Trafika Europe 14 - Italian Piazza

Nicola Lagioia

window. Dazed by the pain medicine, Orazio reached his arm out toward the nightstand. He felt his other arm. He grabbed the bottle. The long drink of water refreshed him—his thoughts lined up in a bridge of light, but then collapsed, jumping back into line in a different order. He’d had a crash, but he was alive. A nasty crash. He remembered the highway, even the salesman. The van must be a wreck. Then something. An opalescent marble glittered amidst the rough gears he was using to reconstruct what had happened. That was strange, because the gears were interlocking, while the marble floated in thin air. It gleamed again and disappeared. The girl. That had to be a ghost, an imaginary shape risen from the depths of consciousness. He felt an itch. The patient in the adjoining bed wouldn’t stop whining. He scratched his face. He scratched his left hand with his right. Still, an itch. He jerked himself upright, into a sitting position. He felt a tug, reached his arm down toward his right leg. Two nurses came running at the sound of his screaming. The next morning, as he lay in bed with the stump of his leg draining, the head physician came to see him, accompanied by a nurse. From that point on, Orazio began to believe that the girl was real. The doctor was an old man, tall and deathly pale, with wispy white hair. He leaned over him. He

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