Out of Nowhere Read Online Free

fatality rate. Facts I’d read a million times online. Clinical accounts. Impersonal. No textbook or website or medical journal ever tells you how you’re supposed to feel when it’s your father’s brain that starts bleeding, or how to deal with being eleven years old and finding him lying on the ugly linoleum floor in front of the microwave where he’d been warming his dinner, likely dead before his plate of lasagna stopped revolving. No one ever tells you how to cope when it’s your parent who was one of the unlucky ten percent who die before reaching the hospital.
    Still, I devoured every word, feeding pieces of information into my brain until they arranged themselves into an order that made sense.

Chapter Three
     
     
    When I woke up on Saturday morning, I knew something was wrong before I even opened my eyes. My skin tingled, like a row of ants was marching up my spine. My sheets were twisted around my legs. I felt sweaty and strange. Something was wrong .
    Then the itching started. I sat up in bed and peered at my arms, which sported several red patches in various shapes and sizes. The rashy spot on my wrist had disappeared, but not before calling in some replacements.
    “Mom?” I called before realizing I was alone in the house. It was ten-thirty already. My mother had left for work hours ago, and Tristan was spending the day with our grandparents. Even the cats had deserted me.
    I trudged into the bathroom, where I took off my shirt and pajama pants and stood in front of the mirror. My chest looked as bad as my arms, but the skin from my thighs down was clear. At least it wasn’t on my face. Yet.
    Still in my underwear, I went to the kitchen and called the number for my mom’s store. “Mom,” I said when she came on the line. “I’m allergic to the antibiotic. I have to go to the ER.”
    “Allergic how?” she asked, suspicious. This wasn’t the first time I’d called her at work with a medical emergency.
    “I have hives all over my body. They itch.”
    Mom sighed. “Take some Benalyn, Riley. You’ll be fine.”
    “Benadryl,” I corrected. “And we don’t have any.”
    “Then put some Calamine lotion on them.”
    I snorted. “Yeah, Calamine lotion will be a big help when I go into anaphylactic shock.”
    “Come on, babe. You’re not going to go into ana…whatever…shock.” She sighed again, louder this time. “I have to get back to work. Call me when you get back from the ER.”
    I hung up and got down to business. A visit to the ER took a lot of preparation. The wait might be anywhere from one hour to eight hours, depending on how many doctors were on call and if some kind of dire emergency took place like a ten-car pile-up or a sudden wave of heart attack victims. Such unpredictability required a battery of supplies—book, cell phone, change for the vending machines, granola bars, and anti-bacterial hand gel for those times when a Cougher decides to sit right next to you and hack germs in your direction.
    After my shower I actually did dot myself with Calamine lotion, making me look like I’d been attacked by a swarm of angry bees while standing in a patch of poison ivy. But it helped quell the itch enough for me to eat a whole bagel without stopping to scratch. Finally ready, I slung my backpack over my shoulders and walked to the bus stop.
    By the time I arrived at the hospital, it was almost one o’clock and my throat felt a little tight. Maybe I was about to go into anaphylactic shock. Oh well, I was in the right place for it.
    Ten or so people sat in the waiting room, all wearing the same Am I ever going to get out of here? expression. I pulled a number—37—and took a seat near the middle of the room. Three seats to my left, a large woman with dark moles on her face turned to stare at me. I guess I did look pretty weird, stroking my pink polka-dotted arm like I was washing with an invisible bar of soap. I gave her a tiny smile and she went back to her Danielle Steele