“Drop the device or I will put you on the ground!” The command shattered the morning quiet of the Cedar Falls shopping center,"s" but it barely registered over the roaring panic in my lungs.
I am Maya Collins. For six years, I was a Marine Corps drill instructor, a woman who broke civilian souls and rebuilt them into soldiers. Today, I’m a trauma nurse at St. Anne’s, eight months pregnant, and completely starved of oxygen. A sudden temperature shift from the freezing parking lot had triggered a massive asthma flare-up. My chest felt clamped in a steel vise. I had just pulled my Albuterol inhaler from my bag when Officer Trent Holloway blocked my path. He didn’t see a choking nurse in scrubs; his eyes saw a suspect fumbling with contraband.
He drew his taser, stepping closer with a dangerous cocktail of power and incompetence. “I said drop it!”
Every survival instinct I possessed screamed that a physical struggle or a hard fall would kill my unborn baby. I couldn’t fight him, not like this. Making a split-second choice, I lowered myself carefully onto the freezing tiles, wrapping my left arm protectively over my heavy belly, my right hand still desperately gripping the plastic inhaler.
“It’s… an inhaler,” I gasped, the words tearing my throat. “I can’t… breathe.”
Holloway didn’t care. He stepped over me, his heavy boot inches from my face. “Tell it to the judge, junkie. Hands behind your back!”
