metal utensil, unabashed.
These were Li Pockface?! Chen Hunchback?!
Beiling’s “backbone”?!
Icy dread shot up Zhang Chi’s spine! Doctors? These two belonged in coffins! Custodians wore more dignity! Compared to the city hospital’s starched white coats and gold-rimmed professors… He’d plunged from celestial heights to a grotesque underworld!
“See! Here! Zhang… whatever!” The window woman jerked her red-tipped nail at Zhang Chi. “Precious city goods! Settle him! Stop clogging the view!” The flap slammed shut. Her muffled grumble: “…city cast-off slumming it here…”
“New meat?” Chen Hunchback leaned close, reeking of cheap liquor and garlic. Zhang Chi recoiled!
“Tsk tsk… Young sprout…” He cackled, revealing jagged yellow teeth. “Prime luck! Assigned to Beiling’s paradise! Heh heh!”
Li Pockface stopped picking his teeth. Beady eyes raked Zhang Chi and his suitcase: suspicion laid bare. “City send-off? Why the mess? Papers?”
Zhang Chi choked back rage—and Pockface’s piercing stare. He retrieved the mud-slimed letter: “Transfer Letter! Where do I bunk? On-duty quarters?!”
Pockface twirled his improvised toothpick, eyeing Zhang Chi sidelong. He ignored the letter, voice slick with implication: “Kid, who’d you piss off up there? No connections? Sent here? Give us the lowdown, eh?” The leer screamed: You’re exiled. Don’t posture.
Zhang Chi’s fury ignited!
Ignoring the letter! Asking about pull?!
Damn!
“Documentation complete! Where’s Director Qin?!” Zhang Chi’s voice turned arctic. Words wasted here were life wasted!
“Oho! Fiery stallion!” Li Pockface sneered, toothpick returning to his mouth. “Director’s office? That lit door! End of hall!” He gestured with his chin toward a peeling wood door sagging on its frame, sliver of jaundiced light beneath. “But friendly tip… Don’t interrupt!”
A salacious grin spread: “Director’s… inspecting. Deeply. Nurse Liu’s… medical records. Don’t kill the boss’s… enthusiasm! Heh heh heh…”
Inspecting? Medical records?
That leer. The insinuation…
Damn!
This flyblown hellhole! The director screwing nurses on duty?!
Revolting bile clawed Zhang Chi’s throat!
Damn it all!
No wonder this place was a sty! The boss hog was a rutting boar!
Chen Hunchback giggled vacuously beside him, as if this were routine.
Zhang Chi’s stare froze, dagger-like, on the shabby door, then lashed back to Pockface’s mocking face. Humiliation—being trampled into filth, forced to breathe the same air as maggots—scorched his insides!
Fine!
Perfect!
Beiling exceeded his nightmares!
He tore his eyes from the rancid door.
Ignored Pockface and Hunchback.
Dismissed the transfer letter!
“Quarters!” Zhang Chi ground the word out! “Where?!”
Pockface, seeing no leverage, rolled his eyes. His toothpick jabbed towards a pitch-black stairwell. “Basement! Walk towards the stink! Last door! Unlocked! Follow your nose!” Malice saturated every syllable.
He descended beside greasy walls.
Stairs—steep, narrow, treacherously slick.
A miasma, tenfold worse than the lobby—mold, decay, uric acid—suffocated him. Basement dorms?!
Zhang Chi’s heart plummeted further.
He forced himself downward.
Reached level ground.
A corridor, black and narrow.
Only a single defective bulb flickered like ghoul-fire at the far end.
Weak light revealed oily water pooling on the floor, slimy algae crawling along the walls.
Corridor’s end.
A door—not merely unlocked—warped upon its hinges! A fist-sized gap gaped beside it!
Zhang Chi sucked in a lungful of mold-thick air.
He shoved—
The warped, heavy door screeched—an ear-splitting protest!
The sight inside—
Despite Zhang Chi’s direst expectations—his heart seized! Stomach knotted in visceral shock!
Suffocating!
The room cramped.
A clammy, subterranean cell!
Air choked with mildew dust!
Plaster sloughed off in sheets! Exposing fetid brick beneath! Water beaded down walls, collecting in greasy puddles on the floor!
Window? One. Boarded shut. Not a sliver of light. Only a single overhead bulb—grimed, spider-webbed—caged in dust.
The sole “furniture”: a rusting metal bunk bed frame. Lower berth—piled with dust-cloaked junk, cockroaches scattering into shadows.
Upper berth—
Bare, sour-smelling straw pallet! Under it, a blackened straw mat—stained oily brown (grease? dried blood?)!
Sheet? Absent.
Blanket? Absent.
Pillow? Absent.
Beside the bed, a makeshift “table”—warped chipboard propped on three legs! Tilted. Scattered with crumpled cigarette packs, furred with mold.
The pièce de résistance—
A sunken pit in the center of the floor! Filled with stagnant, greenish water! A monstrous rat perched on the edge—beady eyes fixed on this intruder!
Dorms?!
Less fit than the city hospital’s corpse drawers!
Zhang Chi stood rooted, dragging his suitcase.
Blood turned to ice.
God. Damn. It.
This was Beiling.
This was the welcome for the city’s “sent doctor”?!
Worse than a pig sty!
The journey’s fury, the suffocated shame, the nausea barely held back, the bone-deep exhaustion… seeing this “dormitory from hell” detonated it all!
His stomach convulsed—wild, uncontrollable!
Heaving!
“*Uuuaaarrgh—!!!*”
Zhang Chi buckled! He flung his suitcase onto the filthy wet floor!
Scrambled—half-crawling—to the lip of the fetid water pit!
Dropped to his knees in the sludge!
Retched violently! Emptily!
Stomach long voided, only bitter bile and blood-taste surged up!
He choked! Spasmed!
Temples pulsed with pressure!
Tears, snot—gushing uncontrollably—
Mingling with the filthy water splashing his face!
Degradation!
Abasement!
Lower than beaten strays!
The rat vanished into junk shadows!
Footsteps approached.
Li Pockface appeared in the warped doorway.
Arms folded across his chest!
A gloating, malevolent smirk twisting his pitted face!
Toothpick working noisily between his lips!
“Woozy? Eh?” Li Pockface crooned, dripping mock concern. “Our little paradise’s ‘geomancy’ takes getting used to! Heh! All that purging… polluting our pristine atmosphere, doctor!”
He drawled, eyes feasting on Zhang Chi’s retching misery, voice sharpening to a taunt:
“Lao Chen! Chen! Where you buried?! Fetch tools!”
“Our fine city doctor has standards! Finds our squalor… repulsive! Offering ‘environmental beautification’!!”
“That prime organic purge won’t go to waste! Get the brush! The pan! Scoop it up! Preserve it!”
“Tomorrow’s hog slop vat needs prime additives! Heh heh heh!!!”
Every word! Salted whips lashing raw nerves!
Humiliation!
Unendurable!
Zhang Chi knelt in filthy water, body racked by convulsions!
He snapped his head up!
Eyes bloodshot, streaming with vomit-induced tears—burned like poisoned blades into Pockface’s smirking, pocked visage!
Hate!
Volcanic, seething hate and crushing revulsion churned in his chest! Threatening to rupture him!
Then—
*BRRRRRIIINNNNNGGGGG—!!!*
A shrieking, metallic clangor!
Savage! Deafening!
An old, wall-mounted phone screamed—a relic ensnared in cobwebs in the shadowed corridor corner!
No mobile. A landline, shrilling with archaic fury!
The clamor ricocheted through the dripping stone corridor—sinister, imperative! Li Pockface’s smirk dissolved into stunned fear!
- Writer
