Oct 16th, 2006
A Shooting in Boston
It was on a saturday evening that my companion and I decided to head out to Cambridge to observe the phenomenon that is the world’s greatest young minds immersed in revelrie. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions as to why I decided to leave both my glasses and contact lenses at home as we headed out the door.
We arrived in the center of Cambridge and I was pleased to find it a vibrant place, despite the slight haze of mist that surrounded the city. We chose a street at random and began walking until we came upon a Chinese food restaurant. Both of us were starving so after a quick scan of the menu, we headed in and sat down only to find ourselves slightly put off by the flourescent lighting and the less-than-cordial customer service being administered by the Chinese wait staff.
Without much deliberation, we gathered our things and I muttered some excuse to the hostess as we headed out back into the Cambridge night. Before long, we both realized that Cambridge wasn’t really the hotbed of culinary delights one might imagine. Actually, apart from the Chinese restaurant and Au Bon Pain (which is ubiquitous in the Boston area for some reason), it didn’t really seem like there was anywhere to eat at all in the city.
After consulting with some friendly Cambridgians, we finally settled on Fire and Ice, an ‘all you can eat’ grill house, where I like to think I managed to beat the house.
Contentedly full, we headed back to my companion’s residence in Bay Village and promptly fell asleep.
About two hours into our slumber, we were awakened by a commotion outside that we both assumed to be the residual sounds of the clubs that were nearby. Unfortunately, the sounds persisted for quite some time and my half-conscious mind slowly began to wonder if something was amiss. This creeping awareness leapt forward when I heard a young woman’s shrieks shortly followed by a cacaphony of sirens. I leapt to my feet and pulled on some shorts and a t-shirt and headed for the front door.
As I gingerly opened the door, a flood of sirens, digitized walkie-talkie voices, and distressed screams flooded into the apartment. I looked down at the front steps and saw a young man lying on a stretcher with an oxygen mask affixed to his face. Blood soaked through bandaging that had been wrapped around his mid-section, and a young asian girl stood by, frantically crying as a small cadre of uniformed men and women milled around the scene. To my immediate left, an older couple had come out of the front entrance to the door adjacent to me and were standing, watching the scene in utter shock.
Immediately, my companion began crying as I stood and watched the scene in amazement. I had actually never come so close to being in the immediecy of an event like this, and it was a strange and disorienting experience. It reminded me of the few times I had met someone initially by talking with them over the phone or by e-mail at length, before actually meeting with them. As if I somehow had a mediated experience of this type of an event in the past. As I looked on, they carted the young man into the ambulance and the older couple and the young woman began to frenetically discuss what they should do. Eventually, the young woman got into the ambulance with the man who had been shot and the older couple (who I later found out were the younger woman’s parents) made plans to accompany the ambulance by taxi. As the energy of the event began to settle down, we sat on the front stoop for a while longer, still shocked by what had just transpired in front of our eyes. Slowly, we made our way back inside where we began trying to figure out what had just happened.
