Chapter 1 - The Floor Was Cold And He Could Not Breathe
The floor was cold through my suit pants and that was the first clear thing I could feel. I had gone down on one knee thinking I could ride it out, then both knees, then one hand flat on the dark reflective glass of the office floor to keep from tipping over. My chest would not open. I kept pulling and getting nothing, a thin whistle stuck high in my throat. In front of me, near the leg of the wooden desk, my blue inhaler lay on its side where I had dropped it. I had already pressed it twice and gotten dust.
Elena was beside me before I understood she was in the room. She had been wiping the windows, her cart parked by the door, and suddenly her hand was on my back, steady and warm through my shirt. The overcast light coming off the high-rise windows turned everything gray-blue except the warm pool from the desk lamp. I could hear her breathing, normal and even, and that made my own panic worse. I was supposed to be down the hall running a budget meeting in six minutes.
My name is Julian Hale. I was thirty-four and I had not told anyone in that tower that I still had asthma.
She picked up the inhaler off the floor first. She shook it, pressed it once toward the air, and her face changed. "Look at me. Can you breathe? This one's empty. Do you have another? Stay with me. Breathe out first."
I tried to shake my head and could not finish the motion. The wheeze took over. I clutched at my open collar like I could tear more space for air. Black spots moved at the edge of my vision. She kept her hand on my back and leaned in so I had to look at her, long dark hair pulled back, light blue uniform with that white lace apron over it. She was kneeling on that hard floor in a way that must have hurt her knees and she did not move.
I thought about the desk drawer. There had been a backup once, months ago, and I had taken it on a trip and never replaced it. I hated the paper trail of the pharmacy. I hated the look on HR's face if a CEO put down a chronic condition on a form. I nodded toward the desk but I could not get words out, and she read it wrong or read it right and reached for her own apron instead.
Both her hands went into the front pocket of her white apron. She pulled out a second small blue inhaler with a white label. Same size. Same color. For a half second I stared at it and thought I was hallucinating it, that my body had invented what I needed.
She uncapped it, shook it hard, and moved it to my mouth. "Breathe out first," she said again, quieter. I tried to empty what little I had. Then she pressed the canister. "One, two, three, four."
I held it. My eyes were half closed. The mist tasted bitter and chemical. I counted with her in my head because I could not speak, and on four I tried to breathe in again and found a little more room than before. Not enough. She waited, watched my shoulders, then gave me another puff and counted again under her breath. The lamp behind her blurred. Slowly the whistle got lower. The band around my ribs loosened one notch.
When I could finally get a sentence out, my voice sounded far away. "Why did you help me?"
She did not answer right away. She turned the inhaler she had used over in both hands and looked at the little white dose counter window on the end. Her brow pulled together. The worried look was not the same as before. Before she had been focused on my breathing. Now she was focused on the object.
"This number doesn't look right," she said.
I leaned back against the side of the wooden desk and tried to keep my breathing steady. My suit jacket had ridden up. My shirt was damp under the arms. I held out my hand for the inhaler and she did not give it to me yet. She glanced from the counter on her inhaler to the empty one still lying on the floor, then to me.
Footsteps sounded in the hallway outside. Not passing by. Stopping. Someone paused right in front of my office door.
May you like
Elena's eyes flicked to the door, then back to the inhaler in her hands. She lowered her voice. "Don't let them see that."
The handle started to turn.
