CHAPTER 09

-Look, I don't know much. After... you left, they kept very quiet. I used to go to their house every day to find out where you were but they wouldn't open the door for me anymore. So I tried to drive them crazy, I drummed for hours, I slept on their doorstep but I quickly realized that your house had become practically deserted. But when I learned that they were... dead, I...

A whirlwind of questions devastates everything in my mind, but the most mundane is the only one I manage to whisper.

-It was when ?

- Just a month ago.

If Milan didn't seem so desolate, I might believe someone was telling me the synopsis of a fictional film. Because in my reality, my parents are alive and well waiting for their little girl to come home from the ball. The world around me is collapsing. I hurt deep in my flesh. The physical pain I have been enduring for more than twenty-four hours now is nothing compared to what I have just learned.

-And my brother ? I asked him sobbing.

-Enzo disappeared at the same time as you, seven years ago. I learned recently that he came back for your parents' funeral, but I didn't see him again.

My friend's warm hand is still firmly clinging to my arm. He knows that without him, I would drown.

- When did we disappear?

- You left the day after the ball.

It's too much. Too much. My body goes through such violent spasms that I almost suffocate. I'm losing all my means and it doesn't look like me at all. I no longer know what to do to cling to reality because this reality disgusts me. I do not want it. I want to go back to my life, the one I was leading before I woke up from this fucking coma. I want to go home after prom, I want to meet my parents and my brother and I want the four of us to have breakfast the next morning.

Seeing that I can't resurface, Milan gets up and wraps my hand in his while gently twisting his gaze to mine. His warm, poised voice crackles around me to cling to him, to no avail.

- Emma, look at me. It's okay, calm down.

But no, it's not! I can't get up from this shitty bed because my legs are screwed up and I can't even understand what happened to my family because I don't remember anything. So no hell, it's not going at all!

-Go outside ! Get out of Milan! I... let me...

I scream in her face like a hysteric. My shrill cries and my words drowned in my tears ricochet without interruption against the cold walls of this room. I can't stand the thought of collapsing in front of someone. In his eyes, I see that he is surprised to find my good old protective reflexes and my shitty character. He squeezes my hand one last time before rushing into the hallway, having already understood that I need to be alone. My sobs are erratic, my fingers throw everything nearby and the pain that grips my chest is so intense that it becomes inhuman. It's simply inhuman to lose your parents so suddenly. How am I going to be able to live without this part of me that has just been amputated?

I have never had so much pain in my entire life. I have pain in my flesh, in my skin, in my heart and in my head. My heart bleeds as my tears flood my face. I'm not equipped to face life in these conditions, I won't make it! My parents have always been the two most loving and generous people on this earth. My mother was a beautiful woman in her forties who was adored by everyone. Her gentleness and kindness were matched only by her kindness. With her angelic face, she beamed in the house. My father always said that he fell in love with her every day because he discovered new reasons to fall in love with her every day. He was a sportsman with a keen sense of competition who forgot everything when Enzo and I were around. We were his priority, his oxygen as he liked to say. Even though I've always been the hotheaded type, I didn't go a day without snuggling into his arms at least once. I have always loved my parents from the bottom of my heart and nothing can ever change that.

Torrential tears that fall on me so that I do not see the door to my room open. The doctor stops for a second when he notices the state I'm in but he quickly steps closer to help me calm down. I can't say exactly the gestures and the words he uses, but the fact remains that I almost manage to reassure myself.

-We have carefully reviewed all your test results. Here are our first observations: you suffer from various contusions, haematomas and wounds on the whole of the body which were caused by the violent shock which you underwent. You have a broken left humerus and deep burns to your back. When you arrived, we urgently treated a lung perforation and you seem to be recovering quite well from this surgery. Two important points require our full attention today: first, your lower limbs. We detected edema on your spinal cord. Given its size and location, an operation is totally excluded. Concretely, we have to wait for it to subside to know the definitive damage you could suffer.

I struggle to swallow as the words that hit me make me sick. I'm a fucking disabled person who may never walk again in my life!