Bad Combination

Abstract

Doris had smoked Lucky Strikes for 55 years; but her alveoli eventually popped like party balloons; emphysema turned her lungs into dead space; she inhaled a steady flow of bottled oxygen. Her latest Lucky, lit with an old Zippo lighter, ignited her O2, too—the flash of flames blistered her cheeks, charred her tender nares; her eyelashes curled as if by a cruel beautician, eyebrows all but erased; her polyester nightgown, blue with yellow daisies, melted into her chest. In the ER the smell of burned human flesh— fetid, but strangely sweet, rode high in my nose— I chased it away with thoughts of wood smoke; seasoned cherry, the best in my opinion, or the waft from Walt’s Hitching Post open pit barbeque in Covington. Her hoarse, singed voice cried out: “Doc, pleeease! Something for the pain!” We rushed to pop an IV into her thin arm— merciful morphine; now she sucked precious oxygen through a tight mask that puckered her scorched face; I observed all this, without much fire in my empathy furnace. I regarded her ribs as she heaved breaths in and out, like the tired bellows in an old steel factory; her skin was leathery and wrinkled, as soft to the touch as the chaps of the Marlboro man; her upper lip had weeping blisters with remnants of lipstick; I imagined her ashtray at home, filled with Lucky butts, each with a pink halo kiss. “When will it stop burning?” she moaned “You’re probably through the worst of it.” As I slathered her face with burn ointment I was pretty sure she would live— there was a toughness about her— I was pretty sure, too, that she had not had her last Lucky Strike—some doctorly advice was in order: “Doris,—cigarettes and oxygen—bad combination,” “Yeah, Doc,” she grimaced, “Tell me about it.”