felt in his debt for all that the older brother did for him: “some things you can’t forget”, he told him the day his wife died, “I’ll always be next to you, always”
And Luigi kept his promise.
Not even a day passed by without them seeing each other, or, for the worst, talking to each other on the phone, usually they always knew the other’s appointments, when they felt the need they asked and gave each other advices.
It was a long time that they both were single and, even if they mutually agreed to live in different flats, they still felt together, the one next to the other.
Sometimes they had like the impression that, in the long term, they developed some sort of telepathy between them, and that developed it with time. They understood each other right away, it was like they transmitted their thoughts with a gaze, and often they didn’t even have the need to talk to decide certain things.
I never thought that all of this could be broken in a few seconds, thought Mario while he found himself before his brother’s body, lying motionless in a comatose status.
Luigi’s conditions kept getting better day by day, or that at least was a good news, but seeing him always there, in the same position, put Mario in an uncomfortable situation: he felt a knot in his throat that would hardly be dissolved before his awakening.
All the days passed by like that since the accident: they all were alike, like photocopies.
And even that day the night came without that Mario Mazza realized, so immersed in his thoughts he was.
When he was awakened from a servant’s voice that invited him to leave the hospital because the time to visit the patients was over, the man walked towards the exit, went down the stairs and, with the coat well closed, he prepared to face the bad weather: outside it started to snow.
X
I’m driving, I don’t know where to. I’m here alone, for a few days now, with a migraine that pulses in my temples at a variable intensity and no one that could help me let it go. Sometimes I feel like dazed, stunned by the pain.
I try not to think about it, but that is pointless because the headache persists anyway.
I’m still sitting on the only seat of this car, I see the steering wheel before me, but now I decide to take my hands off and stretch them along my hips: I could never drive with such a strong headache.
The darkness around me endures and from time to time I touch it lightly with my fingers, as to find a solution to all my problems.
Despite my attempts to understand where I am, I haven’t understood anything yet and that is starting to get on my nerves: when I am missing assurance, it feels like I am suspended in air.
I can’t see anyone here, I can’t hear any noise around, maybe I am isolated from the rest of the world, rolled up in darkness, under a soundproofed glass bell.
Turning at my left, I feel like seeing a shadow, but it stays quite vague at my sight. That, though, gives me hope, I start to think that there’s someone like me here, even though this “someone” wants to stay anonymous, he doesn’t want to be recognized, maybe because he’s scared of something.
I try to be careful to the possible movements, to try to see again that shadow, but I don’t see anyone anymore.
Maybe there never was anyone there besides me, and the shadow that I saw was only in my head, it was result of my imagination.
Is this sort of isolation having some kind of negative effect over me? On my body, but also on my mind? Is it destroying me psychically, slowly wearing me out?
I hope not, in the meanwhile I see that shadow again, as it passes sneakily and hides somewhere, moving from time to time.
That’s what’s going on: someone is playing with me.
Yes, I’m starting to be sure, but that’s a game that I don’t like at all, you know? Where are they hidden? I can’t see the shadow anymore.
Actually, I can, I’m seeing it, here next to me, so close.
I turn to my left and see something: the outline of a human figure, of a dark grey tone, that I can distinguish in the middle of the dark unvarying black thanks only to this light tone difference.
“A painkiller”, I say, “I need a painkiller”. But how can I think to get something, an answer of any kind, from a flimsy presence?
The human-alike pulled back after a few moments and I stay once again alone, trying, for a few moments, not to think of anything, hoping that in the meanwhile my headache goes way too.
A question arises: where am I now, time passes by or stays still? It feels like being out of the world, in a parallel world, or in a place, in a system, isolated from the rest thanks to an air bubble or a glass sphere. Where am I?
I have an annoying headache. Can someone help me? Give me something that makes it go away, or at least that it’s able to alleviate it. If it stays like this, my temples will explode in a few hours.
I see that shadow again.
It is coming close to me again, arriving at my left.
He looks at me… so to speak. It’s inconsistent, like a halo, without a face, but if he did have it, the gaze would have been in my direction, at least one meter far away.
“A painkiller”, I say, “I need a painkiller. It hurts like hell!”
The weird presence goes away again; it seems almost like he comes here to me with the purpose of stay a few seconds staring at me and, right after, go away retracing his steps.
Who is he? Or should I say: what is it? I don’t know, but I want to.
Many thoughts are born and evolve inside me, I’m racking my own brain, I’m in confusion, and I have to try to make clear many things: where am I and why, how long have I been here and how long do I have to stay still…
And yet: could I reduce time? If yes, how?
All these questions do nothing but make my migraine worse, so I close my eyes and try to relax, waiting for some change and for someone who can help me get out of here.
XI
Days went by and, although the doctors were optimistic and made Mario Mazza imply that his brother was going to completely recover in a few days, he was always brooding, and he would have been until he didn’t see with his own eyes Luigi walking on his own and go back to his normal life.
Like everyday after the accident, once again memories came to mind, in which he got lost, sometimes smiling, sometimes barely holding back his tears.
Who knows if we could go back to have fun together, to have dinner in nice restaurants in the area of Bologna?
He was awakened by the voice of a nurse that was laughing down the hall and so he realized that he was sitting on that chair since an hour and half, in front of the room accommodating his brother, with the door shut and silence inside.
He got up to have
