Chapter 212: To make The pawns protest

 

The clinic room broke me; or broke my lungs anyway. This room always had a funny smell and today it was stronger like everything had just been cleaned with bleach and ammonia. My lungs squeezed together fully and for a few terrifying seconds I was almost certain that I would stop breathing altogether. I coughed hard trying to shift some air around and grabbed hold of the doctor’s bench to try and steady myself. my lungs squeaking furiously in their annoyance.

 

“Ok sweetie, try not to panic, take some deep breaths if you can and I will get your inhaler for you.” Esmee flew past me to the cupboards of medicine and turned her key in the lock pulling out the tray that had my name printed on the front of it, obscuring most of the history underneath. I could make out the name Adam-James Hayden written on the label just under my name. I wondered who would be at the very bottom. History covered with sticky tape, names since forgotten.

 

Esmee shook a blue inhaler and released two doses into the air before handing it over to me to use which I tried to do without much success. It took coordination and some lung capacity to successfully use an inhaler and I had lost most of mine by then. My coordination was focused on not letting the black dots that exploded over my vision take me under or allowing my spiraling head to pull me off of the bench and onto the floor underneath. My ears buzzed as the sounds began to echo around me apart from the thudding of my heart. The oximeater Esmee had attached to one of my fingers beeped in protest as I tried to draw more of the medicine into my lungs without much success.

 

“Sorry about that my dears I had my hands full back then.” Emmet announced cheerfully as he allowed himself into the clinic room a few seconds later rubbing alcohol rub into his hands and attaching new gloves from the display of boxes just inside the door. The smell of the alcohol rub made my lungs screech out in another protest and my breathing to accelerate. Esmee winced slightly silencing the alarm on the hand held monitor. She had not taken one eye off of the decreasing numbers anyway, there was no need for any audio prop to signal my body’s distress.

 

“Well that sounds really nasty and uncomfortable my love,” Emmet confirmed for me pressing two fingers to the back of my wrist as he followed the second hand, “and your heart is really pissed about it as well,” he confirmed.

 

“we are having trouble getting the salbutamol inhalers to stick,” Esmee said nodding with a grimace “We got O2 SATS of 89 to 90 and a pulse of 105ish; ambulance? She suggested.

 

“I’m hoping it won’t come to that. I think we should try a nebulizer first. It will make it a little bit easier to take the salbutamol in without having to hold your breath and things. We can give the maximum dose that way as well.”

 

“No!” I shouted, not caring how much it hurt to talk or how my lungs protested to the added effort put on them. I sat quietly though everything they normally gave me. I let pills of every color of the rainbow tumble down my throat every morning and every night because a nurse popped them into a cardboard cup and presented them to me with water. They all came with the promise of course that they would go towards making me better. They were meant to drive the pain away, trick my head into thinking that it was happy while others were meant to rebuild my physical body. They couldn’t manage it completely but they did give the crumbling pillars that supported me a first aid kit of super glue and sticky tape to play with. I didn’t mind them giving me them if they wanted to play with my life. They didn’t hurt, not really, and everyone needed a super living doll, however nebulizers were different, they changed the rules. They changed the rules so much that even pawns and dolls had to protest.

 

“Honey if you can’t get the asthma under control with the inhaler the nebulizer is the next step. If we call an ambulance they are going to do exactly the same thing OK? I thought you would be used to this with your history of asthma,” Emmet smiled as he went over to the cupboard and to my horror started pulling out the things that he would need to start the treatment. The panic rose higher inside me. He hadn’t understood how serious I had been. I could not – would not – use a nebulizer. Too much had passed connected with it. I had promised never again. It was not about life and death even though that was the consequence it could hold. It was about staying sane enough to want to live.