During that terrible week, Elia and Azzurra had seen the absolute worst. The comfort offered by friends and relatives—who, even from a distance, reached out in a constant stream of calls and messages—did little to ease their pain. Anna, Belinda's mother-in-law, prayed fervently and wept over the phone. Then, one morning, Belinda woke up. She was smiling, like someone emerging from a bad dream, simply happy to be alive. She felt neither pain nor anger; she was inhabited only by a profound gratitude toward a life that was telling her she was still in the game.
Perhaps she was somewhat unaware of the gravity of her situation. As soon as she opened her eyes, she saw the face of a young, tall doctor with a friendly expression and felt compelled to say: "Hello, handsome!" She offered him a wide smile, then looked out the hospital window at the wind dancing through the branches of lush green trees. To her, it was a magnificent spectacle—a moving painting. The doctor hurried to the waiting room to inform the family. "The patient is awake, smiling, and making jokes. This is an excellent sign. Just don't let her tire herself out too much."
Immediately, Elia, Azzurra, her brother, and her sister-in-law rushed to her side. Elia took her hands, which seemed to vanish within his large ones, kissed them, and smiled, barely able to conceal his overwhelming emotion. "My love, chi ni mattiò? (My love, what has happened to us?)" Elia tried to explain the events calmly, careful not to traumatize this woman who was at once so fragile and so strong, having just survived a sea of troubles. Belinda simply replied: "I'm fine, I'm alive!" Azzurra threw herself into her mother's arms like a parched traveler finding an oasis in the desert. In that eternal instant, they were all happy. The room lit up—no longer with the murky green of the money magic they had performed years ago, but with a gold as bright as the morning sun.
Soon, the doctors asked the relatives to leave; it was time to tend to Belinda's medical needs, as she was still tethered to a catheter, a nasogastric tube, and IV drips. As she became more alert, they bathed her and peppered her with a thousand questions: "How old are you? What is your name? What is your daughter's name? How old is she? What year is it?" It was a necessary barrage to determine if Belinda's mind was intact. She answered some perfectly, but with others, she was confused, mixing up dates and places. She wanted to get out of bed, but she lacked the strength. She called the nurses to remove that annoying catheter, but they couldn't yet; she wasn't capable of going to the bathroom on her own.
The days that followed were filled with endless visits and various doctors—necessary "tortures" to monitor Belinda's health. She was happy only when she saw her loved ones and longed to go home. Her veins were in poor condition, her arms and hands covered in bruises; finding a good vein was so difficult that even the nurses grew despondent. She underwent frequent CT scans to see if and how much the edema had reduced, as days turned into weeks.
One day, they sat her in a wheelchair. she remained there, staring out the window at the trees, which no longer looked like a moving painting but like a static, boring drawing. She had to get out of that cursed chair; she had to succeed at all costs. She would do it for Elia, for Azzurra, for her home, and for herself. She could not go on like this. The doctors spoke with Elia, Mattia, and Erica, explaining that Belinda's health was clearly improving and the edema was shrinking. However, the prognosis for her renal failure remained guarded. The positive note was her creatinine: the levels, previously sky-high, had dropped. She was no longer at risk for dialysis, but she wasn't out of danger yet. They needed more tests to see if she would ever walk again.
Elia spoke to Belinda as he always had—with a calm and brutally honest tone. Belinda needed to be aware of the situation, and she deeply appreciated his positive, never-discouraging attitude. "We have to win this, my love," he would say, like a soldier in battle. That night, Belinda dreamed of her mother, Caterina, who approached the bed and kissed her forehead. "Sleep, sleep, mammitta didn't want to wake you... but you must rise from that chair! A mala sorti a sfidari! (You must defy the evil fate!)"
The next morning, she felt a new energy. Even though the bruises on her arms were still visible, she felt something inside her healing. As they did every morning, they bathed her and placed her in the wheelchair. But instead of staring out the window as usual, she decided to try and stand up on her own, convinced she could call for help if she failed. Trying again and again with immense effort, she finally stood up. She took three decisive steps that brought her from the side of the bed to the headboard, where the emergency bell was. She rang it with pride and a sense of victory: she could still walk.
In the days to come, she began getting up by herself, walking to the bathroom, and eventually traversing the corridor of the neurology ward with her head held high, as if she were running a marathon. The annoying catheter was already a distant memory. It was beautiful how painful events could be overcome; it felt almost magical. Belinda no longer had the strength for sorcery; she only wanted to return to a normal life, far from the hospital, back home to her villa in Sicily where the sun always shone.