Cigarettes and my sister

My sister, uncharacteristically, in a half-worried and half-exasperated voice, said, “If you get cancer, I’m not sponsoring your medical bill.”

She didn’t like my smoking. My drinking.

The anime was on the television but she wasn’t watching it.

I realised, for the first time, that the cost of smoking extended to my family.

More broadly speaking, how long more can I put myself in harm’s way? My sister may think that what she said never reached me. I hadn’t made a sound. But she’s got me thinking… Who else is there besides me when the crap hits the fan?