Past 8:00 PM. The fifth-floor surgical wing of the Neurosurgery Building.
Tonight, a total of three cranial surgeries were underway.
In the family waiting area, nearly twenty people were sparsely scattered across five rows of seats.
They were clearly separated into three distinct groups.
They spoke in low voices, comforting and encouraging one another, occasionally glancing at the sealed, blue-and-white isolation doors leading to the surgical area.
Although they had all been told the surgeries wouldn't be finished until after midnight at the earliest, they still couldn't help but look at those doors.
However, five or six of the adult men among them kept sneaking glances toward the last row.
In the leftmost seat of the back row sat a young woman who looked to be about twenty-two or twenty-three.
She clearly wasn't a friend or relative of any of the three surgical patients. She just sat there alone, quietly flipping through a thick medical textbook resting on her lap.
