Thirty
Asher
I sat against the headboard in the dark, fighting to get air in my lungs. Porter slept beside me, on his stomach, like he usually did if he wasn’t holding me.
In through my nose, out through pursed lips.
In, out.
My shoulders were stiff from holding them up, and my chest felt like an elephant was sitting on it. The only other time I’d felt this way…
Tears filled my eyes—from the memory, or the fact I couldn’t breathe, I didn’t know.
What little breaths I could get in were shaky, and now that I was silently crying, getting the air in and out was even harder.
My chest itched on the inside, an itch that literally could not be scratched.
I should wake him up.
I looked over at Porter, sleeping soundly.
A few more minutes. A few more minutes, and I’ll be fine.
I reached up to press my fingers into the muscle where neck meets shoulder, digging deep, but to get the deepest press, I had to drop my chin and that wasn’t very conducive to breathing.
I was to the point where I couldn’t get enough air in through my nose. But even mouth breathing, I could feel my breaths weren’t full.
Reaching over, I shook Porter’s shoulder. “Porter,” I whispered, my voice shaky.
He moaned in his sleep, turning his head away from me. I shook him again. “Porter.”
“Hmm?” he answered sleepily.
“Porter, I h-have t-to go,” I tried another breath. “To go. To the. Hospital.” The tears were falling faster now. Talking took too much energy.
“Yeah?” He was still sleeping.
This time when I said his name, it was on a broken sob. He had to wake up. I couldn’t drive myself.
I’d hit him, but I didn’t have the energy. “P-Porter. You’ve gotta. Wake up.”
He shifted and moaned in his sleep, taking a deep breath that I was incredibly envious of.
My chest heaving, I swung my legs over the side of the bed. I sat there a moment, breathe in, breathe out, before standing. I had to squeeze my eyes shut, immediately light-headed and my vision fading to black. Breathe in, breathe out. When my head stopped spinning, I opened my eyes again.
Using the bed as a guide, I walked toward the end, reaching out for the wall on the opposite side of the room. Like I did with the bed, the wall was my guide until I reached the light switch.
The small bedroom we were in was immediately filled with light and Porter groaned at the obtrusion. He rolled to his back.
“Porter,” I tried again, moving to lean against the wall. Standing was too much.
“Yeah?” he asked, and I could tell he was actually waking up. The light worked.
“I need.” Breathe in. Breathe out. “Help.” The word was nearly a whisper.
I watched as he reached for my side of the bed and frowned when I wasn’t there. “Door.”
He rolled over and sat up, rubbing the sleep from his face. “What’s up?” He lowered his hand and his sleepy face turned into one of concern. “You look like shit. Why are you crying.”
Now the dam broke. Instead of a few tears, they were now free falling. “I can’t. B-breathe.”
He was out of bed in a heartbeat, crossing the room toward me. He took my face in both his hands and searched my eyes. “Do you need the hospital?”
I nodded in his hands.
“Fuck, you’re wheezing badly.”
I hadn’t noticed. All I could hear was the rushing in my head but now that I focused…
Yes, I was wheezing.
Porter went into overdrive, throwing a sweatshirt on over his bare chest and digging through a drawer. He came over to me with grey sweatpants in hand, kneeling in front of me. “They’re gonna be huge on you.”
It was embarrassing, him helping me dress, but there was no way I was going to put these on, on my own. I leaned against the wall, with one trembling hand on his shoulder, as I stepped into the much too large sweatpants. He pulled them up and tightened them, rolling the waist to help with the length.
If I wasn’t so oxygen-deprived, I would comment how sexy it was, him taking care of me.
But I was oxygen-deprived, and more than that, I was fucking scared.
The only other time I’d felt like this was in boot camp.
Two seconds in the gas chamber, and I was done.
I spent hours in medical, the docs trying to get my oxygen level back up to normal, before they decided that this…this…adult onset asthma…was too much of a gamble to let me finish boot camp.
I hadn’t even known you could get asthma as an adult!
I never had breathing problems before. Never had allergies. And I was far from overweight.
It was the first time I failed while on my own.
“Here, let me lift you,” Porter said, already bending to do just that.
I shook my head. “I c-can walk.”
“Asher, you’re white as a fucking sheet and your lips are turning blue.” His cool demeanor cracked. “Stop being so damn stubborn for one fucking second and let me help you.”
I tried to pull my lips in and bite them, but I had to open my mouth shortly after just to breathe. So instead, I put my arms around his neck and let him carry me out.
Porter
She was finally sleeping.
I sat in a chair beside Asher’s hospital bed and squeezed the bridge of my nose, finally allowing myself to feel the rush of emotions running through me. Since I woke up, the only thing I focused on was getting her to the hospital.
When the staff poked and prodded at her, my focus was on being her strength.
But now that she was asleep, I let myself feel.
When we made it to the emergency room, her oxygen level was fucking sixty-eight percent.
Sixty-eight percent.
What little air she was managing to breathe in, wasn’t properly exchanging in her lungs. She was immediately put on oxygen and breathing treatments.
One after another, each one bringing her oxygen levels up, but causing her body to shake. I held her hand through most of it, feeling the tremors wracking through her.
I had never, not once in my entire fucking twenty-one years, been as scared as I was tonight.
The doctors called it a severe asthma exacerbation.
I didn’t even know Asher had asthma.
But apparently she did, because she didn’t meet my eyes when the doctor announced it.
Two years.
We’d been together for two fucking years, and I didn’t know she had asthma.
Okay, cool, so she obviously had it under control, but wasn’t that something you would think to share with your partner?
Just so you know, sometimes I can’t breathe, and it can get pretty severe. No big.
I slouched in my chair and stared at the tiled ceiling.
I really thought I knew everything about her.
What else was she hiding?
Or was this the last of it?
Because let me tell you, these shocked surprise glimpses into Asher’s life were not my idea of good surprises.
“Porter.”
Her voice was muffled behind the treatment mask, and huskier than normal. I lowered my chin so I could look at her, but said nothing.
She stared at me. For a long moment, we just stared at one another until whatever Asher saw in my eyes had her own filling with tears. “I love you,” she said quietly.
I nodded. Did she, though? Or was that a lie too?
“I’m going to call the house to let them know where we went. They should all be waking up soon,” I told her instead, pulling myself up to stand. My body ached from being in that damn chair for the last six hours.
Six hours, and her oxygen level was hardly hovering around eighty-nine. They started spacing out her asthma treatments though, getting rid of one of the medications and just doing albuterol, so that was promising.
I walked through the sliding door for her room and moved to an area that had chairs, but was still within the confines of the treatment area. I may be angry with her right now, but I’d be damned if I left this area and wasn’t allowed back in.
We had told them she was my fiancée—the irony of it wasn’t lost on me—but I wasn’t taking chances.
I sat down on the hard plastic that was probably supposed to fit your ass better than a regular flat bottom chair, but it was still uncomfortable. I held my phone in my hands, my arms resting on my legs.
I couldn’t call. Shit, I didn’t want to talk to anyone.
Instead, I punched out a quick message to Mom. She was usually the first to wake up.
Took Asher to General. She had an asthma attack last night. She’s ok. We’ll be back later but may miss you guys.
I pressed send before adding, Love you, sending that too before closing my eyes and hanging my head.
“It’s a good thing you brought her in when you did,” the doctor told me shortly after Asher fell asleep. “She was borderline life-threatening. Any later, and she’d likely be in the ICU right now. As it is, she’s responding slowly, but well. We’ll reassess in a few hours.”
Life-threatening, he’d said.
Life.
Threatening.
I glanced over to the glass door of her room.
Life-threatening, and I was out here having a fucking pity party because she kept something from me.
And I didn’t tell her I loved her before I left that room.
My heart ached in my chest and I tried rubbing at the hurt. It wasn’t going anywhere, not while I was out here and she was in there.
So I stood.
And I walked back to the one who held my heart in the palm of her hand.
In her room, I saw Asher’s eyes were closed again. I slid the door shut behind me quietly but when I turned back toward the bed, her eyes were open and on me.
Without a word, I walked over to the bed and put my hands on her face and pressed my lips to her forehead. “I love you, too, beautiful. So fucking much.”
***
We were in the ER for twelve hours before the docs released her. She protested it—because she was Asher—but I pushed her to the car in a wheelchair. After getting her settled in the car, I returned the chair and pulled out my cell, checking messages for the first time since texting my mom earlier in the morning.
Mom: Ok…please be sure to bring her to the house before the guest house when you make it home.
I replied, telling her I would, and folded myself into the driver’s seat.
“We’ll stop at the lake house so I can grab our things before heading home.”
She nodded, pulling that quiet thing she did sometimes.
I put the car in reverse to pull out of our parking spot, but right after moving into drive and heading toward the lake house, I reached over and took her hand, squeezing it once before threading our fingers together.
“That was why I was discharged from boot camp,” she admitted nearly twenty minutes of silence later.
I squeezed her hand but said nothing. If there was one thing I learned over the years, it was that Asher would talk when she was ready.
As hard as that could be sometimes, if I wanted her in my life, I had to give her time.
“It was just like every other day. I was actually really excited about the gas chamber. It was this big, taboo thing that you were either scared of, or wanted to face head on.” She turned her head to look out the window, but didn’t take her hand away from mine. “Carter gave me all sorts of hints from her brothers. They’re all Marines and SEALs and whatever. I was completely prepared. I knew that we’d get in and have to break the seal on our masks. I knew that we were going to experience small amounts of the gas first. I knew that some of the girls would get panicky, and that this was the true test, the first major test, before the long hike we were doing before graduating.”
She shifted in her seat but continued telling her story. “Two seconds.” She shook her head. “Two fucking seconds, and I was the one panicking. It was like a fucking switch—one moment I was fine, and the next the breath was completely out of my lungs.”
I lifted her hand to my lips, pressing it there and not moving.
“The docs said it wouldn’t be safe for me to continue boot camp, that I could be putting my squadron in danger in a real-life situation. I wasn’t…” She stopped herself and shook her head.
I could hear her unspoken words.
She wasn’t worth the risk.
I put my blinker on. I couldn’t do this while driving.
As I eased the car onto the side of the road, Asher turned to face me. “What are you doing?”
I let go of her hand so I could put the car in park and turned in my seat, facing the beautiful girl who, because of a shitty hand and shitty events, wound up in my life.
“I’m sorry that you went through what you did. I hate that you grew up feeling unwanted, unloved. I hate that you had choices taken from you. And I’m sorry that you think you failed at things.
“But at the same time, I’m not sorry.” Asher’s frown was quick but fleeting. “If you’d been adopted, where would you be? If you were still Genevieve, who would you be? Don’t tell me you didn’t change pieces of you when you dropped your first name. You’ve always worn your tattoos and piercings as a shield.” I ran my thumb down the myriad of piercings in her right ear before cupping her face with both hands. “If it weren’t for the Marine Corps and being discharged, where would you be?
“I can tell you where you wouldn’t be. You wouldn’t be here.”
Asher swallowed hard and I watched as the green in her eyes cleared. She was going to cry and I hated that I put the tears there. I hated that what she saw as failures, I saw as an opportunity.
“I’m sorry, baby, but I’m selfish. I want you. I need you. And I’m really fucking sorry for being a dick earlier this morning. It hurt to know there were things you still held from me, but the doc’s words kept filtering through my head. If you had died…” I couldn’t finish the thought, shaking my head. I could feel tears burning behind my eyes but I forged on. “Asher, I love you so fucking much. I want you in Charleston with me because I want to marry you. I want to have with you what my parents have, what Cael has with Sydney. And I think that we’ve got it.”
I could tell I shocked her. Her mouth parted but she didn’t have words for me.
“Marry me, Asher. We can have a long engagement, I don’t fucking care. Short, long, whatever you need. But tell me you’ll marry me.”
The tears started to fill her lower lids, her eyes now completely clear and glassy. “We can figure out what you’ll do in Charleston. But I need you there with me.”
“Okay,” she whispered.
“Okay?”
A smile broke across her face and tears spilled down her cheeks. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”
Everything in me stilled. “Are you shitting me?” I didn’t think she’d say yes.
She shook her head. “No. Yes, I want to marry you.” She was still shaking her head but she let out a watery laugh. “I love you.”
“You’re going to marry me.”
“Yes!”
My grin was fucking huge. “Fuck yes.” Then I sealed the deal.