Chapter 10 — The Secret Pages of Room Seven

The opportunity to access the archives came more unexpectedly than Nhã Vân and Bách Nguyên had ever planned. One evening, head doctor Nghiêm Đình Vũ informed the entire medical team that the hospital was about to welcome a periodic medical inspection team at the end of the month, requesting that all medical records - including old records that had been discontinued and stored in the warehouse - must be reviewed and neatly arranged for ease of inspection.

"This is our chance," Bách Nguyên spoke to Nhã Vân during their short meeting that night, his voice filled with rare excitement. "I was assigned to help review a portion of the archives, which means I would have a legitimate reason to go down to the basement without anyone getting suspicious."

"But the doctor said that area is strictly guarded by electronic locks." Nhã Vân frowned worriedly. "Doctor, are you sure you have permission to enter?"

"Just the official storage area, not the side entrance with the electronic lock you've seen," Bách Nguyên replied. "But if those two areas connect, as I suspect, this is still the best chance we've ever had."

Two days later, Bách Nguyên was given a temporary pass to enter the official archives with two other administrative staff. He took advantage of every moment they left his sight to observe the structure of the basement, memorizing every hallway, every door, paying special attention to the wall separating the official storage area from the area with electronic locks behind the row of trash cans that Nhã Vân had described.

That evening, when they met again, he drew a diagram of the basement he observed, marking a small door near the corner of the west wall — a door without a sign, not included in the official diagram that the administrative department provided to the review team.

"I think that's the entrance to the secret area you've seen people delivering goods into," he said, pointing to the location marked on the diagram. "But that door is locked with a mechanical lock, not electronic like the main entrance, perhaps because this is a lesser-known internal passage."

"Doctor, can you get the key?"

"I don't know who has the key yet. But I noticed that one of the two administrative staff accompanying me today seems very familiar with this area, although she is not assigned down here regularly as far as I know." Bách Nguyên pondered. "Maybe she is the one who has access to that secret area."

For the next three days, Bách Nguyên tried to observe that administrative employee - the name on the name tag was Tưởng Nhã Kỳ, a middle-aged woman with a serious appearance, quiet, always moving with a large bunch of keys hanging on her waist. He noticed that she often appeared in the basement at the same time every day, right after lunch, when most of the other employees were resting.

Nhã Vân, after listening to his story, decided to observe more for herself. She asked permission to participate in Ward B's "mini-library rearrangement" activity—another light therapeutic task encouraged for patients—for the real reason that the library was located on the ground floor, near the stairs leading to the basement, allowing her to observe part of the hallway below through the small glass door on the stairs.

Just as Bách Nguyên described, at noon the next day, Nhã Vân saw Tưởng Nhã Kỳ going down the stairs, the keys jingling at her side, disappearing behind the corner of the wall where Bách Nguyên had marked the secret door. About twenty minutes later, she came back up, no longer carrying anything, but her attitude seemed more hurried than when she came down.

"She didn't bring anything when she came up, but she must have done something in the twenty minutes she was down there." Nhã Vân told Bách Nguyên that night. "Maybe check the books, or update some records."

"We need to find a way to get inside while she's gone," Bách Nguyên said, his voice became serious. "But if discovered, the consequences will be very serious."

The opportunity came one afternoon, when the work schedule was disturbed due to an emergency meeting of the board of directors requiring the entire administrative staff, including Tưởng Nhã Kỳ, to be fully present. Bách Nguyên, who was not required to attend that meeting, quickly took advantage of this rare time, using an excuse to continue reviewing assigned documents, going alone to the basement.

He found the secret door, tried turning the mechanical lock with a bent paperclip - a skill he learned from an investigative training course before taking on this assignment - and after a few minutes of trying, the door opened.

Inside was a small, dark room, much damper than the official storage area, filled with old iron shelves lined with boxes of files not numbered according to the hospital's usual system, but according to a separate code. He quickly opened a few of the nearest boxes, his heart pounding when he saw that inside were medical records containing the names of people whose recorded conditions completely did not match common psychiatric diagnoses — many records were only a few pages, with sketchy notes, accompanied by large financial numbers handwritten in the margins of the pages.

He quickly took photos of some pages with his phone hidden in his blouse pocket, careful not to disturb the original position of the files. In the corner of the room, he noticed a small sign mounted on the wall, almost hidden by an iron shelf, that read simply: "Room Seven — Internal Archives."

That name made him pause for a moment. Not a random name, but clearly a symbol placed on purpose to differentiate it from the hospital's usual room numbering system. He quickly took a few more photos, then left the room, locked the door carefully as before, and returned to his working position before the board of directors meeting ended.

That evening, when showing Nhã Vân the hastily taken photos, they both sat silently in front of the small phone screen, trying to read each blurred line in the low light of the studio.

"Room Seven," Nhã Vân repeated, her voice shaking. "This is where all the evidence is kept, right?"

"I believe so." Bách Nguyên nodded. "But we need time to carefully analyze what was captured, and more importantly, we need to find a way to go back there again to get more evidence, enough to convince the investigation agency to get involved."

Nhã Vân looked at the blurry photos appearing on the screen, clearly feeling that she was standing on the threshold of the truth that she had been searching for many days. But she also understood that this was only the beginning, and the road ahead, leading to the very end of Room Seven, would certainly be much more dangerous than what the two of them had experienced up to now.

She asked Bách Nguyên to zoom in on each photo, trying to clearly read the blurred handwriting in the margins of the file pages. One of them recorded a long string of numbers accompanied by a currency symbol, next to it were a few abbreviations "K.D — third installment transfer", and in the corner of the page, an initials identical to the "C.B.H" font she had seen on an internal expense statement before. Another photo shows the cover of a file, on which was a small piece of paper with the patient's initials and the words "transfer to area D upon request — no medical records released" without the signature of any treating doctor, which was the minimum required in any legal transfer decision.

"This is clearly not a routine medical procedure," Bách Nguyên said, his voice lowered as he scrolled through each photo. "A decision to transfer to a special treatment area like this requires evaluation by at least two specialists, accompanied by complete medical records. Here there is only a handwritten note, no medical signature at all."

"So who has the right to make such decisions if not the doctor?" Nhã Vân asked, even though in her heart she had vaguely guessed the answer.

"It can only be the administrative management level, the person with power beyond medical expertise in this hospital's operating system," Bách Nguyên replied, his eyes looking straight at her meaningfully.

Nhã Vân nodded, he didn't need to explain further. All the clues, from the red stamp on the expense statement, to Chu Bảo Hạnh's commanding tone on the phone, to the handwritten notes lying in Room Seven, were all pointing in the same direction, becoming clearer and clearer with each passing day.

"We need to get the entire contents of those file boxes, not just a few snapshots," she said, her voice determined. "Otherwise, we will never have enough evidence to fully bring the case to light."

"I know." Bách Nguyên nodded and put the phone carefully in his pocket. "But next time, we'll need more time than twenty minutes, and we'll need to make sure Tưởng Nhã Kỳ is completely out of the building, not just busy in a meeting upstairs."

That night, when she returned to her room, Nhã Vân lay looking at the ceiling for a long time, her mind constantly reeling with the image of fragile files lying silently in the darkness of Room Seven - a place that not only kept illegal financial numbers, but also the fate of countless people who were deprived of the right to live a normal life, just because they accidentally stood in the way of greedy people. She told herself, no matter how long it took, no matter how many risks she had to face, she would find a way to return to that room again, bringing enough time and preparation to retrieve the entire truth buried there.