The room is spacious and quiet, often positioned away from high-traffic corridors. Walls are painted in muted, calming tones—soft beige, pale gray, or warm cream—rather than stark white. Lighting is layered: bright, adjustable medical lights near the bed, and softer ambient lighting from recessed fixtures or bedside lamps to reduce stress.
The hospital bed is modern and fully motorized, with high-quality linens and additional pillows for comfort. Medical equipment is present but discreetly integrated into wall panels or cabinets to minimize visual clutter. Monitors are quieter and often positioned so they're not directly in the patient's line of sight unless needed.
Furnishings include a comfortable sofa or recliner for visitors, a small dining table, and sometimes a work desk. Floors are usually wood-look vinyl or polished laminate instead of cold tile, contributing to a warmer atmosphere. Large windows are common, allowing in natural light and offering city or garden views, with blackout curtains for rest.
Amenities often include a private bathroom with a walk-in shower, premium toiletries, a television with cable or streaming access, a mini fridge, and sometimes a wardrobe or safe. Climate control is individually adjustable.
Overall, the environment balances luxury and calm with medical readiness—quiet, private, and reassuring, designed to reduce the psychological weight of hospitalization while allowing staff to provide immediate care when necessary.
Zack lies at the center of the VIP room, the hospital bed adjusted to keep his body stable and aligned after years of immobility. He is eighteen now, though his face still carries traces of who he was at thirteen—softer features, lashes too long, skin unmarked by age or hardship. His body has grown taller under careful medical management, muscles preserved through routine therapy, but there is a stillness to him that feels unnatural, as if time has passed around him rather than through him.
A ventilator hums softly beside the bed, its rhythm steady and unobtrusive. Heart and brain monitors glow faintly on the wall panel, their readings stable, unchanged for years. Tubes and lines are neatly secured, maintained with meticulous care, evidence of long-term vigilance rather than emergency.
Sunlight from the large window reaches his bed in the afternoon, washing over pale sheets and his unmoving hands. Nurses keep the curtains open during the day, believing—hoping—that light still matters. A chair sits close to the bedside, its leather worn slightly from frequent use, suggesting someone visits often.
Despite the room's luxury and calm, there is a quiet tension in the air. Five years in a coma is no longer a crisis—it's a condition. Zack is not dying, but not living either, suspended in a prolonged pause that began on the day he turned thirteen, while the world outside the room continued without him.
The memory cuts back to noise and color.
Born in a wealthy household with two busy but responsible parent, Zack's life was fine though he never seems to understand most of the things happening around him. Because of his state, some kids used to call him names like dimwit, or "zzz" Zack.
The birthday celebration was decent, and his mother even called over a mascot to cheer up her son. The air was warm and light that night, but things quickly turn cold.
Then the pain hits.
It's instantaneous, like something slamming into the center of his skull. His vision fractures, edges blurring and doubling. Sound stretches and distorts, voices warping into low, metallic echoes. He drops the plate he's holding. It shatters, but he barely registers it.
The migraine escalates into something far worse. His head feels too full, as if pressure is building with nowhere to escape. He grabs at his temples, fingers digging in hard, nails scraping skin. His knees buckle.
Then the memories arrive.
He dropped.
His body convulsed on the floor, limbs locking and jerking in sharp, uncontrolled spasms. To anyone watching, it looked like a seizure, maybe a stroke. To Zack, it was far worse.
His mind split open.
Memories that were not his forced their way in.
The first set was familiar—too familiar. A life as a human on a world called Earth. School, streets, technology, history. Ordinary struggles, ordinary time. The world was almost identical to the one he lived in now, yet subtly wrong, like a reflection that didn't perfectly match. He knew this life. Or rather—he suddenly remembered having lived it.
But before his mind could stabilize, the second set arrived.
It did not arrive gently.
Time ceased to have meaning.
Eons poured into him all at once—existence without decay, centuries stacked upon millennia. Zack was no longer human in those memories. He was something immortal, something that watched civilizations rise and erode into dust. He remembered standing beneath dead stars, walking worlds long before they were named, outliving species that never knew he existed.
There was no single identity in that second life—only continuity. Awareness stretched endlessly, until boredom itself became unbearable. And from that boredom came a decision, calm and deliberate:
To end immortality by choice.To reincarnate.To forget.
The contradiction was catastrophic.
A thirteen-year-old human brain was never meant to contain eternity.
The flood of information exceeded biological limits. Neurons misfired, synapses burned out, protective shutdown mechanisms triggered all at once. His consciousness imploded inward, not destroyed, but forcibly sealed off to prevent total collapse.
As adults screamed and someone called for help, Zack's body went still.
His mind, overloaded with two complete lives—one mundane, one infinite—fell into silence.
And there it stayed.
Zack woke up violently.
His body snapped upright in the hospital bed as if yanked by an invisible wire. Muscles screamed in protest, lungs dragged in air too fast, too deep. The heart monitor spiked, alarms shrilled for half a second before stabilizing. Five years of stillness shattered in an instant.
His eyes were open.
Focused.
Not confused.
Before the coma, Zack had been… empty. Not stupid, not slow—just flat. He reacted to the world instead of engaging with it. No strong preferences, no ambition, no real inner voice. Thirteen years of life had passed through him without leaving much behind.
That absence was gone.
Now, awareness settled into him with weight and structure. Thoughts aligned smoothly. Sensations were cataloged, prioritized, understood. Pain registered, but didn't overwhelm. Panic was acknowledged, then dismissed.
The second set of memories hadn't faded during the coma.
They had finished integrating.
Eternity had shaped him—not emotionally explosive, not dramatic, but precise. Calm came naturally, not as restraint, but as default. His gaze moved slowly around the room, absorbing details with practiced efficiency: medical layout, equipment placement, reflections in glass, the slight tremor in his own hands.
He knew what this place was.He knew how long five years was.He knew exactly why he had survived.
Immortality had taught him patience. Reincarnation had stripped him of power. What remained was perspective.
Zack lowered his breathing, muscles loosening as control reasserted itself over a body that felt unfamiliar but workable. He did not ask where he was. He did not cry. He did not panic.
Instead, one clear thought surfaced—steady, unemotional, complete:
So this life continued.
And for the first time since his birth—this one—Zack possessed something he never had before.
Self awareness.
[Zack's POV]
Ah. Finally. Motion. Sensation. Light. The trifecta of existence for anyone who's been trapped in a hospital-grade coffin for half a decade. My muscles groan as if I've just asked them to perform Azarian gymnastic moves while untrained, which, in fairness, might be easier than what my neurons are doing right now.
I run through my memories—because, of course, why settle for one when you can have two entire lifetimes crashing through the cerebral cortex like a poorly coordinated parade? First, the mundane life. Earth. School. Homework. Mildly irritating teachers. Blah, blah, humanity in its usual, painfully predictable cycle. Yes, I remember pretending to care about math tests and cafeteria pizza. Riveting stuff.
And would you believe? I was on my way to become the second millionaire in my family. A dream that don't really manifest because I got myself into quite a gruesome traffic accident. My body split in half vertically. Don't throw up now, I get how you must felt.
Anyway, Then the other set. Oh, dear, the other set. Immortality. Eons of observing civilizations rise and fall, stars dying and being born, civilizations so numerous and varied it makes the word plenitude lose it's meaning.
And here's the kicker: I chose reincarnation once I'd seen it all. Boredom. Immortals get to the point where even the collapse of galaxies is just a mild Tuesday. Naturally, I opted for reincarnation. Spoiler alert: it was the most stimulating decision I've ever made.
I can't help but smirk internally—if not physically, lest the nurses assume I've suddenly developed a rogue twitch. This world—this hospital, this "VIP" suite—isn't the only stage. Not even close. Life exists elsewhere. Planets, realities, maybe universes stacked like Russian dolls, all teeming with existence, all spectacularly oblivious to me. How quaint.
My thoughts now have a vocabulary, a structure, a flair for dramatic commentary that the thirteen-year-old Zack lacked entirely. Back then, I was functionally a neutral shade of beige, floating through life like a lost sock. Now? Now, I am the sock with opinions, preferably sarcastic, occasionally pedantic, always aware of just how ridiculously large the stage of reality truly is.
Ah yes. The nurses.
I notice them about three seconds after I sit up—because, apparently, human peripheral vision becomes very sharp when people start doing impossible things. One moment I'm a long-term coma patient, medically categorized somewhere between "stable" and "permanent question mark," and the next I'm upright, breathing on my own.
The first nurse freezes.
Literally. Clipboard mid-air, mouth slightly open, eyes doing that rapid recalculation thing humans do when reality fails a routine check. Her brain is clearly running diagnostics: coma patient… five years… sitting up…
The second nurse reacts faster. Panic-adjacent competence. Fingers hit the call button so hard I'm fairly sure it felt personally attacked. Monitors get stared at with intense suspicion, as if the machines are about to confess to a crime.
Alarms chirp. Not the dramatic "someone is dying" kind—more the confused, offended beeping of equipment that has been minding its own business for half a decade and now has to admit I'm awake.
I consider waving. Decide against it. Sudden gestures might escalate things.
There's a lot of staring.
They look at me the way people look at a painting that wasn't there yesterday. Awe mixed with unease. I'm medically impossible, but also inconveniently calm, which I imagine is worse. If I were screaming or disoriented, they could file me under expected miracle recovery behavior. Instead, I'm just… observing them back.
One of them finally speaks. My name. Carefully. Like it might explode.
I confirm it with a nod. Polite. Reassuring. Immortals learn early that panicking the locals is rarely productive.
Their relief is immediate and intense—followed swiftly by professional mode. Blood pressure. Pupils. Questions delivered in clipped, practiced tones that pretend this is normal. It is not. Everyone here knows it.
I can almost hear the future paperwork forming in their minds. Case studies. Medical journals. "Patient Regained Consciousness After Five-Year Coma With Full Cognitive Clarity and Zero Confusion." A nightmare sentence for statisticians.
As they bustle around me, I feel a flicker of amusement. Not unkind. Just observational.
From their perspective, this is a miracle.
From mine, it's a system reboot finally completing after a very long update.
I remain cooperative, answer only what's necessary, and keep my humor internal—for now.