“This is it, Mrs. Gallagher, or Hagerman,” he said with sarcastic joy. “You wanted to see your husband again. Here, you get your wish. Now comes your suffering, and along with your suffering comes a souvenir. A remembrance, of a sort, of the union you shared between yourself and that fuckin’ asshole FBI agent!”
The men began to laugh, and my confusion about his words didn’t last long. When Donovan Esposito put the instrument around my ring finger, I knew exactly what Sal meant. There wasn’t time to brace myself for the unimaginable pain I was about to endure. The diamond ring, which symbolized my lifetime commitment to Michael, was pushed forward, to make room for the bone cutter. There wasn’t even time to close my eyes before the doctor clamped the instrument together, severing my finger completely. Sal held out the bloody finger, waving it in front of my face, as I screamed in pain like never before.
“Finger lickin’ good, eh, Detective?” he chided.
The pain was too much and I began vomiting. With Antonio still holding my head in his viselike hands, I wasn’t able to turn. Because there was nowhere for the bile to go, I began to aspirate it. All of the liquid was sucked back down into my lungs. I could suffocate to death. This was it. Please God, let this be it. Let me die like this, quickly, I begged silently as I gagged and struggled for air. Sal wouldn’t have it.
“Turn her fuckin’ head over, Tony! Jesus Christ, if she dies like that I’m gonna be pissed. I’m not done yet!” he screamed.
As ordered, Antonio turned my head sharply to the left, allowing me to regurgitate quickly and avoid death. A shame really—death would have been much better. I was ultimately able to catch my breath as Donovan took my finger and placed it in the cooler that sat next to the table.
“That’s all they’re gonna get, honey. Just yer finger! Trust me when I tell you that no one will ever find your body. You’ll be like the female Jimmy Hoffa. You should be honored! Your finger, with the ring of course, will be in the mail to the FBI at the same time we’re on our plane out of here.” He leaned over and grabbed my chin, forcing me to look at him. “But in case you think that’s the end of it, think again. Your finger is only the beginning, darlin’.”
Dizziness and disorientation were starting to take over. I tried my best to focus on Sal’s face but couldn’t.
Donovan grabbed the next instrument and turned it on, a very small version of a buzz saw, the blade approximately the size of a silver dollar. Hearing the grinding, buzzing sound of the instrument was enough to make me convulse on the table, causing all of the men to hold me down harder. That was the last feeling I had.
Thinking maybe I had aspirated a little too much, it dawned on me that now I was dying. The pain from my finger was gone; I couldn’t feel it. In fact, I couldn’t feel anything. My body, as it died, started to slowly lose feeling from my toes on up. There was no sense of time or place, no sense of pain or feeling at all. When the hands of death reached my head, the lights in the room started to dim, and the sounds could no longer be heard. The men disappeared and everything became dark—everything except a small light in the far corner of the room that started to brighten.
Patiently, I watched as the light grew. Smiling, I was able to sit up and hold my hand out as Michael emerged, wearing the tuxedo he’d worn the day we were married. I felt at peace. Music drifted into the room, as if off in the distance, but loud enough that we could hear it. Taking my hand, he smiled as I stood up and embraced him, slowly rocking back and forth to the music. We would be together forever. We would be to—
“Wake up, sweetheart!”
I focused back on the lights above. The sounds of the vibrating, grinding saw told me the nightmare wasn’t over yet. Although I had a brief reprieve of unconsciousness, these men would make good on their word: they were going to make me suffer. I felt better about it somehow, calmer. Michael was waiting for me, waiting to dance and take me away with him. And that was okay.
My preempted reunion with Michael had seemed to last hours, but Donovan was in the same spot he was when I’d blacked out. Justin and Petey pulled my gold tank top up, exposing my stomach and the area where my liver was.
Donovan Esposito began to reach toward my abdomen, holding the instrument. This time, I was able to close my eyes. I can’t remember which came first, the blast, or the feeling of the blade against my skin. Regardless, the next few seconds threw me into utter madness.
Just as Donovan began to cut my skin, a blast, loud enough to deafen my ears, exploded through the double doors. Smoke enveloped the room and a barrage of gunfire seemed to come from all sides. I opened my eyes in time to see Petey Iaccona thrown against the wall, a spray of bullets penetrating his entire torso. He slumped to the ground, leaving a wide smear of blood against the sterile white walls.
There was a lot of yelling and screaming. Justin Brown crouched down along the table to give himself time to grab his pistol. When he came up to fire it, he took a shot directly in his forehead. I’ll never forget the look on his face as he was catapulted backward.
So engrossed in the chaos, I wasn’t aware that one of the men, dressed in black and wearing a dark helmet and dark face shield—a SWAT team member, I thought—was frantically pulling at my restraints in an attempt to free them. He resorted to pulling a switchblade out of his pants and cut the restraints off. Overcome by smoke from the blast and gunfire, I was coughing and trying to breathe as the SWAT officer lifted me off the table and ran with me in his arms through the double doors. Yells of surrender and orders of “Don’t move” spread throughout the room. The last time I saw Salvatore Iaccona, he was facedown on the floor being handcuffed.
Feeling the fresh air wash over my face, I knew a miracle had occurred and my prayers had been answered. I was going to live. How or why was irrelevant at that point. The only thing relevant was that I was saved and had once again escaped the hands of death. However, this time, I had come entirely too close.
The SWAT officer who carried me headed toward a waiting ambulance. The flashing lights of the numerous police and emergency vehicles blinded me. As I was bounced and jarred around in his arms, my pain resurfaced in my hand, my stomach, and my face. For once, the pain was welcomed. The pain told me I was still alive and kicking. The pain told me I would see my children again. If I’d had the strength, I would’ve screamed in celebration.
When the officer jumped over a curb, I cried out from the jolt. Stopping, he gently set me down on the pavement, cradling my head in his arms.
“Bring that ambulance over here, now!” he yelled.
Hearing his voice made my heart stop. I bolted upright and looked at my own reflection in the shiny black shield that he wore, a shield that covered his face. My pain became a distant memory. It was then that he reached to me, ever so tenderly, brushing the hair away from my face, a signature gesture I had received hundreds of times before. It can’t be! my head screamed.
Almost violently, I reached toward the officer with my good hand and began pulling at the shield to rip it off. Grabbing my wrist, he prevented this, and backed away before reaching up to his face. He slowly began pulling the shield up himself.
As I looked at the face staring back at me, I began shaking my head back and forth in disbelief. It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be.
“Yes, CeeCee,” he said, reading my thoughts. “It’s me…Michael.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Maybe this was another dream, similar to the one I’d had inside the funeral home. But remembering the dance Michael and I had shared brought forth several differences between then and now. The first was that now I felt excruciating pain. The second was that as my eyes were locked on Michael’s, I saw he was breathing hard and sweating, unlike the perfection of our earlier reunion. Still, this wasn’t enough to convince me that I was currently facing my dead husband. My mind scrambled for the explanation.
“Who are you?” I asked breathlessly, backing away from him. “Why would you do this to me? Is this a sick joke?”
H
e pulled his helmet completely off, exposing his thick brown hair. Then he put his hand out and slowly took a step toward me.
“It’s me, Cee. This isn’t a joke.” He spoke slow and soft. “I know you’re scared right now, but please, listen to me. This was set up to protect you and the kids, and I will tell you everything, but we need to get you to a hospital.” He nodded at my left hand, minus a digit and still bleeding heavily.
My missing finger was the furthest thing from my mind right now. On my knees, I moved forward to be closer to him, enough that I could reach my good hand out and barely touch his face. His skin was real—it had stubble on it, for crying out loud. His hair felt the same as I remembered. When I pulled his left glove off and saw the wedding ring I thought had been buried with his body, that was the moment I finally believed. It was the moment that I knew my prayers had been answered. Michael was alive, and standing right in front of me.
“Michael?” My voice quivered, before the sobs came. “Michael!”
My legs felt weak, even kneeling, but I managed to lean forward and grab ahold of him, planting my face in the front of his shirt and screaming. Screaming and sobbing so hard into his shirt, I began to feel light-headed again, but I didn’t let go. He knelt down with me and held me tighter than I did him. Feeling his chest hiccup against my face let me know that he too was sobbing. All of the past several months came flooding back. The feelings of despair, heartache, loneliness, and sorrow all brought me to this point. It brought Michael back to me.
Oh, how I screamed and sobbed, and screamed. The front of Michael’s shirt was soaked, and we had drawn an audience of police officers and FBI agents. The whole damn city could’ve been standing there watching us, but as far as I was concerned, it was just me and my Michael.
After what seemed an eternity, but not yet long enough, Michael tenderly pulled away and put his finger under my chin, raising my face to his. His eyes, red and swollen from his own sea of emotions, looked into mine.
“I missed you so much I thought I would die, but we’ll get to all of that.” He soothingly caressed my cheek. “I’m going to try to help you into the ambulance. You have to go to the hospital now.”
My chest convulsed in an attempt to get air. My eyes felt swollen and watery. I did my best to let Michael help me, but I never took my eyes off him for a second. Everything seemed so foggy and blurry, I feared that if I shut my eyes, he would be gone when I opened them.
Three EMTs who stood by the back door of the ambulance helped me get inside and onto the gurney. They immediately began taking my vital signs while bandaging my left hand in a massive amount of white gauze. My eyes were still on Michael as he stood at the ambulance door, and his were on mine.
“Ma’am?” the EMT taking my vitals said, his face showing lines of deep concern. “Your heart rate is a little too high for my taste right now. I need you to do me a favor and take a deep breath and hold it for twenty seconds. Can you do that for me?”
Listening to the beeps slow down as I held my breath, I saw the man begin to relax. Maybe I was closer to a heart attack than I thought, but it appeared they had it under control.
“I think we’ve got her stabilized. Lou, shut the door so we can get going,” the EMT who’d bandaged my hand said to the man who was taking my vitals.
They started to shut the rear doors of the ambulance when I sat up in a panic. Before I could say anything, Michael had already addressed my fear.
“Hold up, guys!” He put his hand in between the doors to prevent them from closing, and opened them back up as he stepped inside. “You’re not taking her anywhere without me.” He gave me a wink and sat down on a padded bench.
Feeling relieved, I lay back down, turning my head toward him. There was another knock at the back doors just as we began to pull away. Stopping the ambulance, an EMT opened the doors to one of the SWAT members, who was holding a small red cooler—the cooler that held my finger.
“Sorry, but you might want this.” The officer shoved the cooler forward.
“What the hell is it?” The EMT looked irritated.
“It’s her finger.” He nodded at me, and my stomach churned.
As the EMT took the cooler, I saw two more familiar faces approaching the ambulance, Naomi and Coop.
“Wait!” I ordered, before he closed the doors again.
Propping myself up on my elbows, I did my best to smile at them. Naomi was crying, and Coop looked as if he was in shock.
“Hey there, strangers.”
“God, CeeCee, please tell me you’re okay,” Naomi whispered, poking her head in.
“I’m gonna be. Now that I have him back, I’ll be just fine, Naomi.” I nodded at Michael.
Coop was still staring at Michael, as if dumbfounded. Apparently, the other officers had just filled them in on Michael, and on Justin Brown.
“Man oh man, Michael.” Coop shook his head. “I wouldn’t have believed it until I saw it with my own eyes. It’s good to have you back, buddy.” He stretched out his hand, which Michael shook lightly. “And Justin. Who would’ve thought—”
“Not right now, Coop,” Naomi intervened. “All in good time. Right now, CeeCee needs to get to the hospital. CeeCee, I’ve called your father and Eric. The sheriff is on his way here. I’ll fill him in.”
Nodding at her as the doors closed, I breathed a sigh of relief. It was finally over. On the short drive to the hospital, Michael held my right hand the entire way and kept asking me which parts of my body hurt. Since the list was lengthy, I kept telling him I’d be fine.
As soon as we arrived at the hospital, I was taken to an operating room. The EMT told me the sooner they reattached my finger, the better off I’d be. As I was prepped for the surgery, I heard Michael, in the hallway, talking louder than usual. Smiling to myself, I knew what was happening. Michael was telling the doctor that he would be in the operating room during the surgery, whether the doctor liked it or not. When Michael came through the doors a short time later wearing surgical scrubs, I knew he had won the argument.
Once all of the X-rays taken earlier returned, the doctor was ready to start. Surprisingly, my nose wasn’t broken, and the only attention my abdomen needed was a butterfly Band-Aid. Donovan Esposito hadn’t cut me before the blast, but the force from it threw him forward, scraping the blade of the saw across my stomach. It was nothing more than a deep scratch. Right before the surgery began, I told the doctor that my lungs needed to be looked at because I thought I had slightly aspirated.
“You probably choked on your vomit, CeeCee, but I guarantee you didn’t aspirate it. If that were the case, we’d have you on a ventilator right now, or you probably would have died. Aspirating vomit destroys lung tissue immediately, so consider yourself lucky.”
He couldn’t possibly comprehend just how lucky I felt. People dream about having their loved ones brought back from the dead. Only I had experienced such a miracle.
The surgery went smoothly, and less than three hours later I was lying in the recovery room with Michael still at my side. I tried to remember what day it was or the last time I had slept, but it was no use. As hard as I fought the exhaustion that overcame me, it was a battle I quickly lost. I closed my eyes and fell into a sleep that lasted for almost seventeen hours.
Since I had an IV of continuous pain medication, I actually felt decent when I woke up. Expecting my body to ache and scream out in pain at every small movement, I was pleasantly surprised to sit up pain free and see Michael sitting in the same chair, as I remembered. He hadn’t moved. He was still wearing his SWAT uniform, and his head rested on his shoulder as he slept.
Smiling, I had to pinch myself as a reminder that he was real. I stared at him for several minutes before rousing him awake.
“Michael,” I called out to him.
He sat upright, rubbing his eyes. “What? You okay, baby?”
“I’m perfect. What time is it?”
He looked at his watch. “It’s about one in the morning. Let me get the n
urse.” He stood up.
“No, I’m fine, really. Come over here.”
He sat on my bed, and I rested my head on his shoulder. Euphoria didn’t come close to describing what I felt.
“The doctor was in earlier. He said your hand looks good, and you should regain full use of your finger in the next couple of months. Other than feeling some numbness in the tip, you’ll be as good as new,” he said softly, stroking my hair.
Lifting the white gauze mitten that engulfed my hand, I was truly grateful to the doctor, and to the SWAT member who’d recovered the cooler with my finger in it. Michael raised an issue that hadn’t even crossed my mind yet. Everything had happened so quickly, it was difficult to put things into perspective.
“Naomi was in, too. She called Eric and told him not to bring the girls in. You’re going to have to sit them down and explain the circumstances to them…like me, for instance. If he brought them in now, and they saw me, they’d go into shock.” He rubbed his eyes again. “I’m going to have to get used to people looking at me like I’m a ghost. The sheriff, your father, and some of the officers about fell over when they saw me. Your dad’s coming back, but I had to give him some type of an explanation.”
I brought my head up from his shoulder. “I’m certainly waiting to hear an explanation too, as you can imagine. I’m ready, Michael. I have to know.”
He nodded but suggested we have our talk at home. The doctor said I could have been discharged much earlier, but Michael had allowed me to sleep. Within an hour, Michael and I were on our way home together, something that hadn’t occurred in several months. Pulling into the driveway, he commented on the front window, the one that had been blown out during the explosion.
“I see you got it fixed.” His voice was flat.
“Cost a pretty penny. Not to mention, I was blown against the wall when it happened.”
The Body Mafia Page 20