Indifferent Confusion

“Oh don’t even bring my height into this one asshole,” I seethed. “Just because I’m short does not mean I’m not strong. I hate when people do that do me and degrade me just because of my height. So don’t even.”

He raised his arms in surrender and silently stood behind me so that he could spot. After I did a set of fifteen reps, I sat up and childishly stuck my tongue out at him. He chuckled at this, but he did look surprised. That’ll teach him to stereotype me.

“Alright short shit,” great, he already had a nickname for me, “let’s see what you can do with the leg press. You ever tried it?”

Instead of answering, I went to the machine and put 400 pounds on it. His eyebrows went way up when he saw how much I put on it, but he said nothing as I sat down. I’m sure he was waiting for me to embarrass myself. Yeah, right. I did my fifteen reps with no problem to see that Shane had a look of amazement on his face.

“Still think I’m weak and can’t do it?”

"Shit, your legs are built,” he unnecessarily informed. As if I’ve never seen my own legs before. "How the hell did you get so strong?”

“I used to be a gymnast,” I answered with a shrug. It really wasn’t a big deal; I knew girls that could lift twice as much as me. When he just kept staring at me, I grew anxious. “What?”

“You don’t look like a gymnast.”

I groaned in annoyance. “If I had a quarter for every time I’ve heard that one,” I said rolling my eyes. “I heard that even as I was winning medals for it.”

He said no more about it. By that time, it was ten minutes to five so Shane had to wake up the other guys. I was satisfied to note that he woke them up with a bullhorn and I was glad that he didn’t use it with me. I guess that’s a perk of waking up early.

“What the hell are you doing already up?” Riley grumbled trying to tame his serious bed head.

“I was punished already,” I informed cheekily with a smirk clearly evident on my face. “Pretty good, yeah?”

“Rain, you are something else,” Jeremy commented. I just rolled my eyes. That is another comment I heard so often back home.

As soon as they were ready, we followed Shane on an hour long run through the grounds of my place of residence for the next two years. I noticed that there weren’t too many other groups of guys out running, so I asked Shane about it. He said that they were not required to run in the morning and official wake up was six thirty. I personally enjoyed running in the morning. Call me crazy, but I ran in the mornings anyway, regardless of whether I was forced to do it or not.

In the midst of our run, I learned that Caleb had been there for about a month, Jeremy about two weeks, Riley about the same, and Ashleigh a little under two months. None of them were used to all the training and whatnot yet.

They were huffing and puffing on our cool down walk, while I was still pretty okay. Granted, I was breathing heavily for a while, but I was able to control it. That is, until I suddenly could not breath and I started to wheeze really badly. I stopped walking and put my hands on my head to try to control the flow of air, but I was becoming dizzy and light headed. No matter what I did, I could not gain a steady air flow and my breathing became even shorter and labored. I must have looked very strange to anyone watching.

Faintly, I heard all the guys shouting at me, worried about what was wrong, but everything soon turned black. It was a nice change, I must admit, because I could not feel the struggle for breath anymore. I was peaceful, at least for the time being. Maybe it wasn’t exactly the best way to find peace, but I figured it was good enough.

When I came to, all five of the guys were huddled around me in a room that, if I had to guess, was the nurse’s office. They all breathed a sigh of relief when they saw that I was awake, but I scowled at the oxygen mask on my face, completely dead set against using that to help me breath any longer. When I tried to rip it off, Shane slapped my hand away, but I did it anyway. Why would I keep the thing on?

“I’m fucking fine,” I informed through gritted teeth, unable to hide my frustration. It wasn’t like that had never happened to me before.

“Rainelle,” a man of about 35 questioned in a tone that just oozed disappointment, “why were we not informed of your condition?”

“What condition? It’s not like there’s really anything seriously wrong with me so I don’t know why you’re making a big deal out of it.” I had asthma and forgot to take my inhaler with me, sue me.

“Rainelle, this is more serious than that. You were lucky that you were with them when it happened to you.”

“Look, it really is not as serious as you apparently think it is. It’s called exercise induced bronchial spasms and I forgot my inhaler. No big deal, okay? Can we all please go on with our lives now that it’s over?”

“Exercised what?” Riley wondered. The look on his face was priceless.

“It’s called asthma, stupid. I have exercise induced asthma, that’s all there is to it. I just need to take my inhaler and I will be perfectly fine.”

“Not that simple Rainelle,” the stupid doctor informed coolly. “No steroids are allowed in the houses so how would you suggest taking an inhaler?”

I stared at him like he was a complete mental case. “Easy. I give it to Brookes here, he watches me take it, then I go on my fucking way and I will be absolutely fine. It doesn’t take a PhD to figure that one out, dude. You sure you’re qualified to be a doc?”

His face turned an unflattering shade of red, and I mean super tomato unflattering. And not Shaun White Flying Tomato hair red either, more like 99 red balloons red. “I will have you know that I am more than qualified to-”

“Look doc, I’m hungry and I am just going to pass out again if I don’t get some sustenance into my system. Can I just get my inhaler and be done with it?” I swear, his face started to inflate like a big puffer fish and it was quite comical. “You know, your face looks like-”

“Rain, stop,” Shane barked. He looked pissed, I’ll give him that, but I could also see the laughter behind his eyes that he wanted to let loose. “Dr. Ravenstahl, can I just get an inhaler for Thunder and then we can be on our way?”

Doctor Red Man scowled, but wrote up a pharmaceutical prescription anyway. He obviously was not happy with me and probably would not have minded if I died from an asthma attack. No doubt he wanted me to have some kind of cardiac arrest from an attack, but by writing me up a prescription, he could get rid of me more easily. Not literally get rid of me since he was actually preventing that with the inhaler, but he wanted me out of his office as soon as physically possible.

I seemed to have that effect on people.