Breathless: A Journey from the Moon to My Father’s Arms

By Sophia Lopez

The night had been full of noise, everyone’s sweaty backs dancing on the floor, singing happy birthday, and music that had been thumping into my chest. My best friend's birthday party felt like one of those endless nights, little did I know, later, I was about to become the first girl in history to survive space without a suit.

When I got into the car, the engine vibrated like a rocket. During the eight-minute ride home, my hair smelled like sweat and my cheeks ached from smiling. As soon as I got home, I collapsed into bed, too tired to shower. Around 3 a.m., the air felt strange, as if oxygen had vanished. When I opened my eyes, my ceiling drifted upward like a cloud, and behind me my bed with its purple sheets was gone, replaced by pitch-black space scattered with stars. My body floated, and I couldn’t breathe, so I shut my eyes. A faint voice whispered, “Breathe in and out, don’t stress.” When I opened them again, I was on a wall-less spaceship, like a convertible with only a floor. Still gasping for air, I cried and pushed at invisible walls as astronaut-like figures surrounded me. I tried to speak, but nothing came out. I close my eyes again and fall asleep. The astronauts pick me up out of the convertible spaceship, and I suddenly find myself laying on a cold bumpy ball. It was the moon. Stars swirled around me like a whirlpool, bending toward me as if I were the center of the universe. There are three astronauts around me shoving tubes in my mouth and in my arms. Tubes that were connected in the spaceship. After what felt like decades of me laying on the cold hard moon, I suddenly felt that I could breathe again. One astronaut told me they’d never seen a human survive so long without air, I felt almost heroic. I close my eyes again and fall asleep. “Sophia, it’s time to go home,” an astronaut said, their face hidden by a helmet. I opened my eyes and saw a man beside me, familiar, yet not. “What time is it? When can I go home?” I asked. In a calm, deep voice he answered, “Soon.” I hoped he was right. 

After what felt like hours of staring into space, a few astronauts approached me on the moon and said I was finished and could go home. They removed the tubes, and the man beside me helped me up. Suddenly the stars merged into a blinding white-yellow light. I shut my eyes, overwhelmed, and unsure if I’d make it. When I opened them again, the stars were gone, replaced by bright hospital lights. I look at where I have been laying on, and it is a hospital bed. Looking at my dad’s tired eyes, I realized he had been my real astronaut all along, the one who kept me grounded while my mind drifted galaxies away. We leave the hospital room and go to the front desk to check out. I am still in shock, and I asked the front desk lady what happened. “You had an unbelievably bad asthma attack sweetie. When you came in, you almost passed out, so we rushed a stretcher to you,” the kind nurse told me. Shocked, I hugged my dad. “Let’s go home,” he said. “It’s 7 a.m. we’ve been here since 3:30.” The thirty-minute drive back was a relief. I could finally breathe, and the hospital gave me a new inhaler since I had lost mine. I realized then, the moon was my hospital bed, the convertible spaceship was the stretcher, the astronauts were the doctors and nurses, the strange man was my father, and the stars were the hospital lights. My trip through “space” was nothing more than a severe asthma attack. When I got back to my bed with the purple sheets, still too tired to shower, I collapsed, grateful for rest. I knew I would never look at the night sky, or at my dad, the same way again.