Tua Luce (English version)

Shadows of madness

Once again Maya ran through the smoke looking for Carina.  She heard her calls in the distance as the flames embraced her.  Despair and fear mixed with the hesitation that made her froze as the cement structure hit the ground again with an excruciating sound.

Maya wakes up in a jump.  She sits on the bed with her hand on her chest.  She was sweaty and her heartbeat out of rhythm.  She was barely able to sleep and when she did, she dreamed about the same moment.

She looks at the clock on her dresser pointing 4:30 in the morning.  She sighs getting up, heading to the kitchen to make some coffee.  As concentrated as she can.

She was is need to wake up from the nightmare she'd been living for nearly a week.

Minutes later she was leaving the house.  She ran until her feet complained and she ran out of breath.  She drops to the grass and stares up at the sky, which that day was gray, but her silent prayer was the same.

She asked for the medicine for her bruised heart.  She asked for Carina back.
The doctor had been taken to Gray Sloan along with her father and brother.  The elder DeLuca's condition was critical but stable.  Andrea had some minor abrasions and burns.  And Carina, her sweet Carina, in her eagerness to save her brother, had put herself at risk and the price for that thoughtless action, driven above all by love, had been taken.

Inhaling the smoke longer than it should have caused a carbon monoxide poisoning that led to unconsciousness.  Compromising part of your airway that can be treated in time.  Everything seemed to go towards recovery, until they came across the aneurysm, probably caused by the fluctuation in Carina's blood pressure during the first two days.  Aneurysm that Amelia Shepherd had operated with praise.

Everything now depended on the Italian woman's own body.  Meanwhile, Maya was languishing in the wait that had been going on for nearly a week.

The doctor's brother had been discharged the day after the incident and, surprising everyone who knew the context that permeated the brothers' relationship with their father's bipolarity, denounced him.

Andrea literally had to go through the fire in order for him to accept reality.  The father needed help and at that point, he needed to be stopped and protected from himself.

Vicenzo DeLuca had broken through the shadows of his own madness, and his actions had almost condemned him and his two kids to a cruel fate.

(...)

The day at the station happened like any other: with its fellow workers walking on eggshells while talking to the captain.  And Maya no longer had the energy for reprimands.  She was more vulnerable than ever and couldn't deny it or hide it.

She was getting ready to leave under Andy's watchful eye.  The lieutenant didn't need to verbalize what she was thinking, for Maya to know, and so she avoided eye contact.

But it didn't last for long.

- Maya...

- Hmm?  - she still answers without looking at her.

- I'll go with you.

The blonde freezes, trying to understand the sentence, seeing no alternative but to finally face her friend with questioning blue eyes.

- You've been trying to get out for ten minutes.  I know where you goes after station.  Where you've been going every day and it's okay if you don't want to or aren't ready to talk, but I'm going with you today - She gets up.

The captain had tears in her eyes when she feels Andy's hand clasp hers.

“Thank you,” she whispers in a shaky voice.

The truth was, she was afraid.  And it only got bigger as the days went by and Carina showed no sign of improvement.

And every trip to the hospital with that uncertainty in her heart, it became more difficult.

The visit that day, however, would reveal a change.

When Maya turned down the hall with Andy beside her, the movement near the doctor's room was different and that was enough for the blonde to hurry her steps.

She can't go in right away, but she can see through the glass.  A team was around the gurney where an awake and sitting Carina was being examined.

As if he felt the presence of the other.  The brown eyes met the thrilled blue ones and Carina smiled.  Making Maya repeat the act, supporting one of her hands on the glass while her friend patted her shoulders.

And in the midst of that cloudy day with no hope of any sunlight, Maya could find her light again.