Another part of the original draft. I know uploading just parts of a longer piece in no particular order is such a chaos. I really don’t know how to write in chronological order. I just have a long draft with a thousand notes and links and a vague idea of how to connect them, the plot is my head but I’m really struggling to develop it. I don’t have a method or a habit so I work on them in a very messy way. However, I think they can also be read individually, so I’ll keep uploading them this way instead of waiting to have them all done. Hopefully, if I get to finish it someday, I will edit it as the a slow burn it was meant to be. In the meantime, here you have a piece involving injured Alfie.
No smut or fluff, they’re still building bridges…
Days and months had gone by since he left you standing confused, scared and speechless on the pavement in the early spring. You really didn’t know what to expect from him in such a situation, but the fact that he let you go back home by yourself bruised and scared after getting in trouble to help him, totally took you aback. However, it was the way he had spoken that you found more frustrating. After spending a great deal of time dissecting his words, you were unable to fathom his message. Should you take it as a warning or a threat? Even the tone of his voice had been so ambiguous. Whether it was a sibylline prophecy of doom or a devious threat, his narrative of Lot’s wife had you mesmerized. He was ever such an enigmatic man and deep inside you loved that. The less you understood him, the more you wanted to figure him out.
On the other hand, the strong independent woman you had become had promised herself not to make it into a big thing. After everything you had gone through in the past few years, you were adamant about your emotional and economic self-sufficiency. Willing and perfectly capable of taking care of yourself, you did your best to scrape out a living in the tough streets of London.
Your job as a nurse at the hospital kept you busy a good part of your time but since you usually felt quite energetic, you would spend your spare time in a million activities in order to dodge boredom but mostly your own thoughts. One of the many consequences you had to face when you returned from France was the fact that living an ordinary life was no longer an option. Everything felt meaningless and empty and the thrill seeker inside you crave for action. The war put you into perspective of what is worth, changed your priorities, you didn’t care about dresses and whims anymore and you’d never waste your life again with someone who wouldn’t let you be free. All things considered, you regret more what you never did because of the lack of courage, than the mistakes you had made.
That’s why you threw caution into the wind the evening you decided to get involved in Mr. Solomons’ business putting yourself at risk without a second thought. Your thirst for extreme feelings was insatiable to say the least.
In spite of this intense activity, more frequently than not, you kept finding yourself trying not to linger in those recurrent daydreams in which you shared an exciting life with the man. It was always him, the image of his broad figure dressed in black, eyes covered by the wide brim of his hat, didn’t cease to chase you. You couldn’t shake off the image of those impious eyes staring at you the last time you had talked. His plump lips, buried under a messy dark blonde beard. During the daytime, you would volunteer for different causes, taught nursery to young girls, spent hours in the library reading books and research papers, enjoying the hustle and bustle of the big city. Any distraction would do it, but at the end of the day, when you passed by the bakery on your way home, you couldn’t help but take a look inside with the hope of seeing him through the windows. Although you just had talked a couple of times and even if you thought he had been dismissive and ungrateful to you, he had brought the promise of new exhilarating experiences to your life the very moment you saw him crossing the bakeshop backdoor with a gun in his hand, so you kept passing by again and again, trying to figure out the mixed feelings he elicited from you.
If only you knew what he was raking over. Oh, he knew. He kept a record of your movements, tracked you from a distance. Nothing unusual, taking into account the nature of his occupation. He was informed of every single event in the area, every detail, every person. That’s how he got to be a step ahead of enemies and rivals. But finding new opportunities for business and avoiding inconvenient situations wasn’t by far the only reason that encouraged such attention to your person. There was something else about you. He was very aware of it. What was the true reason of this genuine interest in you, he still didn’t know (or maybe he wasn’t willing to admit it to himself), but all the details he had gathered about you weren’t enough to satisfy the boundless curiosity of this man. You tried to keep a low profile and you were modest in your looks, measured in your habits and yet, you glowed. There was something in your attitude, your curiousness, you seemed to be passionate about life, always trying to comprehend everything around you. You were eager to live as many experiences as possible, fearlessly eager to get everything that life could offer you. And he absolutely loved that. He wasn’t a man of excess, at least not in his habits. Not apparently. He didn’t taste the drink, didn’t gamble, he didn’t spend great amounts of money on commodities, it was pretty obvious if you looked at him, the way he dressed, his environment. His attire was everything but fancy, each individual garment was akin to a uniform he wore as an extension of his crooked profession. He might indulge himself once in a while, and he really appreciated certain luxuries such as an exquisite piece of jewelery but this hobby met more his collector and businessman spirit rather than a need for showing off. He seemed to be a man of simple tastes so you presumed it was power that moved him to the business. To know that no other man would ever be above him to make him kneel. One of the few times you had seen him in the Free Russian Library of Whitechapel, you remembered him saying: “As a baker, I occasionally sell bread. As a bookmaker I occasionally let the fastest horse win. As a landlord I occasionally have a roof fixed. But mostly, I find it is quicker and it is easier to deal with the complainant, right, rather than deal with the complaint.”
In other occasion, while you were queueing to buy some bread you wondered who was he speaking with when you heard his voice coming from the back room: “Every time I got stomped down, yeah, I fucking stomped back up again, mate. I survived out of spite and instead of learning how to fight, I learned how to put right the wrongs done unto me tenfold, a hundred…a thousandfold, yay, unto the fucking stars, right, by using the bit of my body that God had cleverly put inside a strong bone box so the kicks and the digs could not reach it”.
You might be perfectly wrong, but those brief encounters with him allowed you to get a sense of him. Power was the end, you thought, and a weird combination of harshness and wisdom were the means. That wasn’t, though, his only motivation. The word on the street was that a good part of the benefits he obtained through his many shady business was designated for charitable use among the Jewish community. Although he had lost any trace of religiosity years ago, left his beliefs and hopes in the trenches, buried under a thousand corpses, he was a man fond of traditions who held a strong sense of belonging and he was proud of his roots. Whenever he felt lost or weak he clung to his culture and his people. It provided him an identity and it was enough to avoid the solitude and alienation in this world. It was his compass and his home.
Yes, he was intriguing, to say the least. Unreachable, you reckoned. But if you only knew, all of this aside, that this urge to know more about him was actually reciprocal. In addition, an inconvenient need to keep you safe was beginning to grow inside of him against his will, which was probably why he was so reluctant to interact while he tried to figure out how to deal with it.
Coming back home from work on a cold winter night, tiny snowflakes floated in the air and you hurried up to get to the warmth of your small but cozy apartment when you saw him leaving the bakery through the back door. You couldn’t help but stop and stare and you froze up at the sight. The tough gangster was now hunched over, you noticed he could barely walk, his hefty body shrinking and grimacing with pain, he rested his back on the dirty brick wall slowly sliding down to the floor. As you observed astonished the scene, he slowly took his right hand out of his black heavy coat and looked at it. Even from a distance, you realized his palm was covered in a red liquid. Shocked, you sealed your mouth to silence a whimper and without thinking twice, you ran to him.
“Mr. Solomons!”- you said, trying not to be too loud and without bothering to check on the wound, since you knew very well by the amount of blood in his hand and the fact that it flew from his abdomen that he needed urgent medical attention, you added -“Stay here, I’ll go get some help right now, you need an ambulance”-, but he grasped your wrist tightly and looked up to you:
“Don’t”- he warned you, “a sign of God you are, yeah, showing up right in this fuckin’ moment. How fortunate is to be found by a nurse who can keep her mouth shut and treat my wounds? Fuckin’ biblical, mate, so let’s keep this incident apocryphal, a’ight?”.
You looked at him in disbelief but despite his tone, he was speaking hundred per cent seriously.
“I’m a doctor, actually” you said with resignation, “see if we can get home, I live near here”. He surely knew about that but the thought of him digging into you vanished as soon as you put his arm over your shoulder and attempted to lift him up. The man was heavy as hell and you doubted if you would be able to get home, but he took his cane with his other hand and resting his weight on you, he managed to stand up and walk together to your place. Although the distance from the bakery was short, the route seemed to be endless and just when you reached the door to your flat a sudden shout coming from behind startled you: “Mr. Solomons!!” an alarmed voice made him look over his shoulder. “Ishmael”, he replied. Apparently, the young lad was one of his men and you felt a slight relief because you were going to need all the help you could get.
As soon as you crossed the threshold, you took off his coat, hat and cane and it was only then that you realized the gravity of the injury. A huge red stain in his white shirt revealed how much blood he might have lost and he was alarmingly pale, cold beads of sweat covering his forehead.
“Is there any chance to get any sort of sanitary materials?” You said heading for the table in the living room to take off everything on it so you could use it to examine his wounds properly.
“Make a list” he muttered, his voice sounding more and more weak as time went by, “Ishmael, will you get it please?”, to what the steady man nodded. How and where he would access medical equipment, you didn’t know, but once you had the flat surface clean, you turned to Alfie, who was sitting heavily on a chair giving instructions to the lad in a low voice and you started to give orders:
“All right, Mr. Solomons, I need you to lay down here so I can check on your injuries”-.
“It is Alfie, dear. The situation calls for it, don’t ya think?”-, he said as he sat on the table with the help of the young man.
Holding the back of his neck to help him lay down, you placed your coat under his head in order to give him a little comfort and asked his man to light the fireplace in your bedroom, bring the scissors you kept in the kitchen and get a piece of paper to write down a list of the things you were going to need. The grunts coming out from Alfie’s mouth made him look so vulnerable that you felt a deep angst crawling up your throat but you had to live up to your billing and you quickly managed to pull yourself together. You just looked at him confidently and taking his hand you told him: “let’s take a look at it”.
Having washed your hands thoroughly, you started to cut all the blooded fabric layers, slowly revealing his broad chest. Fully dressed, it would’ve been impossible to tell if his bulged figure was actually muscle or fat, but as you gradually removed his ruined clothes, gently uncovering his chest, well-defined muscles revealed, his pectorals rising and falling with difficulty. You tried not to stare, focusing on the location and size of the injury, but some scars on his wet skin caught your attention, making you wonder what sort of stories underlay them. Indeed, a stab wound in the umbilical region was now fully exposed. Contrary to what you had initially thought, it didn’t seem to be too deep and you felt optimistic. Even if you had graduated with honours, you soon directed your career to the research field and you never had the chance to practise as a doctor. However, the knowledge acquired as a student along with your valuable experience as a nurse at the front, made you fully competent for the task you were about to perform.
Pressing firmly with your index and middle fingers next to his Adam’s Apple you checked his vital signs, his pulse rate was irregular and weak but it was there. Gently palpating his thorax, you held your breath, pondering on the possible diagnosis and treatments but time was of the essence and making the wrong decision could be a matter of life and death. As far as you remembered, an internal hemorrhage was the main cause of early death in abdomen wounds when you served as an army nurse at the military hospital but the procedure to assess the damage in vital organs was risky, especially if it was going to be performed at home without proper medical assistance and equipment. There was a good chance of having complications from the surgery and you decided to dismiss the laparotomy after further explorations. You’d keep an eye on him for the next hours so in case of any sign of sepsis you could quickly call for an ambulance against his wish. Hoping that it was a simple penetrating wound without any vital organs affected you started to list every possible thing you would need to deal with the situation: a stethoscope, wound dressing, sterile sutures, antiseptics, morphine, novocaine…One by one, Ishmael took good note of every item and ran out in search of them.
As soon as you heard the door slam and you two were left alone, you looked at him making visual contact. Alfie remained silent but conscious and stared directly into your eyes. The intimacy of the moment took you by surprise and you hurried to get a clean cloth to block the wound. Taking his hands, you placed them over it and asked him to press while you looked for a blanket to keep him warm. After covering his body with the fabric, you slid skilled fingers under it, unlacing one of his black cap-toe leather work boots and taking it off, then the other. Getting closer to him, who kept track of everything you did with his gaze, you did the same with his belt, unfastening it delicately so as not to hurt him. He might be too weak to speak but the bastard wasn’t willing to stop staring and give you a break. Carefully, you took off his trousers, always under the blanket in order to keep him warm but mostly to avoid making the situation more awkward than it already was. But far from making him uncomfortable and in spite of the pain he would surely be enduring, you would’ve sworn a barely perceptible smirk flashed under his beard.
You didn’t mean to stress him out or to be nosy but you wondered why and who had done that to him. Given his background, sure he had made a thousand enemies over the years but you’d like to know if this was somehow related to the man you tried to get some information from and his boss, Darby Sabini. Anyone could have done it. Alfie Solomons was said to run his business with thread and relentless violence and as the Jewish proverb states, “as you teach, you learn”. Engrossed in these thoughts, his thick cockney accent startled you:
“Who are ya, hmm?” - he blurted out, narrowing his eyes. You turned to him,
“I don’t know anymore, to be honest. I don’t know what I came for but I’m looking for a cause”-
“You’re not looking for anything, sweetie, that I doubt. You’re just running away and it shows, yeah. Just like Adit leaving Sodom”. Again, he was referring to the story of Lot’s wife. His comment left you thinking. He was probably right. You’d heard he could read people and you quickly understood why. Laying there, injured, weak and semi-naked, even in that miserable state, he made you feel as defenseless and desirable as an open book.
“I’m not looking back, though. May the bridges I burned light the way” you replied when you suddenly heard Ishmael knocking on the door.