When nobody is around, the buildings breathe.

Any building will do this, though with older buildings it is more noticeable, the wind sighing in and out through cracked windowpanes and loose doors. In newer buildings, it is much more subdued, and is easily drowned out in the whine of ventilators.

When airports breathe, it has a manic, almost panicky quality. They have seen too much of frantic passengers sure they are going to miss their flights, of fearful acrophobes steeling themselves for or recovering from an ordeal, of angry travelers stranded by the vagaries of weather or airline schedule—and, lately, of TSA checkpoints enforcing nonsensical rules for the mythical protection of an ungrateful clientele. They are stepped in negative emotions, and sit within spitting distance of the asphault strips where hundreds of high-speed projectiles whiz in and out daily.

If there were building-sized asthma inhalers, it is the airports who would use them.