The Unkillable Girl - [ONC 2024]

3. Coming back to life

Gradually the darkness faded, and Amelia slowly opened her eyes. It took a moment for her vision to focus, and even longer for her to realise where she was. The bright lights and beeping machines told her she was sitting in a hospital bed.

She tried to sit up, but was stopped by a sudden wave of nausea.

"Hey, take it easy," said Darius.

Amelia painfully turned her head to the side, and saw Darius sitting in a chair next over by the wall. He looked subdued, and not his usual flamboyant self.

"Hey," said Amelia, and then she winced in pain. Her throat felt like she had swallowed sandpaper.

"Here, take a sip of this," said Darius, as he stood up and picked up a cup of water from beside her.

Amelia took the straw between her lips and sucked down the soothing liquid.

"How are you feeling?" Darius asked.

"Terrible."

"Yeah, I'm not surprised," said Darius.

Amelia scowled at him. "What happened?" she asked.

"You electrocuted yourself, dumbass," he said.

That did sound familiar to Amelia. She tried to focus the scrambled parts of her brain. Bits of what happened came back to her. The coffee pot, the water, the damaged cord. The last thing she remembered doing was reaching out with her hand to unplug it.

Amelia looked down and saw that her left hand was now wrapped up in a bandage. As she looked at it, she also noticed a slight throbbing pain coming from it.

"The power cord," she said, mostly to herself.

"Yeah. It zapped you, and threw you backwards so you hit your head on the door," said Darius. "So scary. You were like literally dead. I had to CPR you."

"You know CPR?" Amelia asked.

"Err, obviously. I was a nurse on Grey's Anatomy," said Darius. "I learned all the medical stuff."

Amelia rolled her eyes. "You were an extra, and it was only for one episode," she said.

"Urgh, whatever," said Darius. "I still saved your life. You basically owe me."

"Hmmm, yeah..." Amelia said, as she drifted off into her thoughts.

This was not quite what she had expected. When she had died and that weird man had sent her to try again, she had assumed it meant she would be repeating the day again. She would be stuck in a time loop, retrying everything until she learned from her mistakes. Kind of like in that movie. But if that was true, she should have woken up in her own bed. So this was something different, she just couldn't be sure what.

"This is Monday morning, right?" she asked.

"Monday? Babe, it's Wednesday afternoon," said Darius, with a look of concern.

"Oh," said Amelia. "I thought when I came back to life it would be like a loop of the same day. So then it would be like I'm stuck in a time loop and I have to keep repeating the same day and like learning new stuff and improving as I go until I slowly realise what I'm supposed to have done. You know, like in that movie we watched on Netflix where you said it was just a bad copy of the movie Groundhog Day."

Darius looked at her with a patient expression. "You could've just said 'like in the movie Groundhog Day'."

"Well I wouldn't know what happens in that movie. I've never watched it," Amelia said.

Darius threw up his hands with an exasperated sigh. "You literally just described the plot."

"Whatever, you know what I mean," said Amelia. "Wait, did you say it's Wednesday?"