In the brief moment as I went down, I’d noted the absurdity of my situation. It was broad daylight. My office was wired, equipped with a panel where an emergency button would signal my distress and bring help in short order. The problem was while I could move my feet, I couldn’t lift my hips or legs and I couldn’t buck or turn my lower body. The small effort I made was futile and only burned oxygen I needed to conserve.

I converted any thought of resistance to a simple resolve to breathe. Fewer than ten seconds had passed, but his weight prevented me from drawing a breath and the panic was overwhelming. Compressive asphyxia had limited the expansion of my lungs to the point of suffocation. This crushing phenomena was precisely what I’d been avoiding by never jacking up my car and sliding under it to make homely repairs. The nose pinch and the palm pressed hard against my mouth formed a seal. My attention was most wonderfully concentrated on the need for air. Often in moments of physical jeopardy, I’m entertained by the incongruities of time and place. Once when I was bleeding on a stretch of office carpeting, thinking soon I’d be shot to death, I wondered idly what unlucky soul would be hired to clean up the mess. With blood, cold water is always preferable to hot because heat cooks the protein content, causing it to set. You don’t want blood to dry, either, because you’ll only compound the staining issue. Never seal your bloody evidence in a plastic bag. In short order, it will putrefy and will be worthless in court.

I wasn’t concerned with any of the above just then. Oxygen deprivation is a speedy means of leaving this earth. I figured three minutes tops—unconsciousness followed by crippling brain damage followed by death. The pain in my lungs was searing, the need for air so acute that I nearly gave myself up to it. I could not make a sound. No air passed in or out of me, and the carbon dioxide in my system built so rapidly that I felt like I was being consumed from within. The hand was warm and fleshy, and if he’d been doing anything other than killing me, I might have appreciated his strength. All the times I worked late, the nights I’d stopped off at the market on my way home, times I’d found myself on empty streets in the dark. I’d always felt safe. I’d thought I was prepared.

Straining for air was pointless. I lay still, trying to signal submission. Did he know he was killing me? Of course he did! That was the point. My heart hammered and my blood pressure soared as my systems labored to feed my brain the oxygen required to continue functioning. Heat radiated through my chest and spread along my arms.

What aggravated the hell out of me, in the brief time I had for reflection, was the thought of all the time and energy I wasted learning to fight. Success at hand-to-hand combat is predicated on traction and balance, on the landing of solid kicks, on strikes with knuckles, elbows, and knees. I thought about all the orderly exercises I’d participated in, learning self-defense. In class, grabbing your opponent’s arm gave you sufficient leverage to turn the tables on him, dispatching your assailant with speed. Hair grabs and forearm blocks, heel stomps to your attacker’s instep, a chop to the back of his neck. Head butt, followed by elbow smash to the solar plexus. I could flip my opponent with the best of them. I couldn’t remember a training scenario in which I’d been flung to the floor while my aggressor stopped my breathing by the leaden application of dead weight, mouth and nose blocked until death ensued. I pictured the books on self-defense with the stern admonitions to jab your attacker’s eyes while you snapped a knee to his groin. In my current prone position, none of that was possible. I was going to die here and I wanted my money back.