Read Chapter 10: — THE MISSING SOURCE

The city’s next emergency had nothing to do with a patient.

An iridium-192 source used for industrial radiography disappeared from a worksite in Zhao’s district.

It was small enough to fit in a pocket and dangerous enough to injure anyone who kept it there.

Seventy-two hours passed.

Police, environmental teams and health authorities searched construction yards, drainage channels, scrap piles and housing estates. Public warnings spread. Rumours spread faster.

Li was drawn in because Nuclear Medicine understood radiation better than most departments, even though an industrial source was very different from medical imaging.

The source eventually reappeared near the original site.

The explanation was painfully ordinary.

A local man had found the object and taken it. When he realised police were searching for radioactive material, he panicked and hid it. Later, frightened by contamination warnings, he moved it back.

He required treatment for radiation injury but survived.

The employees responsible for the source faced investigation for serious breaches of hazardous-material rules.

Tang shook his head.

“Every disaster begins with someone thinking, ‘It’ll probably be fine.’”

Li watched the recovered source disappear into shielding.

“Medicine too.”

The incident should have ended there.

Instead, it brought police and hospital leadership into closer cooperation just as the larger Zou mystery began to move.

Li also discovered how quickly the word radioactive erased distinctions.

Members of the public treated an industrial source, a PET tracer and a nuclear reactor as versions of the same invisible threat. Reporters asked whether patients leaving Nuclear Medicine were dangerous to their families. Social-media accounts circulated photographs of unrelated warning signs.

Qin drafted a technical explanation several pages long.

Li stopped him.

“Start with the fear. Then explain the difference.”

The department recorded a short public briefing in plain language. It did not eliminate anxiety, but it gave people something better than rumours to share.

That lesson would matter later.

Facts did not travel by themselves.

They needed language people could understand before fear invented its own.

At the end of the week, Chenxi found Li alone in the diagnostic room, comparing old schedules involving Zou.

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing sensible.”

“That narrows it down poorly.”

He showed her the notes.

On days when Zou performed difficult surgery, staff remembered him as focused, quiet, almost shy once the procedure began. On days dominated by meetings and conflict, he was louder, harsher and strangely willing to avoid the operating theatre.

“People have different moods,” Chenxi said.

“I know.”

“You’re turning personality into evidence.”

“I know.”

“Then stop.”

Li stared at the dates.

“I’m trying.”

He was not very good at that either.