My seven-year-old daughter called me gasping for air after my mother-in-law took away her asthma inhaler as “discipline.” When she said my child could breathe after learning respect, I called 911.
May be an image of child and phone
My phone rang at 3:17 p.m., just as I stepped out of a budget meeting in downtown Columbus, Ohio. I saw Lily’s name and answered with my usual smile.
There was no hello.
Just a thin, broken wheeze.
“Mom…”
The sound stopped me cold in the middle of the hallway.
“Lily? Sweetheart, what’s wrong?”
For several seconds, all I heard was strained breathing and a faint scraping noise, as though she were struggling to hold the phone.
“I… can’t…”
My stomach dropped.
Lily had suffered from asthma since she was four. We had dealt with enough attacks that I recognized the sound immediately.
“Where’s your inhaler?”
A pause.
Then another desperate breath.
“Grandma… took it.”
I thought I had misunderstood.
“What?”
“She took my pump.”
I was already running toward the elevator.
“Why would Grandma take your inhaler?”
Lily tried answering, but the sentence dissolved into coughing.
Then another voice appeared in the background.
My mother-in-law, Margaret.
“Give me that phone.”
Lily whispered, “No.”
“Lily, give it to me.”
The phone moved.
Then Margaret spoke directly into my ear.
“Rachel, she’s being dramatic.”
I stopped beside the elevator doors.
“What did you do?”
“She had another tantrum.”
“What did you do with her inhaler?”
Margaret sighed as though I were the unreasonable person.
“I put it away.”
For one second, I genuinely couldn’t process the sentence.
“You took medication away from a child having trouble breathing?”
“She wasn’t having trouble breathing when I took it.”
The elevator doors opened.
I stepped inside and immediately pressed the lobby button.
“Give it back to her.”
“She needs to learn consequences.”
“Margaret, give Lily her inhaler right now.”
“She screamed at me.”
“I don’t care.”
“She threw her backpack on the floor after I told her to clean her room.”
My hands started shaking.
“So you confiscated her asthma medication?”
“I confiscated something she values.”
“It isn’t a toy!”
A man entering the elevator glanced at me.
I turned toward the wall.
“Give Lily the inhaler.”
Margaret’s voice hardened.
“You undermine me every time I try to establish discipline.”
“You are not disciplining her. She cannot breathe.”
“She can breathe.”
“I heard her!”
“She’s exaggerating because she knows you’ll rescue her.”
The elevator seemed impossibly slow.
Then Margaret said the sentence I would remember for the rest of my life.
