Читать книгу The Lost Twin - Federico Betti, Federico Betti - Страница 5

Carla Mezzogori used to live a life without any unusual turn, except that sometimes she used to hang out with her husband or her friends instead, while he decided to stay home and watch any sport in TV.

Both had promptly a good feeling, in harmony with each other, as none of them hadn’t shown signs of doing things differently from what they usually did.

It could be said also that both of them were the typical persons habituated to the routine, that is, neither expected something particular from life, nor behaved in such a way to incite their fate beyond their usual daily activities.

They didn’t have kids as no such desire had been expressed so far, additionally, they were afraid of having the same fate as Luciano, Carla’s brother.

Since the birth, Marco, Luciano’s son, had presented some kind of abnormalities, if may be said so, and with the passing of time, his parents found out that their son was suffering from hemiplegia. In other words, he couldn’t move the right part of the body because of such disease. He wasn’t able to move either the arm or the leg.

Of course that Luciano and his wife, once received the confirmation of diagnosis, did obtain much more information and made a lot of efforts to improve the health of their son, through therapies and everything else, but health condition and common development of him had led to the decision of Carla and her husband to stop thinking of “giving birth to any baby”.

The missing kid and physical disability of her nephew had helped into the creation of a strong bond between Carla and Marco Mezzogori.

The boy had just turned twenty five and obviously had improvements since his birth, though no recovery could be considered yet.

Within the recent few years, Carla used to go and see her nephew, alone or in company of her husband, at least two or three times weekly; mostly during the evenings, often on her way back home or after dinner.

Just for thirty or forty minutes, long enough to see how he was doing, to have a chat with him and afterwards, she came back home.

Likewise the family of her nephew, Carla with her husband used to live in San Lazzaro of Savena, a county of Bologna, a few chilometers from the center of the capital of Emiglia Romagna.

The nephew was living with his family in viale della Repubblica, a street parallel to the street Emilia, therefore it usually took them only a few hundred meters to reach the nephew’s apartment, in the vicinities of via delle Rimembranze.

Frankly speaking, Carla Mezzogori didn’t have great relationships with her sister-in-law, Marco’s mother, nevertheless, Carla handled perfectly the situation whenever she was going to meet her nephew, sometimes putting a brave face on a bad job.

Perhaps the character of Marisa Lavezzoli; this was exactly the name of the sister-in-law, was one reason why the father of the hemiplegic boy had run away, just when the boy had turned eighteen.

A very bizarre fact that Carla and her husband had realized since the very beginning was that Luciano Mezzogori had gone one day without talking to anybody, leaving nothing in writing or no trace at all, as if he was suddenly eager to change his life leaving the past behind, and go far away and never come back.

The situation of the two remaining family members, Marco and his mother, was not plain sailing.

Since the day her husband ran away, Marisa Lavezzoli has had to take care of her hemiplegic son, and to deal with any therapy or treatment of his physical impairment, and furthermore, she has had to afford the expenses for two surgical interventions Marco underwent during the last years.

From the day Luciano Mezzogori was not along with them, the whole savings had been used for the medical treatment of Marco.

Unfortunately, her mom had never managed to gain a permanent job and always had to be “satisfied” with any small job found occasionally and at a short term, which could have helped her earning enough money to afford the living expenses for herself and her son, as well as the expenses for his medical treatment and care.

Over the years, things became even worse, and the eviction just arrived: now the mother wasn’t even able to pay the rent, which was mainly afforded by her husband before, and in the course of a month, Marisa Lavezzoli and her son were both prompted to move in the apartment where they’re actually living.

It was one of the Municipality-owned apartments that usually were given to the low-income people and it only took very little to get the apartment.

Consequently, it happened quite often that every time Marco’s aunt went to their apartment, she used to give some money to them in the hope of being used at best.

Because of hemiplegia, the boy had always with himself one orthopedic brace for the shoulders and the right arm and another one for the right leg and moreover, he regularly took the botulinum toxin for reducing the muscular tension.

Marco indeed felt enormously grateful to everyone taking care of him, though he constantly felt himself like a burden to his mother, aunt, and anyone else taking care of him.

Another person, with whom Marco had a close relation besides his mother and the aunt, was the nurse who every morning used to go to his home exactly at the wake-up time and made the botulinum toxin injections.

She always considered him as her own son and he felt deeply grateful to it.

Daniela Rossi, a middle-aged woman, was a member of the medical staff following up Marco since the day he’s been diagnosed with hemiplegia. In the very beginning, the nurses switched with each other in taking care of Marco and helping him to carry out the daily needs, then through his mother, he had expressly declared to be followed by Daniela for the whole time.

Every time the nurse showed up in the apartment, Marco’s mother usually went out and stayed alone in any other room, to avoid her presence; usually the injections made by Daniela lasted only half an hour in the morning and evening, and afterwards she used to leave and come back in the morning of the next day.

The same routine was applicable also to Andrea Fusari, the physiotherapy expert who was coaching Marco Mezzogori twice a week.

Exceptions were made only in the cases when Marisa Lavezzoli managed to find one of those small jobs at occasional basis, in which she was usually prompted to go out leaving her son alone: in such case, Ms. Rossi spent all the time with Marco until the return of his mother.

However, in some other cases, Marco used to remain alone at home, and it usually occurred when his mother considered necessary to do shopping unexpectedly.

Normally they counted on the availability of the service offered by the supermarket, it always worked out every time they’re making orders through phone calls and home delivery was made by the supermarket in return, while in the case of unplanned purchases, the mother used to go out and made shopping as quickly as possible to avoid leaving Marco alone for long hours.

The other cases when Marco used to be alone were exactly when he usually wrote on his personal diary.

He made such a decision when he had turned eighteen.

The diary was an inseparable companion of him, through the pages of which the emotions were transmitted, and he used to write down all the feelings, while sometimes he talked to it as if there was a mouth inside and it was able to speak. He recorded events from his everyday life, as well as any thought, emotion, and perception arisen to him.

Obviously, he considered the diary as a tool to give free rein to what he had inside, because he felt imposed to do so in a sort of situation which was never desirable to him.

Before sleep, he used to stay alone in his room, and turned his emotions into small letters written by him in ink.

Usually he tried to finish writing before the nurse showed up and before he laid himself on the bed, and if he couldn’t do so, she used to leave him uninterrupted while he kept writing not in a hurry, and right after writing, she began to take care of him.