“Shh,” I said. I finished counting. “—six elephants, seven elephants, eight elephants, nine elephants, ten elephants.”
“Elephants?” said Paris, in a hysterical tone. Like she was freaking out but hard. She was fully human now, the stony tone gone from her voice, and I almost forgot about how she had been on the phone earlier; I had other stuff on my mind.
I was a terrible friend.
Anyway.
I took another deep breath. Better. No hitching in the chest. I took another.
Okay.
My airways were clearing. The epinephrine was doing its job. My mouth was still sore though.
“You count to ten,” I said, as I massaged my thigh. “Because the spring keeps squeezing the drug through the needle. If you don’t wait, you lose some of the injection. They teach you to count elephants, because it makes sure.”
“What the **** happened?”
“A good Samaritan,” I said.
“Huh?”
I shook my head. “Long story.” I picked up my bag from the sidewalk—the shoulder bag I carried everywhere. It was green and had red writing embroidered onto it: ALLERGIC TO PEANUTS!
CASSANDRA DI MATTEO
76 OCEAN DRIVE OAKWOOD
Mom had sewn it herself, and it was the lamest and least cool thing in the world, but I still carried it with me at all times and would have fought anyone who tried to take it from me, bare fists. I opened the bag and handed Paris my spare EpiPen. “Here: if I start struggling to breathe, give me that. Meanwhile, call an ambulance.”
“Now?”
“Yes, now. Make sure it’s a paramedic ambulance. Tell them I’m having an anaphylaxis and have injected myself with 0.3 of epinephrine. At …”—I checked my watch—“at about twenty past seven.”
Paris made the call, then she sat down beside me. “This is why you called?”
“What? Oh. No. I called because … You know what, I can’t … I can’t.”
“Sure,” said Paris. “Sure. Let’s just get you better.”
“I’ll be fine,” I said. “But they’ll want to keep me overnight.”
We waited in silence for a moment.
“Want me to come with you?” asked Paris.
“Please.”
“And your dad. You want me to call him?”
“Um … yes. Please. Wait.”
“Yeah?”
“We need a story. I need a story.” I thought for a moment. “Okay, so I was at your place. You made cookies. I ate one. Then we left to get sodas, and I had a delayed reaction. It can take two hours.”
“I don’t live very near here.”
“He doesn’t know that.”
“And won’t he be pissed with me for making you the cookies?”
“No. He’ll be pissed with me for not checking. I’ll say they were chocolate; that I wanted to be polite. Or something. He’ll probably never let me leave the house again; he’ll think I’m totally irresponsible. But hey.”
“You can’t tell him the truth? Whatever that is?”
“No.”
Paris frowned at me. “He doesn’t know about Dr. Lewis, does he?”
“No.”
“Jeez, Cass. Way to set yourself up for a fall. Wait. Does your psych know?”
Silence from me.
“Jeez, Cass.”
Paris dialed the number I gave her. It was a short conversation. What I could hear of it sounded like this:
PARIS: Hi, Mr… . Oh. Actually, I don’t know Cass’s last name. Hi, Mr. Cass’s Dad.
DAD: Kccccchhhhhhh.
PARIS: No, no! No, she’s okay. I mean, she’s not okay. I mean … ****. She’s had a reaction. To nuts, you know? She stabbed herself with the thing …
DAD: Kccccchhhhhhh
PARIS: (nodding) The EpiPen, yeah. Yes, she’s breathing fine. No, it’s totally my fault. I insisted she eat a cookie. I didn’t realize.
DAD: Kccccchhhhhhh Kccccchhhhhhh Kccccchhhhhhh
PARIS: Oh, no, yeah, no, she did tell me. But I didn’t know how serious it was. (Raising her hands and eyebrows at me, like, I’m trying!)
DAD: Kccccchhhhhhh
PARIS: Anyway, I’ve called an ambulance. We’re going to City.
DAD: Kccccchhhhhhh Kccccchhhhhhh
PARIS: I will.
She hung up.
“Wow,” she said to me. “That guy’s tense. Anyone would think I was telling him that his daughter had suffered a potentially life-threatening allergic reaction.”
I rolled my eyes at her, and she laughed.
“Seriously,” I said, “is he pissed?”
“Hard to tell. He’s jacked up though.”
“Super,” I said.
Paris started laughing again. I loved her for it.
Remember that:
I loved her.
Not like you, not romantically, but I loved her.
The ambulance came, and Paris rode in it with me all the way to the hospital. She was having the best time, now that I was clearly going to be all right. She flirted with Ben, the younger paramedic, and thought the banks of instruments were the coolest; she had never been in an ambulance before, she said.
Ben stuck tabs to the top of my chest and a clip to the end of my index finger. Then he watched my heartbeat on the screen. “107,” he said. “Saturation 100.”
“Good,” said the guy I think was called Peter. He was older, with a mustache. “Looks like you won’t need to be intubated,” he said to me.