The receptionist picked up on the second ring. I jabbed at the screen to put her on speaker. I didn’t even wait for her to speak. “I need a new drug. No hangovers. No nerve damage. No racing heart. Just something that works.”

An hour later, I was wandering through the long maze of hallways where the doctor’s art collection looked like toile wallpaper. Vivaldi’s Four Seasons dripped from hidden speakers, even into the bathroom, where my urine sample waited on a shelf beside a plastic daisy in a cracked vase. The nurse’s face beamed. I wanted whatever she was on. She led me to an exam room with a large window overlooking a creek bed. Squirrels were gathering black walnuts.

I was about to ask when they remodeled the place when the doctor drifted in like a silk flag in summer wind, a slip of paper fluttering in his hand. “A natural remedy,” he promised, “stronger than any pill.” I stared at the paper, shaking my congested head slowly back and forth as I read.

Build yourself a porch. Build it eye level with the tops of sturdy maple trees. Swallow it in one gulp. Take daily as needed.

I climbed down from the exam table, peeling disposable paper off my damp thighs. I wanted to trust him. But did he grasp the weight in my chest, the fire behind my eyes? Did he know I was two seconds from bursting? “I think it’s gonna kill me,” I told him, repeating kill me once more and clutching my heart for effect.

He cleaned the lenses of his glasses on his white coat but did not put them back on his face. He watched me with a look of delight, as if he’d handed me a treasure map. His rich baritone was sing-songy lyrics. “This is not the kind of cure that makes you forget. Forgetting is done in high-def screens, in closets, in cars, in crowds of people, in bottles and capsules coated in sorrow.” His right foot tapped to the beat.

He had never done me wrong before. His solid advice had seen me through several difficult pregnancies, one depressive episode, and two cases of kidney stones. I don’t remember getting to my car. I just know the building wasn’t there when I turned around.

When I walked through our front door, my husband took one look at me and asked, “What’s wrong? Did the doctor prescribe anything?”

“He said to build a porch,” I could hardly get the words out without laughing and crying at the same time.

“What the…”

“Look, don’t ask me any questions, ok? He said to grow peaches, make some cobbler. Get some wind chimes.” I don’t know why, but the look of disbelief on my husband’s face brought the wisdom of the absurd prescription into perfect focus, so I headed to our closet to change into work clothes.

“You’re not taking that quack seriously, are you?” he asked, but the way his question trailed off in the end, I knew he was beginning to see the logic in it.

At first, the hammering echoed like arguments. We changed our minds about the roof pitch, the measurements, the lighting. It didn’t feel like healing. Then one morning, we sat there drinking coffee in silence, sinking into cushions thick as country biscuits, canvas fabric waterproofed like a second skin.

We built it like a tree fort. We used composite wood mixed with plastic, so it won’t rot. At the south end, there are chaise lounges for toasting our limbs and infusing our bones with vitamin D.

We took each dose just as the doctor ordered, on a full stomach of prayers whispered into the whirring of a ceiling fan. It floated easily down our throats like the vinegary smell of grilled meat or marshmallows scorched over an open flame. It fortified every malnourished memory of where we had been, who we were, how we survived. Within days, the miracle drug saved both of our lives.

This weekend we were lounging on the porch listening to the swaying branches, the neighing horses, the greening pastures. “Hey, remember that whacky dream about your doctor handing you a prescription to build this porch?” My husband and I laughed together while he flipped the smash burgers on the grill.

The wind shifted, carrying the aroma and sizzle of ground beef. I breathed deep, moving bare feet over sunbaked planks to lean over the railing, inching away from doubt toward surrender. Maybe it was a map. One plank for each remembered joy. One screw for each regret loosened from my chest. A deep sigh escaped across the pasture and into the trees. I couldn’t be sure if it came from me or my husband. Or maybe it was the porch. After the sigh came the clean hum of a daily dose of bodies dancing in humid air, children zipping through trees on thin wire, swimsuits drip-drying on the railing. The porch swallowed every ghost that haunted us, then rocked us gently back to ourselves.

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Tracie Adams is a retired educator and playwright who writes short fiction and memoir from her farm in rural Virginia. She is the author of the essay collection, Our Lives in Pieces. Her work was nominated for the Pushcart Prize, longlisted at Wigleaf Top 50, and published widely in literary magazines including Cleaver, Dishsoap Quarterly, Trash Cat, Epistemic Lit, SoFloPoJo, Fictive Dream, and more. Visit tracieadamswrites.com and follow her on X @1funnyfarmAdams.