Million Dollar Baby

Eu estava revendo alguns de meus textos quando encontrei uma redação do curso de inglês, quando o Rina nos pediu para que inventássemos um final alternativo para "Million Dollar Baby". Não tínhamos terminado de ver na aula e eu nunca tinha visto. É bem estranho hoje pensar que o meu final de certa forma é parecido com o do filme... O que me assusta é como o final está escrito. Está muito bem escrito...


“Whenever we get hurt, we always tell doctors how to do their jobs. Just stitch me up, slap a band-aid on it and send me home. It’s easy to suggest a quick solution when you don’t know much about the problem. When you don’t understand the underlying cause… or just how deep the wound really is.”


Five months from it, she was still there. Not alone, because Frank kept coming everyday. The simple twist of fate turned a plain combat into an endless overwhelming nightmare. Maggie, with bruises all over her body, couldn’t move and was slowly losing the sense of reality. She didn’t know the day of the week, she didn’t know the month, and she didn’t even know the year we were anymore. It was quite surprising that she knew her name at all. Most of her memory had fallen apart, except for the fact that she would say all the correct names of punches – and then we take a final conclusion: no matter what happens, once a fighter, always a fighter.


As days went by, her moody also ran away. No one could blame her: the bruises had turned into gangrenes and the amputation was just a matter of time, with no guaranties that would be the end of a partial problem in a woman’s life marked by struggles and battles in trying to pursue a long life dream that ended up with nothing more than a profound abrasion which not even time could heal.


“The first step towards a real cure is to know exactly what the disease is to begin with. But that’s not what people want to hear, that's not what WE want to hear. We’re supposed to forget about the past that led us there, ignore the future complications that might arise and go for the quick fix.”


She was actually holding onto Frank. He was the reason she kept going for all that time, without feeling any emotional pain for the fact that she was frozen on a bed seeing her bones degenerate like a bacteria. She knew she could win the battle, but not war; she knew her inside was losing the will to live; she knew she was dying. No one could ever doubt that.


How long would it be until she got exhausted of that? Euthanasia is prohibited, but sometimes is the best way out. Frank forbid this term. He would never accept it, and when asked about her wishes, his usual manner, aggressive, selfish, showed it up.


But then one day he came in and found no Maggie in the room. Maggie had committed suicide. Euthanasia. The simple word “injection” could have made it happen. No more days going by. That was it; that was all.


“As friends, as human beings we all try to do the best we can. But the world is full of unexpected twists and turns. And just when you’ve gotten the lay of the land, the ground underneath you, shifts… and knocks you off your feet.”


Frank went on searching for his daughter. Day by day he sent her a letter but the next day, the mail returned, without being touched. Except for… on the back of one something was written. Would it be hers? “Stop searching for your daughter. She will never come back. She will never return from the place you put her,” it said.


Sometimes we think we could have changed the world. Sometimes we wish we could turn back time and make things differently. We can’t face the truth, we can’t feel the growing misery scattering in our veins. It doesn’t matter whose fault it is. It hurts like hell, so we lie. We lie to ourselves in a certain level that it makes us blind and depths; it makes us live pure fantasy. It makes us think that Maggie was just a boxing fighter…


“If you’re lucky you’ll end up with nothing more than a flesh wound. Something a band-aid will cover. But some wounds are deeper than they first appear and require more than just a quick fix. With some wounds you have to rip off the bandage, let them breathe and give them time to heal.”


Frankie pulled the trigger…