Chasing Her Tail Read Online Free PDF Page B

they let the puppy out without her seeing? And what did they do with it? She remembered the classroom door closing as she turned around after calling the nurse. Had Callie snuck the puppy out with her?
    Or Sam—had he returned then left again with the dog? Bridget shook her head. He’d been in the bathroom during all the puppy excitement. He wouldn’t have even known there was a dog in the closet.
    With a bewildered sigh, Bridget walked over to the phone to cancel the call to animal control.

    She was really sick. Almost scarily sick. Bridget had been feverish all night and her body retched and ached until she started crying in the early morning hours. She knew it would just make her head throb and her eyes swell—as if she didn’t have enough misery—but Bridget couldn’t stop the tears from trickling across the bridge of her nose to plop onto the pillow.
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    Title
    This wasn’t the flu. Bridget had the flu before and this wasn’t it. This wasn’t anything she’d ever experienced. Her muscles and bones felt as if they were fighting under her fever-hot skin, as if her entire body was rejecting itself. Fuck, it hurt.
    Groaning, she shoved herself onto her other side. The shift of position didn’t help.
    A dull, tearing pain shot down her arm and Bridget knew she had to go to the emergency room. The thought of sitting at the hospital, waiting for hours, made her cry harder but she forced her aching body out of bed anyway.
    As she dressed, slowly and painfully, Bridget wished she didn’t live alone. Most of the time she liked her solitary home but being sick made her lonely. There was no one to pet her, bring her soup and let her be snarly to him or, most practically, no one to drive her to the emergency room when she was really, really sick. Micah’s face came to mind and Bridget almost started to cry again.
    Forcing herself to concentrate on putting on her shoes, Bridget shoved away the self-pity and shuffled out of her bedroom. The thought of calling a cab to take her to the hospital was too depressing to bear. Calling Jodi crossed her mind but Bridget hesitated. Jodi lived in a suburb forty minutes away and the hospital was barely a mile from Bridget’s house. She could drive herself.
    Although the streetlights looked strange—too bright and haloed—Bridget made it to the emergency room entrance without crashing the car into a tree. She only had to wait a half-hour before an efficient woman had her reclining in a chair next to the nurses’ station.
    “I’m so sorry you’re out here,” the nurse apologized as she took Bridget’s blood pressure. “We’re out of rooms. It’s been a crazy night.”
    “It’s okay,” Bridget reassured her, her voice a little croaky. “As long as I’m not getting a pelvic exam, I’m fine being out here.”
    “Of course we wouldn’t do that,” the nurse exclaimed, looking horrified. Bridget just closed her eyes, too tired and sick to try to explain that it was a joke.
    Her left hand was really hurting now. She held it up to look at it, expecting it to be swollen to twice the normal size. The nurse gasped.
    Bridget blinked at her hand, wondering if she was having a fever-induced hallucination.
    Although it wasn’t swollen, her entire hand was…shifting, as if something was moving under the skin. Her fingers appeared shorter and stubbier, like they were withdrawing into her palm. As she stared at it, Bridget could feel the muscles stretching, pulling at the bones.
    The pain drew drops of sweat from her forehead and she instantly felt clammy.
    “Am I having a seizure or something?” Bridget doubtfully asked the nurse, not taking her eyes from the freakish thing that had been her hand a few minutes ago. “A hand seizure?” Bridget shook her head. It sounded ridiculous when she said it out loud but something really crazy was going on with her hand—with her whole body.
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    Katie Allen
    “It’s…I…” the nurse stammered, tottering back a few steps and