The Woman in Room Zero

The room is unfamiliar. I don’t know how I got here.

The thought echoed in Evelyn’s mind as her eyes adjusted to the stark fluorescent light above. She lay on a cold floor, her head throbbing with each pulse of illumination. The ceiling was a perfect white square, unblemished except for that single light panel that seemed to hover like a trapped sun.

Pushing herself to sitting, Evelyn pressed her palm against her temple. The skin felt tender, though she couldn’t remember hitting her head. She couldn’t remember much of anything beyond driving down Route 16 in the rain, her windshield wipers keeping time with some forgotten song on the radio.

The room was perhaps fifteen feet square, with walls as white and featureless as the ceiling. No windows. No doors. No visible means of entry or exit. The thought should have triggered panic, but instead, it settled over her like a heavy blanket, dulling her senses rather than sharpening them.

A few objects dotted the space, appearing almost staged in their careful placement. A clock hung on the wall directly across from her, its face cracked like a frozen spider web. Its hands stood motionless at 2:17, though whether it was afternoon or morning was impossible to tell in this timeless space. Something about that specific time tugged at her memory, but like everything else, it remained just out of reach.

Near the clock, a leather-bound journal lay closed on a small table she could have sworn wasn’t there a moment ago. Evelyn blinked hard, but the table remained. It must have been there all along, she thought. I just didn’t notice it before.

She rose unsteadily to her feet, her muscles protesting as if she’d been still for far too long. The air felt thick, almost syrupy, making each movement require conscious effort. As she crossed to the table, her reflection caught her eye in the polished surface—but something was wrong. The face that looked back at her seemed older, worn, with dark circles under its eyes that she didn’t remember having.

Evelyn reached for the journal, but her hand froze midway. On the wall behind the table hung a photograph she hadn’t noticed before: a little girl in a yellow dress, sitting on a swing. The child’s face was her own, but she had no memory of the moment captured in the image. The swing set behind the girl seemed to shift slightly, the chains lengthening and shortening when viewed from the corner of her eye.

A whisper brushed past her ear, so faint she might have imagined it. But when she whirled around, the room was empty—though she could have sworn the clock had moved three inches to the left.

Something was very wrong here. The room wasn’t just unfamiliar; it was impossible. And with each passing moment, that impossibility seemed to be watching her, waiting to see what she would do next.

The leather journal felt wrong in her hands. Its cover was warm to the touch, like something living, and the pages made a sound like distant crying when she turned them. They were blank, but the paper seemed to ripple under her gaze, as though words were trying to surface from somewhere deep within.

Evelyn placed the journal back on the table and pressed her palms against her eyes until spots of color danced in the darkness. When she looked again, the first page was no longer empty. Words had appeared in a handwriting she recognized as her own, though she hadn’t written them:

Day 37: The doctors say there’s no change. They don’t think I can hear them, but I do. Mom hasn’t left my side. I wish I could tell her I’m still here.

Her heart hammered against her ribs. The next page filled itself as she watched, ink bleeding up through the paper:

Day 58: The machines keep beeping. Someone’s crying. I think it’s Sarah—she always did have a distinctive sob. I want to reach out, to squeeze her hand, but I can’t move. I can’t wake up.

“No,” Evelyn whispered, backing away from the journal. Her heel caught on something—a loose thread in the carpet, perhaps—and she stumbled. As she caught herself, her hand brushed against the wall, and the surface rippled like disturbed water.

The whispers returned, louder now. They came from everywhere and nowhere, a chorus of familiar voices speaking over each other:

“—brain activity is stable, but—”

“—just need you to wake up, sweetie—”

“—insurance will cover the extended care—”

She pressed her hands against her ears, but the voices were inside her head now. The photograph on the wall had changed; the little girl was gone, replaced by an image of a hospital room. A woman lay in the bed, tubes snaking from her arms and nose, monitors casting a sickly green glow across her slack features. Her own features.

The clock ticked. One sharp, impossible sound that cut through the whispers like a knife. When Evelyn looked at it, the crack in its face had spread, spiderwebbing across the surface in a pattern that looked unsettlingly like a human neural network.

Movement caught her eye—a flutter of fabric in her peripheral vision. A heavy curtain hung on one wall, dark red and impossibly grand in the otherwise stark room. She was certain it hadn’t been there before, but that certainty meant nothing in this place where reality seemed as fluid as water.

Behind her, the journal’s pages began to turn on their own, a dry papery sound like dead leaves skittering across pavement. The whispers grew more insistent, and the walls seemed to pulse in time with them, expanding and contracting like a giant lung.

Evelyn approached the curtain. Her reflection in the polished floor stretched and distorted, growing older with each step until it was barely recognizable as human. The fabric felt like ice under her fingers as she gripped it, preparing to pull it aside.

“Please,” she whispered, though she wasn’t sure to whom or for what she was pleading. “Please let me understand.”

She pulled the curtain back in one sharp motion, revealing a mirror that stretched from floor to ceiling. But the woman staring back at her wasn’t her reflection—or rather, it was her reflection from some impossible future, aged by years of confinement. The other Evelyn’s face was gaunt, her hair streaked with gray, her eyes wild with recognition and terror.

And then her reflection began to move independently, pressing its hands against the glass, mouth opening in a silent scream: “Wake up!”

A sound like breaking ice filled the room as cracks spiderwebbed across the mirror’s surface. Her reflection—the older, desperate version of herself—continued to pound against the glass, each impact sending new fractures racing outward. The whispers had become a roar, and Evelyn could now make out complete sentences:

“—severe head trauma from the impact—”

“—found her car wrapped around a tree at 2:17 AM—”

“—might never regain consciousness—”

The walls pulsed faster, their white surface taking on the soft pink of living tissue. The clock’s hands began to spin backward, and the photograph cycled through images like a slideshow: herself in a hospital bed, herself driving in the rain, herself as a child on the swing, herself lying broken in a crushed car, herself in the room, herself in the room, herself in the room—

Her reflection’s mouth moved again: “You have to remember!”

And suddenly, she did.

The rain had been torrential that night. She’d been arguing with her mother on the phone about moving back home after the divorce. Her tears had blurred her vision, or maybe it was the rain, when the deer appeared in her headlights. She’d swerved. There had been a tree, an impact, the sound of metal screaming against wood, and then—

The room.

But it wasn’t just one room, was it? It was hundreds of rooms, thousands of them, each one a loop in her consciousness as her mind tried to protect itself from the trauma. Each time she got close to the truth, the room would shift, change, reset, and she would forget again.

The mirror shattered.

Behind it was a dark passage that seemed to bend and twist in impossible ways. Cold air rushed out, carrying with it the antiseptic smell of a hospital room. Her reflection was gone, but its voice echoed in her mind: “Wake up!”

Evelyn stepped through the broken mirror, glass crunching under her feet. The passage was organic, its walls rippling with neural patterns that pulsed with dim blue light. Each step felt like walking through deep water, and the air grew thicker, more resistant.

Behind her, she heard the sound of glass reassembling itself, the mirror reforming. She turned to see the room one last time and froze.

Through the restored mirror, she could see another woman appearing in the room she’d just left. The woman looked up, confused and frightened, her face a perfect match for Evelyn’s own.

“The room is unfamiliar,” the other woman whispered. “I don’t know how I got here.”

The passage collapsed behind her, but Evelyn barely noticed. Her mind was too busy unspooling years of memories—or were they dreams? How many times had she walked through that room? How many versions of herself were trapped in that endless loop, each one doomed to forget and begin again?

The neural patterns in the walls flared brighter, and voices echoed more clearly now:

“Her brain activity is spiking—”

“Get the doctor in here now—”

“Evelyn? Honey, can you hear me?”

She recognized her mother’s voice, thick with tears and hope. The passage began to narrow, forcing her to crawl. The walls pressed against her, warm and alive, pulsing with electrical signals that matched the rhythm of her thoughts.

A memory surfaced: her neurologist explaining persistent vegetative states, how some patients create entire worlds within their minds, time moving differently in these mental constructs. “The brain,” he’d said, “will do anything to protect itself from trauma.”

The passage grew tighter still. Panic clawed at her throat—she was going to be trapped here, crushed between synapses and memories. But beyond the constriction, she saw a pinpoint of pure white light.

The journal’s pages flashed through her mind, filled now with thousands of entries:

Day 147: Another loop completed.

Day 294: Almost remembered this time.

Day 623: Please, let this be the last time.

Day 1,089: The room is unfamiliar…



She understood now. The room wasn’t just a prison—it was a defense mechanism. Every time she got close to consciousness, to facing the reality of her injuries and loss, her mind would reset the loop. The room protected her from pain, from grief, from having to rebuild her life.

But it also protected her from healing.

The light grew brighter. Behind her, she heard glass breaking again, heard another version of herself discovering the room for the first time. How many more loops would there be if she turned back now?

Evelyn forced herself forward, though every inch felt like moving through concrete. The voices grew louder, more insistent. She could smell her mother’s perfume, feel Sarah’s hand clutching hers.

She was almost there. Almost awake. Almost—

The light exploded around her, and for the first time in what felt like years, Evelyn opened her real eyes.

The hospital room was dim, but after so long in the white room, it felt blazingly bright. Machines beeped steadily. Her mother’s perfume mixed with antiseptic. Sarah’s hand was warm in hers.

“Doctor!” someone called. “She’s awake!”

Evelyn tried to speak, but her throat was too dry. She squeezed Sarah’s hand instead.

A doctor leaned over her, shining a light in her eyes. “Ms. Walker? Do you know where you are?”

She managed a small nod.

“Do you remember what happened?”

Another nod. The car. The rain. The tree.

“You’ve been in a coma for three years,” the doctor said gently. “There were times we weren’t sure you’d ever wake up.”

Three years. Three years of the same room, the same discovery, the same journey. But something nagged at her mind, something important trying to surface.

As the doctor checked her vitals, Evelyn’s gaze drifted to the window. Through the glass, she caught a glimpse of her reflection—aged, tired, exactly like the woman she’d seen in the mirror in the room.

And behind her reflection, just for a moment, she saw another room, white and doorless, where another Evelyn was waking up, thinking: The room is unfamiliar. I don’t know how I got here.

She tried to scream a warning, to somehow reach through the glass and tell her other self to remember, to break the loop. But the image faded like breath on a mirror, leaving her to wonder:

Had she really escaped? Or was this just another room?