Irish Eyes

I settle in next to her. "Hey, thanks for meeting me. I think I'm going crazy and I need to talk to someone." I get the attention of the bartender and order a glass of wine.

"Ok, going to skip past the pleasantries. I'm assuming this has something to do with Ciara, what happened?"

"Nothing, she hasn't done anything. It's me."

"What? It's you what." Seeing the look on my face she makes the correct guess. "Oh, you've fallen for her, haven't you?"

"Anna, I didn't mean to. When she told us that first night she had broken up with her boyfriend and moved here, I had resigned myself to the fact that we could be friends. I knew I couldn't cross that line. But my feelings for her have been growing. I love everything about her. Her mind, her eyes, her smile, her hair, the smell of her is intoxicating. I'm lost and I don't know what to do."

"Oh, you have it bad. Don't you." All I can do is nod my head as tears form in the corner of my eyes.

"She's everything I think I've ever dreamed of, everything I didn't know existed that I need. That little roll of her r's drives me insane. I can't stop thinking about her. I never thought I'd be the lovesick puppy trying to get the attention of someone, but there you go. I'm going crazy because she's straight and I know I can't go there with her."

"I'm happy that you trust me to talk to about this Nat. I know it can't be easy for you. How much does she know, or how much has she figured out?"

"I don't know. I've never said anything to her, but she must know I like her, I just don't know if she knows I love her, and not love as in friend. Damn, Anna. She is turning me inside out. I've never fallen for someone like this. I get up in the morning, I wonder what she is doing, whether she tossed and turned during the night or if she had a peaceful night's sleep. I'm constantly thinking about her during the day, she is in my daydreams, just thinking of her calms me when I'm stuck on a problem or getting nervous about something. When I'm eating, I think of her across from me and the easy conversations the two of us have. What do I do?"

"Nat, do you love her, not are you infatuated with her, but do you love her? You need to figure that out before you do anything. If it's just infatuation, you need to figure out how to let it go. If it's really love, you need to talk to her."

"The night we first met Ciara at Danny's, I was infatuated. God, when she walked out onto the patio, she took my breath away. But when she told us about her ex, I knew that she was straight and I told myself, ok, I can be friends with her. And I really did believe that. At first when we started meeting up, I was able to push all that to the side and just get to know her. Anna, you know in a short amount of time, we've become the best of friends. Hell, more often than not, I know what she's going to say when I ask her a question or when she's responding to someone else. And she can probably do the same with me. I'm way past infatuation, she means the world to me and I can't imagine my life without her. But she's straight. I am totally screwed!" Tears are streaming out of my eyes at this point.

Anna moves to put her arms around me and hug me. I lean into her, my head resting on her shoulder as I let the emotions run thru me. Anna is kind enough to just hold me, knowing that I need this moment. She is a true friend and I'm lucky to have her in my life.

We talk for a couple more hours and by the end of our discussion, Anna convinces me that I need to talk with Ciara and let her know how I'm feeling. At least then it will be out in the open and I will know if there is any chance that she will reciprocate my feelings. If she doesn't, I might get crushed, but at least then I'll know how she feels. I'm actually smiling by the end of our conversation and feel like I have a path forward.

Thursday

Ciara has been texting me all week, worried about me and making sure that I'm ok. I text her back that it was a one-day thing. Thru our texting and chatting she knows that I was back to work on Monday. She continually is checking to ensure that whatever it was is truly gone and that I'm ok. I can tell that she is genuinely worried about me.

She works the late shift at Danny's tonight, and I've let her know that I'll be there for our normal night. She doesn't know it, but I'm going to tell her tonight. I've made the decision that when the other people leave, and she is finished locking up is when I'm going to sit her down and confess what has been going on in this head of mine. I'm nervous as heck about telling her, but my talk with Anna has convinced me that I must do this.

I take my normal spot at one end of the bar, allowing her to tend to her other customers. This spot has always given us a little privacy from others when she isn't busy with the other customers. C doesn't use it as an excuse not to do her work but being there allows us to chat and spend time with each other. Our conversations range from religion, to politics, sports, work, school and family. We always have an easy conversation.

Tonight, the time drags by. Danny's normally stays open until midnight, but tonight is one of those nights when a little after eleven, everyone has left the place but me. C makes the decision that she's going to lock up and shut down early. I tell her I'm going to use the lady's room as she locks up and make my way back down the hall. My nerves are getting the better of me and I'm trying to take deep breaths to calm down.

I wrap up my business on the toilet and am at the sink washing my hands when I hear two loud bangs. Noises I'd never heard in Danny's before. Not sure what they are, I quick dry my hands and head back out. As I'm leaving the ladies room, I yell out to Ciara, "What was that C, is everything all right?"

There's no reply from Ciara. I continue down the hall and ask again, "Ciara, are you ok, what happened?" Still no answer.

As I round the corner from the hall, I see her body lying near the entrance. Crumpled down on the floor. I've never moved so fast in my life as I run to her body. I'm screaming, "Ciara are you ok? C answer me, damnit!"

She doesn't move. As I reach her, I notice blood pooling on the floor next to her body. Her shirt is stained red in two places, near the shoulder above her breast and down in her stomach. I also notice the two holes in her shirt. Holy shit, she's been shot!

I grab my phone and dial 911.

"911 please tell me what your emergency is?"

"My friends been shot. She's bleeding. She's bleeding a lot!"

"Where are you at?"

"Danny's Place, the sports bar on Capitol and Sycamore."

"What's your name?"

"I'm her friend, Natalia Giordano"

"Ok, Natalia, help is on the way, I need you to stay with your friend. Is there anything there that you can use to put pressure on the wounds?"

"Yes, I can grab some towels behind the bar."

"Ok, that's good, when you get them, I need you to place a towel over each of the wounds and press down. It's important that you keep the pressure on until help gets there and can take over. Can you do that?"

"Yes, I've got the towels now and I'm getting back to her to do as you said."

The operator stays online with me until the ambulance and firefighters arrive. The police arrive shortly after. As the EMTs and Firefighters take care of Ciara and prep her to get in the ambulance, one of the police pulls me to the side. The flashing lights from all the vehicles outside cause garish reflections to dance around the walls of the bar. All it accomplishes is to remind me that my best friend, the woman I was about to confess my love for has been shot.

The police begin questioning me about what happened. I'm not much help as I tell them I was in the bathroom and didn't see anything. They keep asking me different ways, but I can't tell them anything because I don't know anything. I did convince one of them to call Danny and let him know what happened to Ciara.

As the police are busy questioning me, they get Ciara on the stretcher, into the ambulance and take her away from me. As the police continue to question me and inspect the bar, Danny arrives. I would have sworn a couple of minutes had passed. But it had to have been closer to a half hour or forty-five minutes, knowing where he and Andrea live.

As Danny rushes into the place, he about trips over several officers still hanging around the front door and kneeling where Ciara's body had been before they moved her to the hospital. Danny sees me and immediately heads my way.

"Nat, are you ok? How bad is Ciara?"

At this point, the adrenaline has passed, and my nerves and emotions finally are catching up with me. As he reaches me, I bury my head into his chest and began to ball. I try to spit the words out.

"Danny," sniffling thru my crying. "I was gone for just a few minutes in the bathroom." I continue to blubber, and my voice has to be muffled by his body as I stand there. "She was shot, I don't know who did it, but they shot her. I can't believe they shot her."

Danny is tense, I could feel it in his body, his muscles are coiled up and I can sense the anger rising in him. Give the man credit, he finds a way to hold me until I can settle down.

"Sir," one of the police gently said getting his attention. "Can you tell me if anything is missing."

Danny guides me back to the bar and has me sit down. He grabs me a wet bar rag so that I can clean the dried blood from my hands. I scrub them as best as I can, but no matter how hard I scrub, I can still see her blood on my hands.

Danny quickly begins to check on things, first looking at the register and then the safe behind the bar.

"No, they didn't take anything. The money is all here, the safe is still closed and locked. What the hell happened? Officer, are we done here? If so, I want to lock this place up and get down to the hospital to see my niece."

"Ok, we'll want to talk in the morning to see if you can shed any light on why someone would want to hurt your niece - Ciara. I'll get everyone out of here."

Before we leave, Danny gets a mop and cleans the floor where Ciara had landed and had bled. He moves the money from the register to the safe and then guides me out the door to his car. He wastes no time getting us to the hospital. When we arrive, we meet up in the emergency room with Andrea who had headed to the hospital when they got the call.

Andrea sees us walking in and quickly moves to Danny grabbing him and wrapping her arms around him. She is crying.

"Andrea, hon, tell me what you know."

"Oh, Danny, they've got her in surgery. Ciara was shot twice - the first one in her shoulder, that caused some muscle and tissue damage but didn't hit anything significant. They feel they can easily remove that one. The second one is the one that worries me. It apparently punctured the colon. There's lots of bleeding and they are concerned about infections. They are confident they can repair everything but are going to need to keep a close eye on her."

Danny holds onto Andrea and his face is locked, I can see he is fighting his emotions, not wanting to let anything out.

Andrea finally let's go of Danny and moves my way, wrapping her arms around me. I don't hesitate to reciprocate, and my head leans down onto her shoulder. Danny leans in and envelopes both of us. I don't know how long we just stand there holding on to each other.

"Honey, are you ok?" Andrea speaking very softly.

"I'm not hurt, just shook. I was just in the bathroom for a couple of minutes. I should have stayed out there with her. If I'd been there, maybe this wouldn't have happened."

"Oh, Nat, this isn't your fault. If you'd been out there you might have been shot. It's better you stayed safe, so you were able to help Ciara until the EMTs arrived."

Danny's phone rang then, and he moved away from Andra and me.

"Andrea, who would do this to Ciara? Why would anyone do this to her?"

"I don't know, Nat. We need to let the police do their work and hopefully they'll find the person." As we talked, Andrea moved us towards a set of chairs and got us seated.

After about fifteen minutes, Danny walked back and told us that Ciara's parents were on their way. Ardan and Noelle were taking the company jet and would be here in the morning. They were on their way to the airport now.

Danny, Andrea and I chatted to keep our minds busy and off what was happening. The conversation wasn't really about anything, just to keep us preoccupied. Somewhere during the discussion, all energy left my body and I fell asleep. The next thing I knew, Andrea was waking me up.

"Nat, hey Nat?" Slowly my eyes opened, it took me a few minutes to realize where I was and why I was here.

"I'm awake, what's going on? What time is it?"

"It's almost five. The surgeon is going to be out shortly to talk to us. I thought you might want to be awake when he gets here."

"Yes, thanks."

Time seems to crawl by, but in reality, it was only about 10 minutes when we all saw a woman in scrubs walking towards us. She looked tired.

"Hi, Mr and Mrs O'Shae? My name is Alyssa Masters, I'm the surgeon that has been working on Ciara. Are you her parents?"

Danny answered, "No, we're her aunt and uncle and this is her friend Natalia. Andrea and I are Ciaras emergency contacts, and the forms should be on file that we are able to make medical decisions for her." I'm stunned at how calm Danny has been thru all of this.

She pulls a chair up closer to us and sits. "I'm giving you good news; I want you all to take a deep breath. While no gunshot wounds are good, Ciara is lucky that they ended up where they did and didn't penetrate any further thru her body. She's going to be very sore, but barring some unforeseen complication, she should be ok. I'm not at all concerned about the upper chest wound. That didn't hit anything serious. The bullet hit a rib, fractured the rib and then was deflected and left her body. That one is going to be sore and will inhibit her breathing just from the pain and will be sore for a solid couple of weeks. After 4-6 weeks, she won't notice that wound. More concerning is the second wound that entered her abdominal area. That one punctured her colon, leaving a rather significant tear and more importantly allowing contents within the colon to leak out of the colon. The biggest threat right now is infection. Besides having to remove the bullet and repair the colon, a lot of stuff that shouldn't be floating around the body seeped out of the colon and we had to do quite a bit of cleanup. The good news is she is young, healthy and, again, barring any serious infection or complication, she should recover. There's going to be some serious discomfort as her body recovers, but she'll be ok."

As she speaks, I look over at Danny and I can see the tension release from his body. His shoulders and face becoming less stiff and tense. He has his arm wrapped around Andrea, giving her comfort.

Andrea is the first one to reply to the doctor. "Doctor, you have no idea how much those words mean to us. Thank you for all you've done for Ciara! A few questions. First, when can we get back to see her? Second, how long do you think she'll be in the hospital? Third, what's recovery going to look like?"

"Those are pretty reasonable questions. She is being moved to recovery right now, as soon as we have her awake and do an initial check, we'll allow one person at a time to come back and see her. She's going to be groggy, so don't count on getting too much out of her. Her body has been thru a lot over the last several hours. If everything goes right and we don't see any signs of infection, she'll most likely be in the hospital for a couple of days. Recovery is somewhat dependent on how she handles pain. Overall, when she gets released from the hospital, she'll have a restriction on what she can lift - nothing more than 10 pounds. And I don't want her lifting anything with her left arm for at least a week. Other than that, she can return to normal activity if she listens to her body. If it hurts, she needs to stop, if she is getting tired, she needs to stop and get some rest. We'll know more as she wakes up and we see how she responds. Most patients with this kind of a wound and surgery feel it for a couple of months."

She continues, "I'm not as concerned about the physical side as much as I'm concerned about the mental side. While she experienced physical trauma, she also experienced mental trauma. My understanding is we don't know who or why she was shot. She's going to remember being shot and will hopefully be able to tell us something that helps make some sense of this. However, while the rest of us are going to process that, she is most likely going to be dealing with a heightened sense of fear and emotions stemming from being shot. We're going to have her talk to a counselor here when we think she is ready, I would also recommend you get someone lined up to help her thru the mental part of this when she is released from the hospital."

Andrea again steps in, "I can assure you; we will make sure she has whatever support she needs to recover both physically and mentally. Her parents will be here shortly and between all of us, she will have what she needs."

"Ok, the nurse who leads my surgical team is with Ciara right now. When Ciara is waking up, Jan will step out here and get one of you to go back and be with her. The team is also working to get her a room. And we'll be transferring her to her room shortly after she wakes up. I would recommend one person at a time when she gets to her room. As she gets more energy today, we're going to get her up and moving around. Not too much, but it's better for her recovery to get her moving. If you have any questions, get them to Jan or my team and they'll make sure that I get them. When Jan speaks to you, she'll tell you how to reach someone on my team any time - day or night. I plan on checking on Ciara several times today to make sure that things stay on track. Jan and her team are the best, and I mean that with all sincerity, your niece is in excellent hands."

"Thank you again, doctor. Our family deeply appreciates the care you and your team are giving Ciara." Danny says as he reaches over and places his hand on hers for a moment. As she stands, Andrea stands up and gives her a hug.

The doctor looks back at me. "The ER nurses told me, that the EMTs said you were the one that took care of Ciara until they got there. Your actions helped your friend. She's lucky you were there when all of this happened. If I might suggest, you may want to think about getting someone to talk to about this. Ciara isn't the only one who experience trauma last night." With that, she stepped over to me and gave me a quick hug.

As she walked away, I begin to cry. Both Andrea and Danny closed in and wrapped me in their arms. I am a big emotional mess. I haven't slept much; it is all catching up to me. Seeing Ciara lying on the floor unresponsive. Seeing the blood staining her shirt and pooling by her body. Seeing the two wounds where the bullets had entered her body. I sobbed as I let it all out and Danny and Andrea held me the whole time. Andrea comforting me telling me it was going to be ok.

It wasn't long after that when Ciaras parents arrived. There was no mistaking them as they walked towards us. Ciara was the spitting image of her mother and Ardan was taller than Danny, the family resemblance was spooky. Ardan was just a taller version of Danny. They had the same body frame, same facial features.

As they walked over, everyone got up and hugs all around ensued. Andrea introduced me to the two of them. And she took on the responsibility of bringing Noelle and Ardan up to speed on where things were with Ciara. As she listened, Noelle took my hand and kept it in hers. Ardan had his arm around her. Noelle fought back tears the entire time.