I told you so

“See ya in a few hours!” I yelled to James, “Good luck with that!”

He grunted and waved one of his tools at me as I opened the door to head out. A nice breeze flew in and cooled our sweaty bodies. Our small apartment was nice, but the lack of any sort of cooling system made us both a bit grouchy during the day. Luckily I was headed to work and wouldn’t be home in the heat for another eight and a half hours. 

“Don’t hurt yourself,” I called and opened the door to head out. James was an engineering student and was convinced that he could rig up some sort of AC for us. I wasn’t sure how he was going to do it but he had some sort of refrigerant canister that he’d gotten from his uncle a few miles south and some fans from the thrift store. 

“You sure this is gonna work?” I had asked him earlier, “This just looks like a bunch of old metal scraps to me.”

“Oh don’t worry, I know what I’m doing. All I have to do is hook this,” he pointed to the metal can of refrigerant and then gestured to some other doohickey, “to this and plug in the fans. Then I’ll connect them with some chords and plug them in. We’ll be chilling like gods in no time. It’s gonna feel like the ice age by the time I’m done.” 

“And you’re sure this will work?”

“Ya, for sure”

“And why’s that again? Besides the backwards engineering of course.”

“Because I said so,” He threw a cocky grin my way. 

I closed the door and smiled. With any luck he’d actually get it to work and we wouldn’t have to suffer through the summer. 

I had the music blasting in my car. I sang along as I drove through town. Work was fine, but exhausting. We had a new shipment come in and I had to put all of the new stuff away. My feet were killing me, and I was ready to lay down for a bit - even if it meant sweating my ass off in our apartment. 

I heard sirens behind me and pulled over for an ambulance to pass. 

Poor people I thought to myself, that’s a guaranteed rough day. It turned the way I was headed but I didn’t think much of it. I still had another 10 minutes before I would get home. It would probably turn on the next block. There were a lot of elderly people in that neighborhood. 

I got home right as the sun was setting and pulled up to the back of our apartment. From there I walked past the other apartments in our row. I picked up our mail on our way and walked slowly to enjoy the cool breeze that had lasted throughout the long day. 

When I got to our building however, the front door was covered in caution tape and there were a couple of police officers around.

“You live here?”

“Yes sir, did something happen?”

“Your roommate got himself nearly blown up. Seems like there was some sort of gas leak so when he turned on your old gas stove the whole place went up.”

“The refrigerant,” I whispered, “He must have tried out the AC and not noticed a leak. Is he okay?”

“I don’t know, they took him down to the hospital on main street. If you head that way I’m sure they can show you to his room. Wait - before you go we’ll need your information so we contact you since it seems like you might know what happened here.”

I quickly gave them my information and ran for my car. When I got to the hospital my voice was shaky, and I had to wait forever before I could see him. His body was burned badly and covered in bandages. 

“You stupid head,” my voice wobbled as I spoke, “how’d you end up like this?”

“Just trying to cool down man. I guess I managed to do the exact opposite though.” He sort of smiled but his cheek was burned on one side and he couldn’t smile well without hurting it. 

I laughed but it came out as more of a cough or a sob. I couldn’t tell which one it was. The nurses said it was a miracle that he wasn’t in a worse state. His family was coming in to visit and would be there the next day. I called out of work sick for the next day and spent the night with him. 

The sun set and the nurses and doctor hurried off to help other patients. They turned off the main light in our room but left on the lamps. 

“Do you remember when we were kids and we used to launch rockets in your parents backyard? You’d always light them to go off and then we’d count how long we could stand by the rocket before running off so that we wouldn’t get caught as the gunpowder exploded.”

“Yeah,” he smiled with his eyes, “I made it all the way to twelve seconds but you never made it past seven.” 

“Of course, I didn’t want to get blown up and I told you so,” I laughed sadly, “I told you not to get blown up either.”

“A bit too late for that I guess,” he said with a smile and grimaced at the pain.

“I told you so.”

We stayed up a bit later talking, but soon he fell asleep. It was dark outside, but I could see the stars through the window. A satellite glided slowly across the horizon. 

“I told you so,” I whispered, but I smiled. He would heal, and no doubt he would still be as stubborn as ever. He would still be the same old engineer, the same old daredevil, and the same old James I’d come to love. 

“Goodnight stupid head,” I muttered, and I faded off to sleep as well.