I was first introduced the a man and a woman, sharing one office room. Just when I was shaking hands with them, I heard a woman cough heavily somewhere else. She sounded like she was coughing her lungs up for about minute, then I heard her walk away from the corridor where she must have stood. I listened for more coughings, but nothing. In the next room, in the same size as the first one and also containing two people sharing it, I found the cougher. It was a good-looking, fairly beautiful blonde woman, age around 40 I thought. The room had a slight smell of cigarette smoke and I saw a packet of some sort of very feminin-looking cigarettes, quite elegant, on her desk, and a half-smoked long, slim, white cigarette in her ash-tray.
The last room contained... wow! If the blonde had been fantastic in my eyes, I lacked words for this woman. She was around 33-35, tall, slim, dark - very dark - not of European origin, I would guess she was born in Turkey, Greece, or even some place around Syria, Lebanon, I don't really know, but she was so lovely. This room also smelled some cigarette smoke, and I saw a pack of plain red Marlboros on her desk. She looked up at me when Mr Johnstone brought me into her room to introduce me and she locked her black eyes in mine so I almost felt paralyzed. She stood up, inhaled, turned her head and coughed twice and heavily in her right hand before I had the privilege (I thought) to shake it. I could feel her coughed-out, hot, smoky, humid air as I touched her hand, at least I thought so. So, this was the cougher. Mr Johnstone told me she was their stamp expert, and that it was unusual that such a young person was so experienced in this profession.
I was placed in an office fairly close to Rima, because that was
her name. I mean, the dark woman, I almost never thought of any
other person among those who worked there. As soon as I sat down on
my own, in my new office room, I heard suppressed hacks from Rima's
room, and I noticed she often got a sequence of them. I wondered why
she didn't let her cough loose as she had done earlier this day,
but she never did. Just those suppressed coughing fits.
After 20 minutes, I heard her get up from her chair, and I heard
her inhale deeply, before getting a wild coughing fit. She coughed
intensively and slightly wet, and three times her body ended a
coughing sequence with a sound like if she got a lung up. After
around two minutes, it ended and I heard her sit down again.
I waited for a reason to talk to her, and hoped I would hear the
click of her lighter soon. Her cigarette break might be the best
moment, I thought, but the only thing I heard was some more suppressed
hacks after around five minutes, then I heard her cough three hard,
wet hacks, before leaving her room. I understood she went into the
lunch room and I quickly followed her.
Rima had sat down on a chair and lit her cigarette, and her exotic
nose sent out a cloud a smoke from her lungs just as I entered. She
looked up at me and smiled just as more smoke flew from her nostrils.
After some chatting about this and that, she explained that she never
smoked when working, since the smoke wasn't good for the stamps.
She told me that her lungs were so hungry for smoke so she had to take
smoking breaks every now and then, and that she could almost chain smoke
in the evenings. Just after finishing her cigarette, she said something
strange. "I'll be back soon", she said, smiling friendly, but it was like
if she wanted me to leave the room. She had no cellular phone or so
around her, so it couldn't be for that she had to make some private
phone calls, so I couldn't quite understand. "I need to let my smoker's
cough loose, you see, and..." She couldn't keep her urge to cough
back anymore and started to hack with her long, dark beautiful hand
over her mouth. She coughed a long sequence without inhaling between
the hacks and had to bend her body forwards more and more. Then, she
inhaled quickly and deeply with a worried expression in her eyes, and
then, before my eyes, coughed a new long sequence consisting of heavy
and deep hacks, the last three sounding like if she was loosing her air,
then inhaled again to cough another sequence of even deeper hacks.
When coughing the final two of these, her face had got a bit red and
she was bending her body forwards so much so I thought she would fall
of her chair. She sounded like if her lungs, stomach, everything was
coughed up into her throat.
She remained sitting like that for an eternity it felt, without
saying a word, still with her hand over her mouth. She glanced a bit
towards me and was obviously a bit embarrassed because I hadn't left,
so to making life a bit easier for her, I smiled and took that hand
from her mouth and hold it. It wasn't just humid inside, it was wet.
I hold the hand a little harder and pressed her wet palm tightly
to my own. She looked me into my eyes and smiled a bit, before we
kissed deeply.
I was about to play some tennis in the evening after work, so I happened to stay quite long in the office, and Rima was still there too, since she had to finish an order from a Japanese stamp collector. Just before leaving I went into her room to say good evening. She was in the middle of a sequence of suppressed hacks, while moving stamps from the boxes where they were stored over to the special sheet, with a transparent sort of pockets which the stamps were delivered in to the customer. "Come on, let your cough loose", I smiled. "I can't", she smiled back. "If I cough when working I would blow the stamps all over the office, and I have to use both my hands when working. See the problem?".
Of course I now understood why she had to cough with those suppressed
hacks. She explained that this was the reason why she got to bad
coughing fits when she let it loose, her lighter, suppressed hacks weren't
enough to clear away the mucus, and whenever her body got the opportunity
to cough it away, it was so eager to do it so there was no way for her
to control her cough. Every day, she got coughing fits that made her cough
so deeply so her diafragma muscle would ache in the evening. Of course,
it was really trained now from her coughings, but still her body wanted
it to cough harder and harder every day, she said.
- And I MUST finish this order before leaving, she sighed, and I
have to turn around and cough more often and often, it feels, she
muttered and hacked again with more suppressed hacks.
- I could help you out there, I said to her. - How?, she asked.
I whispered in her air, and after looking extremely puzzled, then
astonished, she smiled in a teasing way and nodded.
I put my palm over her mouth and she let her cough loose, working
with those stamps at the same time. Her body let her heavy, hard hacks
out in my palm and she coughed and coughed. Just as I put both my
hands up over her nose, placing my fingers over lips, she inhaled
deeply and started to cough like if her lungs were on their way up in
my hands. She tried hardly not to bend her body forward, because it
would prevent her from working I guess, and the fight between her reflexes
and her brain made her body jerk heavily. I gently pressed my side to
hers to feel her shaking body. Her hacks got deeper and deeper and I
feared her next sequence, after inhaling, would really get her lungs up.
I quickly released one of my hands and pressed it on to her diafragma region.
I had never before felt such a hard diafragma, and it was trembling.
She hacked and hacked, now a bit red in her face, but still her coughing
spasm was so strong so it didn't let her inhale. Finally, she forced
herself to inhale and I put my hand back and moved both hands up so I
had the fingers on her long, sexy, nose. She had to fight her strong
coughing reflex back to be able to inhale, which made a sort of wheezing
sound from her chest. She almost had panic in her eyes when her inhaling
was over and she was about to let the coughings loose again. Rima
quickly threw her body forward and I felt her smoky mucus inside my hands
when her cough forced it out from the bottom of her lungs, it least it
sounded like it was from there it was coming. She looked terribly embarrassed,
but again I comforted her by a deep kiss, and soon we were making love
on the floor.