Carrie came back after her four days sick leave and said "Hi"
as usual. Her voice sounded deeper than ever, she's always
had a very dark voice to be a woman. Before I had opened my
mouth to comment on her voice, she continued "I have to warn
you for my cough".
- Is it that bad, I asked.
- You'd bet it is. I thought I was going to cough up my
lungs this morning. And I'm sounding like an explosion.
Like if she wanted to prove, she quickly cupped her hand
over her mouth and coughed with a sequence of hacks, all
deep and with a rumbling sound. She then inhaled deeply with
an almost wheezing sound and coughed loudly, inhaled again,
coughed again.
-"It's so loud", she wheezed afterwards.
-"Do you always cough like that, I mean when you get a cough?", I asked.
-"More or less, I guess."
Carrie sat down on her chair. We're sitting in an office landscape and our desks are placed together so that we sit face to face, but there's a screen between us so we can't see each other unless we stand up. Several times, she started with a number of hacks, inhaled and coughed, inhaled and coughed. A few times, she got long coughing fits and it sounded deeper and deeper. I tried to find as many excuses as possible within reasonable limits to go over to her desk to be close to her and hope that she would start to cough. Three times, I managed to time my visits, and the third time, I put my hand on her back, and I felt her rumblings in my hand.
After lunch, I was reading some documents when I felt some
sort of shakenings in the table. I couldn't understand what they
had come from and went on reading, only to be interrupted by some
more shakenings. Maybe something going on on the floor beneath ours?
Yet another sequence of shakenings. Without really knowing why, I stood up
and then I saw what they came from. Poor Carrie was leaning over
her desk with her hands pressed up over her nose and mouth, and
her face was red. She was obviously trying to suppress a bad coughing
fit.
I went over to her and put an arm around her. - "How are you,
Carrie? Let that coughing fit loose, there's only the two of us
in here. Come on!"
I started to massage her over her back and put my other hand
on her breast and gave her a little massage there too, as she
sat up and inhaled deeply. She was almost trembling a little
before she let her cough out. She coughed with an extremely long
hack, it sounded like if her whole chest exploded. It was followed
by a fast sequence of hacks, then she inhaled again and repeated it.
She coughed like that for almost a minute; long, long hacks followed
by uncontrollably fast hack sequences, then inhaled.
Finally, it was over and she was breathing heavily still with her
hands up over her nose and mouth. After a while, she released her hands,
smiled weakly and said "thanks".
After a couple of minutes, she picked something from her purse
and got up from her chair. A pack of cigarettes and a lighter.
"- I didn't even know you're a smoker", I said surprised.
"- I've been, I started again a month ago", she wheezed and left
to go to she smoking room. I followed her.
We sat down there, but just as she was going to light her cigarette,
she started to cough. It was an intensive coughing fit, and she turned
her head a bit and coughed right out, her lighter and her cigarette
still in her hands. It stopped after a while and she lit up.
But, again she started to cough, even more intensive now. Then she
did something incredible. -" I don't have time ... to wait until the
cough... is over ... to smoke...", she managed to say between the hacks.
After the last hack in the sequence, she managed to suppresss the urge
to inhale for the next coughing, and she dragged on the cigarette while
her whole body just wanted to cough. Then, she let her inhale reflex
free so that the smoke was sucked to the bottom of her lungs. The only
way to keep it there for some seconds was to again suppress her coughing
reflex and her body was trembling as it was fighting for its right to
cough. Soon, she let the coughing loose and coughed out the smoke.
After the next sequence of hacks, she dragged, let the coughing/inhaling
reflex get the smoke inside her chest, then coughed it out again after
holding the smoke down for a while. She smoked the whole cigarette
this way.