Crude Surgery

[Blamey]

Despite everything I had worked for, I remained alone. In my one time of need, despite the playful fights and the “family” setting we had tried to throw ourselves in, they were now gone. We were busy sure; I was throwing up colleges left and right, focused on education and so damn fucking proud of myself. Johnny had his sky scrapers…..the others were doing whatever. All I could think to do was breathe; I could feel blood leaving my body in sickening spurts, glancing to my right I saw the red liquid seeping out in a rushed pool, surrounding me like an aura of emotion and pain. I choked, feeling it rush up and hit me as I tried to sit up. The painful nausea that forced me to retch, only to puke up more blood. I could stand, but barely, and voices sounded off around me, surrounding my head in a buzz of constant stabbing pain.

I was in pain. My people were in pain. He was dead. He was really dead. And all I could do was take those few slow steps, and collapse next to his fallen body. His face was so white, and his eyes were still open. I didn’t even have the energy to try and close them before sirens blared in the distance. Explaining this to the police would be a bitch, so I forced myself up and away from it all. I took the well-known back alley routes through the city, away from the noise, away from Boston entirely. Right now this city wasn’t a place where I could thrive and be proud of myself, it held nothing more than blood drenched streets and anger. How I managed to get home I’ll never understand, I remember crying, making some kind of noise, and a lot of pain. I felt like I was on fire, and the fear was almost as bad as the Trials. I must have been a sight to people passing by, pale face, drenched in a grotesque amount of blood, I looked like I’d been stabbed.

Even if I had been shot. The urge to call Johnny, or Al, was massive, but I resisted both and instead collapsed on my kitchen floor, curling into a ball and trying to stop the bleeding with my hands. Even if it was illogical, and I should have grabbed a towel, I didn’t care. I just wanted it all to stop. No one could know what happened, no one could know why I was on the scene of Buddy McLean’s death, no one could know how desperately in love with that man I was. It just wasn’t right of me, I was the smart one the one with the amazing education who never put a book down, I was supposed to be the one who was guarded against my emotions, I was happy and free. I scolded the others for doing things that were reckless; I fished and swam in my free time. I was too busy for love, especially with a mafia member. Yet here I was, broken unlike anything I’d experienced before.

And I had been caught in the crossfire. Three shots had been fired, two hit him, one hit me, and I was losing more blood than I should have. Maybe one hit him and two hit me, I didn’t know, but the white hot pain had turned cold for a few moments, and I blacked out shortly after. I remember Buddy screaming, screaming my name. “Alice! Alice wake up! Don’t die on me!” I could have begged the same from him. Don’t die on me Buddy. Please, don’t turn cold, don’t lose that beautiful flush, don’t be so white, don’t be so stiff. I just want to be near you. But in a matter of seconds after I had regained my sense of reality, and realized I’d been screaming this out loud to his motionless figure, he was gone. I felt a pain like no other. It was despair, and anger, and misery. It came from several directions, pain from my personal trauma and emotional state, anger from the mafia which was about to go to war, misery as his wife found out, sadness from all over the state as people subconsciously realized something bad was about to happen, even if they didn’t fully realize it.

The feeling spread like an infection, it began where the bullet had entered my stomach, and spread with its agonizing cold tendrils to grip my heart, and freeze my lungs, and leave my legs incapable of moving. I needed Al. I needed at least Johnny. But they were dealing with enough as it was, and compared to them my pain was minuscule. And as the smart girl I knew I was, I had decided at that moment to lock up this dark secret. With this secret my will to communicate with the rest of my proud yet torn country would vanish little by little, until I had locked myself in my house and refused to leave. After a while, people stopped trying to contact me. I suppose they became annoyed by my obnoxious behavior, and I wouldn’t blame them. I was throwing a fit, mourning in the worst possible way. While they may have needed me, my support and advice, I didn’t offer it. I healed slowly from my wounds, though a nasty scar left a reminder of the day I ripped the bullet from within me with my own hands.

Crude surgery from a woman who was fully educated in these practices, yet put none of those skills to real use. Louise Erdrich once said “Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.” Despite the advice, and the apple tree conveniently located in my garden, I could never bring myself to take those first steps out the door to enjoy the sunshine. My heart had become cold, and lonely. I felt it was only appropriate as an artist to live the way I felt.

The day Buddy died, was the last day I ever felt beautiful.

Alice McLaen - Massachusetts
Johnny Amsterdam - New York