Anne's Choice, Part 5

ANNE'S CHOICE
by Richad
 
Chapter 5
 
 
So Anne gave it a try.  She made a plan: each pack would have to last her for
two days.  If she smoked too much on day 1, she would smoke less on day 2.
It would be easy to see whether she was succeeding in sticking to the limits
which she had set herself.
 
And for a while she did succeed.  Or, at least, she did succeed provided you
didn't count the occasional cigarette bummed from friends; or taken from the
emergency pack in her office desk; or from the emergency pack in her car; or
from the emergency pack on her bedside table.  When she smoked too many on
day 1, she smoked less on day 2; or, at least, she kept a count of the
excess, with the intention of smoking less on day 3, or, anyway, smoking less
next week.  When the "excess" got above 20 she stopped counting.
 
 
*   *   *
 
 
It was Anne's birthday.  To celebrate, Martin had taken her out for dinner to
an expensive out of town restaurant beside the River Thames.  It was a warm
summer evening, and they were seated at a table near the river in the
restaurant's garden where Anne could smoke.  As they sat waiting for their
main course to arrive, Martin, looked across at Anne, admiring, as always,
her casually stylish dress sense; her perfectly applied make-up; her long,
well-brushed hair; her dark, brown eyes.  She's so wonderful, he thought to
himself.  Which reminded him that, in once respect, things were not working
out quite as he had hoped they would.  He said, quite gently: "It's not
working, is it?"
 
Anne, who had been playing with her cutlery in order to distract herself from
reaching for another cigarette, looked up in alarm.  "What's not working?"
she asked, anxiously.
 
"Cutting down on your smoking.  You're back where you started, aren't you?"
 
"I wouldn't say that," Anne replied, defensively.  "All right, I admit that
some days are better than others, but what did you expect?"
 
"Name one day in the last two weeks when you smoked less than twenty."
 
Anne thought for a moment.  "Last Sunday," she said, triumphantly.
 
"True," admitted Martin.  "But then you didn't get out of bed until three
o'clock in the afternoon, having sat up all night with Laura drinking us out
of red wine.  And you managed to get through two packs during that night
alone."
 
Anne started to laugh at the memory, her laugh gradually turning into a
cough.  She abandoned her cutlery, took out one of her Marlboros, and lit it.
"I suppose there are just a lot more enjoyable cigarettes in the day than I
had realised," she said, exhaling smoke as she spoke.
 
But she knew that this was not the whole truth.  Although she was not going
to admit it to Martin, she was secretly alarmed that her attempt to cut down
had failed so quickly and so completely.  Anne was a very well-organised
person, who liked to think that she lived her life exactly as she wanted to
in every respect.  (At work her colleagues privately regarded her as a bit of
a control freak.)  She had always assumed that if the day came when she no
longer wanted to smoke, then she would simply stop, just as she would move
house if she became bored with where she was living.  Now, for the first
time, she had discovered that she was under the control of her nicotine
habit, rather than the other way round.   She did not find this an appealing
discovery.  Maybe one day she really would have to quit to protect her
health: if so, would she be able to do it?   What if she became pregnant and
had to stop for the health of her baby? 
 
Anne's thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of the waiter with their main
course.  She took another drag.  Martin watched the twin plumes of smoke
stream from her nose as she emptied her lungs for one more, final drag before
she crushed the cigarette out in the ashtray, exhaled another large cloud of
smoke, and began to eat.
 
 
*     *     *
 
 
Having abandoned the pretence that she was cutting back to ten cigarettes a
day, Anne returned once more to her usual smoking patterns.  She had a
nagging feeling, though, that things had subtly changed: something about
smoking was no longer quite the same.  It was not that she found it less
pleasant; quite the opposite. But now that it had been demonstrated to her
that she was not in control of her nicotine habit, she began to notice its
effects on her more than she had done before.  She found her cough more
irritating.  She appeared to have no stamina for physical exercise at all.
It occurred to her that her body might be sending her a distant early warning
of trouble ahead.  She began to wish that she had never agreed to Martin's
proposal, and tried to persuade herself that she was imagining these
tell-tale symptoms.
 
Eventually there came an incident which Anne could not ignore.  Martin
telephoned her at work one afternoon to say that he had been given two
tickets for a West End show that evening.  Anne was working late, and so they
agreed to meet at the theatre.  When Anne eventually finished work, she had
less than half an hour to make the journey from her office to the theatre,
and on going outside she discovered that it had begun to rain.  She sheltered
in a doorway while she waited for a taxi to come along.  And waited, and
waited.  Because of the rain, taxis were in short supply, and cab after cab
went by full of passengers.  It was nearly a quarter of an hour before she
spotted a taxi at last, emerging with its hire sign illuminated from a side
street into the road where she was standing.  She walked towards it waving
her arm, but failed to catch the driver's eye.  The taxi moved out into the
road but then turned to drive off in the direction away from where Anne was
frantically signalling.  She threw away her cigarette and started to run
after it as fast as she could.  The taxi was now stopped at a red light about
a hundred metres away, its hire sign still on.  Before Anne had covered half
the distance to it, she felt her chest becoming tight and painful.  Her heart
was hammering as it demanded more oxygen than her lungs could supply.  Unable
to continue running, she stopped and tried to force her lungs to take deeper
breaths, but succeeded only in triggering a coughing fit.   When she looked
up again the taxi had gone.
 
Gasping from her effort, Anne stood in a shop doorway and got out her cell
phone.
 
"Martin?  Hi, it's me-  What?   No, I'm all right-  I'm just-out of breath,
that's all.  Look, I'm sorry, but I'm going to be late-"
 
Anne put away her phone and, for once, resisted the urge to take out her
cigarettes.  Still breathing heavily, she began to walk slowly towards the
nearest Tube station.
 
 
*    *    *
 
 
"I've decided to stop smoking," Anne announced out of the blue, a few days
later.
 
"I'm pleased to hear it," Martin replied, cautiously.  "What's caused the
change of mind?"
 
"I've been thinking about what you said.  I don't suppose I can go on smoking
two packs a day for ever, can I?  Maybe you're right - maybe I've been doing
it for too long already.  I used to be able to run 100 metres in 12 seconds
and now I can't run it at all.  And it seems that I'm not able to cut down to
just a few each day.  So if I'm going to have to quit altogether it may as
well be sooner rather than later.  I've always told you that I only smoke
because I want to.  This is my chance to prove it to myself."
 
"You're quite right.  If you're determined to stop, then of course I'll help
you in any way I can," Martin assured her.  He put his arms round her and
kissed her.  "Good for you, Anne.  I know you won't regret this."
 
Anne looked at him scornfully.  "Of course I'll regret it," she said.  "I
love smoking.  It's going to be absolute hell."

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