(Hot) oil and water

As many of you already know, I had a bit of a mishap in the kitchen on Saturday night. I’d been sitting on a few different variations of a recipe for struffoli for a few weeks now, and decided that since I was sick to death of reading Walter Scott’s The Bride of Lammermoor for class, I was going to try out the easiest of the three recipes I’d found. (Struffoli is the fantastically addictive dessert I’d basically lived off of while in Sorrento, Italy, with my family over the Christmas break.)

The recipe, though it was the simplest, was still quite a bit more complicated than boxed brownie mix. It called for making the dough and then deep-frying it. I’ve never deep-fried anything before. (Maybe I should have watched some youtube videos before I tried it?)

I filled a small pot with about an inch, maybe an inch and a half, of vegetable oil and turned the stove on high to heat it. Two of my flatmates and one of their boyfriends helped me with that part, actually, because I already had dough all over my hands. And then they went off to go do… whatever. I don’t actually know what.

Shortly after they left, though—no more than three or four minutes—the pan of oil went fwoom, like a gas stove lighting up, and the oil burst into flame. They weren’t big flames. They barely reached over the sides of the pot. If I had yanked the fire blanket off the wall and thrown it over the pot at that moment, it would have gone no further. But we don’t regularly have fire blankets around in the States, so I didn’t think of it.

I panicked. All I knew for sure in that moment was I had to put the fire out as quickly as possible, so I dropped the pan in the sink, and, still holding onto the handle as I was reaching over the flames for the faucet, I had a vague thought of, “Isn’t water on oil one of those things Mom said to never, never do? It just makes it worse, or something?”

But I didn’t want to use any of the fire extinguisher. I wasn’t sure if the flat would be charged for its use, and besides, if I had to pull either the fire blanket or extinguisher off the wall, it would have been admitting that things had gone really, really wrong and that the situation couldn’t be salvaged.

I turned on the faucet, and a fireball roared up, scorching the ceiling. I screamed and jerked my hands away, fell back, crouching with my hands up in a “don’t shoot!” gesture (as if that would help).

It took two pulls to get the fire extinguisher off the hook on the wall because my hands shook so much. The extinguisher was heavy, and I had to hoist the thing up a bit in order to properly aim it at the sink. I pressed down the lever and nothing happened. Pressed it down again, and still nothing. I remember my breath came in breathy, panicked pants. Of all times to have to stop and read the directions! (It’s never been my strong suit.)

There was a pin, and I had a vague flash of, “Oh, god, like a grenade,” as I struggled to tug it out. It took two tries as well, but I got it. I hoisted the extinguisher up again and pressed down on the lever.

It sounded just like a fire extinguisher in the movies. White dust filled the kitchen, intermingling with the smoke. I couldn’t tell if the fire was fully out, but I had to get everything aired out or the fire alarm would go off. It had gone off at five in the morning the previous night, and everyone always gripes and snarls about wanting to lynch whoever set it off.

Of course, it’s always been people burning toast or smoking in their rooms. This was the first real fire of the year.

I got halfway across our monstrous living room to the windows and stopped. There was more dust and smoke in the room than air. There was no way I was going to be able to air the place out. I burst into tears. The fire alarm was going to go off no matter what I did.

And right on cue, it did.

One of the flatmates who’d been in the kitchen with me only minutes before (codename: Skye, since she’s from the Isle of Skye) burst in, glanced around at the mess and cried, “What happened?! Are you alright?” I don’t remember what I said, but it was jumbled enough that she took two steps into the room, seized my arm, and hauled me out. (She’s a tiny little thing that comes up barely past my shoulder. I wouldn’t have thought she had it in her.)

“My—my hands,” I remember forcing out, holding them up and looking at my unhurt palms. I still had dough all over them. “My hands are going to blister.”

She shoved me into the nearest bathroom, turned on the cold tap, and told me to put them under there while she got us both coats. I told her where mine was and she looked at me funny like I wasn’t making sense. Maybe I wasn’t. I was still sobbing.

I couldn’t stop shaking. Or crying, which was completely uncharacteristic. My mother says I must have an internal faucet, because usually all it takes is a flick of the wrist and I can halt any amount of tears.

But the explosion had frightened me so, so much. It was a wide-eyed, childish fear that made me wish for my mother, my dad, my little brother, my dog.

Skye draped one of her coats around my shoulders and guided me toward the door. I tried to tell her we had to go back into the kitchen, because I didn’t know if the fire was all the way out. I remembered seeing a flicker of orange in the sink after using the fire extinguisher, but I still don’t know if I imagined it or not. Regardless, she told me in no uncertain terms that no, that’s what the firefighters were for, we had to evacuate.

I remember crying and shaking as I tried to explain to another flatmate what’d happened, crying and shaking as we went down the stairs, as Skye handed me off to an R.A., who took me up to her own flat in a different stairwell and had me keep my hands under more cold water. I remember everyone walked too quickly for me to be able to keep up properly.

I calmed down some and hid the uncontrollable shaking in my hands as best I could. I swallowed my tears. I had to be able to explain what happened, and tears only freak people out. At one point the R.A. disappeared to flag down the paramedics, who had been told there was an injury but didn’t know who, how many, or where I was. I took the opportunity of being alone to burst into tears again—the heavy, loud, fat tears that are more cathartic that silent sobbing. I knew people could see me from the courtyard below, but no one could hear me, and that was all that mattered right then.

I was calm by the time the paramedics, Andy and Kirsten, came up. They patched me up a bit as a firefighter took my statement then asked if I wanted a flatmate or friend to come with me to the hospital. I said no, but then changed my mind and asked them to knock on Freiburg’s door across the street. I sat in the ambulance with Andy as Kirsten went up and got her. She arrived, looking appalled, and I tried to grin and thanked her for coming. Two policemen and a university official took my statement as Andy hooked me up to various contraptions.

I hardly remember the drive to the hospital. Kirsten got me a wheelchair and sent Freiburg to the waiting room as she parked me under a cold tap. I kept looking in the direction of the waiting room, fretting, until Andy got a chair and invited Freiburg to come sit with me.

We waited a long time before a doc came to see me. He took a look at the blisters and explained I would have to come back the next morning. If the blisters joined together in the night or spread over any of my joints, it could scar and then I would need skin grafts to restore mobility to my fingers. (My response to which was: “WHAT.”) He said it wasn’t likely (and, as it turned out, isn’t going to happen, thank god), then wrapped up my hand and gave me a small box of painkillers. I was to wait an hour before taking a second pill, because they were strong but took a while to kick in.

I didn’t last a full hour. By the time he wrapped my hand up, the numbness from the cold water had begun to wear off, and as we sat in the waiting room, waiting for the taxi the receptionist had called for us to arrive, I couldn’t help but rock back and forth and tap my foot. I kept the pathetic noises to a minimum, but it just hurt too much to sit still.

It was an unfamiliar kind of pain, too. Applying pressure helps a lot of different kinds of pain, but not burns. My wrist wasn’t badly burned, so I could writhe just fine—but it didn’t do any good. There’s really nothing to be done to make a burn feel better without cold air or water.

I was too emotionally wrung out to go home and face the questions I knew my flatmates would want to ask. (And, as I discovered later, I didn’t have my keys, anyway.) Freiburg let me crash at her place for a few hours. She ate dinner (I think she was interrupted by the paramedic at her door), I took another painkiller, taught her how to find megavideo links, and then we watched a few episodes of Doctor Who.

And then I went home, skyped my poor parents, and fell into the bed.