We slept side by side, or rather almost onto each other, because the bed was really too narrow for too. Her alarm bell rang at eight o'clock and I turned it off.
- Good morning, I said and gave her a kiss to wake her up.
- Morning, she said and sat up in the bed. I was about to give her another kiss, when she started to hack. What a coughing fit! She just hacked and hacked, over and over again, with a wheezing sound. It took a long time before she could inhale properly, so she bent her body forward deeper and deeper. She cupped both her hands over her lips, with the fingers over her lips, and just sat there, coughing and shaking. I started to give her some massage over her back and chest, then I started to caress her hands with my left hand while massaging her back with my right hand. We sat like that for over five minutes, and I was completely crazy about her, when I heard that all the stuff in her chest suddenly got looser because she started to rattle. She got up from her bed and went, coughing, into the bathroom and I heard her cough up her mucus four times, spitting it out in the WC. After coughing for nine minutes, she came out, breathing heavily. She immediately sat down in the kitchen and lit a cigarette. She kept the smoke from a first double drag for almost ten seconds with her eyes closed before exhaling.
- Feeling better, I smiled.
- Yeah, the worst one's over (she started tto cough again), now I'll go on like this for almost an hour before it calms down. She got up to prepare some breakfast together with me. She often got interrupted my smaller, but rattling, coughing fits.

- You'll have to get used to it, she said when we had sat down to have breakfast. I glanced at the parts of her chest that were visible, dreaming about all those sounds that had been coming from inside it. I remembered her face expressions, how she had sounded in the bathroom, everything.
- Helloooo, she said, smiling
- Sorry, I was just dreaming, I smiled. The morning went on like that; me dreaming and her trying to have a conversation with me. The only times when she managed to wake me up from my soft dreams were when she coughed...
- You must be tired today, she said when we left. We were going to look at a flat the day after the next, but Samantha insisted on me sleeping at her place until we had moved. Of course, I had nothing against it, but I wasn't sure about how to concentrate on my studies in the evenings from now on. It was the final course before I would get back to my job again after one and a half year of stuying. I decided to try hard to read this evening, nothing else.

I came home, to her place, after eight o'clock. She asked if I couldn't sit down for a cup of tea and some talking before I started to read, and so we did. We sat in the TV room in the sofa. Samantha coughed a lot; she got smoker's coughing fits time after time, some of them lasting more than half a minute and resulting in her coughing mucus up. I would say that in six cases out of four, she turned her head and coughed right out, in three cases she cupped her sexy fingers over her lips and in one case, she cupped both her hands over her mouth and nose. She often massaged her chest in that usual, attractive way. A few times, I helped her.
- Worse than usual, I asked after a while.<
- My cough? No, not at all.
- Oh, I don't think you were coughing like this yesterday, I said.
- No, I know, strange, isn't it? But I havee some days when I cough less than usual, can't tell why. Not often, she added smiling before lighting a cigarette.
- I'm always like this after about seven o''clock, she said and mouth exhaled, turning her head away a bit. - I know I cough terribly often, and sometimes I get these longer fits in the evenings, but you know, I'm into three packs a day now. I've been pulling three packs into my lungs day after day in three years now...
- Has your cough increased since then, you mean, I interrupted her.
- To start with, I've had morning cough sinnce I was 27 or 28. At 33 or 34, I noticed it started to last longer and longer, and these last three years, it has developed to what you heard this morning. I think I started to cough a few times daily already at 22 or something, but when I was 26 or 27, I know I used to cough quite much in the evenings, but not as much (a long rattling interrupted her) as - I've - been - doing - since (she couldn't hold her cough back, and got a deep coughing fit) ... since I've been coughing the last two or three years. She inhaled deeply and coughed so she almost whooped.
- But, I've got used to it, and I LOVE smokking. I hope you don't mind too much, she suddenly said and looked me deeply into my eyes. - I mean, you're a non-smoker and your wife sucks the smoke from three packs a day into her mouth, lets it pass through her throat before she keeps it into her long, smoky lungs, and then she coughs her lungs up...
- I LOVE the way you smell after a day of ssmoking, I interrupted her (I often had to interrupt her when we were chatting if I should have a chance the say a single word...), I LOVE that smoky air coming from your mouth and nostrils, I LOVE the way your fingers look like after a day of smoking like you do (she stared at her fingers) and I ADORE your cough. She started to laugh, but it turned into a coughing fit and she bent her head backwards and coughed so her chest almost roared towards the ceiling. She then got up, sat down in my knees and we kissed deeply. I looked up into her eyes and realized how tall she was, a bit taller than me.
- Can you ever laugh without starting to coough, I asked, because I was curious to know.
- At least not in the evenings, she smiled.. I wanted to ask if it was a promise, but I didn't.