Aimee Garcia has revealed that she died when she was four years old, and that childhood brush with death is the reason she lives on borrowed time. The Lucifer actress has played a forensic scientist and a zombie-fighting community leader, yet this plot twist outdoes both of them. Her recent podcast appearance began with dog breeds and handwritten to-do lists before taking a much deeper turn.

While most measure careers in credits, Garcia measures life in bonus days; the math starts in a hospital room.

Aimee Garcia lives on borrowed time because she flatlined during a childhood hospital stay. Pneumonia had left water in her lungs. She recovered, yet the experience became the lens for everything that followed.

“I might have mentioned this on the podcast before, but I died when I was four years old,” Garcia told Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum podcast.

She then added, “It’s really informed who I am and how I look at life because to me, I’m on borrow time.”

On Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum, Garcia also recalled that the girl in the next hospital bed did not survive, and nobody visited her. Garcia’s father, who loves to sing, would pick the girl up and serenade her. That experience convinced Garcia to skip the small stuff, and a humpback whale photo in her room reminds her daily that she is only a tiny dot in a huge world.

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While Garcia has made peace with her own ending, a country legend’s death recently kept her staring at the ceiling.

Dolly Parton died on August 25 at age 80, and Aimee Garcia felt the loss personally. Speaking on the same podcast, Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum, Garcia revealed that the news kept her awake as she thought about losing the people she loves. The actress, who usually sleeps about ten hours a night, has carried a small book of Parton quotes everywhere for years and even owns a Parton candle. She also recalled calling her father with the news, only to learn that he had cried a little too.

Garcia called Parton a north star she never met, praising how unapologetic she stayed about who she was. She also admired the Imagination Library, created because Parton’s father was illiterate, which mails free books to young children. The loss left Garcia wondering who she would be without her parents, whom she calls her right and left arm. Garcia may have flatlined once, yet she keeps living every borrowed day out loud.

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