Tess Awakening (31 page)

“I just need to relax, Nicola. I don’t care
if I spend the time in bed playing with you or reading my Kindle. I
guess we don’t have much choice, the TV here sucks.”

“You have proclaimed the absolute truth. I
dare say that developing countries probably do better. No matter,
we can find entertainment by just walking around.”

Carmen was a keen observer and noticed that
there seemed to be only a few children around, even on the
playground. Nicola explained. “Italy has one of the lowest birth
rates in the world after France. Couples having a child are the
exception, not the rule. I am sure that the economy is a factor,
but I suspect that the real problem is a persistent lack of
optimism. Sooner or later, we are going to face a demographic
problem, too few young people supporting too many old ones. At the
same time, we resist immigration. I am not sure what will come of
that.”

They walked back into Nicola’s apartment
building which sported a handsome marble foyer with simple modern
décor. The elevator took them to his unit. Carmen took off her
sweater and walked to the balcony. The boardwalk was now
practically deserted, the increasing wind having driven people
indoors. Rain started to pour, becoming increasingly intense.

Carmen was running out of clothes, and even
though the apartment had a clothes washer, it did not have a dryer.
Carmen thought this was weird.

Nicola explained. “Italians don’t like to use
dryers. They just hang clothes out to dry on clotheslines.”

Carmen did not find the practice quaint or
even remotely acceptable. “What do you do in winter?”

Nicola shrugged his shoulders. Carmen passed
on providing her opinion on the subject.

“My sisters use the apartment when I am gone,
let me see what nightwear they keep here.”

Carmen looked through the armoire and
selected a light yellow negligee and a robe. When she walked back
to the living room, Nicola had changed into a V-neck T-shirt and
lounge pants. He poured a couple of brandy glasses and true to
form, proceeded to make love to his vessel, swirling amber liquor
and inhaling the vapor. Carmen smiled. They spent the rest of the
evening talking.

Carmen had never trusted men—she just used
them. In her mind, men were still stuck on acting with the
reptilian part of their brain, obsessively spreading their seed
around as much as they could. She was puzzled that she did not
detect any sign of that behavior in Nicola. He remained relaxed,
self-assured and darn, gorgeous. He had blue eyes, great skin, and
a sexy, fit body. He moved around with stealthy grace and looked at
Carmen with a slight glint in his eyes. What she did not know was
that he had admired her since they first met in Iraq. He saw that
she was unique, confident, assertive, extremely competent and sexy
as hell.

The rain continued to pour, and Nicola
suggested they get some rest. Carmen brushed her teeth and lay
down. They made love again, listening to the rushing trains below
and the howling wind outside.

Chapter 50

Jake moved Tess to a rehab facility. She was
still confused, with short-term memory loss. The therapists started
to work with her immediately. They put her on a treadmill then
moved her to occupational therapy specialists who worked on
restoring her cognitive faculties through picture cards, puzzles
and objects manipulation. Jake was always was there with her,
pushing the wheelchair to take her to the various activities.
Initially, she did not do well but improved rapidly, regaining
strength and memory.

Back to her room resting in bed, Tess finally
asked about little Morgan. She also noticed that her abdomen had
not grown. Jake steeled himself. He now had to tell her the
truth.

“Tess, we lost the baby due to the accident.
There was nothing they could do.”

Tess now remembered. The car chase, the
explosions, jumping into the ditch, the pain of hitting her head on
a rock. She put her hand on her belly, hoping that the child was
still in her. She wasn’t.

Tess moaned in despair. She needed to feel
something precious. “Jake, I want you to bring little Morgan to
me.”

Jake remained silent, his heart breaking. He
steeled himself. “Tess, someone kidnapped little Morgan; we think
it was Amir.”

Tess opened her eyes wide, unable to
comprehend the horror. She emitted a scream of agony, causing the
nurses to come into the room. Jake asked them to leave and embraced
her, trying to help her through her flood of tears. He said
nothing; he just held her until the nurse gave her a sedative shot
to make her sleep. Jake sat in an easy chair beside the bed,
staring into nothingness, enduring his own private hell.

Tess slept for a couple of hours and woke up.
Jake had fallen asleep on the chair. She looked at her beloved who
was always at her side and shared her pain. Tess was shattered, the
sudden loss of her two children difficult to comprehend. She
started to keen, holding her stomach, bobbing up and down, tears
flowing again.

Jake woke up hugged her again, trying to
comfort her as well as he could. Tess finally drew on her strength,
forcing herself to stop crying. Her old courageous self was
back.

“Jake, I want to know everything. I swear I
will go after Amir, take my child back and make him pay for killing
the baby in my womb. I want to get out of here now!”

“Tess, your therapy is not done; you need to
stay here for a couple more days.”

“I want to get out now! Help me get dressed.
I need to find a way to kill the bastard!”

There was no way to keep her down. Jake
checked her out of the facility against the advice of the doctors,
fully realizing that the old, fierce and relentless Tess was back
in action. Her murderous rage was very much evident in her face.
She was back to being a fearsome warrior bent on revenge and on
taking back what was hers.

Jake took her home to their apartment and
tried to help her get some rest to no avail. Tess called her father
and asked him to come to her.

Chapter 51

Still in Chiavari, Carmen woke up in the
morning and decided to make Nicola a Mexican breakfast. For the
first time since she got there she tried to use the small, outdated
kitchen, so out of place compared to the rest of the elegant
apartment. Just about everything was archaic; antediluvian, the
period before the flood described in the Bible. An appropriate
metaphor, since the rain showed no signs of abating.

She found a butane gas lighter and after a
few attempts she managed to fire up the rickety gas burner. She
looked around for a frying pan and found a decrepit dented
approximation of it deep into a greasy cabinet. It was obvious that
neither Nicola nor his sisters ever cooked in this place. They
probably ate out at the restaurants below the building.

Carmen poured some olive oil in the pan and
started to adapt ingredients for breakfast. Suddenly, the frying
pan tilted on the rickety burner, spilling oil on the surface of
the stove, igniting a blaze. She grabbed a small towel and tried to
pat down the flames. The towel caught fire and stuck to her hand.
Carmen felt an agonizing burning sensation. She could not get to
the small sink because the flames now had extended to the area.

Nicola heard the noise, rushed over to the
kitchen and opened the refrigerator. He retrieved a large bottle of
mineral water and splashed the contents on Carmen’s burning hand.
He used a second bottle to extinguish the fire.

Carmen was hurting, the pain of the burn now
intense. Nicola took her into his arms and lay her down on the
living room sofa. He then called the hospital. The dispatcher told
him that there was flooding everywhere and that it would take some
time to dispatch an ambulance to them. It would be faster if he
could drive Carmen to the hospital.

Nicola helped Carmen get dressed, and led her
down the elevator to the basement, where his car was parked. They
opened the door to the garage and found it flooded. All the parked
cars were submerged in water up to the top of the wheel wells.

Working through the pain, Carmen regained her
wits. “My rental car is at the parking lot outside the building. I
don’t think it floods there. The lot is elevated.”

The parking lot was at the end of the block.
The wisdom of the town fathers now proved itself. Walking under to
covered porticos, they managed not to get soaked. Nicola asked
Carmen to stay put and ran to retrieve the small Fiat 500. He got
in and in less than a minute picked her up.

They headed to Lavagna, the only town with a
small regional hospital, just across the river from Chiavari.
Driving through the increasingly nasty torrent of water, they
crossed the bridge and made it to the Pronto Soccorso, the Italian
equivalent of Emergency Room. Orderlies whisked Carmen to the
triage area for treatment. Nicola went back outside to park the 500
on an elevated outside parking lot above the hospital. There was no
overhead protection, and by the time he returned the treatment
room, he was soaked.

The doctor cleaned Carmen’s hand, slathered a
jellylike substance on it and bandaged it. He suggested that she
stay in the hospital overnight. She declined, and said that she
wanted to go back to the apartment.

“I am not so sure it’s the best thing to do,
Carmen,” Nicola said. Outside we have a biblical flood.” Carmen
insisted so Nicola got soaked again to retrieve the car and off
they went.”

By this time, it was dark. Carmen had never
seen so much heavy rain precipitating for hours on end. The news on
the radio reported significant flooding in Genoa. Nicola started to
drive through the streets, managed to avoid large puddles and
headed toward one of the bridges on the border with Chiavari. He
drove around a corner and suddenly he had to step on the brakes. A
long line of cars ahead of them had stopped. The police had closed
the bridge connecting the town to Chiavari. The torrential rain had
swollen the river and the water was now over the bridge.

Nicola backed up and made for another bridge
located a short distance south of town. The same thing happened;
when they approached the alternate bridge, instead of a road, they
now saw a lake. Police cars were parked at the periphery of the
flooding, red lights flashing. A policeman clad in a yellow rubber
overcoat came over and told them that there was no way to pass at
this time. Nicola thought of alternatives. “Can we make it to the
Autostrada? “No, Signore,” was the response, “the approaches to it
are also flooded. There is nothing we can do for a while.”

Parking was scarce, but they managed to find
a spot under an apartment building with balconies that funneled
water down below. They stayed there for an hour, enduring water
running from the building and pouring on the ceiling of the tiny
Fiat. The noise was deafening.

Nicola knew that Carmen was still in
distress. “Do you need a pain pill?”

“I would love to take one, Nicola, but under
the circumstances, I better not.”

The heavy rain continued to fall. Now sheets
of water invaded the streets, and Nicola now worried that if they
remained there they ran the risk of being flooded. He turned the
car around and drove back to the center of town. They saw an
available parking spot in front a large gated villa and stopped. No
sign of abatement. The rain continued unrestrained and there was
not one soul to be seen. The town was dark, the townspeople holed
up in their apartments, waiting for the wet hell outside to come to
an end.

Carmen was really hurting now. Nicola started
the car and kept searching for alternative exits out of town. All
of the possible escape routes were either blocked or flooded. The
police had managed to cordon off the most dangerous areas. Nicola
was not very familiar with the town, so he had to guess alternate
means of escape. He finally saw a park that appeared to be slightly
elevated from the streets. He took a chance, followed a pedestrian
pathway, and drove through some grassed areas. He silently
apologized for the damage that he was inflicting on the lawn and
made it north of town where he was able to cross a bridge that was
close to being flooded by the rising torrent below.

They finally arrived in Chiavari. Their city
was flooding as well, and many cars parked in the beautiful Piazza
Roma were now in what appeared a small lake. They made it to the
railroad station, the building below Nicola’s place on the other
side of the tracks. The elevated rails separated the entire beach
area from the town itself. Several underpasses allowed cars to
travel from the beach to downtown. They made a left turn to get to
the first underpass, but it was flooded. Several disabled cars were
stranded at the bottom, many of them underwater.

Carmen was still hurting. Nicola anxiously
kept searching for alternative routes to make it home. They tried
the other three underpasses to the beach, but they also flooded.
Finally, they drove downtown to Piazza Garibaldi and parked in a
diagonal spot across from shuttered stores under porticos. Nicola
was running out of ideas. He wished he could find a place to stay
for the night, but everything was shuttered tight and dark. The
rain continued, and more streets were flooding.

Carmen had a thought. “Nicola, remember when
we went to eat in Lavagna and you got to the beach through a road
east of here?”

“Nicola thought for a couple of seconds. “We
might as well try it.” He turned the tiny car around and headed
back toward Lavagna. He made a right turn looking for another
access route to the beach, but by the time they reached the spot
under a bridge, they saw that the road underneath had also turned
into a small lake. A large Audi station wagon was on the opposite
side, flooded, with the driver’s door open and the lights still
on.