Meadow: A Sopranos Fanfic

Core... Core 'ngrato

Paulie tried to yell the word "Modafucka!" but before he could even finish, the prosthetic piece of lip, a strange blue piece of silicone which had been made to fit exactly over the place where the bullet had literally melted the skin away, flew out painfully and he slapped at the pillow on his hospital bed violently while howling.
He was in pain, a lot of it, and everyone could see it. He was incredibly embarrassed as well and everyone could see that too.
Half of Paulie's top lip was missing, revealing teeth and gums and skull that he couldn't hide like a bad Halloween party favor. The continuous twitch of the remaining left hand upper lip was twitching every few seconds, as he was trying, with no luck, to pull down a piece of him that he knew was gone forever. He was manifesting this insecure and self-conscious side to him that even he didn't know existed and it was driving him crazy. That's why he tried to say "modafucka!", and that's why his prosthetic lip went flying halfway across the room.
The back of mouth, just below the ear where the bullet had gone in through and missed all of his other teeth, was swollen the size of a golfball.
His chest and shoulder were on fire. Every movement he made sent the scar tissue inside and outside of his body screaming to hell and back.
And still he moved.
He was Paulie "Walnuts" Gaultieri, and he knew now that meant nothing and that he was nothing more than an old man.
An old man with a wheelchair, a fucking cripple and a cripple life waiting for him outside those doors as soon as he was well enough to move into a sitting position. An old man who'd need to learn to speak again. An old man who felt bad yet again for treating someone poorly just before their death.
Benny, who he'd yelled at, was probably down three quarters of the way past the inferno's rings to hell by now, and the last thing he had done was yell at him.
This thing of ours used to mean something, a battalion of men who respected other made men, and defended each other and this thing with all their hearts and minds. He'd regretted treating Chrissy disrespectfully all those years back when he had cracked jokes and busted his balls about the drugs. Now he had belittled a man that had voiced real concern over his worth and

position within this thing of ours. Benny had paid his dues, and he had yelled at him like a child minutes before the poor bastard had died trying to gasp air through blood.
But he had bigger problems now, he thought, shoving Benny's memory to the side as he had done to so many others in his past. All except Chrissy. That one was always with him for some reason.
The cocksuckin motherfuckin physical trainer was working him hard today, asking him to pull himself up from a laying position by pulling on a rope above him. The act and the frustration that came with it was enough to make him want to shoot the black prick right then and there. But he knew he couldn't. He knew he wasn't even a wise guy any more. Those days were clearly over. A wheelchair? Half a lip?
Weakness.
He knew Meadow had come to visit a few times, but he'd been sedated each one of those times; once for yelling at an attending doctor and once because he had been raging like a madman at the state of his face.
Paulie Gaultieri couldn't help but think that he was basically a bad joke of what had happened to Corado Soprano. Worthless, useless, tossed to the side and broken.
But the Twins kept coming and dropping off packages. His own boys kept coming and making their payments on time. And Meadow kept sending flowers.
She cared, this was the message he was getting. The problem was, he didn't care at all. Might as well send him to Green Grove and be done with it all, he pondered in his heart, angry at the fact that truly, nothing good had ever happened to him in his life at all.
Just as he was thinking this, slurping jello that tasted like a nun's laundry day panties through a straw, Kevin Cullen, the Psychic, walked through the door and right up to his hospital bed; leaving Paulie, mouth agape, grasping at his bedsheets like a scared little 12 year old boy.

***

The Twins had passed the buck to Volante and the Murder Street boys, since Furio was their captain anyway, they thought it should be up to them to make preparations for the big Soprano Family dinner.
Instead of doing the work Meadow had asked them to do, the two were considering a proposition by Butch DeConcini; to meet him and his family on behalf of George Paglieri and flip Meadow's family around on her.
Enough time had gone by for tensions to wane and for people to get used to the fact that New Jersey was home to the first and only female boss. Now it was time to move in on her and close up that shop for good and show those people that you don't make a mockery of "This Thing." Ever.