The Year I Stopped Being His novel Chapter 290

The taxi pulled up to the entrance of the Haven Medical Center.

It was an old five-story building with light gray tiles on the exterior walls, many of which had peeled off due to years of neglect, exposing the dull concrete underneath.

The lightbox above the porch emitted a faint glow, the words "Haven Medical Center" quietly shining white in the night.

The hospital was small, holding only sixty beds. It mostly admitted elderly patients with chronic illnesses from the surrounding community and terminal cancer patients receiving palliative care. It barely made any money, and sometimes Garrison Foster even had to pay out of his own pocket to keep it running.

Gus, the security guard, poked his head out of the reception room. Seeing who it was, he politely called out, "Director Foster." Garrison carried his belongings through the empty outpatient hall, went up to the fifth floor, and pushed open an inconspicuous door at the end of the corridor.

Behind that door lay a completely different world.

If the hospital outside was plain and even a bit shabby, this private lab was the fortress Garrison had built with everything he had.

The few hundred square feet of space were spotless. A PCR thermocycler, a gel electrophoresis tank, a clean bench, and a small flow cytometer were neatly lined up on the lab bench against the wall. Every piece of equipment was polished until it gleamed.

An ultra-low temperature freezer stood in the corner, its compressor letting out a steady hum. An A4 paper was taped to the door, bearing a printed line: The Vitas Strain Core Sequence.

Deep inside the lab, separated by a sliding blast-proof glass door, was Garrison's personal office.

Garrison set the cardboard box down next to his desk, opened the glass cabinet door, and carefully placed the cello inside.

The glass cabinet wasn't large. It originally only held a few reference books he frequently consulted and a spare set of pipettes. He positioned the cello case upright, took a step back to check, and then stepped forward to slightly adjust its angle so the side of the instrument faced his office chair. That way, the moment he sat down and looked up, it would be the first thing he saw.

He closed the cabinet door, turned back to his desk, and took the items out of the cardboard box one by one, placing them into a storage bin hidden behind the bookshelf—a spot no ordinary person would ever notice.

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