Chapter 7 — The Secret Pages of Room Seven

Luong Bao Tram was the woman Nhã Vân had noticed since her first group therapy session — the one who always sat quietly in the corner of the room, her eyes unusually alert compared to the rest of the patients, and whom Bách Nguyên treated with special respect, without forcing her, without urging her to share anything she wasn't ready for.

For nearly two weeks, Nhã Vân tried to approach her as naturally as possible, not wanting to create any alarm that could make her close her heart. She started with small gestures — offering her seat by the window during mealtimes, bringing an extra cup of hot tea on cold afternoons, quietly sitting next to her during free reading time without forcing her to talk.

Gradually, Mrs. Tram began to open up a little more, although she still kept a certain cautious distance. One afternoon, when they were both sitting in the small library of the dormitory, she suddenly spoke first.

"You just came here not long ago, right?" Mrs. Tram asked, her eyes still looking down at the book page in her hand, her voice as light as a breeze.

"Yes, I've only been in for two weeks," Nhã Vân replied, keeping her voice calm.

"You're not like the other patients." Mrs. Tram looked up, her sharp eyes looking straight at her. "The way you observe everything around you, the way you ask questions about others — you're looking for something, right?"

Nhã Vân stopped, her heart beat faster. She realized she had underestimated the intelligence of the woman in front of her. "Why do you think that?"

"Because I used to be like you." Mrs. Tram put down the book, her voice lowered to a whisper. "Three years ago, I also walked in here with complete clarity, believing I would only stay for a few days to clarify a few issues at work. But three years later, I'm still here."

"What job did you do before coming here?" Nhã Vân asked, trying to keep her voice calm even though an indescribable feeling of nervousness was rising in her heart.

Mrs. Tram was silent for a long time, looking around the empty library room, then replied, her voice almost inaudible. "I used to be the chief accountant of a large medical corporation."

That answer made Nhã Vân almost blurt out something that could reveal her true identity. She suppressed her emotions, trying to maintain a curious expression just like that of a stranger listening to an interesting story.

"What corporation?"

"Not important." Mrs. Tram shook her head, her eyes slightly alert again. "The important thing is, three years ago, I discovered that the hospital fee books at one of the group's facilities had many unusual expenses, large sums of money were circulated through satellite companies of unknown origin, hidden under the guise of long-term treatment costs for patients whose complete medical records I had never seen. I intended to report to the board of directors, but before I could do anything, I was brought here, with a diagnosis of delusional disorder, within just a week."

Nhã Vân felt cold all over her body. What Ms. Tram just told was frighteningly consistent with the suspicions she had quietly collected over the past two weeks—disappearing patient codes, ambiguous surcharges, secret carts carrying goods into the basement. If Ms. Tram was telling the truth, this was not an isolated case, but part of a long-established system to eliminate anyone who discovered irregularities in the group's finances.

"But how could they diagnose her with the disease in just a week?" Nhã Vân asked, trying to keep her voice from revealing too much emotion.

"It's very easy, if the person who signs the diagnosis and the person who runs the hospital are on the same side." Mrs. Tram smiled faintly, a rare bitter smile. "They just needed a few contrived statements from colleagues, a few false records in the records, and a doctor willing to sign off on whatever was required. Then, just by keeping the dose high enough that I would be in a daze every time the medical inspector came for a routine check-up, no one would have any doubts about my diagnosis."

Nhã Vân clenched her fists, trying to suppress the anger rising in her heart. She thought of Diệu Kỳ, lying motionless in the quarantine area, perhaps enduring the exact cruel process that Mrs. Tram had just described. "What about your family? Didn't they try to get you out?"

Mrs. Tram's eyes suddenly darkened, old pain clearly visible on her face wrinkled with time. "My family was informed that I was seriously ill and could not interact with outsiders due to treatment reasons. My husband visited the first few times, but each time he came, I was injected with drugs a few hours before, spoke confusedly, and no longer appeared to be awake. Gradually, he believed that I had truly lost my mind, and stopped coming to visit. My daughter is probably very grown up now, and I don't know if she still remembers her mother's face or not."

Hearing that, Nhã Vân had to turn away for a moment to hide her tears. She thought that Diệu Kỳ might also suffer the same fate - being gradually shunned by her family, forgotten by society, just because she accidentally encountered a secret too big to survive safely outside these walls.

“Why are you telling me all this?” She asked, her voice hoarse with emotion. "Aren't you afraid that I will denounce you, or worse, that one of their people will be planted to spy on you?"

Mrs. Tram looked at her for a long time, her eyes softened. "Because I saw in your eyes the same thing I did three years ago—a person fighting for someone he loves, not for himself. The people who work for them don't have that look in their eyes, ma'am. They're just cold and calculating."

Nhã Vân was silent, clearly feeling the burden of responsibility that had just been placed on her shoulders. She is not only fighting for Diệu Kỳ, but also for Mrs. Tram, for all the other anonymous victims who may be detained somewhere in this building, waiting for someone brave enough to reveal the truth.

"Do you know anyone else in the same situation as you?" She asked, trying to gather more information while the opportunity allowed.

Mrs. Tram nodded slowly. "There is a young nurse, named Thanh Hà, who came here about two years after me. She is much shyer than me, rarely dares to talk to anyone. But if you are patient enough, maybe she will trust you, like me."

That name was carefully remembered by Nhã Vân in her mind, adding another piece to the gradually emerging picture of the criminal network hidden inside An Tâm Clinic. Before leaving the library, Mrs. Tram held her hand, whispering urgently.

"Whatever you're looking for, please be careful. The people who run this place aren't as benevolent as they seem. If they find out you're spying, I'm afraid you won't have a chance to leave again, just like me."

Nhã Vân squeezed her hand tightly, her eyes determined. "I promise to be careful. And I promise, if one day the truth is revealed, you will be the first to be taken out of this place."

That night, returning to her room, Nhã Vân sat quietly for a long time, writing down Mrs. Tram's entire story in a code book, her hands shaking with both anger and determination. She realized that the criminal network operating inside An Tâm not only targeted her family, but was destroying the lives of countless other innocent people, those who just because they accidentally encountered the truth, had to pay the price for the rest of their lives, buried behind a cover of fake medical diagnoses.

She thought of her father, of the wishes he had put into each brick that built An Tâm Clinic, and felt a mixture of pain and anger welling up in her heart. The place that should have been a place of healing for damaged souls had now become a prison that held the truth, and she knew she had no other way but to go to the end to break it.

Lying in bed that night, she tried to imagine the true scale of what was happening. If the special quarantine area alone had at least two victims like Ms. Tram and a nurse named Thanh Hà who were detained for many years to silence them, then the real number could be many times larger than what she had seen. She wondered, during An Tâm's twenty years of operation, how many people had walked through this gate with complete alertness, then disappeared from the lives of their loved ones, just because they happened to see a book page that should not have been seen.

She also realized something more terrifying: if this network had been operating smoothly for many years without being detected, it must have had sponsorship from very high positions of power in the corporation, so high that it could bend both the medical diagnosis process and the state's periodic inspection system. And if that's true, the person behind it all may not just stop at Chu Bảo Hạnh, but also rise even higher, to positions she never dared to think of.

She tightened her grip on the code book in her hand, telling herself to quickly find Ve Thanh Hà, the second witness that Mrs. Tram had just revealed, before that network could realize that someone was silently piecing together the pieces of the truth that had been buried for so many years.