Liao returned to the hospital records desk with the copy of his prescriptions. He had counted the pages at home and found one gap in the sequence: the note explaining why the concentration changed during the month his tremor began.
Records clerk Han Lu checked the index. His face tightened as he traced the file number to a nurse’s copy filed under the wrong shift date.
“I should have checked the patient number before I returned the folder,” he said. “I saw the date and thought it belonged to the other shift.”
Ning asked Liao whether he wanted the missing page added to his case. “Yes. But only for my physician. Don’t put my name on the public report.”
“I’ll keep those limits,” she said. She wrote his choice on the request and asked him to read it back. He did, then signed.
Ning brought Qinghe to the consultation room. Before they went in, Liao looked at Yan, who had followed them from the waiting hall.
“Could you wait outside?”
“Of course.” Yan moved to the window bench beside Mei. He did not ask what Liao planned to discuss.
