Accepting this weird dream felt strangely easier now that the scenario and environment had changed, and I had a strong feeling that this was a hospital. And for my mind to stop deceiving me or convincing me that none of this was real, the interior of the ward suggested otherwise.
Across from me was a sleeping old man. He didn't look physically injured, but he looked sick. Beside him sat an equally old woman, carefully peeling an apple. I guessed that was what she had decided to eat while waiting. Beside me was a young adult with a fractured arm resting in a sling, while the bed to my left remained empty.
I tried to sit up and immediately noticed the IV attached to my left wrist. I didn't really want to move too much, so I remained in my current position and simply looked around.
The door to the ward suddenly opened and my mum walked in with hurried footsteps, both hands occupied with different bags.
"Nyla, you're awake!"
Relief flooded her face almost instantly.
"How are you feeling? Where does it hurt? Tell me which part hurts and I'll call the doctor."
Seeing my mum asking me those questions made something inside me break. Before I knew it, tears were already streaming down my face.
My mum immediately dropped everything she was carrying and rushed to my bedside.
"Hey, hey... what's wrong?" she asked, wiping away my tears with obvious concern. "Tell me where it hurts, okay?"
"It's okay," I managed to say between sniffles. "I'm okay."
My mum looked completely unconvinced.
"You scared me," she said, letting out a shaky breath as though she was only now allowing herself to relax. "Do you know how scared I was?"
I lowered my eyes and nodded quietly.
The truth was that I did know. At least I thought I did. If our positions had been reversed, I probably would have reacted the same way.
Eventually, after making sure I had stopped crying, Mum stepped outside to call the doctor.
A few minutes later, he entered the ward carrying a clipboard and began asking me a series of questions. He checked my eyes, asked whether I felt dizzy, and made me follow his finger to ensure there was no sign of a head injury. Apart from feeling exhausted and mentally overwhelmed, I didn't have any serious complaints.
After the examination, he turned toward my mum.
"She appears to be suffering from shock caused by the accident and mild dehydration," he explained calmly. "Fortunately, there are no serious injuries. She'll need rest, proper hydration, and regular meals for the next few days."
My mum nodded immediately.
The doctor glanced down at a few test results before continuing.
"There is one other thing. Her blood work suggests she is mildly anemic. I'll prescribe iron supplements. It isn't anything alarming, but she should take them consistently."
The moment he mentioned anemia, Mum's expression became even more serious.
"What foods should she be eating?"
"How often should she take the supplements?"
"Should we come back for another checkup?"
The doctor answered every question patiently while Mum listened with complete focus, making mental notes of everything he said. By the time he finished speaking, she had already repeated the dosage instructions to herself several times just to make sure she wouldn't forget them.
I simply watched the interaction from my hospital bed.
Somehow seeing my mum worry so intensely about iron supplements felt stranger than waking up in a hospital.
After the doctor left, Mum remained seated beside me, still looking concerned despite all the reassurance she had received.
"She'll be discharged once the IV finishes," the doctor had said before leaving. "Just make sure she gets plenty of rest."
Mum nodded again, though she still looked as though she wanted to keep me in the hospital for another week just to be safe.
"You really scared me today," Mum said after a while, her voice much calmer than before but still carrying traces of the panic she had experienced earlier. She looked at me for a moment before continuing, explaining that when she heard the crash from downstairs, she genuinely thought the entire ceiling had collapsed on top of me. When she ran upstairs and saw the condition of my room, with broken glass, scattered debris, and part of the ceiling hanging down, she had immediately feared the worst. She stopped speaking before finishing the sentence, she really looked exhausted, tension still lingering in her expression made it obvious that the accident had frightened her far more than she wanted to admit.
Curious about what had happened after the collapse, I asked her what she saw when she entered the room. Mum let out a small sigh before explaining that she had found me sitting on the bed staring blankly at the damage. According to her, I wasn't responding properly when she spoke to me. At first she thought I had been injured or suffered a concussion, but I simply continued staring without saying much. A few minutes later, before she could figure out what was wrong, I suddenly fainted.
Honestly, her explanation sounded believable enough. It was certainly easier to accept than the possibility that I had died at thirty-two years old and somehow woken up fifteen years earlier.
While Mum organized the bags she had brought and checked the discharge paperwork the nurses had left behind, my attention drifted toward the digital clock mounted near the entrance of the ward. What caught my attention wasn't the time but the date displayed directly beneath it. The moment I saw the day, month, and year, my entire body went still. I stared at the screen for several seconds just to make sure I wasn't reading it incorrectly, but the numbers never changed. Everything matched. The date confirmed exactly what the mirror, my room, and my memories had already been suggesting. I really was seventeen years old again. I wasn't dreaming, hallucinating, or imagining things. Somehow I had returned to the past.
My heart began beating faster as the reality of the situation settled in. Once Mum became distracted arranging prescriptions and discussing discharge instructions with a nurse, I slowly reached for my phone resting on the bedside table. My mum for some reason had it with her. Its an old model phone which I turned on. The wallpaper was one I hadn't seen in years. The notifications were old. Even the apps on the home screen belonged to a version of me that was once regarded as nostalgia or past memories. Unlocking the phone only made things worse. Old group chats filled with classmates appeared on the screen. Contacts I hadn't spoken to in years were exactly where I remembered them. Photographs from school events, old conversations, and forgotten memories stared back at me from the display. Every piece of evidence pointed toward the same impossible conclusion. I had somehow returned to the past.
A different possibility suddenly entered my mind. What if the system wasn't real? What if everything involving the countdown, the mechanical voice, and the strange blue screen had simply been a hallucination brought on by shock? After all, collapsing ceilings, hospital visits, and severe stress could probably do strange things to a person's mind.
After making sure Mum wasn't paying attention, I quietly tested the theory.
"System?" I whispered.
Nothing happened.
I waited several seconds before trying again.
"Status."
Still nothing happened.
No blue screen appeared in front of me. No mechanical voice answered. No countdown appeared. The only sounds that reached me were the ordinary sounds of the hospital ward: distant conversations from other patients, the occasional beeping of medical equipment, and the quiet movement of nurses passing through the hallways.
For a brief moment, relief washed over me. Maybe I really had imagined everything.
My gaze eventually dropped to my hands resting on top of the blanket. Looking at them closely, I immediately noticed things I had overlooked earlier. They looked younger. Smaller. The faint scar I remembered getting years later was gone. Several tiny marks and blemishes I vaguely remembered having as an adult had completely disappeared. Even my skin looked healthier and smoother than I remembered. Whether the system was real or not, one fact remained impossible to deny. I was no longer thirty-two years old.
Not long afterward, a nurse returned to remove the IV after the last of the fluids had emptied into my arm. Once the discharge paperwork was completed, Mum gathered our belongings while I changed back into my clothes. The entire process felt strangely ordinary. Forms were signed, prescriptions were collected, instructions were repeated, and preparations were made for us to leave. Everything about it felt like a completely normal hospital discharge, which somehow made the situation feel even more absurd.
By the time we stepped outside, the afternoon sun had already replaced the morning I barely remembered. Mum drove us home while occasionally glancing in my direction, as though she wanted to make sure I wasn't about to faint again. Meanwhile, I spent most of the journey staring out the window at the familiar streets passing by. The buildings, shops, and roads looked exactly the way I remembered them from years ago. As I watched them pass, I tried to remember the missing years between seventeen and thirty-two. I tried to remember how I died. More importantly, I tried to remember why.
Before I could make sense of any of those thoughts, a cold sensation suddenly passed through my head. My body stiffened immediately. A familiar mechanical voice echoed inside my mind, and a blue screen briefly appeared in front of my eyes.
[Monitoring Resumed.]
[Accident #2 Pending.]
[Continued Vigilance Advised.]
The screen vanished almost as quickly as it had appeared.
My fingers tightened around the seatbelt.
So it hadn't been a hallucination after all.