I don’t really know the order that things happened, the whole situation was a blur.

I had just come home from practice one night and I had a spelling bee the next day, which I had not studied for at all. My mom told me that she smelled something weird, but my dad said it was nothing. He had just turned on the oven; no one thought anything of it.

I fell asleep with a packet of words clutched in my hands, oblivious to what would happen next.

My mom woke up at two in the morning, she stood to go to the bathroom and felt light headed and dizzy. Her heart was racing at what she said felt like a million beats per second. She thought she was having a heart attack. No longer able to walk, she started crawling towards the door and yelling for my dad, but there was no answer. Soon after, she fell back asleep into the land of no cares and blank stares.

In the other part of the house, my sister fell asleep early that night. She woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, feeling like she had the flu. When she finally got there, after feeling like everything was in slow motion, she checked her phone and saw a text message from her boyfriend, saying that his grandpa just died. After she read the message, she involuntary crumpled onto a pile of hangers on the floor. At that moment, she knew something wasn’t right.

My dad usually falls asleep on the floor downstairs to the murmurs of the television, so that’s what happened this night, right next to the basement door. He remembers waking up and then blacking out, standing up and blacking out, once more, standing up and blacking out.

My sister’s boyfriend was concerned based on the text messages he was receiving from my sister, so he thought he would stop by before work, around 5 a.m. He arrived and looked through the front window: couldn’t see anything. Rang the doorbell: no answer. Called everyone’s phones: voicemail.

He walked around to the back and glanced through the window and witnessed my dad laying on the floor unconscious. He shouted and knocked, did everything he could, but my dad still didn’t stir. He called 911, then decided to knock down the door. He ran inside and shook my dad; luckily my dad groaned, so he knew that my he was alive. Then he went upstairs to check on my sister; she was responsive. He found my mom in the bathroom wedged between the wall and toilet, and she was half awake, so he figured he would check on me.

He voyaged on the journey of uncertainty, to my room: I’m not on the top bunk, I’m not on the futon, I’m not on the floor. He searched my whole room and couldn’t find me anywhere. He didn’t know that at some point in the night I had rolled off my mom’s bed and hit my face on her dresser.

After what felt like forever, the first responders got to the house and told my sister’s boyfriend to get out while they find everyone. Everyone managed to get out of the house with help from the EMTs, but I was still unconscious and limp as they carried me out of the house.

This whole time felt like the creepiest dream ever. It felt so real; I woke up once in the hospital, saw my dad’s bloody hand with an IV in his arm and all I heard was, “Everything’s okay, you’re okay, everything’s going to be fine.” Then, I passed out again; this was a bizarre dream.

The next thing I knew I was on the roof. I saw a helicopter; apparently I was being moved to a different hospital. I remember being in the sky for only a portion of the flight. I was so confused, floating in and out of consciousness.

I didn’t physically feel anything, except exhaustion. I started to actually wake up, to reality, when they were rushing me to the ER.

I had no idea what time it was at this point because there were no windows in the room I was in.

I realized that I needed to pee really badly, so I got out of the hospital bed and I could not keep my balance for the life of me. I was only about 100 pounds at the time, yet it took two people to keep me up on my feet.

Now I knew that this was not a dream. This was real. I had been poisoned by carbon monoxide.

Just then, I understood that I was by myself in the hospital. I asked the nurse where my family was and she said she talked to my mom; apparently they were coming to visit me later.

It registered to me that I wasn’t hungry. I had no appetite at all; I hadn’t even thought about food.

Shortly after they told me they were still concerned with my oxygen levels so they put me in a hyperbaric chamber. They put something similar to a scuba helmet on me because it forces oxygen into the lungs. I had to stay in there for a whole hour with a plastic cone on my head. I literally felt like a dog. It was really weird. Everything was really weird. This whole circumstance was weird.

The next morning I woke up and I felt pretty normal; I could walk and talk, so I ordered pancakes from the hospital cafeteria and realized that my throat was immensely dry. It felt like somebody had taken knives and sliced the inside of my throat. It hurt way too bad to eat anything. The rest of my family was okay, they weren’t experiencing the same effects as I was.

Luckily, my whole family, including myself, have all recovered from this experience. If my sister’s boyfriend hadn’t stopped by the house that morning, we would all be dead right now.

The ironic thing: the day before, my mom said she had to replace the carbon monoxide detectors in the house.