Tattoo'd Lady (A Brian May Fanfiction) -English-

Every morning it's the same scene

       London - 27th August 1974

                       11:00 am

My eyes open slowly, very slowly. I feel them wet, sticky and my eyelids are so heavy that I barely can raise them up to see the sunlight even today. So many times, in the last three months, I was afraid I won't be able to not see the sunlight again. It all started in New York, at the climax of the tour as supporters to the Mott The Hoople: I get out of bed, an empty bed because the night before I came back in the hotel too tired and sick to take with me one of the many available girls, I go to bathroom, I look in the mirror and...

"Oh my God, Brian! What's happening to you? " I wonder shocked, my face and my tongue are completely yellow "What's happening? What... what's going on...I..."

And the chaos starts. The tour ended earlier than expected, then hospitals, doctors and the diagnosis, the unfortunate diagnosis: hepatitis. All because of that damn infected vaccination needle for Australia. What the hell! They even made fun of us in Australia! Back in London, I feared that the guys decided to exclude me from the band, that they would choose another guitarist but instead they didn't it. They decided to wait for me and this choice, I have to admit it, it amazed me. I didn't think that Freddie cared so much about me, I don't know if he cares more about me or more about the way I play the guitar, but he chose to wait for me even when a fantastic ulcer decided to compromise my stomach after that the hepatitis had compromised my liver.

"Your son will have to stay here in the hospital for another two weeks" the big, big in every sense, nurse Maggie Simpson explained to my mother. I remember it as if it were yesterday when, with her hoarse voice as a chain smoker, she recommended to my mother: "When he will come back home he will have to follow a treatment, he will have to spend a long period of convalescence and he will have to don't forget this: no alcohol, no efforts..."

But yes, no efforts! We have to record the new album, what does the nurse Simpson knows about our new album? We have to record it and we have to do it now, we already had to stop a tour in the middle of the best part. But... but was really so beautiful this tour? Yes, I saw the United States, the skyscrapers, the nightclubs, the Dungeon and...

She was beautiful that night, she danced among the tables of the Dungeon, moving sensual as a mermaid, and I, I who was just a poor, naive guy from overseas, I properly entangled in her net. That night with her was wonderful, but the awakening was not so wonderful.Anything strange, the only problem was that to call me was Amalia, my girlfriend, or rather, my ex"girlfriend. She just wanted to know if I was ok, since the night before I had been too busy to call her. So, if you call your boyfriend in his hotel room and is another girl to answer, what's the first thing to do? It's to break up with him, obviously. And Amalia broke up with me directly by phone, when I came back to London she never came to the hospital to visit me, to make sure I was still alive and when I tried to call her she never answered my calls. I'm dead for her, and maybe it was better if I was really dead.

But I didn't always think in this way. When I was really afraid of dying, when I was in that hospital bed where everything was white around me and the only noise I heard was the beats of my heart mechanically reproduced by the electrocardiograph I was attached to, in that moment I prayed God to save me. Many things I still want to do in my life, in music, for others, I still have many stories to tell and I still have a lots of songs to write. I'm just a new man I written composing Now I'm Here during my hospitalization, because yes, now I'm a new man, I'm facing a new life, a career on the way up as a musician, I'm appreciated by many my colleagues, but... but I feel I've lost something. I've lost that thrill, that emotion, that romantic longing that is the engine of my life, of my being an artist, of my being a man. Maybe it's because Amalia broke up with me, but is really that the only reason? Recently I had much more time to think than usual, so I reflected on our story: at the beginning everything was idyllic and perfect, but then anything become a routine and even in bed, well, it was no longer as exciting as the first times.