There is no air left in the atmosphere, only smoke. It filled the small interior of the Honda Escort in a matter of minutes. I can’t breathe; I can’t escape; I can’t think of anything except the fresh, cold air separated from me by a thin pane of glass. I turn away from the source, but it makes no difference. My lungs are constricting, and the tiny crack in the driver’s seat window is letting in just enough of the bitter winter air to keep me conscious during this hell. I think I’m finally safe when he throws it through the miniscule crack, but almost immediately my dad lights up another cigarette.

He’d do this to me every winter. It was freezing out, but if the passenger side window still worked, I think I would have rolled it all the way down. Maybe that was real reason I could never sit in the back when I was little. I couldn’t stand the smoke, and he couldn’t stand the cold.

My dad had been smoking long before I was born, and he didn’t quit until eighteen years after. I always hated his nasty habit, even when I was too little to understand that he was killing himself one cancer stick at a time. I hated it because of winters in the car, because of the stench in the basement where he primarily smoked, and because of the faint stale smell of it on my clothes which one somewhat tactless friend informed me of sophomore year. I hated it even before it landed him in the hospital.

Fall of my senior year my dad went into the hospital. He’d been feeling very weak and sick, and he’d turned a pale yellow color. My mom took him into ICU when I was busy with the newspaper after school. They didn’t call me; I found out when I called my mom. This is similar to the time when, during my freshman year of college, my father went in again to have surgery and they didn’t tell me because they didn’t want me distracted during finals.

He stayed in the hospital about a week and a half. He was unconscious the first two days, and when he woke he couldn’t speak; he had a tube jammed down his throat. In fact, he couldn’t communicate at all; his wrists were bound to the bed so he wouldn’t pull out the tube that was jammed down his throat. Luckily, the unconsciousness, the drugs, and the tube jammed down his throat made him forget he was being forced to quit after thirty years.

Pneumonia, bronchitis, and the beginnings of emphysema were the verdict. He left the hospital with an oxygen machine, an inhaler filled with steroids, and one good lung. The oxygen machine whirs incessantly and screeches relentlessly whenever the power goes out. The steroids made my dad fat; I mean hard, visceral, pregnant belly fat. And the one good lung is a poor substitute for the two he used to have.

I don’t remember how many cigarettes my dad smoked per day. In fact, I don’t even remember what he looked like when he smoked. I can’t picture him with a cigarette between his fingers or perched on his lips. Maybe I just don’t want to.

I do remember what it was like seeing him in that hospital bed, though. And I remember the time, right before he went into ICU, we were in Chicago for a Bears game and he made us take a cab half a block to the train station. He’d walked too much that day; he couldn’t walk any more. And I remember it was two months after his ICU stay that I lit up my first cigarette.