The Weed by Derek McMillan
I started smoking to look big and hard at school. (The evidence linking smoking and impotence came later). Aptly enough, we smokers used to gather in the graveyard during the lunch break.
The local shop used to sell us single cigarettes for threepence. They knew we were underage. We were in school uniform for a start.
Years later, when I went back to the same school as a teacher, you couldn’t see from one side of the staffroom to the other for the clouds of smoke. I needn’t have bothered buying cigarettes, just breathing in was enough.
That all changed when we smokers were banned. They consigned us to a “smokers’ room”. It was cruel to put it up three flights of stairs. Many of us barely had breath when we arrived.
Then I got a bit of a cough. It didn’t go away. The hospital said the lung cancer was inoperable and I was sent home to “be more comfortable” and free up a bed.
I have a cylinder of oxygen with a “no smoking” sign on the side. Every day a nurse comes to give me my morphine shot. I have a chemist’s shopful of drugs on the bedside table and a fat lot of good they are.
I chat with the family on Facetime or Zoom. The cheeky whippersnapper from “meals on wheels will be along with a joke and a shepherd’s pie soon. I look forward to “Nurse Morphine.” The only trouble is I’m dying for a cigarette.
Derek McMillan is a writer in Durringon in the UK. His editor is his wife, Angela. He has written for print and online publications in the UK, USA and Canada. His latest book is the audio-book Brevity which is available on eBay. Check it out. He also publishes a blog for flash fiction with the help of over 100 contributors – worthingflash.blogspot.com
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