It's been all go here today. First there was a 7-hour powercut while I was alone at home. I had to take to my bed through boredom; I have become sadly reliant on atrocious Italian TV. Later Marco and Sonia came home and had a blazing row in which Sonia threatened to leave. I tried to avoid the row by doing a few circuits of the bedroom on my crutches, and by the time I braved the sitting room again they had magically made up and decided to head out to buy some scratchcards.
Now I'm waiting for E to come home from work to medicate my leg (my Friday nights really have come to this). I have to do it at home once a week in addition to going to the hospital once a week to have it done. At the hospital I usually see the no-nonsesne doctor Pierro who has, as he put it 'been my butcher since the beginning'. Most of his family live in New York, and as a result he speaks English with an Italian-American gangster accent straight from the movies. My favourite day in hospital was when he appeared at my bedside and said "hey little girl, how ya doin?" (look, nothing much exciting happened in hospital ok?). Last visit he was asking me questions, probably trying to distract me from the antispetic he was wiping liberally over my leg, when he got round to asking about E. "What does ya boyfriend do?". "He's the manager of a pizzeria. OW, what are you doing now?". "Pulling out your stitches" yank "well, that's interesting, my family have a pizzeria in Long Island" yank "stay still, I'm not gonna hurt ya".
Five minutes of yanking and vicious swabbing with antispetic later Pierro says "why don't we call your boy in, he can keep you company while I finish up". E is summoned and looks puzzled, unsurprising given that on several occasions he has been forcefully ejected from my bedside when leg medication has been in process. But it turns out Pierro wants to chat pizza. I lie helplessly on the hard bed, pizza talk swirling around my head while Pierro, losing any sembelance of bedside manner he may have had through lack of concentration, pours on some more antispetic for good measure and slaps on bandages with his meaty hands while my boyfriend, sent to 'keep me company', gesticulates excitedly on the other side of the room about pizza varieties. They end the visit in high spirits, with Pierro promising a visit to E's pizzeria soon. I wearily lower myself and my throbbing leg from the bed.
On the way home E is full of chat about Pierro "isn't he such a cool doctor? Did you hear he said I could go and work for his brother in Long Island?" Yes, I thought, reaching into my bag for my painkillers, very cool...just you wait until he treats your wounds and then we'll see how cool you think he is!
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