A Breath of Fresh Air

A cough, a sniffle, a scratch, a sneeze. I’m clutching at my throat and have fallen to my knees.

You all are going to watch me die.

Alarmed whispers and small cries ripple throughout the hospital waiting room, a patient has crumpled out of their seat and appears to be struggling.

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  They continue to stare at me, a few shrink away from my frame, growing colder as the tile floor drains every ounce of heat from my bones. Not a single person approaches me as I struggle to breathe, gasping for air as I feel my throat start to close.

I came here for a referral for my prescription asthma treatment, my pharmacist denied my last fill up, and I’ve had no word from any of my doctors why I’ve been denied. If I were to have an attack without it I would die. What wonderful timing this is.

   My heart rate rises at an increasing rate; I begin to pick myself off the floor and make eye contact with one of the nurses who’s currently chatting up the new security guard. She seems to snap back to the present to realize she’s in a waiting room full of the sick and dying, and she’s staring down a certain someone who’s suffocating. She puts her reception papers down among the rest of her mess and runs to my aid.

“Ma’am, ma’am, what’s wrong? What’s your name?” I give her my wrist so she can look at my hospital bracelet, a sterile white against my sallowed skin.

“Okay Marida, we’re going to get you some help, come with me.”  The woman easily lifts me and rests me against her shoulder, taking most of my weight and helping me closer to the hospital doors. She calls out several commands and some codes I don’t quite understand, pushing through the doors and placing me into the first room on the right. I heave and choke, tears brimming my eyes. I can’t breathe. 

I’m going to die here and they’re going to watch me. 

She immediately rushes out of my room; blood roars through my ears, the floor is swaying. I grab onto the railing of the medical bed and try to slow my heart rate, having a panic attack right now would only kill me faster. Maybe it’d be a blessing.

A doctor and a couple of nurses swing into the room, and with a clipboard in hand he goes over my information quickly and I nod to confirm my details. Beads of sweat pool along my hairline and temples; looking up at the clock I can safely give myself maybe three minutes before I go completely lights out. The doctor frantically flips through my file, reading my conditions and reviewing my medications. He murmurs in one of the nurses’ ears, she whispers back. I can just barely hear it.

   They don’t have it. They don’t have my medication. 

I’m going to die here and they’re going to watch me. 

My eyes are puffy, I don’t stop the tears. I check the clock again.

  Two minutes.

My crying only makes it worse, my sinuses block and what little air I was able to get is completely gone. I tilt my head up, a feeble attempt at letting my sinuses drain, tears continuing to race down my cheeks. I can’t believe this is happening. I’ve always struggled with my breathing, and I’ve even toyed around with the thought of what would happen if I forgot my inhaler. I never thought something this bad could happen, especially not in the place where I should be the least worried about it. I’m in a hospital for Christ’s sake, but I’m in a hospital that doesn’t carry my medicine. It’s already unfortunate enough that I was born with allergies and weakened lungs, but of course I had to be allergic to the majority of mainstream medications for Asthma. Albuterol, Levalbuterol, Metaproterenol, all off the table. No, I have to have a custom ordered medication – that’s insanely hard to come by and expensive as all hell. Of course they wouldn’t have it. Who is going to take care of my dog? I never got to say goodbye. Oh my God.

I’m going to die here and they’re going to watch me. 

The doctor curses upon hearing the news, apologizes and assures me that everything is going to be okay, that he’ll be right back. He doesn’t know that I heard what she told him, I know that it won’t be okay. He doesn’t know that I have an eight year old Greyhound at home, who won’t know why I don’t come back. He doesn’t know that the last thing that I did with my mom this morning was fight. He doesn’t know that I’m still just a kid and I make stupid mistakes and I do stupid things and I haven’t necessarily made something of myself but I’m not ready to die yet. I’ve always known I have a mucher higher risk of dying at an early age, much more than everyone around me. That doesn’t mean I ever stopped being scared of death. That doesn’t mean I ever actually thought I was going to die. I check the clock once more. One minute and fifteen seconds. That is, if I even have that long. At this point it’s a race between the clock and that doctor, with whatever he has planned, and I guess however long I can hold my breath – but I was never very good at swimming. One minute.

—

“Marida honey?” Mom calls up the stairs. “Breakfast’s ready!” I sigh and put my book down. I need to get this homework done, I fell asleep early last night and had forgotten about it until now. “Coming!” I quickly jog down the stairs, making sure to avoid the nail sticking up on the second to last step. I grab the end of the banister and use my weight to swing myself towards the kitchen. 

“Marida! I told you to stop putting your weight on the railing!” I roll my eyes and continue on. “You know,” she starts as I enter the kitchen “your cousin molly just got first place – ”

“ – In the track race, yeah, yeah I know Mom.” I sigh again “You know I can’t do track. Or anything that involves rigorous movement. My lungs?”

“I know, I know.. but you could do something! Something, and I would be so excited to tell your grandparents…  and, and my sister how well – ”

“Mom.” I stare her down, anger heating my cheeks. “I am not my cousin. I will never be her. I am not some reigning champion in literally everything I do. Please stop trying to get me to be a part of things that I don’t care about so you can compete with your sister. I am your kid, not your race horse. Stop treating me like one.” She immediately drops any niceties she had prepared for this morning. “I don’t understand how you can be so lazy. No daughter of mine would sit around all day like you do, you aren’t like a single one of us, not me, not your dad, not your cousins. There isn’t a single one of us who hasn’t been in a sport, or at least done some sort of hobby! You do nothing! There’s absolutely no reason for it, unless your intention is to disappoint us, your asthma is no reason to stop you from succeeding in something.” 

I look down and leave the kitchen, returning to my room. I don’t want her to see the tears welling in my eyes. Behind me I can hear her throwing away my breakfast she just made.

—

The doctor sprints back into the room, sneakers squeaking on the newly polished tiles. He brandishes a syringe, presumably a corticosteroid shot. He approaches me, chest heaving and eyes bright with worry. “This is Dupixent, this is a newer medicine that should open your airways almost immediately-”

I shake my head violently, I know what Dupixent is. When it first came out as a new, non-oral medication for those with severe asthma, I was among the first to try it – and it caught every nerve I have on fire. Another medication to add to the list.

“I know, let me finish,” he pleads, “It’s going to open your airways, and then put you immediately into anaphylaxis. You’ll be able to breathe again, but you’re going to wish you weren’t. I’m going to give you a shot of Epinephrine, hook you up on oxygen, and then attempt to bring you out of it with a blood transfusion.” I can’t mask my terror, glass shards shredding through my heart. I lower my head and clasp my hands to calm the shaking. I don’t want to die. 

He continues with a last, bone chilling sentence. “This probably won’t save you, but it’s your only shot.” I look at the clock one last time. Fifteen seconds. I’m out of time.

I’m going to die here and they’re going to watch me.

I nod my head, he takes my arm and injects me with the medication. It takes less than three seconds for everything to clear, and I can breathe. He spins to grab the Epipen, but I can already feel it, every nerve, every pore, every inch of skin is on fire – inside and out. I feel it spread across my body with each beat of my heart.

Thunk Thunk

 He was right, oh God do I wish I wasn’t breathing. He squeezes the outer part of my thigh and slams the needle down, injecting yet another medicine into my system. If it’s supposed to help with the burning at all, I can’t feel a difference. A guttural, inhuman noise claws its way up my throat. An oxygen machine is wheeled into the room and the nurses work to hook it up with the bed, they lay me back against the crinkling paper and one of them holds my hand. They adjust the bed and remove its brakes, allowing the entire system to be mobile. “We’ve called your mother- she’ll be on her way soon.” I weakly shake my head, I don’t want her to see me like this. Although, they don’t seem to notice my objection and carry on with their urgent task of wheeling me to a room they can perform a transfusion in.

The burning only gets worse; strangled cries tease around my tongue and escape through my clenched teeth. I rake at the bed sheets and railings – the nurses try again to reassure me that things will get better soon. I don’t believe a single goddamn one of them. I stare up at the ceiling as we pass through hallways and different rooms. I count the harsh lights in pairs of two while I listen to the groans and cries of other patients around me. Finally, we roll to a stop in a room that felt as though it was on the opposite side of the hospital. I can feel myself start to lose grip on my consciousness, I’m falling asleep. What a merciful thing that would be, sleep. I let it happen, the pain begins to feel farther away. I can faintly hear the nurses calling out to me, I think one might be grabbing my arm, I don’t really care. I feel something sharp.

I’m going to die here and they’re going to watch me.

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Picture: “Hospital” by  Ralf Heß from openverse is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0 license.