In the early morning, there was a loud and unhurried knock on the door.
"Hello, is Mr. Brad at home?"
"Wait a minute, I'll be here soon." The young woman wearing a blackened apron put down the half-cut bread, wiped her hands with the apron, walked to the door and opened the door, "You are..."
"My Lord! What is going on?!"
The scene outside the door frightened her.
In the slightly bright sky, two bird-headed men in black robes were standing at the door of her house, carrying wooden boxes. The metallic beaks and red lenses reflected the penetrating light.
She subconsciously wanted to close the door, but a black glove quickly stretched out and pressed against the door panel, "Please don't do this, madam, we are doctors! Don't close the door."
It's quite bizarre. In the early morning, when the light and darkness alternate, two guys who look very similar to the legendary demons come to the door. They talk about people and claim to be doctors who come to see a doctor.
Realizing that he had been misunderstood, Kraft quickly explained the purpose of his visit, "We are here to see Mr. Brad, the baker. He came to the clinic before and said that he slept for too long, so we came to visit him specially."
Seeing the expression on the woman's face change from fear to slight suspicion, Kraft retracted his hand from the door panel and pointed to the badge on his collar.
"My name is Kraft, and I am a lecturer at Wendeng Port College. Don't mind this stupid hood, I don't like it either." He automatically forced out a polite smile, but unfortunately it was blocked by the mask and did not take advantage of his young and handsome face.
"Huh?" The woman was still wary. The bird-headed man called her husband's name, knew his profession, and had an unknown badge on his collar. This could not be the reason for her to let them in easily.
Especially since my husband hasn't woken up yet.
It was such a difficult scene that Kraft stretched out his hand to scratch his head and hit the red lens. He reorganized his words and tried to impress the lady.
"Are you Mr. Brad's wife? That's right. We think it's really serious that being unable to wake up in the morning interferes with his normal work. You don't want your husband to be so distressed, right?"
The woman's expression was a little shaken, and Kraft took a step back, "Our work is very busy. If you miss today, you have to wait another half a month. Can you tell Mr. Brad to make an appointment in half a month?"
"Oh, that's not what I meant. Please come in. It's just that my husband is still sleeping and I need to wait for a while. It's getting harder and harder to wake him up." She opened the door and let Kraft and Lucius go.
Enter the house.
"Thank you, my understanding Madam, Mr. Brad is so lucky." Craft complimented politely, and this friendly attitude made Mrs. Brad relax a little more.
It went smoothly, but this conversation and scene always gave Kraft a subtle sense of déjà vu, as if he had seen it before.
With this sense of déjà vu, he and Lucius walked into Brad's house, and Mrs. Brad took them to sit at the table.
"I'm really sorry, my husband hasn't woken up yet. He's been getting up later and later recently. You need to wait a while before you can see him."
"It doesn't matter, we can just check if there is a problem with the house first." Kraft observed the room. It was uncomfortable to see anything under the light red filter, and the air filtered by the bird's beak could not smell the original smell.
.
"Madam, you woke up really early, weren't you affected by your husband?"
"Why do you say that?" She cut two thin slices from the bread and put them on a wooden plate. "Sleepiness is not contagious. We have always woken up very early before, but Brad has woken up a little later recently."
Lucius and Kraft looked at each other and shook their heads. Unexpectedly, their suspicions were broken from the beginning.
If it were an epidemic, the wife who had the most contact with Brad would have been infected several times over such a long period of time, so there would be no reason why there would be no signs at all.
The theory of the cause of living environment has also been shaken. It doesn't make sense that two people live together and have no difference in food, clothing, housing and transportation.
"Then do you know anyone nearby who has been in a similar situation recently?" Kraft continued to ask.
Mrs. Brad stopped the knife in her hand and recalled for a moment, "No, at least I haven't heard of it on this street. You can ask Brad, he knows more people than me."
"Thank you. It's a bit presumptuous to say it. Can we try to wake him up?"
Regarding "difficulty arousing", Kraft was very curious about the extent to which patients would express themselves in that way.
"It's better to say that it really helped me a lot. It's not easy to wake him up every day. He's in the room over there."
Mrs. Brad pointed the knife at the door on one side.
Kraft and Lucius pushed open the door and saw a fat man sleeping soundly on the bed.
He held the fat hand stretched out from under the quilt and said with a little force, "Mr. Brad, wake up."
"You can't wake him up like this." Mrs. Brad's voice came from outside the door, "You have to be louder and harder, but don't crush him."
Kraft gradually increased the strength in his hand, grabbed Brad's hand with his strong palm, and squeezed it hard.
This intensity will cause obvious pain to most people who are not prepared, but Brad was still sleeping soundly without any reaction, and his chest rose and fell regularly without any change.
Kraft put his hand on the side of his neck. Without a timer, he could only estimate that the carotid artery pulse was about fifty times per minute, which was within the normal range.
The beak mask did not allow Kraft to shout into his ear, so he could only shake Brad's body vigorously. However, in such a violent shaking, he only stopped snoring and had no intention of waking up.
.
"It's really hard to wake up. I have an idea, but I don't know if it can be used." Lucius watched Kraft fiddle with it for a while, then took out Brad's other hand.
"What?"
"I think people with thick body hair won't mind one less hair, right?" He pinched one of Brad's arm hairs and pulled hard.
"Don't!" Kraft wanted to stop him, but it was too late.
"Hiss." The effect was immediate. Even being pricked by a needle may not hurt as much. Brad made a slight inhaling sound in his sleep, showing signs of waking up.
Craft took the opportunity to shake him more violently, and under the torture of this arousal package, Brad finally opened his eyes.
"Who are you?!" He sat up and backed away desperately, hitting the wall.
"Relax, we are doctors." Kraft spread his hands to show no harm, "Dr. Liston said you won't wake up easily, so we decided to come and have a look."
When he woke up, he found two bird-headed men in his home. This huge shock made Brad wake up completely as soon as he got up. He covered his chest and tried to calm his racing heart, got dressed and sat at the table.
"Thank you, but next time I'd better ask my wife to wake me up." Brad said with lingering fear.
"I'm very sorry. This is also to intuitively feel what 'not easily awakened' means. To be honest, I don't think this is normal." Kraft took the wooden tray of bread and placed it in front of Brad, "No.
If you mind, we can chat while eating."
"Would you like some?" Chatting with the bird-headed man while eating breakfast obviously has no positive effect on appetite.
"No, it doesn't have this function yet." He tapped the mask lightly with his knuckles, making a banging sound.
The eyes behind the red lenses looked at Brad carefully. After waking up, Brad's mental state was very normal. It could even be said that it was better than Kraft's recent state. He didn't even hit Hache.
Regardless of the gradual deterioration, this kind of sleep quality is still very enviable.
"Have you slept well recently? Did you have any dreams?"
"I did sleep well, but it was a little too good to wake up." Brad tore off a piece of bread and stuffed it into his mouth, "Dream... I didn't have a dream. Maybe I don't remember it. I just remember it."
There was an impression the moment I woke up.”
He touched his arm, feeling a bit of residual tingling, "It's strange to say that I slept so well, but I didn't even have a dream."
"It's like the entire sleeping time has been erased, and you have no idea what happened during this time?" Lucius interjected.
"Ah, yes, that's the feeling." Brian agreed with this metaphor, "It's different from sleeping before."
Kraft wrote this down on the paper and glanced at Lucius. "I have no idea what happened during this period of time." These were the exact words Lucius told him when he described the feeling of drinking the diluent.
He only needed to do a little active recall to recall the excited expression on Lucius's face and excited tone at that time.
Lucius's face couldn't be seen under the mask, so he probably didn't look any better.
"Have you ever heard of people nearby having a similar situation? They wake up later and later, are unable to wake up, have both or one of the two."
"No, I know half the people here, and they have never mentioned this kind of thing." Brad put the last piece of bread into his mouth, swallowed it, and continued, "It's not a big deal, right? Once you get used to it,
I also think it would be nice to get some more sleep."
…
…
"It doesn't make sense, it doesn't make sense at all."
Kraft and Lucius walked out and back into the street.
"I still think it has something to do with Chengming. Even if it doesn't make sense logically, I still have to keep my opinion." Lucius was a little irritated by the contradiction between intuition and reality.
He thinks this is a problem caused by the diluent, but according to the current feedback, this is the only patient who had such symptoms after drinking the clarifying potion, while Kraft has at least two examples of people who have not been exposed to the diluent.
.
"Actually, I feel the same way, Lucius." Kraft stopped and touched a metal beak. He had no beard to stroke, so he could only use the beak as a temporary substitute when thinking.
"If a hypothesis conflicts with reality, it is definitely not reality that is wrong. One possibility is that we have omitted to observe the phenomenon, and the other is that our theory is imperfect."
"What do you mean?" Lucius was confused.
"I think it's the latter. This assumption is too simple. There may be more than one risk factor for the disease. The clarifying agent is just one of them."
Kraft recalled yesterday's map and compared it with his own sense of walking on Elm Street today. "If my sense of distance is not too outrageous and Liston's drawing scale is correct, the dotted line I drew yesterday..."
He made a rough calculation and said, "If we walk in a straight line, it will only take five to ten minutes."
"I also want to go back to my original guess. There is a factor that can affect a certain range. It may not be an infectious disease, but it is much larger than the few houses I originally thought."
Kraft opened his arms and made a big circle.
"Its center is not here, and its influence here is already very weak, so it will only manifest itself under the dual effects of another dangerous factor, that is, clarity."
"In that case, to find it..." Lucius thought thoughtfully.
"Salt tide area." Kraft picked up the wooden box, "We have to go to the salt tide area to have a look."
