CHAPTER 3

At 9 o’ clock of that morning I went through the doorway of the hospital. On reaching the ward, I found myself in a waiting room full of people. And yet the feeling of emptiness in my heart was huge and tasted bitter.
I was holding on tightly to Stefano, looking for protection, for a safe shelter from my fears. I remember looking at him when I asked him, “And if we kept it and went away, the three of us?” With a sweet smile, without taking his eyes off mine, he replied, “If you want to, you know, we can keep it.”
My God! Instead of hearing again about my (“my”, not “our”) freedom of choice, I desperately would have wished him to hold my hand and drag me out of that place, far away, to hold me as tight as to make me breathless, and to tell me, “Together we can make it. I want this child... because I love you.” But, unfortunately, my heart had not received any reply to what it was asking for, and, again, I felt LONELY.


In that moment Doctor X appeared in the corridor and, after giving me the first necessary instructions on what to do when I was in my bedroom, he invited Stefano to come back in the afternoon. This decision had to be made to protect my privacy and the other wretched women’s. 
I didn’t want him to go away... I didn’t want to be separated from him.
The last opportunity to save our child by talking and communicating to each other our emotions freely, without the conditioning of the unforgivable and stupid reasoning that was clawing us... had vanished. And then, how could I have faced it all on my own?
I went inside the room... a ghetto reserved for those who, like me, had to have an abortion on that day. One could breathe death inside that room. I could hardly walk. I felt my legs paralysed and unable to move.
I found only one available bed, near the window, certainly the most exposed to the wind, which was violently blowing through the window frame on that day. But that didn’t matter... the cold that I felt in my heart was more overwhelming. I was ashamed of being there, I didn’t have the courage to raise my eyes from the bed where I had put my few things, although I knew I would not be judged by “my mates”.
Nearly in a daze, I made sure to take the antibiotic that I had previously obtained under the doctor’s instructions, followed by a drink of water...water... the only sign of life inside that place. After taking off my clothes, I immediately put on my pyjamas and went to the bath to have a pee. Doctor X would arrive soon to insert a suppository inside the vagina necessary for expanding the uterus. We would have to wait for two hours for this to happen and make it easier to tear... my child away from my womb.
I am crying while I’m writing this... It is difficult to carry on telling this story... The pains became sharper and sharper: the vaginal suppository was working effectively... I felt an 

unbearable pain in my back and legs: my ovaries were contracting, my blood had frozen, my bones had become numb. My teeth were chattering and I turned my eyes to the ceiling, looking for the face of God: but what right did I have?
”What am I doing?” I asked myself, in a loud voice.
I didn’t know that the answer to that question would haunt me from that moment again and again on every new day of my wretched life.
I couldn’t stand it any longer! I asked the nurse to give me something, anything, to relieve my growing pain.
It was necessary to give me a drip of a strong painkiller. They were unable to find a vein, and that caused further pain added to the pain I was already feeling, but I didn’t mind: I only wanted those continuous and violent contractions to stop.
After a short while, I felt such a strong sense of nausea that I couldn’t help vomiting up my gastric juice and... my soul.
With the eyes of someone who implores a single grain of compassion, I “stole” the nurse’s hand and brought it to my face, holding it tight. 
“What’s your name?” I asked her. 
“Liliana” she immediately replied, with such a gentle manner that I would never forget.
“Like my best friend,” I told her with a feeble smile. “Thank you,” I carried on. “Help me, it hurts so much. I beg you to help me.”
“You must breathe slowly. It gets worse if you are restless. You’ll see it will get better soon.”
But the pain didn’t go.
“I want my mum...” I told her, looking towards the door. “Why didn’t she come?”

“Because she doesn’t know anything.”
And my mum would never have allowed me to be there. She wouldn’t have allowed me even to think about the solution I had chosen, not at all! With her “customary” love, she would have supported me and sacrificed herself to help me, in case of need. She would have been happy for that gift, like all the other people in my family. But I didn’t want to be a burden to anybody, not even to her.
My suffering reached its limit and I cried out with pain. Doctor X arrived again and sat on the edge of my bed, trying in his own way to comfort me.
“I told you that you had to be very patient,” he reminded me.
I threw up again.
A different side effect of the vaginal suppository was soon to appear: diarrhoea. The doctor invited us to go to the bathroom, one at the time, and not to hesitate to call the nurse in case of need.
When my turn arrived, I gathered all my strength. I couldn’t stand up, but I had to stand.
After I went back to bed, exhausted, I looked at my watch. I couldn’t wait for the end of that slow agony.
Later a man appeared at the door and asked us who wanted to go first for the operation. Hoping that the wait had ended, I gave myself up to tiredness. I was eventually feeling a little bit better.
They took the eldest of us three wretches. Before she came back, a nurse came to the bedroom to pick me up and asked me whether I could walk.


To reach the operating theatre, we walked through a long corridor, which seemed interminable to me. The nurse was holding me by the arm; my steps were slow and uncertain, my head was bent. I felt like an animal on its way to the slaughterhouse.
When we arrived, I saw the other girl, not yet fully conscious, lying on a stretcher. I caressed her face before they took her away. I waited in a room, bent over, nearly in a daze, with my eyes fixed on the floor. They took off my tights, my necklace and a ring from which I never parted. When they told me that everything was ready they led me to the operating theatre, they had me take off my pyjamas and knickers. They had me lie on my back on the bed, with my legs resting on the retractor and my pelvis pushed forward: that was the correct position to take.
I felt ashamed, like being raped, beaten up in my most intimate parts. Five people were around me...
Doctor X was ready. Before falling asleep, I begged the anaesthetist, who was a woman in her forties, with indifferent and cold eyes, or so it seemed to me, but who, instead, gave me a moment of humanity and protection. I begged her to tell me that everything would be over when I woke up, and she answered yes, it would be indeed, with a caress and a tender, compassionate look on her face.
Then... a sharp pain in my hand because of the injected substance and my last words, said through clenched teeth, before killing my child: “How painful it is...”