Pancake Tuesday: Part Uno

For those of you who don't already know of the feelings I feel for February 21st, allow me to enlighten you through song:

Fuck you, February 21st. I will continue to hate you until my dying day.

Trust me, I sang that. Use your imagination.

For the unaware, permit me to educate you on why one particular 21st of February is responsible for shaping the man you know and secretly love (ssshhh don't fight, let it happen). This one particular date explains The Curse of the Gold Shirt, the ongoing presence of my wrist accoutrements and my present career path (the reason why I know more or less all of you that I do). Oh, and also the reason I loathe pancakes.

Flashback, bitches!

The year was 2006. It was a simpler time. One in which Facebook was still in its infancy, Pope Benedict XVI (:Adrian's Revenge) was still enjoying the "honeymoon period" (so to speak) of his papacy, the world knew only of three Die Hards, three Indiana Joneses and nobody yet knew what the fuck a Twilight was. More relevant to this story however, it was also a time at which I was a 21 year old journalism student working my way through Dublin's banking sector in order to buy pretty things for my then girlfriend. And, as this was at a time in which alcohol had not yet been invented (*citation needed*), I was all young and hopeful and....stuff. Most pressingly, I was sweating the results of the previous semester's college exams.

Pretty sure that covers the background and brings us to the date in question....

....well there was a gold shirt, but that'll come into play later.

So, it was 21/02/06 and I was on my way to rendezvous with said girlfriend, get our exam results, and do whatever it is I used to do to celebrate/commiserate before I took up drinking. Oh, and hey, also, I looked like this:

Moving on....

I probably should take this opportunity to warn you that this story is not so full of the usual whimsy and self-deprecation that seem to have become my trademark. Shit's gonna get dark, kids. Still, I'll kick off the day's events on a relative high- we both passed our exams. Good times. We hopped a bus and headed back to hang out at her place for a few hours. At some point after we got there, I decided that this was the time to break out my gold disco shirt (recently bought in a second hand shop) solely because I knew how much she hated it, and all of my ironically terrible shirts. It really offered very little warmth, but it was worth it to....to....er....I'm sure I had some end-game with that, but I cannot now, all these years later, fathom what the fuck it could have been. In a heavy book on her kitchen table, she was pressing one of the roses I had given her the week before for Valentine's Day. I remember that part with particular clarity for some reason. I remember having a particularly in depth conversation with her dog, Solo, as she disappeared off into some dark corner of her kitchen. And I remember the massive smile that crept across her face when she re-emerged. It may have been Pancake Tuesday. Neither of us were sure, and in these pre-social networking addiction days, we had not been bombarded with a news feed full of reminders. The only thing that was clear, even just from that smile that stretched wordlessly from ear to ear, was that her mum had left some pancake batter sitting in the fridge. Pancake Tuesday or not, things were about to get tasty.

So, a while later, a pancake had been created, birthed from the ether like a sugar coated Frankenstein's Monster, and waiting to make our day. I was reluctant to partake in pancake, partly to make a point that I did not trust her skills in the kitchen, partly because I was already full on the joys of a trip to Beshoff's on O'Connell Street. Regardless of rhyme or reason, I fought like a startled mouse in a sock (purely speculative) to not sample that first pancake. I take my hat off to the level of fight she displayed to get me to sample some, but eventually she had to accept defeat and abandon the pancake battle when she was bested by a coughing fit.

OK, so this was a girl who had suffered severely at the hands of asthma for a number of years. From what she'd told me, it could get pretty bad and she had been hospitalised on a few occasions after bad asthma attacks. I'd never seen it first hand, and hoped I'd never have to. I'd seen people afflicted by asthma and I could only imagine how much of a kick in the bones it must have been for them to lose the ability to breathe for a spell. Breathing is, hands down, one of my favourite things to do. So, every time she so much as coughed, I winced in pain on her behalf. I was all kinds of crazy about this girl, so seeing her in even the slightest hint of discomfort bothered me. Seriously, I cannot adequately describe in words how I felt about this girl in those days....and attempts to do so through gesticulating have proved equally fruitless to this point. Anyway, with her coughing her dodgy lungs up by the sink, I likely went off on some bizarre, inconsequential tangent in an effort to take her mind off these organs that were trying to escape through her mouth at that very moment. She apologised and asked me to take good care of her pancake for the time-being. It was at this moment that I felt a deep stirring within my soul for the first time. I had known this girl for a year or two as a friend before we started going out, and had fallen very hard, very fast when we got together. I knew I loved her, a fact which I'd shared with her many months previously by this stage. Thankfully for me, she reciprocated those feelings, so clearly she was without taste or sound judgement. But, I digress: it was at this time- sitting in her kitchen, all long haired youth and golden shirted- that I realised the love I felt for her at that precise moment was nothing compared to the love I was then feeling for that pancake. Left momentarily unattended in my company, its owner coughing herself into a position of limited sight to my right, this pancake was now my whole world. Screw empathy for her plight. I needed that pancake. I felt it only right to inform the girl of this development, so she could plan accordingly for her future bereft of pancake and my love. I turned to do so....

"Call an ambulance."

That brief sentence spluttered forth took with it all hope for my eloping with her snack, on this most fraudulent of Pancake Tuesdays. I abandoned such jovial thoughts and instead set to keeping her calm while I contacted the emergency services. Next up came time to place a call to her dad in work, whilst we awaited medical assistance. She may have faced these situations before, but it was all new and terrifying to me. She went outside to the front garden for some space and fresh air (in a manner of speaking) whilst clutching her inhaler. I was beginning to panic a little at this point, to be fair.

"Asthma attack is it? Alright. Well, I guess that means they'll take her to the local hospital again. Is it a bad one? Do you think they'll want to keep her in overnight this time? I'll swing by after work in a few hours."

The total nonchalance with which he greeted the news threw me right back into a sort of limbo between calm and terror. I knew they'd all been through this a bunch of times, and I'd been made well aware throughout the relationship that this was likely an eventuality I'd come to face at some point, but it was all a bit jarring to me still. After all, I'd been plotting an escape to Mexico with her pancake mere moments earlier. I almost felt a bit guilty about that now. Still, it would be grand when the ambulance showed. I'd give her some space until then, and let her get her breath as best she....

*THWACK*

I hadn't realised how silent things had been for the 10 seconds or so since the end of the call to her dad until I heard her inhaler cracking against the front step. I only knew what it was when I saw it float across my eyes in slow motion, like Challenger breaking apart in the sky.

"Fuck it. I'm dying."

She hadn't said much in the last minute, fighting for breath being her main concern. She said it with such defeated conviction. Such hurt that this was going to be what got her. I put my hands on her shoulders and tried to calm her down so she could concentrate on fighting to breathe, and not over-think anything. No need to fear the worst here, it was just a regular asthma attack, the like of which she'd dealt with so many times before. I told her this and made sure to stare deep into her eyes as I did. I'll never forget that look in those eyes.This wasn't a regular asthma attack, and now we both knew it.

I jumped her garden wall and ran next door. The neighbours were out but I knew there were a group of builders working out the back all day. All I could think was that one of them must have known first aid or CPR or whatever. I pounded on that door for seconds that felt like days. When someone finally did open the door, I made sure to state as simply, as clearly and as relaxed as I could that my girlfriend was having an asthma attack next door. Did anyone have any experience or know-how to help?

"Get her a brown paper bag to breathe into!"

Hyperventilation- the new asthma. Still, it wasn't their fault. They didn't know much better than I did what to do in this situation. Why would they?

An interminable amount of time having passed, the ambulance rounded the corner, bringing with it such a feeling of relief that I almost broke down in hysterical laughter on the spot.

"Look. They're here. You'll be fine. They've got you now."
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Aaaaaaaaaand relax.

Shit, I warned you that would get pretty dark, didn't I? I'm sorry about that. Really, I am, but it's a very necessary part of the story. Now, let's take a moment here, collect our thoughts and regain composure. I don't know what you like to do to get yourself together and chill out, but I'm going to go and grab a Coke. I'll be back.