Chapter Text
Sitting in the OPs center, Clay was practically vibrating with nervous energy. It was his second week on Bravo and while he had been spun up with them before, this was one of the first missions where he was taking point, rare for a rookie. Focusing back on what Blackburn was saying, Clay realized that maybe this mission was more than a simple recon, it was a lot more dangerous.
“Gentleman, under no circumstances are you to surface, we are not cleared to operate in this country. Get in, drop the tracker, and get out,” Blackburn said, closing the file. It wasn’t exactly ideal, but his priority was getting his men back home safely. The sway of the vessel that they were boarding wasn’t noticeable, but Eric Blackburn would blame anything for why his stomach was rolling, it certainly couldn’t be from nerves. This was the best damn team he had ever had the pleasure of commanding, it would be fine.
Glancing around the dank cabin where his team was holed up in, Eric was struck by the profile of Clay Spenser. He had operated back in the day with Adam and Ash on the original Bravo team and every time he looked at Clay, he was brought back in time to a different Spenser, one that wasn’t half the operator that his son was making out to be, not even close. There were always whispers of things that happened behind closed doors in the Spenser household, but Eric could never find any evidence. Then Clay was sent to Liberia and Ash never talked about his son again, it wasn’t Eric’s place to pry. Sometimes ignorance was bliss, he preferred to pretend that Ash was a true pipehitter and not a wife beater, or worse a child abuser. “Suit up boys, we go as soon as you’re ready.”
“Ok, so Brock, you and the kid are going to take the dive. You’re going to have the tracker, attach it to the bow of the ship. In and Out. We’re going to stay as close to your pos as we can, but it’s likely to be about a ten click swim to shore. We’ll meet you and then the helo will hover for exfil,” Jason explained while Ray and Sonny were helping them into the wet suits. He didn’t like that the ship didn’t carry more than two wetsuits. He disliked even more that they only carried sizes that fit prepubescent boys, and Brock and Clay were the slimmest of the team. It would be a tight fit, but would have to work.
There was no other option and entertaining the idea of mission failure was laughable. Bravo would get the job done.
“So we’re just putting the tracker on the ship, nothing fancy,” Clay clarified, thinking that the mission was a little too easy. Wasn’t being a tier one operator supposed to be dangerous?
“Nice and easy, good first OP to take point on,” Jason nodded. He hoped that the kid was up to this, but even if he wasn’t up to it, no shot that Brock was going in alone.
The boys finished suiting up, oxygen tanks strapped to their backs as they made their way up to the deck. “Remember, do not surface,” Jason warned as they began their descent to the waves. Twin nods answered him as their regulators slipped into their mouths. Soon all Jason was watching were the bubbles on the surface of the glassy ocean where Brock and Clay were once treading water.
“They’ll be fine Jace, Brock will look out for him,” Ray said at his elbow.
Jason nodded, rubbing his thigh absently. This mission was eerily similar to the one where they had lost Nate, he didn’t want to lose his rookie any time soon, no matter how annoying his loud mouth was, he was their brother now. “I know, I don’t like it,”
“Davis has the tracker on Brock, we have ISR on the ship, it’ll be fine. We’re going to meet them on shore. It’s out of our hands,” Ray clapped Jason on the shoulder, moving away from the whipping air on deck back down to TOC. He was anxious to let Clay out of his sight, but hovering on the deck wasn’t going to do any good, it would be better if he could see with his own two eyes where his brothers were at the moment, Davis would know.
Clay and Brock made steady headway towards the approximate location of the target vessel. Clay swam in his normal long, smooth strokes behind Brock, concentrating on regulating his breathing. It was beaten into his head in BUDS that being the fastest swimmer was great, but it was better to be the swimmer that had enough air to finish the mission. And right now? If his breath sustained its frenetic pace, there wouldn’t be enough air. Clay couldn’t keep his breathing in check, it was coming faster and faster, no matter how many times he scolded himself to slow down.
Once they reached the looming silhouette of the ship, Brock took the tracker out from the belt that he wore around his waist. Clay turned away from Brock, watching his six as he swam right up to the enemy vessel, placing the tracker on the bow. Feeling a tap on his shoulder, Clay spun around. Brock nodded once and then swam back towards the direction that they had come from, or at least what Clay assumed was the direction. There was nothing but open water in front of him and behind him and for a moment, Clay didn’t know which way was up, but he knew that his brother wouldn’t steer him wrong. Focusing on the gentle flapping of Brock’s fins, Clay felt his heart beat slow down, but the square breathing wasn’t working, his breath still caught in his throat. The square breathing always worked and its failure brought an edge of panic to Clay’s thoughts. It always worked, and yet, today it failed.
Breathe in, one… two… three… four. Hold, one… two… three… four… Breathe out, one… two… three… four. Hold, one… two… - fuck, he needed more air!
Swimming side by side with Brock, Clay’s thoughts were racing. Something was wrong with his tubing or his regulator or something. There was no other explanation for why he couldn’t take a deep breath. Diving tanks emitted 100% oxygen, better than the air quality on dry land. Clay struggled to keep his cool as the sand started to rise beneath him, they were coming up on solid ground. Brock stood and surfaced, but Clay couldn’t get him legs to work.
He was stuck.
He couldn’t breathe.
He was going to drown in water that was shallow enough for him to stand.
Crawling forward on his hands and knees, Clay felt the sharp sting of shells and rocks penetrating his wetsuit as his head broke through the waves crashing on the shoreline. Clay spat the regulator out of his mouth, gasping the salty spray of the ocean flooded his mouth. As he fought to make his way up the beach, Clay dragged the canister behind him, panting heavily. Once he made it past the crashing waves, Clay left the canister where it lie and walked away from the safety of his brothers.
Vaguely he heard the chatter of his brothers, heard the pride in Brock’s voice when he spoke about how he placed the tracker without anyone knowing the wiser, heard Ray and Sonny laugh at the mermaid state of Brock’s curly hair. But at the same time, he also heard the rushing of his blood through his ears, the beat of heart thundering, drowning out any other sound. Each breath he tried to take into his lungs was getting harder and harder to draw. His chest was tight, and the little air he forced into his lungs felt like liquid fire, burning him from the inside out.
I’m having a delayed onset beta-adrenergic response , he thought to himself. Clay almost didn’t believe it, of all the times for him to have a freaking panic attack, he chooses the middle of a mission, in front of his teammates no less. Just fucking perfect, he executes a textbooks diving operation and then panics like a little bitch for no reason at all. This was going to go over so well with Sonny. Fucking shit.
They were taught about this in BUDS, it happened from time to time when operations needed intense focus. Often the feelings would surface once the brain ensured that the body was safe. While he knew that it was perfectly logical and expected that this would happen at some point, he didn’t want an audience for when he inevitably flipped his shit. Walking further down the beach, Clay took a deep breath, held it for four counts, and then tried to breathe out slowly for four counts, coughing when the air got stuck in his throat. Raising his arms above his head, Clay continued to try and utilize the square breathing method when he felt a tap on his shoulder and lost the little air he had in his lungs as he felt himself cave into a hunched position, wheezing.
Standing on the beach with his brothers, Trent was half listening to Brock recount how many fish he had seen in the ocean and how he thought he had seen a shark, knowing full well that the waters they were in were not habitable to half the species that Brock was describing. His attention was better suited to his youngest brother, walking further down the beach. Something wasn’t right.
“Looks like Blondie is a bit of a pansy ass after all,” Sonny chortled, not even bothering to conceal his disdain for the rookie in front of Jason.
The goading continued, but Trent didn’t say a word. Even from a distance, Trent could see that Clay was breathing heavily, which might be normal for someone after completing what was easily a ten mile swim, but not for Clay. The kid had beaten out all of Jason’s old records, he was in the best shape of his life. Not exactly the picture of someone who got out of breath from a little swim. Striding towards Clay, Trent was dead set on examining the kid. He was breathing far too rapidly to be exercise induced and if he was going to pass out, he wanted to be there to catch the kid before he could crack his skull open. A little ways away from Clay, the oxygen tank that was part of Clay’s kit was stuck in the sand, water lapping around it gently.
Stopping short in front of the canister, he eyed Clay. Still breathing far too quickly, but this would only take a second. He had a gut feeling that the oxygen tank was part of the problem. And he was right. Trent walked over to the tank, looking at the gauge that measured the oxygen remaining in the canister. He knew for a fact that Brock’s was normal, arrow firmly in the green. But when he looked at Clay’s his eyebrows shot up on his face: how on Earth did he manage to use enough oxygen to nearly deplete the entire canister ?
“Trent, what’s wrong?” Jason asked quietly, effectively silencing the trio of babbling buffoons on his right.
He didn’t get an answer. Trent grabbed his kit from Davis and jogged down the shoreline, intent on reaching his brother. Coming closer to Clay, Trent watched as his body literally vibrated with the effort it took to breathe. Stopping just behind him, Trent reached out his hand to put on his shoulder and was surprised when Clay whirled around before bending at the waist, breaths coming in short, frantic bursts.
“Hey, hey kid, it’s fine stand up for me,” Trent heaved his shoulders up and looked at Clay’s face. Their typically brash and overconfident rookie was scared , eyes flickering randomly and hands gripping his arms.
Suddenly, it clicked for Trent. The kid was having a panic attack. He wondered what triggered it, it couldn’t have been the dive. They were sailors for chrissake.
“It’s ok, it happens to the best of us, sit down, it’ll pass,” Trent used a voice similar to the one he used with Mikey when he was upset. In reality there was more than a ten year difference between Mikey and Clay, but if the shoe fit… “Just try and take some deep breaths.”
“Trent,” Clay gasped. “I, I can’t, Trent, it’s not.” Clay couldn’t even get a full sentence out, tears were starting to stream down his face.
“Little bud, you’re fine,” Trent soothed. “I’m here with you, you’re safe, on a beach. You and Brock made it out.” Trent continued to mutter nonsense when Clay’s hand grabbed his arm, fingernails biting into the mangled flesh of his forearm. The kid never truly voluntarily asked for help, medical or otherwise, but something was making him ask now, and Trent sure as hell wasn’t going to say no, not to him. Some direction on what the root of the problem was would have been appreciated, though.
Trent racked his brain for anything that could have made the kid panic. Clay was an experienced swimmer. He had made countless dives that were well over the length and depth that he had just completed. The mission, albeit his first with Bravo, had gone off without a hitch and command was pleased with them. There was literally nothing to be anxious about, yet here he was hyperventilating on the shore of Indonesia.
If he wasn’t anxious, something else was causing shortness of breath. Trent mentally catalogued what he could see in front of him, frantically assessing and reassessing as Clay struggled for breath. Shortness of breath. Tachycardia. Retractions. They looked like a panic attack yet the treatment modalities weren’t working. Think, Sawyer, what the fuck was causing this . Trent saw Clay’s other hand reach up to grasp at his neck from the corner of his eye as he coughed, and it clicked. Exploratory wheezes. Panic attacks don’t cause wheezing.
Airway obstructions cause wheezing.
Internally Trent berated himself. The motherfucker wasn’t having an anxiety attack, he couldn’t fucking breathe . “Clay, you’re not anxious are you?” Trent grunted, trying to force Clay in an upright position.
Clay nodded emphatically, coughing as he tried to suck in any air. He would be fine if he could just take a deep fucking breath. Tears stinging at the corners of his eyes, he gasped, ready to beg for anything that would help him breathe.
Anything at all.
Why couldn’t he breathe?
Springing to his knees, Trent dug his stethoscope out of his kit, bellowing across the sand, “Jason!” He turned back to Clay and reassured him, “I gotcha Clay, you’re gonna be just fine. I got you little bud, don’t worry.”
Clay nodded frantically. Black spots were appearing over his field of vision, the horizon line was tilting at an odd angle and Trent’s voice sounded vaguely far away.
Jason was finishing signing a report for Davis when he heard Trent yell, which was an oxymoron in it of itself. The mild mannered medic never raised his voice, was never flustered in the field. Dropping the pen, Jason hauled ass with Sonny and Ray to where Trent was kneeling next to Clay, cutting his wetsuit off with the trauma shears.
Shit, if Trent brought out the trauma shears nothing good was happening. What the hell could Clay have gotten into with Brock watching him?
“Bravo Four, SitRep,” Jason barked, not liking the way that Clay was listlessly swaying from side to side, wheezing audibly, even to his untrained ears.
“Can’t tell, think it’s an airway obstruction of some sort,” Trent muttered, sticking the earpieces of his stethoscope back into place. Please don’t be a tension pneumo , he thought to himself, because they didn’t have half of the supplies that he would need if Clay had somehow developed a collapsed lung. Anything but that, please . Listening carefully, he moved the bell back and forth, sighing in relief when breath sounds were heard bilaterally. No tension pneumo.
But he was wheezing. What the fuck was causing the wheezing?
There was nothing that he could have aspirated. The regulator was intact and the tank was fresh, Davis had ensured that the equipment was working before they had even thought to go for a swim. He didn’t take a hit, there was no trauma to the thorax. Ruled out pulmonary edema. This shit was going to piss him off, there was no medical reason that the kid should be in respiratory distress.
“Trent, what can we do?” Ray said, standing over his shoulder. Trent had obviously called him over for a reason, and it sure as shit wasn’t to stand around and watch Clay Spenser choke to death on his own breath.
“Find me the inhaler,” Trent growled, rubbing his hand along Clay’s back trying to get him to take a deeper breath. With no way to identify the pathology, Trent was operating on his gut. At worst, the inhaler would increase his heart rate, but if it worked? Open airway. Just what the doctor ordered.
“Clay, Clay, I need you to hold your breath for me, as long as you can.” Trent got right up into his face, but he was confused, unsure of why he was telling him not to breathe, didn’t he know that that was the problem in the first place? “The inhaler is going to help open up your airway, but I need you to be able to take a deep breath. Hold your breath Clay!”
Clay was hyperventilating so fast that he was retaining too much carbon dioxide, easily putting him at risk for respiratory acidosis. Yet another way that he could meet his maker today. As he tried to mimic his breathing for Clay, he distantly heard Ray and Sonny fighting over the contents of the med kit, but he couldn’t focus on that. They would figure it out or Trent would do it for them, if Clay ever managed to hold his breath for more than a second.
“Trent, you do not have an inhaler in here!” Ray said, rummaging through the kit.
“Yes there is, look harder!” He knew exactly what was in that kit. Knew which medications he ran out of first and which ones he used so seldom that he almost forgot he stocked them in his kit. Knew that there was an inhaler in there, even if he had never used it. He was sure of it.
Ray turned to Trent, retort on the tip of his tongue when he caught a glimpse of Clay. His lips were turning a sickly shade of blue and the way his chest moved made Ray’s own chest hurt. Turning back to the med kit, Ray dumped the entire medication packet out on the sand, scrambling for the little inhaler that he found tucked into a pocket underneath the morphine vials. “Here, I got it.”
Clay let his gaze linger on all of his brothers, thinking that this was the way that he would go, from a stupid freaking panic attack. An object was thrust into his hands and for a second Clay didn’t understand what was happening, but it clicked. He had an inhaler. Putting his lips around the mouthpiece, Clay depressed the inhaler twice, feeling his breathing begin to slow. Slumping against someone, he didn’t have the energy to try and determine which of his brothers was holding him up, Clay took another two puffs, and closed his eyes. His brothers had him.
He felt the hands that settled him in the chopper basket and then into his hammock on the C17, but didn’t have the energy to open his eyes. He didn’t know how long they were in the air before his eyes opened again, landing on Trent sitting directly beside him, glare fixed on his face.
“You want to tell me what that was all about?” Trent said quietly. The rest of the boys had finally fallen asleep after being lectured by Trent on the importance of everyone checking in after an OP, and how they had failed to mention that to their newest member. He didn’t want to incite a panic by being too loud, they would probably wake up half-cocked thinking that Clay was in respiratory distress again.
“I don’t know Trent, one minute I was swimming and fine and then the next I couldn’t catch my breath, gasping for air, even with the tank,” Clay muttered, trying to roll over and sit upright.
“Have you ever had problems breathing before? Is this something new?” Trent leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees. A new onset of respiratory difficulties wasn’t unheard of, but Trent was leaning more towards a panic response than a physiologic response. It would just be tough getting Clay to admit that.
“As a kid, I had asthma, but I haven’t had an attack in over ten years. Thought I grew out of it,” Clay groaned, rubbing his hand over his eyes.
Well.
There went the panic response.
The kid had fucking asthma and didn’t think to tell anyone before he was sent underwater, where he literally couldn’t breathe, and expected it to be fine. Searching his face for any signs of remorse, Trent realized that the kid legitimately didn’t think it was a problem. The kid was going to give him gray hairs, that was certain.
“Even if you haven’t had an asthma attack, conditions like diving for a prolonged period of time can exacerbate those symptoms,” Trent explained slowly, watching the recognition come across Clay’s face.
Quietly, Clay asked Trent with as much courage as he could muster, “Is this going to prevent me from operating?”
Of all the things that could have come out of Clay’s mouth Trent wasn’t expecting that response. Chuckling slightly, Trent ruffled Clay’s hair, just like he would when Mikey got too serious. “No, we’ll deal with it as it comes up, but didn’t we handle this problem already? No more hiding shit like this, ok? I can’t help you if you don’t tell me everything. We clear?”
Clay nodded and laid back down in his hammock, eyes slipping closed once more. He was lucky that Trent was willing to work with him instead of booting him off Bravo, not many teams were like that, but Bravo was family. As he drifted to sleep, Clay faintly heard the scratching of a pen on paper, but he didn’t want to investigate it further, Trent would tell him if he needed to know.
Trent watched as the kid fell asleep, somehow looking younger than he already did, golden hair and angelic face relaxed in sleep. Searching through his kit, Trent came across the field notebook and pen that he had written down all of the pertinent medical information about his brothers, from blood type to medication preferences, it was all there for Trent to access if he needed, not that these pages weren’t already seared into Trent’s memory. Sighing, Trent took out the spare and scrawled ‘Clay Spenser’ on the front, something told him that he would need the entire book for just Clay.
Opening to a fresh page, Trent wrote:
Asthma
- Childhood asthma, only trigger noted is diving (so far)
- Albuterol controlled acute symptoms, took double dose for effectiveness, four puffs instead of two
- Make SURE to differentiate between panic response and physiologic response, they closely mimic one another
Closing the notebook, Trent let his own eyes fall shut. If they were going to keep the kid, he would have to sit down with Jason and Ray and come up with a game plan for keeping the kid safe. This would be a full time job between the five of them but their brother was worth the trouble. Trent just hoped that the kid wouldn’t give him an aneurysm before he was set to retire.