I imagine that’s how it was at the dawn of time, when fire was sacred, rare, and desperately needed.
Here in the hospital, we all smoke because we’re sick. Some more than others. But in the end, we all smoke just the same.
Then these brilliant doctors decided to ban all lighters.
So now, we all depend on a single fire machine to light up our cigarettes.
It was a big machine, about the size of a person. In the center, a single hole where you’d place your cigarette, and a two-way button you had to press to make the metal glow just enough to spark a flame.
I managed to light my cigarette maybe one out of every three tries. The rest of the time, I had to wait for someone else to succeed and borrow their fire, like some small ritual of shared desperation.
And, of course, the machine only seemed to work when you didn’t need it. But when you were on edge, craving a cigarette like it was air, nothing happened and the machine wouldn’t work.
We’d gather around the machine, a circle of the sick and the restless, watching, waiting.
And when someone made it work, we celebrated.
Fire became currency.
We all shared the fire like it was gold. And since fire was something precious, we often used the end of one cigarette to light another.
We didn’t have much to do in the hospital besides smoking.
Some liked to talk while smoking, some preferred to be left alone enjoying their cigarette.
I was a listener, always into the stories about the violence and the jobs and the nonsense. It gave me something to do.
I think I have never smoked as much in my life. Even with the damn fire machine.
