Borderline [On hold for major revision]

Chapter 10: Ghost of Days Gone By

Chapter 10

I was almost out of the building when I remembered Sierra. I hadn’t even thought about her in a few days, which was extremely rude of me considering it’s my fault she got shot. Now I was starting to feel guilty about that, too. I hadn’t even heard anything about her since someone told me she was transferred here a few days ago. I went back to the front desk and asked the woman behind the counter—a different one from before, luckily—and asked what room Sierra Rivera was in. She typed something in and frowned at the computer. Uh-oh, I thought, frowning usually means something bad happened.

She looked up from her computer, her eyes filling with compassion as she stared at me. “Sir…Miss Rivera was declared dead by the medical staff almost two days ago. I’m so sorry for your loss.”

I backpedaled a few feet, unable to comprehend what she was saying. Sierra died? She couldn’t die, it was just her side. No important organs were located in someone’s side like that. How could she have died?

Then it finally struck me. She was dead, and it was my fault. If she hadn’t been with me that night, she would still be up and about, behaving like her usual perky self. Now she was probably waiting in a wooden box to be buried under several feet of mud and dirt. All because she wanted to be with me. Flattering, but I wished really hard that she would’ve hated me so this whole thing wouldn’t have happened. It just didn’t seem fair.

It seemed like everyone who comes near me ends up getting hurt in some way. All I’ve ever done is try to help people and do my best with what I’ve got, and this is how the universe decided to repay me. Well thanks, Universe, but you can stop repaying me now if you please. My desire to help others kept leading to destruction, so now I was going to stop, or at least not deal with people directly. I’d do my best from the sidelines, at least until I wasn’t such a dangerous person to be around. Basically, I was taking a time-out.

I trudged out to the parking lot and realized that I didn’t have a ride. There was no way the taxi driver waited the two hours I’d spent in there. I went back inside and called for another cab, and a half an hour later I left the hospital to my friend’s house to pick up Swiper. When we pulled up in the driveway I paid a driver for the second time that night and spent an extra hour riding the several miles home. Man, I’d never gone through so much effort to go to one place in my entire life. My backside was really starting to hurt from riding horseback all day. The second I was back in the house I stumbled inside and crashed on my bed, not bothering to take off any clothes. I was asleep in seconds.

My alarm went off at noon, instantly waking me up. I had it set to go off at that time every Sunday just in case, but this was the first time that I was actually still asleep by then. I was tempted to keep resting, but I had something I needed to do. I borrowed Hippo from Daniel and rode about a mile west of my house until I was a little over a quarter mile away from the border.

When I arrived at the arranged meeting place, a Hispanic guide was already there waiting for me. I shook his hand and we both went into a ratty old shack that Hector had purchased two months back. It happened to be one of the only properties that wasn’t featured in Martina’s collection of photographs.

He handed me a binder full of forms, and a moment later he was out the door and gone. I didn’t worry much; he’d be back later.

For the next five hours I pored over ever inch of each form, memorizing details and analyzing the logistics of every individual paper. Each one chronicled the life of a different impoverished Mexican resident who was seeking passage into the United States. I sorted out which ones were candidates for my people to help, and which ones seemed either untrustworthy or not in an urgent need to immigrate.