Week Twelve

Quit

The following is a scene reworked from a movie script I wrote a few years back. 

The walls of the ice cave flickered with the dancing light of the fire. The team - arranged in a messy circle around the camp fire - took this moment to decompress from the day-long climb they'd just endured on the southern face of Gangkhar Puensum. So far, this covert mission had been successful, with minimal interference from the Bhutanese government or mother nature. 

Harris glanced over the crew he'd assembled, and for the first time all day, cracked a smile. They were motley, rugged, and each had an over-sized personality, but they were some of the best mountain climbers he knew. And he saw the completion and subsequent rest from the first day's climb as a chance for them to get to know each other better. 

Mark and Dill, friends since high school, were busy entertaining the rest of the group with a story from their past.

"...and Dill comes to my place with, like, three Thanksgiving-sized turkeys," Mark says, letting the image float in the silence, "and they're totally uncooked."

"Last time you told this, there were only two turkeys," Dill interjects.

"Whatever. Dill has more than one turkey."

"Lots of dead turkeys, got it," Devon says, hoping to move the story along.

"So I ask him what's up, and he tells me not to worry about it. But at this point, I'm fully invested. Motherfucker just shows up at my door with," Mark takes a moment to look at Dill, "several dead turkeys. I mean, this is not a normal occurrence."

"You're really going to tell the whole thing?" Dill asks.

"Now we're all invested," Harris states - his first words since putting his pack down.

"Right. So Dill has these birds, and at that point it'd been like, what? A day and a half since your last cigarette?"

"Something like that."

"And so Dill throws these things on my kitchen table and just goes at them with a knife. Starts cutting meat off of them."

A wave of realization passes over Devon's face.

"Yeah, uncooked poultry. He takes this shit and just starts pounding it into his mouth."

"How was I to know? I didn't take home economics."

"Jesus. How much did you eat?" Chris asks.

"Not that much, it was hard to get down."

"You are such an idiot."

"Hey man, I wanted to quit smoking."

"By going 'cold-turkey.' It's just an expression."

"Yeah. I get that now. And by the way, at any point you could have stopped me."

"No way. I felt like this was a teachable moment for you."

"So what happened? Did you quit smoking" Devon again tries to push the conversation.

"This?" Mark says through laughter, "This is the best part."

"I ate a shit load of raw turkey. Literally pounds of this stuff. I got salmonella poisoning real bad."

"Real bad." Mark punctuates.

"So I spend the next four days in bed, just puking and shitting, shitting and puking. I lost weight. I wanted to die. I couldn't move. And the thing is, I was sick for so long that my cigarette cravings stopped."

"Because," Devon says, "you quit cold turkey." 

"Exactly! I haven't had a cigarette since!"

Harris laughs, "This is remarkable."

"No kidding," says Devon, "You should open a clinic."

"Oh, I've considered it. But I doubt I'd get past the FDA."