CHAPTER SEVEN

      “Blood pressure one-seventeen over seventy-five. You’re doing quite well, Mr. Liao, although your pressure has been creeping up over the past few days.”

      Liao nodded blandly. “I can’t imagine why,” he deadpanned. If it hadn’t been for the circumstances, he would have thought he was in a normal hospital, undergoing a battery of tests in preparation for a normal procedure or operation. Everything fit—the efficient nurses, the bland yet nourishing hospital food, the scheduled checks by the doctors. If only the end result hadn’t been the termination of his life, he would have considered himself to be receiving very good care overall. However, there was that looming end result.

      He had spent the first two or three days—he had to estimate, since there was no clock in his room—in a deep depression. He ate little, didn’t talk to anyone and just stayed in his bed for most of the day. He was depressed, it was true, but after the first twelve or fifteen hours, he had been primarily faking the symptoms to gain some time to think.

      That in itself had been difficult. At first his thoughts had been consumed with where his family was and how they were doing. He dared not ask, for fear of being told the worst—at this point, he figured it was simply better that he not know.

      To distract himself from that, he tried to come up with an escape plan, which proved to be extremely difficult. The guards were very professional in executing their duties. No one was ever allowed in his room by themselves, and the guard was always standing by the door, too far to reach, overpower him and seize his weapon, which Liao wasn’t even sure he knew how to use. Also, he’d learned that the main room was watched through closed-circuit television, and most likely his bathroom as well, making preparing any sort of device—not that he could come up with one—or plan unseen pretty much impossible. The one time he had inadvertently walked into the blind spot under where he thought the camera was, a pair of guards had appeared in his room within sixty seconds. The only way they could have known what was going on was because someone watching him had told them.

      The other option, taking a hostage, probably wouldn’t get him anywhere, either. Although the guards probably wouldn’t actually kill a nurse or a doctor, he couldn’t assume that they didn’t have a shoot-escapees-on-sight policy. Besides, he didn’t have anything to make a weapon out of, so taking a hostage was out of the question. The tray, cup and utensils for his meals were all soft plastic, sturdy enough to use, but useless for fashioning into any sort of weapon. They were also counted before and after he ate, and Liao was certain that anything missing would be found—one way or another. He supposed he could try to fashion some kind of strangling cord out of his bedsheet, but again there was the problem of being watched. The single ventilation shaft high on the wall was bolted shut; it was too small for him to squeeze through anyway. There simply was no remotely feasible way to escape.

      Therefore, with no way out, and his family most likely lost to him, Liao grew resigned to his fate. Well, not entirely. While he might not have been able to escape it, he realized that he could circumvent the reason they were keeping him here in the first place. All he had to do was to figure out a way to injure himself so that his organs would be unusable.

      They may kill me, he thought while lying in bed one evening, but they damn sure aren’t going to profit from my body!

      There only remained the question of how. A hunger strike wouldn’t work—he was sure that damned sociopath Dr. Xu would supervise the force-feeding himself.

      Poison was a possibility, but again, how could he poison himself with only the very limited means available?

      That question had occupied the next day or so. To not be put on antidepressants, Liao appeared to come out of his depression and began interacting with the staff more. But all the while he was racking his brain for a solution.

      The answer, of course, was a simple one. It came to him while he was relieving himself one afternoon. He rose and turned to flush the toilet when he caught sight of his feces floating in the bowl. He stopped and stared at it as the automatic system flushed it down. Might it be that simple?

      He returned to his bed and sat, mind whirling with the possibility. An educated man, he knew that simply ingesting the feces wouldn’t have the desired effect. For a moment he cursed his healthy lifestyle—an ulcer would have been perfect right now. But now, he was as healthy as a horse, more or less.

      However, what if I introduce fecal bacteria to my bloodstream? All he would need is some kind of open wound and a judicious application of his own waste to the area.

      Except they were watching him. They were always watching him. Only when he was asleep, he guessed, and the lights were out, were they not. The real issue was how he would conceal his infection plan from them, especially when all he had to wear was a flimsy hospital gown.

      Again, the answer came while in the bathroom. He had been thinking about that problem while on the toilet when he realized that his entire body was covered by the gown when he sat. Also, he was as close to the infectious material as he was going to get right here, right now. But where to put it that wouldn’t be easily discovered?

      The answer came to him with such clarity that he nearly fell off the toilet. All he had to do was to break the skin near his groin and apply feces to the wound. It was going to hurt, but he was pretty sure he could scratch open the skin near his genitals, smear his waste on it and simply wait.

      He put his plan into motion that night, scratching at the skin near his scrotum under cover of the thin blanket.

      If anyone’s watching, they’ll probably just think I’m masturbating, he thought.

      It took a few hours and his fingers grew stiff and sore, not to mention the area he was injuring did not feel good at all. But by morning he had a raw, red, open wound near his scrotum that he figured should do the trick.

      Feeling better than he had in days, Liao got up and even whistled a little as he headed for the bathroom.