Page 5 of The Restoration Program

No… not nothing.

Her fingers dug into the bedsheets. She desperately wished the memory ended there. No. There had been crippling pain as she lay helpless in the crushed husk of the driver’s seat. She remembered a beat of numb shock that came first before white-hot agony had settled in—the horrible awareness that her body was utterly broken. Unconsciousness had been a blessing.

Somewhere, soft piano music was playing.

Hospital. Against all odds, she was still breathing. She had survived.

Steeling herself, she sat up slowly. Not even a twinge of discomfort. Whatever miracle meds were in her system must have been working overtime. She glanced around the bed with a frown. There was no heart monitor, no machines, not even an IV drip connected to her arm. There wasn’t a nurse pager in sight.

In fact, the small room was practically empty apart from the bed, a plain dresser, and a full-length mirror mounted on the wall. There was a door, but not a single window.

“Hello?” Nicole rasped. Her voice felt foreign in her throat. Delicate, as though she had not used it in ages.

No answer came.

Still wary of pushing herself after such an accident, she gingerly slid her legs over the side of her bed. Again, there was no soreness. Not a single indication that she had shattered her insides into a million pieces.

The fabric felt strange when she pushed it aside. The threading had a peculiar thickness. Hospital beds weren’t the most comfortable of places, but she couldn’t recall ever sleeping under a blanket so stiff. Her hospital gown was equally cumbersome. She braced herself and looked down to assess the damage—and the state of her body made her dry mouth reach desert levels.

She was fine. Perfectly fine.

There wasn’t a single mark on her skin—no bruises or cuts or broken bones. Springing to her feet, she nearly tipped over as her head spun. She staggered drunkenly to the mirror and clutched the sides of it, breath catching at her reflection.

Nicole swore a complete stranger was standing on the other side of the mirror. The face staring back washers, but a thousand barely-perceptible details denied that simple fact.

The reflection mimicked her movements, hands leaping to her face. Her skin was smooth—magazine model smooth. She raked her fingers through the dark waves of her hair. It was full and healthy, bearing no trace of the fading hazel highlights from a month before. Her ear piercings were gone, even the new ones. She glanced down at her hands and found her fingernails had been shorn into perfectly smooth ovals.

The first thought that flickered was absurd:This isn’t my body.

But that couldn’t be true.

As her gaze slowly climbed back up the mirror, she couldn’t deny that the hooded, dark eyes staring back in horror were most certainly hers. The two freckles on her face—one on her chin, one near her hairline—were right where they should be.

“What the hell?” she breathed, backpedaling.

Was I in a coma?

That was the only plausible explanation for her miraculous appearance.

“Hello!” She ran clumsily for the door and yanked the handle up and down, but it refused to budge. It felt glued in place rather than locked. She pushed in and out, slamming her hands against the door. “Nurse! Doctor! Hello, is someone there? Let me out!”

The resounding silence was a violent emptiness to her ears. Apart from the soothing piano melody playing from an unseen speaker, there was none of the ordinary buzz of hospital activity behind the door. No nurses rushing around the floor, no meal carts being pushed about, no chatter from the waiting rooms. Just a whole lot of absolutelynothing.

The room was large, but claustrophobia seized her by the throat as her demands went unanswered. The walls taunted her, trapped her in this sterile space.

“Please, s-someone… Someone saysomething!” Her voice broke as hysterics wracked her. “You can’t just leave me in here!”

Something creaked within the walls, and Nicole flinched back. It sounded like weight shifting on wood. She raced back to the door and pounded her fists on it.

“Hello? Who’s there?” There was more shuffling and distant tremors, like a very large object being moved across the floor.People!“I’m in here! Please,please, you have to help me! Let me out!”

Over her gasps, Nicole almost didn’t hear the faint crackle of something electronic behind her.

“Miss Zhou, please stay calm. Personnel will be with you shortly.”

Although the female voice was distorted through a speaker, it brought a wave of relief crashing down on Nicole.

“Oh, thank fuck, I thought I was alone in here! This… I’ve never seen a hospital room like this. Where am I?” She shuffled toward the bed and tore off the roughspun covers, running open palms under the sheets and pillows.