The Unexpected

It is the summer of 8 August 2002, when Luca, a young 32-year-old Italian, is in Lourdes, France at a community of young former drug addicts and alcoholics founded by an Italian nun. His brother has been manager there for a year. Following a long, tiring journey, he unexplainable fells to the floor as soon as he reaches the house late that evening, but does not lose consciousness. The left side of his body however seems to no longer give any sign of life. After being taken to the local hospital, he is virtually diagnosed as having a cerebral stroke that paralyses the left side of his body. What is to lie ahead for the unfortunate young man appears to be the beginning of a sort of tragedy, and above all the situation is very paradoxical one normally goes to Lourdes to beg a favour, not to Actually, his destiny is to prove anything but tragic. After a long, difficult month at the intensive care unit of the Lourdes hospital, with the help of his family, Luca finds a place at a physical-motorial rehabilitation centre located thirty kilometres from the city (one of the best in France). It is impossible to transfer him to Italy. It is too expensive. He stays there for six long months. While he is still at the reanimation centre, he make friends with Joel, a blind therapist, and with a nurse who yells with her French accent, Maranello, Maranello, every time she sees him. The nurse is a big fan of Modena car manufacturer Ferrari, so one day as she pushes him in a red wheelchair, Luca relates to her an incredible experience he had working with a Formula 1 team at the age of 22. It is the beginning of September when he enters the rehabilitation centre, finding an atmosphere anything but normal. Actually, many of the patients hospitalised at the centre have considerable scars on their heads. From that moment on, every weekend the two brothers have the opportunity to see each other and resume their relationship that was impaired by the drug addiction. The community is founded on nursing the spirit through prayer, and is where forty young men live together. It is significant and of enormous help for Lucas recovery as the six long months pass. The young men of various nationalities appreciate his efforts, but above all they admire his courage and determination. Luca meets the therapist Joel at the house in Lourdes, who is actually a neighbour. He helps him above all owing to his enormous faith in God, not in money. He is of fundamental importance in Lucas speedy recovery of several movements of his upper and lower limbs, gaining time. In truth, faith is the element that both protagonists have in common. Ever since he was a young boy, Luca had faith in God, which saves him each and every time from his vicissitudes. Faith is his only anchor of salvation when, as an adolescent, he tries to grow up without a father always at his side and has to deal with a thousand difficulties. But faith is even more important and is moral support for him when, at the age of 23, he leaves for England after his Formula 1 experience, heading for London with the intention of perfecting the English language. Exactly one year passes by (from 1993 to 1994), working at an Italian ice cream shop and studying the language at night school. He studies and speaks the language with incredible difficulty until one day the following year now at the age of 24 he finds an ad in the London magazine "Time Out" that talks about summer camps and children in America. Luca is dissatisfied with the weather on the island, and more than anything wants to perfect the language in a country full of sun, with definitely summery temperatures. More than a week has gone by at the rehabilitation centre when on 11 September 2002, the French TV shows the terrible images of the Twin Towers massacre, which happened exactly one year before. Luca is in bed resting and thinking of the day when he had the interview to go to America to work, and when he contacted the Camp Counsellor or