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I came home early from work, feeling a bit dizzy and just out of sorts. Thinking a shower would help, I head to our room and the en suite bath. But as I go to undress, I suddenly collapse onto the bed. As I lie there, my breathing becomes steadily weaker. Soon, I’m only gasping a few times per minute, my body barely clinging to life. 

When you arrive an hour or so later, calling my name, you find me face down across a corner of the bed.  I appear unconscious, but somehow I am still partially aware; I can hear and feel. Through the fog, I hear you call my name in concern, and feel you shake my shoulders trying to rouse me. I can’t respond in any way. I feel you lean close to my face, checking for breathing, before gently rolling me over into your arms. I feel you cradle me in your arms, stroking my face and hear you curse as you realize how weak and irregular my gasping breaths are, only 2 or 3 per minute. I feel you gently tilt my head back over your arm and pinch my nose; then your warm lips covering my cool mouth, your warm breath filling down my throat into my starving lungs. I feel the pressure of your fingers in the groove of my neck. 

“Dammit! Their pulse is slow and erratic, too. We need help now,” you state. I hear your phone beep as you dial 911 on speaker. And again, your mouth covering mine, your breath filling my lungs. “911, what is you emergency?” a professional voice asks from the tinny phone speaker. 

“I need an ambulance at 555 Brookbend Rd,” you say before breathing into me once more. “I found my partner unresponsive and barely breathing. They’re hardly moving any air and their pulse is slow and erratic. I’m assisting them with mouth-to-mouth. Please, send help quickly!” Then you bend to ventilate me again.

“An ambulance is enroute, they should be there in less than 5 minutes. Stay on the line and tell me if their condition changes,” the disembodied voice instructs. 

You continue rhythmically filling my lungs and begging me to come back to you, stroking my face and shoulder between breaths and monitoring my pulse and weak attempts to breathe. 

“Breathe, love. Come on, breathe for me. You have to hang on,” you whisper between breaths.

After a minute or so, you notice that all my attempts to gasp and breathe have stopped; I’m now in full respiratory arrest. It is harder now to fully inflate my lungs. You gently pick me up under my knees and shoulders and lie me flat on my back on the floor. You tilt my head back and attempt to ventilate. When you feel resistance, you retilt my head and try again, only to feel more resistance to the air flow. 

“They're in respiratory arrest; all attempts at breathing have stopped. It’s getting hard to ventilate them. I’ve tried repositioning their head, but there is still resistance. Their abdomen and chest seem to be spasming, too,” you say to update the 911 operator.

I feel your hands on me, manipulating my body, your lips on mine, breathing for me. I hear you beg me to stay, muffled as if through a pillow or bedding. As you talk to the operator, I notice spasms in my diaphragm, but before I can figure out what's going on, the world changes to a chaotic buzz of noise and movement. My body begins to convulse. My limbs shake, my neck arches back, but even worse, my chest, diaphragm and abdomen are locked in a tight, painful spasm. Like the end of a hiccup, but this continues without relief. I feel hands on me as you roll me on my side and support my head so it doesn’t hit the floor. You don’t restrain me in any way, just loosely cradle me in your arms as the violent convulsions rack my body.

“Where's the ambulance? Hurry, now they're seizing. I can't get any air into them,” you exclaim to the operator.

“It's almost there,” she answers just as you hear sirens in the distance. It feels hopeless, but you continue to try to breathe for me while supporting me on my side. For me, everything is just noise and static and chaos and pain.

As the seizure dissipates, I come back to my limited senses of hearing and touch. I feel your warm mouth on mine. A thin stream of your breath starts reaching my lungs as they begin to relax from the seizure. The next breath gives some relief from the burning suffocation in my lungs. “Please, don't stop,” I think; you're the only thing keeping me alive, even as I realize my heart is growing weaker, slowing down even more.

There are more hands on me. Gloved hands. Cutting my t-shirt open, sticking things to my chest. Hands on my head, replacing your warm lips with a squishy mask on my face, cold dry air filling my lungs with force. A stab in my arm, a tight crushing band on my bicep, something pinching my fingertip. Ugh, just pain everywhere.