Reinstalling Win8 without disc or drives

Hi All,
I have a system that froze and I have been struggling with for days. Long story short, Lenovo Twist with solid state hard drive and no optical disc drive. I woke up last week and had a black screen. So I rebooted and went through the steps to recover (not 12 :) after a couple of days of free time I had to force the recovery with f10 and then I could only get the reset windows option to come up wanting me to insert my recovery media.
I don't have any. Windows 8 was preinstalled so I don't have the key. Yes it was visible on the system but that's not an option now and without a optical disc I couldn't burn a recovery disc.
After arguing with Lenovo, Staples, and Microsoft about warranties etc. I want to just get my system running. I want to buy windows 8 and install from a stick or external optical drive right? someone told me I cannot just download to the stick and insert into a usb slot. Someone also said that I cannot restore from a factory (Microsoft) CD if I bought the external drive.
Any suggestions.

Thanks, its been sooo long since I have been here!

Shawn