Derpy Can't Breathe Good

by darf

Chapter 4our

That night, Derpy thought hard about her decision on when to use her new breather-thingy first. She remembered it had a lot of different names, but she thought that since it was for helping it breathe, calling it a 'breather' made a lot of sense. Like calling a thing that toasted bread a 'toaster'. That made sense too.

It was late at night, a little past when Derpy normally went to bed, and the sky was dark and hot and Derpy's window was open and there was barely a cloud in the sky. She could see the moon, and it looked like it was close enough to touch. It was really big, an almost perfect circle. Derpy reached a hoof up towards it.

Sometimes, her chest would get tight without her noticing it, and suddenly the next breath she would draw in was shorter, or just a little bit less. And she would notice it then, and start to wonder if the next breath was going to be back to normal, or if it was going to be the same, or worse. And usually it would be worse.

And by the time she had started counting her breaths, and focusing on her beaths, and asking her breaths and begging her breaths and pleading with her breaths to please go back somewhere she could forget about them, when she could think about what she was looking at or the bed she was lying down in or anything other than how hard it was to make her chest go from one part of the huuuuuh to the ahhhhh on the other side. It felt like she was trying to throw a sponge down a football field in a single throw.

But that had happened a lot before, and she didn't have a breather back then. So was that when she was supposed to use it? Or when it got worse? Right when she was about to pass out? Just before then? As she was losing consciousness, or things were starting to become dark?

Derpy was gasping hard now, holding a hoof to her chest. She used her other hoof to pick up the bright blue breather, and shook it clumsily, noticing how much strength it suddenly took not only to lift the tiny apparatus, but just to move her body at all. Everything was mollasses. A sugary soup. Her breaths were wading through exactly the same.

Eyes closed. She popped the cover off. Pop. Put the breather in her mouth. Squeezed.

It made a sound like fwooooosh. Like a balloon blowing up.

Derpy felt a lot of something that was light and feathery and tasted a little like stale air and cough syrup. She remembered she was supposed to breathe in, and she did. Her lungs screamed with their only voice, the raspy wheezing that rattled in Derpy's chest as she drew in a precious mouthful of air and her new medicine.

It was just like the doctor said—even though she couldn't remember exactly what he had said. It was probably just like that.

She could breathe again. Her chest was calming down.

Derpy imagined her two lungs wiping off after a scuffle, both sweating heavily, before giving each other grudging smiles and hugging out the outcome of the brawl.

Derpy laid back in her bed and let the tiny blue inhaler land softly next to her on the pillow.

It was like magic.

I'm going to keep you around all the time, Derpy though to herself as she sat up. She remembered just in time to take the pills out of their package, and did her best to swallow them with the glass of water she kept on her bedside table. One of the pills seemed really big, and she had to try a few times and fill up her water once to get it down, and her throat made choking noises and felt like the pill got stuck in there somewhere, even though she knew it probably didn't.

She wondered if she was supposed to feel sleepy right away.

The moon was still there, waving at her from far out in space. Derpy waved back at it as she fell down into her pillows and blankets.

Before she had time to wonder about her breathing or the way to sleep, her eyes were closed, and she was snoring quietly.