Federico Betti

      The Lost Twin

      Translated by Gentian Cane

      Published by Tektime

      Copyright © 2020 – Federico Betti

      This book is dedicated to all those people who, for any kind of reason, are known as Marco Mezzogori

      Preface

      He couldn’t be aware of the consequences from this sort of action, which exactly at that moment would seem quite normal to anyone.

      He did feel really fine and this was the only thing he was absolutely sure.

      Of course, not because nothing particularly impressive has ever happened to him: the same daily routine, but to feel good was the most important thing to Him, while nothing occurred till then so that he could think of something to be changed either now or later.

      In His case, the notion of time merely was not a matter of concern, as the flow of minutes, hours, days and so on, perfectly matched with the saying “Everything is relative”.

      One day, just at an imprecise moment, He saw Another one.

      What was He doing in that place?

      Being not able to give an answer, He realized day by day that the Other one had obviously the same rights as Him, including the right to stay where he was indeed.

      Anyway, since the first day of his appearance, all has gone smoothly, without any noticeable problem, until something went wrong.

      He couldn’t be able to identify what had gone wrong, but certainly there occurred something that brought about the change to this situation. The Other one didn’t show up, nevertheless all the rest remained unchanged, the same routine as always. Despite this, He would keep being the same, and for the sake of truth, He was feeling stronger and stronger every passing day…

      Two months later...

      The man shuddered and could hardly sleep for several days.

      He knew that the day of luck could be any usual day of his life, and very soon he would become a father.

      All his friends and relatives became aware and were getting ready for the baby party and, exactly on the day the woman has been urgently sent to the Medical Emergency, he called all those who, for the moment, came to his mind and let them know on the forthcoming day of luck.

      In the surgery room, the man couldn’t wait to see the baby. Perhaps being not aware of what he was doing, he shook his wife’s hand as strongly as could be of pain to her.

      After a very long wait, she gave birth to her baby and the anxiety faded away.

      The woman was sent back to a patient room in the hospital Sant’Orsola of Bologna, along with her husband.

      After the required checks, the Head of the Obstetrics Clinic informed the couple about the baby boy size, his weight of about four kilograms and tallness of forty two centimetres.

      It doesn’t seem to be real to the couple: on that day their dream became true.

      After spending the necessary time for recovery and waiting for the doctors’ decision to take her out of the hospital, the man got to the hospital to pick her wife up and along with the baby went home.

      At the same evening, the man made contacts with his closest friends and relatives for having a party together on the occasion of his baby boy birth.

      It was a real party in a very literal sense, with creamy chocolate cake, desserts, snacks, many drinks and also presents of the newborn baby kit, and while at the end, all were about to leave, it turned out that everyone was coming back home even happier since the news of the baby birth has been released.

      Twenty five years later

      I

      Carla Mezzogori used to live a life without any unusual turn, except that sometimes she used to hang out with her husband or her friends instead, while he decided to stay home and watch any sport in TV.

      Both had promptly a good feeling, in harmony with each other, as none of them hadn’t shown signs of doing things differently from what they usually did.

      It could be said also that both of them were the typical persons habituated to the routine, that is, neither expected something particular from life, nor behaved in such a way to incite their fate beyond their usual daily activities.

      They didn’t have kids as no such desire had been expressed so far, additionally, they were afraid of having the same fate as Luciano, Carla’s brother.

      Since the birth, Marco, Luciano’s son, had presented some kind of abnormalities, if may be said so, and with the passing of time, his parents found out that their son was suffering from hemiplegia. In other words, he couldn’t move the right part of the body because of such disease. He wasn’t able to move either the arm or the leg.

      Of course that Luciano and his wife, once received the confirmation of diagnosis, did obtain much more information and made a lot of efforts to improve the health of their son, through therapies and everything else, but health condition and common development of him had led to the decision of Carla and her husband to stop thinking of “giving birth to any baby”.

      The missing kid and physical disability of her nephew had helped into the creation of a strong bond between Carla and Marco Mezzogori.

      The boy had just turned twenty five and obviously had improvements since his birth, though no recovery could be considered yet.

      Within the recent few years, Carla used to go and see her nephew, alone or in company of her husband, at least two or three times weekly; mostly during the evenings, often on her way back home or after dinner.

      Just for thirty or forty minutes, long enough to see how he was doing, to have a chat with him and afterwards, she came back home.

      Likewise the family of her nephew, Carla with her husband used to live in San Lazzaro of Savena, a county of Bologna, a few chilometers from the center of the capital of Emiglia Romagna.

      The nephew was living with his family in viale della Repubblica, a street parallel to the street Emilia, therefore it usually took them only a few hundred meters to reach the nephew’s apartment, in the vicinities of via delle Rimembranze.

      Frankly speaking, Carla Mezzogori didn’t have great relationships with her sister-in-law, Marco’s mother, nevertheless, Carla handled perfectly the situation whenever she was going to meet her nephew, sometimes putting a brave face on a bad job.

      Perhaps the character of Marisa Lavezzoli; this was exactly the name of the sister-in-law, was one reason why the father of the hemiplegic boy had run away, just when the boy had turned eighteen.

      A very bizarre fact that Carla and her husband had realized since the very beginning was that Luciano Mezzogori had gone one day without talking to anybody, leaving nothing in writing or no trace at all, as if he was suddenly eager to change his life leaving the past behind, and go far away and never come back.

      The situation of the two remaining family members, Marco and his mother, was not plain sailing.

      Since the day her husband ran away, Marisa Lavezzoli has had to take care of her hemiplegic son, and to deal with any therapy or treatment of his physical impairment, and furthermore, she has had to afford the expenses for two surgical interventions Marco underwent during the last years.

      From the day Luciano Mezzogori was not along with them, the whole savings had been used for the medical treatment of Marco.

      Unfortunately, her mom had never managed to gain a permanent job and always had to be “satisfied” with any small job found occasionally and at a short term, which could have helped her earning enough money to afford the living expenses for herself and her son, as well as the expenses for his medical treatment and care.

      Over