Just keep breathing

Chapter 49

Stumbling along the hallway, I listen yet again to Mel's bubbly voicemail greeting, noting as I cancel the call that its gone two in the morning.

Maybe she's asleep? Reaching her door, I muster my waning energy to knock in the hope that she might have already come home. I shove my inhaler forcefully into my mouth for the hundredth time tonight and desperately try and gain some relief from the powder that shoots out, but just like for the last twenty minutes, it had no effect at all.

I've tried everything and taken much more medication than I should have done tonight, but this attack doesn't want to subside.
I reach Mel's room and push open the door to find her bed made and the room empty.

Dammit. I'm running out of air. I can't keep moving around like this. I slide down to the floor and make my way back to my bedroom on my hands and knees, managing to reach my nebuliser, I pull the mask back over my face and grasp my phone, trying to clear my vision enough to hit the numbers on the screen to call for an ambulance.

"Brocks Drive... number 50A." I gasp down the handset, using every bit of breath I can find to force the words out of my mouth.

I'm not getting enough oxygen, and I know I will pass out soon.

"Key, under pot." I manage to splutter out, knowing I won't be able to open the door to let them in, just as the world around me turns to black.

"Miss Francis? Can you hear me?"

I'm vaguely aware of someone calling to me, what's going on? Whose voice is that?

"Miss Francis? We're going to lift you into the wheelchair now."

Wheelchair? I feel strong arms grasp my arms and legs, and for a moment I think I should try and fight them off, but my limbs feel too heavy to protest, groggily I force my eyes to open and glance around me... I'm in my bedroom. Why are there men in my bedroom?

"Ahh there you are Miss Francis, can you hear me? We're going to take you to the hospital. Just try and take deep breaths for me please."

The friendly face of a man in his mid-thirties smiles down at me as he positions me gently on a hard surface; he is wearing a green uniform... Suddenly my memories come flooding back to me in a rush.

Paramedics. I called an ambulance.

I must have passed out I realise as he straps me into the chair to prevent me falling and I feel myself moving as it is pushed down my hallway.

When we reach the front door the cold January air makes me shiver, and I am grateful that one of the paramedics seems to have wrapped a blanket around me, the harsh wool chaffs at my skin as I am loaded into the back of the ambulance.

"Hi." I manage to squeak to the kind-faced paramedic as he helps lift me from my chair onto a bed secured to the wall of the ambulance.

"Glad to have you back. You gave us a bit of a scare there, Miss Francis."

"Katie.." I correct him automatically.

"Katie, my apologies. Have you had an asthma attack of this severity before?" He asks me, and I nod furiously, deciding to save what little air I can drag into my lungs instead of wasting it answering questions.

"OK well, then you probably know the procedure by now then," He says placing a blood pressure cuff around my wrist and a pulse monitor over my index finger "I'm going to give you a shot of adrenaline, then we'll get you to the hospital OK?"

I shake my head in protest as he reaches across me the needle in hand. I am not afraid of needles. God knows I have had enough of them stuck in me over the years to have cured any aversion to them I might have once held.