BEEP— BEEP— BEEP—
The monotonous din droned on, pulsing through the quiet like a metronome in a room where time no longer mattered. The sharp smell of disinfectant hung in the air like a membrane, sealing the space in sterile quiet. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead, casting a sickly, clinical pallor over everything they touched.
Jin Zhang lay still slowly opening his eyes.
As he started to wake up, the first thing he noticed was that his whole body was wrapped in bandages. His arms and legs were propped up at weird angles, stiff in heavy casts, like parts of a broken puppet. Broken rays of light streamed through the window hitting his face. At that moment he broke out of his stupor and it hit him… he couldn't feel a thing.
He dug through his head, hoping for something, anything, that could explain what the hell happened. Bits and pieces floated up, blurry and out of order. A quiet sunset, sky glowing red. A black car, just sitting there. Then nothing. Just static.
He stared at the ceiling, trying to piece things together, but his brain felt like it was full of fog. Something was wrong—besides the whole "body in casts" thing. There was this heavy pit in his chest, like he'd left something unfinished… something important. The feeling clawed at him, but the harder he tried to grab onto it, the more it slipped away.
A flicker of motion pulled his eyes to the corner of the room. The TV was on, muted probably by some bored nurse and a tennis match played in grainy HD. Two athletes zipped across the court with graceful quickness, their physiques trim, exact, and full of life. The audience swayed in gradual waves behind them, applauding, shouting, yet noiseless to him. He watched, unable to look away, as one player slammed an ace past the other. Something twisted in his chest. It wasn't envy. It was worse. It was the feeling of being left behind.
Fuck.
He was nineteen.
Supposedly the prime of his life, right? But all he'd really done was sit around, hoping things would magically turn around. That one day, out of nowhere, he'd unlock some hidden talent, become the best tennis player in the world, and bag the baddie while he was at it. Yet laying here he felt the harshness of reality stab and twist like a sharp knife.
His eyes flicked toward the door. It hadn't opened. Not once since he'd woken up. No voices in the hallway calling his name. No mother crying, no father pretending not to cry. No brother pacing, cracking his knuckles the way he always did when he was nervous. Nothing. Just the beeping. Just tennis. Just the sterile white walls and the creeping sense that he was completely, utterly alone.
But maybe they just didn't know yet. The accident, whatever it was, couldn't have happened long ago. His mouth was still dry with the taste of smoke, and the pain meds hadn't fully kicked in yet. Time felt stretchy and disjointed, like everything had been pulled through gauze. Somewhere deep down, he knew it hadn't even been a day. Maybe just hours. Maybe minutes. His phone… was it with him? Was anyone even allowed to see him yet? He pictured his mom stuck in traffic, panicking, calling every hospital in the city. His dad on the phone with insurance. His brother speeding through red lights just to be the first to show up.
But even that thought, his family coming, couldn't push away the feeling crawling up his spine. Cold and slow. Like something inside him had started to flicker and dim. It wasn't pain exactly. It was absence. Like his body was receding from itself, piece by piece, slipping under the weight of painkillers and silence. He didn't know how he knew, but he did. His time was thinning out, stretching toward its final few fragile threads.
And in those threads, tangled between panic and numbness, all he could think about was tennis. Not his parents, not friends, not the usual list of things people say matter most. Just the court, the weight of a racket in his hand, the clean snap of a forehand, the blur of movement, rhythm, breath. He should've played more. Practiced more. Pushed harder. But he hadn't. He'd waited. Waited for talent to bloom, for purpose to arrive like a package on the doorstep. Now, lying still and broken, he realized he'd never even scratched the surface of what he could've been.
As the monitors' incessant beeping grew louder, sharper, like they were counting down instead of keeping time, the weight of it all pressed harder on his chest.
"If I had another chance…" he muttered