As I woke up the blinding lights felt as if they were hitting me from every side with the burning heat of scorched metal.  I was lying in the hospital bed; my asthma treatment hadn’t worked.  I was confused and my heart was beating as fast as a hummingbird’s.  Mom was standing beside my bed with red, swollen eyes and tears streaming down her face.  My oxygen level got so low that I lost consciousness again.  As I came to, I remember the room was green.  Not a pretty green that soothes, but a filthy yellowish green-like vomit.  The smells in the room were so poignant that I felt nauseous.  There were machines hooked up to me and others on standby.  Nurses and doctors were in and out and the noise seemed deafening.  All the while I could barely focus on what was happening.   
   

I could see white figures all around me.  Doctors and nurses were a blizzard of white with blue masks on.  Even my mom had bleached white shorts and a shirt on that day.  I could feel my throat was so dry, I felt like I had all the sand from the Mohave Desert in it. Yet the nurse continued to shove a tube down my throat.  When the tube was placed, I could taste bile coming from my stomach. The bile tasted like a combination of everything I had eaten the past several days made into a disgusting mush.  It wasn’t anything I could identify.  But the taste still lingers in my mind years past that night. Another nurse was stabbing a needle in my left arm for an IV.  My arm began to throb and hurt, she couldn’t find the vein and had to continue to dig in me at new places and finally, she was successful. I was a pin cushion, injected with much needed clear hydrating fluids from one of the IVs and an unknown yellow fluid from the other.  When the yellow fluid entered my body the entire world inside that hospital room started to seem as if in slow motion. I looked at my fingers and there was a bluish tint in them as I tried to raise my arm to escape from the needles.  It felt like it took an hour to even raise my arm off the bed. Dizziness that tricked me into thinking that everything around me was moving and spinning and there was a feeling of wooziness and being so heavy that I couldn’t move. My mom was talking to the Doctor, but I could not make out what she was saying as her voices was very deep and her words slow.   
   

Laying there in bed I felt as if I had a rope constricting around my throat.  I couldn’t breathe and I was gasping for air. Air was turning into shorter and shorter spurts, I was struggling and fighting for my life. My chest began to hurt.  A red alarm on one of the machines sounded as loud as a siren because my oxygen registered below 81. Now the situation could mean life or death. My body felt like it was detached, I had no control over it.  My mind was telling my mouth to move and tell my mom I was okay, but nothing happened. I was losing grip on reality.  
   

Suddenly a white figure came running in to my room and gave me the life-giving oxygen that I so desperately needed.  Slowly my breathing began to stabilize and my scared mom sat down beside me, she seemed to be calmer as she held my hand.  I could still feel her damp tears on my arm.  I wanted to comfort her but I couldn’t move; the yellow fluid was working.  
   

Crisis averted I fell into a deep slumber.  It felt like I had slept only a few minutes, when in fact I had been asleep for hours.  I awoke to the sounds of footsteps echoing around me. As my eyes opened, everything around the room was blurry and my throat was drier than before.  Ice chips were given to ease the pain and it felt like the halcyon days when I use to stand in line for a treat from our local ice cream man. Voices started sounding familiar.  I detected my aunt’s infectious laugh and saw her standing by my bed, images were now clear.  She looked like she had just come from work in her magenta suit and heels.  She came over and sat on my bed with a huge sigh of relief.  There were no lingering effects of the events from earlier in the day.  My breathing was regular and there was a sense of calm and tranquility. Most of the machines were gone and the only remaining ones signaled stable and normal readings.  The doctor had told my mom that if I remained consistent through the night I could go home first thing in the morning!  My day had gone from a near death experience to news that was music to my ears.