Halia looked at herself in the mirror. Her long silky black hair was now tied into a bun, with the random strand of red wire hidden in the middle, and she was wearing a light aqua shirt and pants. She had a little retractable ID card, which she clipped to her pants and on her feet were a pair of white shoes.
"Not bad," she whispered to herself.
She looked surprisingly good in the uniform.
After changing the combination on her locker and closing it, Halia stepped out of the room into the hospital corridor. Her heart began to race. It was nerve-racking to act as a nurse when she had absolutely no idea what she was doing. Perhaps, this was how actors felt when they stepped onto a stage.
Luckily, she spotted the head nurse not too far away, so she began to walk quickly towards her, hoping she'd give her something easy to do. After all, the head nurse was the only person in the hospital, apart from the hospital director, that knew she was working undercover.
But, just as she stepped out of the corridor into the open ER ward, she collided with someone. Halia lost her footing and felt herself fall backward. "Oh no!" she thought as she swung her arms around helplessly.
As she closed her eyes, expecting the worst, she felt a pair of warm arms wrap around her waist and she was pulled forward. Her body pressed against something firm; it was a man's chest. She was so close she could hear his heartbeat and she could feel his warm breaths on the top of her head.
Halia pulled away from the body and looked up to find a handsome young man smiling at her. The dimples on his cheeks were mesmerizing and the look in his eyes were ever so gentle.
"Are you OK?" he asked.
Halia quickly snapped out of her daze and nodded her head. She then stood up straight and apologized, "Sorry for running into you."
The man chuckled as he moved his arms back to his sides.
Halia smiled and stretched out her hand to introduce herself, but someone suddenly called the man's name, "Dr. Yan, over here!"
Dr. Yan bowed apologetically and quickly ran off. Halia couldn't blame him. After all, they were in the emergency department; there was no time for small talk.
She took a quick glance at the man. The scent of his aftershave still lingered in her nose and it made her blush a little. Halia took a deep breath and gathered her composure before she continued walking over to the head nurse.
"You see that bed over there? The patient has just been moved into a ward, so we need to change the sheets. Alex will help you, he's a student nurse from the university," the head nurse said as soon as she saw Halia. "I'll give you a proper induction later, it's crazy in here at the moment. Don't accept any tasks from anyone except me."
Halia glanced over at the bloody sheets on the other side of the ward and cringed a little, but she quickly got into character.
"Alex, pull those sheets off and take them to the laundry room, I'll fetch the clean sheets," Halia quickly ordered the young man around.
She was, after all, in a more senior position, so it was her right to order around a junior.
Fortunately, the student nurse was very obedient, even though he looked like he was a similar age to her.
Halia quickly turned towards the corridor. She was sure she passed by the linen room when she came out of the locker room earlier. As she reached the corridor, she glanced back at the student nurse. He had put on a pair of gloves and was carefully rolling the sheets into a ball, keeping any contaminated parts in the middle.
"So that's how you do it..." she thought.
The student nurse noticed her looking at him, so she quickly smiled and raised a thumb at him before she continued down the corridor.
It wasn't a very long corridor, so Halia quickly found the linen room. But, she also spotted the doctors' on-call room right next door.
The on-call room was a place where doctors could rest and take naps while on-call. Halia had seen it before in hospital TV dramas.
"That's right, our suspect is a doctor," she whispered to herself.
Perhaps...there were clues in the on-call room. Sure, she could wait to talk to the head nurse first, but what was the fun in that?
With that thought, Halia took a slight detour and went to the on-call room instead. Of course, she knocked on the door first to see if there was anyone inside. When she didn't hear a response, she slowly opened the door and popped her head into the room. The blinds were up, so the room had a warm orange glow from the setting sun outside. There was definitely no one there.
Halia checked behind her to make sure no one was around and snuck into the room, carefully closing the door behind her.
As soon as she closed the door, she spotted a roster on the back of the door.
"Sara was killed yesterday afternoon. She wasn't working at the time and the location where she was found was on the other side of town. If it was a doctor, then he or she was definitely not working yesterday afternoon," Halia figured.
She then looked at the roster. There were 3 doctors on duty, 2 surgeons, 2 on-call doctors and 3 interns working during the time of Sara's death, so they were quickly ruled out. That left 5 doctors, 4 surgeons, and 7 interns: 16 suspects all up (assuming that the killer was actually a doctor from the ER). Out of these 16 suspects, 7 of them were women. Halia was sure she heard the laugh of a man in the flashback she experienced, so in theory, her suspect list was now cut down to 9.
While Halia was doing the maths on her fingers, there was a sudden knock on the door. She froze, unsure of what to do. She quickly looked around, but there was nowhere to hide...
Before she could respond, the door began to open...