A blood test is the most ordinary paper in a hospital, which is what makes it a good place to hide the impossible. Twenty numbers are exactly what they should be, and one of them cannot be.
The laboratory’s letterhead and a report number, the patient’s name, date of birth and hospital number, the physician who asked for the test, and when the sample was taken, received and reported. Then the results, in panels: a full blood count, the biochemistry, and whatever special panel the case needs. Each result has its unit, its reference range and a flag, and a result flagged high, low or anomalous is marked on the page. The pathologist’s comment says what the numbers mean, and two signatures and a stamp close the page.
A barber-surgeons’ company reading the four humours in a bowl of blood, a 1920s hospital typing its blood count onto a printed form, an Eastern Bloc district hospital with a boxed table and a violet stamp, a modern hospital printout from a sleep study, and a medical scanner’s haematology panel on a mining platform. Each opens with its own example and its own impossible value. Panels are added, renamed and dragged into place on the page itself. A4 at 300 DPI.
The form the patient filled in before the test is a Questionnaire, and the report written when the sample went missing is an Official Form.