Borderline [On hold for major revision]

Chapter 24

Chapter 24

Apparently the thing I had wrong with my head was called Post-Concussion Syndrome, though I wasn’t even aware I’d had a concussion. That was probably one of those things the doctors pointed out when I wasn’t listening. What they had said that I couldn’t remember was becoming increasingly more relevant—I wished I’d maybe paid a little more attention to what they were telling me. Though now that I thought back to that moment, part of the reason I wasn’t listening was because I was thinking about Pía. So, really, it was at least partially her fault.

            She had to leave soon after her arrival for her upcoming shift at the hospital, but she promised to return later that night with the prescription medication she’d originally assigned me along with some over-the-counter pain meds. “It’ll give you some time to prepare your corn meal,” she’d said before leaving. Hector left soon after that with a promise that he would return later as well.

            I couldn’t tell if Pía was serious or not about the corn meal, so just in case I spent the next few hours trying to figure out how to make edible food out of ten pounds of dried corn kernels. After thinking about it for quite some time, I finally figured out a way to at least get a fire going in the oven/stove. Out back there was a door that would normally lead to a cellar, except there was nothing below the shack. So basically we had doors sticking out of the ground Wizard-of-Oz-style, but if you cared to open them all you would find was dirt. The wood, like everything around here, was extremely dry, so I figured I might as well put it to use.

            I went out back to the faux cellar doors and learned that it really didn’t take that much effort to simply pry them out of the ground. Pretty soon I had I nice stack of potential firewood that I lugged back into the house.

            The problem was, I didn’t know how to start fires without a lighter or one of those rock things people can buy at camping supply stores. I figured that Hector probably thought at least some of this through, so I rifled through all of the cabinets and drawers again to see if I could find anything. There was nothing that was made to start fires, but for some reason I did find a telescope.

           “Really, Hector?” I muttered to the empty room. “A telescope? What could you possibly need that for?” I thought it might be a fun experience to see if I could set something on fire with the telescope just like my brothers and I would set ants on fire with a magnifying glass as kids. So I went outside and though at four in the afternoon the sun wasn’t exactly in its zenith, it wasn’t anywhere close to setting either. And after several minutes of trying, I actually got a bit of brush to catch on fire.

I spent the next fifteen minutes celebrating my victory, then another twenty trying to replicate it. When something else finally lit up, I picked it up—burning myself a little—ran into the shack, and dropped it onto one of the slats of wood. Miraculously that worked and so I lifted the wood and tossed it into the oven. It was easy from there to add more planks on top of it until there was a decent cooking fire.

Hector said he was going to bring more bottled water on his next visit, so admittedly I was a little wasteful with the amount I had. I put the pan I’d found earlier on the stove and poured two full bottles of water into it, then sat around waiting for it to boil.

From there things should have been easy; just slip the corn in, wait until it’s edible, then dump it out on a plate. Except there was another design flaw Hector had failed to foresee: there was a fire burning in the house, but nowhere for the smoke to go. I tried to open a window so I wouldn’t suffocate, but the smoke finally sensed freedom and followed me out into the open air. That helped things a little bit, but not much. Even the fire seemed to want to make things difficult by continually jumping out of the oven and threatening to burn me alive. By the time the corn was decently cooked, the fire was out, and the smoke was all gone out of the house, the sun was already beginning to dip below the horizon.