Take my breath away

Decorum goes out the window quickly when you can’t breathe.

Your worst asthma triggers are a mix of physical activity and some form of allergies, of which you have many: pollen, trees, cats, grass.

Basically, anything furry or outside was your usual answer. This turned some of life's best things, like pets and changing seasons, into high-risk events.

You were headed home from a party together, wandering through campus on a crisp autumn night. You felt the telltale tightness in your chest, but were trying to play it cool while bee-lining toward your dorm for your inhaler before the more obvious symptoms started to show.

Too late.

You give a startled cough, and a second follows when you try to take a slow inhale. Your body reacts as though you’d siphoned smoke from a volcano.

He can’t see me like this. Even if it means crawling the rest of the way to my dorm.

Naturally, panic makes the coughing worse, which makes the panic worse; a murderous feedback loop. An asthmatic's ouroboros.

You try your best not to spin out into infinity, but it’s compoundingly unavoidable the less oxygen is able to reach your lungs.

Oxygen, that fickle bitch. Floating everywhere, all around, just outside of reach. The better to watch me die up close. Must be teamed up with the fashion industry that never includes pockets in women's clothing, making it impossible to always have my inhaler.

You’re a snowball, rolling down a hill. Oh... No, you aren’t; you’re just starting to pass out.

You need to slow your breathing if you have any chance of preventing this from becoming a more severe asthma attack. You stop walking and back up into the nearest gangly tree for support, slowly sinking down against it as carefully as possible before your legs can completely give out.

He refuses to leave; asks what you need.

What does it look like I need?

You need him to stop looking at you; to stop hearing your disgusting wheezing; to stop witnessing you suffocate to death so humiliatingly in front of him. You need fucking air.

But you can’t tell him any of that, because someone has shoved a shop vac into your lungs and is sucking them crinkly, like those storage bags for comforters and winter coats.

He sees you panicking as you struggle to regulate your breathing and puts his hand on your shoulder. Takes a slow, exaggerated breath in through his nose.

Ok, show off.

Still, the corners of your consciousness are getting fuzzy, so what the hell? As slowly as possible, you begin as deep an inhale as you dare.

In. Cough. Out.
In. Cough. Out.

You’re so fucking tired of this shit. Your lungs have held you hostage all your life, keeping you from sports and outdoor adventures.

That doesn’t mean you haven’t tried. Since you started running in high school, you’ve steadily grown stronger and more athletic. You lift weights regularly, and will one day discover a love of climbing that will take your breath away in a new way.

These things can reduce the asthma attacks, but don’t prevent them completely. Fall allergies and cold weather make them so much worse; hence this latest humiliation.

You manage to take small sips of air in tandem with him until the attack begins to wane. Your breathing is still ragged and wheezy, but you’d caught it early enough to avoid a more serious attack.

The coughing begins to feel less like breathing through a coffee straw and more like you’ve finally broken the surface of a choppy lake. You wipe tears of exertion, pain, and fear that have leaked into the corners of your eyes.

There would be no crying; you couldn't afford it right now. In a few minutes, you'll feel recovered enough to stand, make it the rest of the way back home to get your meds.

But for now, you fight to keep your breath slow, lest you trigger more coughing, as you greedily fill your lungs with the sweet oxygen it’d been starved of.

As if it hadn’t been all around you the whole time. As if it wasn’t your body itself that both required it and kept it from you.

He slips his hand into yours. Your heart races, but not in the life-threatening way.