Margaret sat down in the sofa in the doctor's waiting room. It was a raw and cold November morning. Everything was grey, cold and humid and it didn't make Peggy's cough any better, Maggie noticed. Her eight year old daughter got a new coughing fit just as Maggie lit a cigarette. She glanced at Peggy, who hacked and hacked. Maggie dragged on her cigarette and let the smoke stay in her mouth for a while. Peggy was now hacking so her cough wouldn't let her inhale. The girl bent her body forward more and more, her white face getting red. Finally she inhaled deeply with great effort and coughed so she sounded like she was turning inside out. Each long sequence of hacks was rapid and full of energy, but the last hacks always sounded like she was going to lose her air. After coughing almost two minutes like that, she sounded like she was going to choke time after time. Finally, she actually did and the bad coughing fit ended.
Maggie dragged on her cigarette again, and Peggy started on a new coughing fit, less than a minute after the previous one. Maggie put her left hand, the one holding the cigarette between her fingers, around her daughter and put the right hand over the coughing girl's mouth.
- Haven't I taught you to put a hand over your mouth, she said with smoke flowing from her mouth right in the girl's face. The girl couldn't answer, she just coughed and coughed and she felt the fresh smoke from her Mom's lungs inside her, as well as the usual smell of cigarettes from the hand over her mouth. Maggie removed her hand, opened the girl's jacket a bit and put her hand on the girl's chest. It was an almost dry cough this morning and some nasty, sharp sounds was heard from the irritated chest. Maggie could almost feel those hard, raspy sounds in her finger tips.
She removed the hand again and shut the jacket. Peggy stopped coughing, closed her eyes and cupped her hands up over her nose and mouth.

Maggie looked at the remainder of her cigarette, put it between her lips and finished it. She turned her head and nose exhaled after having inhaled the smoke quickly, then yawned. Peggy's cough had kept her awake the last three nights. She couldn't just lie down in her bed and listen, so she had gone up every time, walked into Peggy's room to find the girl sitting up in her bed, bending her body forwards so her forehead almost hit her legs. She had been red in her face and breathing heavily and rattling after the coughing fits.
- Oh, you have so much terrible stuff in here, Maggie had said and massaged the girl over the chest and the back, - you have been coughing for two weeks now, dear, after that pneumonia. But you'll soon get better, your chest sounds like it's getting looser inside there, and as soon as you've coughed all the mucus up, you'll get a dryer cough and then it'll soon be over.

This morning, the cough finally was dryer, and they were on their way to see a doctor.
- Mom, did you cough like this when you were a kid?, Peggy asked tiredly.
- Of course I did. I was a professional cougher at your age, she joked. - Then I started to smoke when I was 11, annd your Grandma said I would cough up my lungs when I was 13 and got a bad bronchitis.
Peggy wanted to ask how a cigarette tasted but started to cough again. She felt that this coughing fit was worse than the previous ones, and she stared in front of her as in panic, pressing both her hands over her mouth. She started to produce a sort of prolonged, sharp sounds over and over again and Maggie could see in her eyes that it hurt a little.

The nurse came out from the doctor's lunch room with a cigarette in her hand and said it was their turn. She took a quick drag and put out her cigarette in the ashtray.
The doctor, a woman in Maggie's age (around 40) asked the girl to sit down. Peggy was still coughing badly so the doctor didn't have to ask her to do before using her stetoscope. Finally, the cough subsided and Peggy got a bad-tasting cough syrup which she hated.

- I'm NOT going to drink that, Peggy managed to say on their way home between her coughing fits.
- Well, do you prefer coughing another week, Maggie asked. - You're coughing day and night now, choking, getting red in your face, everything. And those sounds are almost frightening, you sounded better while you were still coughing mucus even if you got your hands full of it time after time.
- Come on, drink that stuff now, five times per day the next four days and when you've stopped coughing, I'll teach you what my cigarette smoke tastes like. I've said we'll wait until you're 11, older than I was, but we'll see if you drink your coughing syrup as the doctor told you.