Time, only Time - Part 6

He reconsidered the reason why he had been smoking for so long pretty often, also if his sickness was really due to long and intensive smoking.
The former had various answers, almost each time a new one. He could not totally deny that he enjoyed smoking. Sometimes it was definitely the most pleasant occupation in addition to how he adored the taste of certain cigarettes. The only thing about smoking which he really disliked was ridiculously lighting his cigarettes. It somehow seemed quite disgusting for him to light cigarettes, so if he was with a smoking friend or companion he would always ask them to do him the favor and then he would personally turn around in order to spare himself the sight of his cigarette being lit.
However, what really kept him smoking all these years - even when he was unable to tell the taste - was the time effect of his addiction. He was no chain smoker, neither unable to avoid smoking for more hours or even one whole day when he had to. Yet he was addicted enough to feel the urge and the need to smoke every few hours. The alarm worked for him as kind of his personal time measuring system and this was to be treasured most at the times when he could not get his mind clear or off of certain things which bothered or troubled and in most cases also hurt him.
As to the second question, weather his sickness had anything to do with smoking: very little, he believed.
He would not even try to give up, this was a fact, but mostly for he knew ater all this time that his sickness was a great deal more of a mental matter than one to do with his smoking. So he was convinced, should he have given up smoking, his mental disturbance would find another way to express itself. No matter how healty his life was, he could not get away with health problems as long as his mind and his soul were not in peace.
He was obviously tires of having been sick over the past ten days. The worst were however his two days in the hospital. He always kept telling everyone that staying at any health care center would just make his health deteriorate and his suffering greater, but their blind trust in medical science just would not let them accept; or maybe it was their unwillingness to admit that he was truly not to be helped.
This time, he was specially ashamed of himself and how he was only to be helped by her and not by any of the other people who loved him so much and who tried almost everything to help him.
This morning for instance, he had woken up with the pain, which had stopped just one single minute after her arrival, so that he was being fine for the moment, although the fatigue and the residues of pain and sickness did still feel like a heavy load on his chest.
He was tired, obviously tired, mentally and physically tired, too damn tired.
He had been so troubled over these ten days that he was absolutely unable to enjoy her presence as he usually did. She was there ad maybe even god failed to realize how happy this made him, yet it was just not like it always used to be. Maybe he was too desperate or disappointed with how he was being rejected by her fears all over again and again; maybe he was just too tired.
They were cooking and chatting in his kitchen, the same way they had done thousand times before, yet it was not quite like every time; he made the habitual jokes, talked the same way, tried to look calm, chilly and happy as he did every second he had the chance to pass with her, it was just not the same. He was just unable, incapable to feel good.
He was giving his best to excel at pretension, far her presence was far too valuable for him, regardless of the circumstances. He wondered weather he really hoped not to be cut red handed by her or weather his grieving heart did actually wish upon it to happen. For all he had ever dreamt of and all he had ever wished upon would be like blown away with a storm, should she be neglecting the storms inside him to this great extent. There was no mistake to the fact that the two were really close and there could also be none to the fact that she cared for him or the first fact would have already been denied.
So he really felt relieved when she finally asked him the fatal question after they had finished their lunch and were talking over bier. She knew he could not lie, she knew he would not lie. She had suspected why he was being so sick lately, she had speculated the reason. How she felt about it, she would of course not let him find out, just as usual, as he expected. She would never deny anything, she would never say he was just a friend to her, but she would never let him find out what she really felt either. She drove him crazy in each and every way. She just questioned him, she just tried to convince him that he was misjudging his own feelings, his own dreams. How dared she? How dared she tell him what he wanted after all these years of dreaming? Did she know how he smelled her scent every time? Did she know about his nightmares at nights and how he woke up every time feeling guilty to have dreamt of all that happening to her? Had she ever stared into her own eyes to see what stuff she was made of? Was she even capable to realize the stuff his dreams were made out of? So that she could recognize she was made of the same? How dared she ever deny the spell she had cast upon him the first time she ever touched him? Was she aware of how his bare skin longed for her touch every night he tossed and turned in his cold bed trying to defeat pain?
He repeated the questions in his mind in thousand various forms, but he did not dare ask them. It broke his already suffering soul off in infinite number of pieces to be denied by her. Was she actually doing this to protect him? Did she not know that it simply did not work? He wanted to cry, he wanted to shake her until all her fears were shaken off her, he felt like cutting his veins so that the blood flowing out would demonstrate the truth in a way impossible to deny anymore. He felt the sudden attack of the pain which has been forced away for some hours. He felt down, he felt as if gasping for every cubic centimeter of air. He actually burst into coughing over the dining table.