Daniel cringed. His father brought up his TV appearances at any opportunity but it was hardly appropriate now. ‘Look, can I answer your questions later? I just want to be with my wife.’
‘Of course,’ one of the officers replied. ‘Here’s my card. Once you’ve seen Signora Moretti, please give us a call so we can piece together a timeline of the events.’
The front door closed and Daniel quickly moved from his position as his father rushed down the hallway to his bedroom. In mere minutes, Marco was dressed and calling out for them.
When they reached the car, the moon stood out in the black sky, the stars glimmering despite the darkness he felt deep in his chest. Daniel got into the passenger seat and looked back to see Emily trying to keep her tears at bay. Her strawberry-blonde hair was matted to her cheek from her tears and her eyes were wide with dread. He waited for his father to say something reassuring to her, but instead Marco drove in silence, oblivious. For the first time in a long while, Daniel felt the same older-sibling protectiveness that he had when she had come home crying from school because a bully had stolen her lunch, or when she hadn’t made it into the netball team, or the time she fell from a tree on the playground and fractured two of her toes.
‘It’s okay, Emmy. Mum is going to be fine,’ Daniel said gently, saying what he himself wanted to hear.
She gazed at him with raw fear in her eyes, unable to say anything in return.
He turned to face forward again and looked out the window as the Florentine streets passed by in a blur. It was 3.26 am. The city was still asleep. Shutters in apartment blocks were closed and street lamps flickered beneath the dim moonlight. They passed a bakery and the smell of oven-fresh cornetti and warm bomboloni wafted through the car.
It was still dark but soon the sun would rise and the sky would become a palette of soft pink, orange and fiery amber as it rose above the terracotta-tiled rooftops, the medieval candlelit churches, marble basilicas, cobbled streets, the quiet waters of the Arno River and the magnificent Renaissance buildings, and the Florentine people would wake to a beautiful day in this enchanting city. But not them. The day that the light would bring would be dark and bleak.
Marco said nothing as he drove even though Daniel desperately wanted his reassurance that their mother would be okay. But their father had never been one for words of comfort or affection. He had always concealed his emotions. To others he was gregarious and charming, always ready to tell an animated story to an eager audience. But at home, he was quiet and largely kept to himself. When he managed to join them for dinner, he’d ask Emily and Daniel about their studies and friends, but his eyes seemed to glaze over when they answered.
The car bumped over the narrow cobbled streets and Daniel suddenly realised that his body was trembling and that he was just as afraid as his sister. He was filled with guilt when he thought back to the last time he had spoken to his mother, when she asked about his music and he had literally closed the door on the conversation so she wouldn’t realise he was lying to her.
As they drove through the darkened streets, Daniel vowed to himself that if, when, his mother made a full recovery, he would tell her the truth. He would confess that he had quit university, that he didn’t want the life of academia that his parents foresaw for him.
But what if he was too late? What if the last memory he ever had of his mother was shutting the door in her face?
DANIEL
When they reached the hospital, Emily and Marco ran inside to the emergency reception desk but Daniel froze at the glass doors. He was terrified to see his mother in a hospital bed with injuries he couldn’t even begin to imagine. He kept picturing the darkness, her car smashing into the barrier, the panic she must have felt as it tumbled down towards the river. Her unconscious body limp as the car filled with smoke, her head slumped against the steering wheel.
Marco glanced back to see Daniel standing outside and he threw his hands up in frustration. ‘What are you doing?’ he mouthed.
Reluctantly, Daniel headed inside into a shock of bright lights and followed his father and sister silently as a nurse led them through large metal doors and into the emergency bay. There were people in hospital beds all around them. Daniel quickly looked away when they passed an elderly man with his eyes closed, skin like white bark, wheezing. On the next bed, a young woman with black hair, maybe in her early twenties, writhed in pain, gripping the right side of her stomach while her mother held a vomit bag. Nurses and doctors appeared and disappeared behind closed curtains, moving about in quiet efficiency.
The place smelled sterile, like bleach was steaming off the floors. Monitors ticked, rubber shoes tapped on the floors and keys jangled, making a haunting symphony of the sounds of sickness. The doctors and nurses seemed unnervingly calm despite the chaos unfolding in every bed around them.
‘Your wife is just through here. We’ll be moving her to the neurological intensive care unit shortly,’ the nurse said. She had kind eyes but a taut mouth, which gave Daniel the impression that although she was used to seeing the everyday horrors of the hospital, she still retained her capacity for empathy. ‘Try not to get alarmed when you see your mother,’ she said, this time turning her attention to Emily and Daniel. ‘She has some cuts and bruises and we’ve had to insert a breathing tube. But she’s in a stable condition. She was very lucky.’
The officer at their apartment used the word ‘lucky’ too. Daniel didn’t like that word. She wasn’t lucky to be in a car accident. She wasn’t lucky to have nearly died. She wasn’t lucky to have smashed through a barrier and plummeted down to a river. The concept of luck to Daniel seemed like a flimsy drawbridge between life and death. One wrong step and you’re gone. That didn’t sound like luck to him. It sounded like hell.
The nurse pulled open the curtain and Daniel found himself holding his breath. His mother was lying on the hospital bed, a tube taped to her mouth, connected to a ventilator pumping air into her lungs, a drip in her arm, a heart monitor beeping. Her left eye was swollen shut. A bandage was wrapped around her head; blood pooled above her eyebrow and spread under the white bandage like a red-wine stain.
Emily took one glance at her mother and broke down into loud sobs. She held her mother’s limp fingers and stroked her hand. ‘You’re going to be okay, Mamma,’ she said, as if her mother could hear her, as if she was the one who needed the reassurance.
Marco ran his hands over Sarah’s hair delicately. ‘Che cosa è successo tesora,’ he whispered in Italian, What happened, my darling?
Daniel remained at the curtain, feeling numb, as if there were a chasm between what he was seeing and what his mind was willing to process. Daniel felt an unspoken expectation from his father that being a Moretti, the firstborn son, the big brother to Emily, meant that he wasn’t to cry or show emotion. He should be stoic. He should be like his father. But he wasn’t. So, Daniel had to fight the tears that welled in his eyes and swallow the chalk that was stuck at the back of his throat. He put his hands in his pockets so that his father couldn’t see them tremble.
‘The emergency physician will come to see you soon,’ the nurse said and walked away. Marco pulled the curtain closed, cramping them in the small space. Emily and Daniel sat on chairs beside Sarah’s bed while Marco paced.
Daniel could barely look at his mother; all he wanted was for the doctor to come and assure them that her injuries were superficial and that she would make a full recovery.
‘She’s not that bad, surely? The bleeding on her head is just a cut, right?’ Emily asked in a fragile voice, rubbing her damp eyes with the edges of her cardigan.
‘I don’t know,’ Marco answered bluntly. ‘We’ll have to wait for the doctor to tell us.’
Marco’s sparse reply did little to soothe his sister’s rising anxiety. It was their mother who’d always been the warm one, the parent they’d gone to when they felt sick, or failed an exam, or simply needed a hug.
‘I can’t believe this has happened,’ Emily said quietl
y. ‘What was Mamma doing out so late? Where was she?’
Marco pulled the curtains back till there was a small break to gaze through. ‘She went to the excavation site, and I met her at the lab because she had something to show me,’ he said with his back towards them. ‘Then we left in separate cars. I had to fill up petrol on the way but she went straight home.’
‘So, then surely she should have been home before you?’ Emily asked innocently, as if reading the question on Daniel’s mind.
Marco seemed distracted, fidgety. Daniel noticed sweat gathering at the back of his shirt and on the edges of his hairline. ‘I was tired when I got home. I fell asleep.’
‘So tired that you didn’t notice Mamma wasn’t there?’ Daniel spat out, his voice unintentionally laced with anger, maybe even accusation.
Marco turned his sharp eyes to Daniel, his attention snapping back into the room. ‘Are you interrogating me now too, Daniel?’
‘I just mean, didn’t you at least call her, see where she was?’
‘I just assumed she’d walk in the door any second and I fell asleep, okay?’
Daniel couldn’t understand why his father was being so defensive, but before he could ask anything else the doctor opened the curtain. He was tall and lanky; he looked to be in his mid-forties. He was wearing a white hospital coat over a blue shirt and black pants.
‘I’m Doctor Bertoni,’ he said. ‘I’ve been attending Signora Moretti since she was brought in by ambulance. This must have been a terrible shock to you all.’
‘How is she?’ Marco asked, with a fracture in his voice that Daniel had never heard before.
‘When she was brought in she was unconscious, so we evaluated her ability to protect her airway, meaning the safety of allowing her to breathe on her own. We use what’s called the Glasgow Coma Scale and her score necessitated inserting a breathing tube, also known as intubation. Given the injury to her forehead, and her reduced level of consciousness, we were very concerned about a possible brain injury. The CT scan of her head shows that she has some cerebral oedema, or swelling in her brain, which in a worst-case scenario can lead to herniation and death if not treated immediately. So to minimise the pressure in her brain, we have purposely quieted everything down by putting her into an induced coma.’
He paused for a moment, to allow his words to sink in. Daniel felt ill.
‘She’s going to be moved shortly to intensive care,’ he continued. ‘They will continue to monitor her and when, if, it is safe to do so, they will decrease the medicine we used to induce the coma.’
Emily pulled her knees up on the chair and took a long, deep breath. Daniel put his hand on her shoulder while their father stood uneasily on the other side of the bed.
The doctor scanned Sarah’s medical notes and continued. ‘Apart from the brain injury, she has swelling over her left eye, three fractured ribs, and her left wrist is broken.’
Emily leaned forward and ran her hands over Sarah’s hair tenderly and held the limp fingers of her right hand. Doctor Bertoni turned to Emily now, his tone softening. ‘Your mother is getting the best care we can offer. She’s in good hands,’ he said warmly.
‘Thank you,’ Daniel said, replying on his sister’s behalf because he could tell from the quiver in her lip that if she spoke, her tears would come thick and fast.
When the doctor left, Daniel looked through a break in the curtain and out the window as the light of sunrise began to spread across the sky, its orange arms reaching across the fading darkness. He closed his eyes and prayed that his mother wouldn’t be in any pain when she woke up and wouldn’t carry any scars from the ordeal.
He just didn’t factor in that scars weren’t always physical.
MARCO
The last time I was in a hospital, I was fourteen and my dad had drunk himself into a coma. He’d blacked out and hit his head on the side of the bath. Ambulances scarcely came to our dangerous neighbourhood so I had to drag his limp body, covered in vomit, into the lift and to the car. I didn’t have a driver’s licence but my friends and I had stolen our parents’ cars for joyrides around the neighbourhood and we’d all taught ourselves to drive. As my father lay slumped unconscious on the back seat, I figured that if I got pulled over, the police would show some leniency for the child of an alcoholic.
I hated having to pretend that I cared about his wellbeing when we got to the hospital and they put him on a stretcher, their eyes full of pity for me – the child playing the parent. I hated myself even more because a part of me did want him to live.
I had replayed that day over and over in my mind. What if I hadn’t rolled him onto his side and cleared his airway? What if I’d left him there on the bathroom floor, to choke on his own vomit? What if, instead, I’d waited until it was too late? Part of me wished he’d died that day. Especially as the years passed and the mental and physical abuse got so bad that it became too much for my mother to bear.
I’d been terrified of hospitals ever since, so being in one now made me feel like ants were crawling on the inside of my skin. The smells and sounds were enough to take me back to being that frightened boy again. But there I was, a grown man, a husband and father, in a hospital for the second time in my life and I was still afraid. I had to remind myself to breathe as I stared down at my wife’s bruised and battered body. Her left eye was so swollen that it appeared as if it had been inflated from the inside. Her head was bandaged but blood had seeped through and stained the cloth in garish crimson drops. Seeing her intubated and injured made my stomach churn, my mouth dry and my heart feel like it was beating at the base of my throat.
I was riddled with guilt. It felt as if it were etched on my skin – blazing and obvious to anyone who looked at me. I could barely face my kids. Emily sat, holding her mother’s good hand; Daniel was practically mute as he sat on the other side of the bed, looking forlorn. I was too uneasy to keep still. This was my fault. I should have followed her home from the lab. At the very least, I should have gone straight home. It felt like there was a pit of flies swarming inside my ribcage.
Sarah was now in an intensive care room, where her condition would be monitored around the clock. The police informed me that the residents in the house near where the accident occurred said it happened at 2 am. I was sure they’d made a mistake, because we left the lab at midnight, which would leave two hours of Sarah’s time unaccounted for. The distance from the lab to home was only twenty minutes, less at that hour of night. Before I had time to think through what could possibly have taken place in those two hours, it occurred to me that when I was questioned again by the police, I’d surely be asked where I went after leaving the lab. I’d told the police that I’d filled up with petrol on my way home and that I’d fallen asleep soon after I arrived at our apartment. Part of that was true and part wasn’t. I did fall asleep when I got home, but I didn’t fill up with petrol. I went somewhere else on my way back.
I had to get to a station to top up my car as soon as possible and tell the police I had paid with cash. I would still look guilty – what kind of husband falls asleep in the middle of the night without checking where his wife is? I couldn’t even tell them that I had a few glasses of vino before bed and it knocked me out – everyone knew I didn’t drink.
I had nothing to do with my wife’s accident. And yet, I felt guilty as if I were, in some way, responsible.
My children kept their eyes fixed on their mother. I wanted to comfort them but I didn’t know how. Sarah was always the one to give them warm hugs and say the right words. With the three of us in the cramped space around her hospital bed, the air quickly became stifling. I felt closed in, which was unusual for me given that I spent most of my days underground in small trenches.
‘I’m going to get some fresh air,’ I told my kids, like a coward, and made my way outside.
It was light by then, the sun shining like a bright eye illuminating my mistakes. I looked at the time – it was 6.08 am. And then I remembered the email. The damned em
ail! Why did I send it in such haste? Why didn’t I listen to Sarah and wait? The media was going to want to know what we discovered. And then no doubt they’d make some fabricated connection to Sarah’s accident hours later. That was not how I wanted the story to unfold. I didn’t want anything to detract from the glory of our discovery. If I didn’t act quickly, news crews and journalists would gather outside the lab at eleven o’clock – in just five hours. My team would arrive at 8.30 am; I had briefed them at length about the pietre dure box, so if they opened the safe they would know at first glance exactly what was inside. And no one – not even a member of my own team – could be trusted with the necklace.
The timing of the accident couldn’t be worse. I tried to gather my thoughts but shock and fear and guilt cast a fog over my mind. I needed to be at my wife’s bedside but I also had to attend to the necklace’s safety. I couldn’t do both. Surely the latter would be what Sarah would have wanted?
And then there was the press to contend with. I had to keep them at bay by postponing the announcement.
I made my decision and walked back inside the hospital.
‘You okay, Papà?’ Emily asked with tenderness in her voice when I reached Sarah’s bed.
‘I have to go to the lab. I won’t be long,’ I told her and Daniel, and then walked away before they had a chance to register that I was leaving them alone to care for their severely injured mother. But even with my back turned, I could feel their disappointment burn into my skin. What kind of man leaves his wife lying in a coma within hours of a car accident? Was I really more devoted to my career than to my wife and children? I pushed my father’s voice out of my mind, even though it rose up suddenly with fury, taunting me, telling me that I would turn out to be just like him.
I reached the castle just before 7 am. I keyed in the code to unlock the lab and turned on the lights; everything was just as we had left it. I was relieved to find that no one else had come to work early. When I stepped inside the shed, I thought back to last night and how euphoric I felt seeing the exquisite jewel in the flesh, running my fingers over the edges of the gold meshes, diamonds, sapphires and emeralds, and knowing that without my breakthrough, it would never have been sought or found.
The Perfect Couple Page 6
