11. From the hospital bed of Andrea Jura
CHAPTER 11
From the hospital bed of Andrea Jura
MONTEREY COUNTY, CALIFORNIA
ELEVEN MONTHS LATER
Dear Father Savio,
Did you miss me?
I can’t help but wonder if you ignore my letters or if they’re gathering dust in some mailbox that never gets checked or if they end up straight in the trash.
I’ll know soon enough.
I’m coming to Rome. Yes, you read that (or ignored that) correctly.
I know it’s been eleven months since you last heard from me, but I had to resist temptation. It was… difficult. The treatment wasn’t easy, and all I wanted was to talk to you, but I prevailed.
While I’m healing, only to you will I admit there’s something not right.
My sense of smell is strange. My mood swings. I can’t run anymore, not without feeling nauseated. I know while I’m with you, I’ll need to find a gym because my strength is severely depleted.
‘London’s Burning,’ my current WIP, hasn’t had a single word added to it in months. The harsh reality is my publisher’s losing patience.
Writing is something else I’ve lost along the way to good health, but I’m trying to get it back. Despite the ability to write being like a muscle, no gym will help me regain those skills.
One of the hardest parts of my recovery has been staying put for almost eleven months. The butterfly in my soul has almost perished, but Rome will revive it. It has to, or I don’t know who I am or will be.
No one understands. They never have and they never will. My parents tried and Diana too. But, before I was just an oddity. A strange waif who drifted around the country, seeing too much, saying too much, BEING too much. Now, they lay the blame on the cyst.
With that part ripped out of me, they have nothing to excuse me for except the surgery, which will make them question if I’m still sick. Ultimately, that’ll mean a longer stay in the clinic.
Never again.
Another reason I’m traveling overseas—they won’t be there to watch over me.
They raised me to be independent. While I understand and love them for their care, they’re suffocating me.
Oh, how childish I sound. But it’s more than that. My whole life is a lie to them. One big delusion.
I need space. Distance.
Can’t get much farther than Rome.
Of course, my nomadic heart selected that destination for a reason…
Eleven months of silence and you thought I’d forgotten?
Never.
I used the months in self-imposed purdah to learn about you. You’re my next charge. You need me, and I need you. You’ll understand me, and I’ll understand you.
You are the bone of my bones.
One day soon, I’ll come to visit you in your parish in Rome—yes, I know where you live. (Not that that will come as a surprise when this letter shows up at your door.) I’ve studied the many articles about you, watched the trajectory of your career, and even asked Charles, my charge, who’s an ethical hacker, to give me your file from your archdiocese. My, you do move around a lot, don’t you?
You’re like me, but I get the feeling the reason for that is different…
It might also be why you never receive my letters.
Hopefully, you won’t move on again until I get to meet you.
The doctors said the cyst needed to be cut out, but it was as much a part of me as my green eyes... they’d even told me it had been in my head for over two decades, gradually getting bigger and bigger until it started affecting me around the age of seventeen.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I came across ‘the boy I failed’ or that you were taken by those animals that year.
I know what you want to ask but daren’t…
The weight of the wings isn’t there anymore, but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel them. I haven’t lost my calling, either.
YOU are my calling, Father Savio.
I realize that now.
You will too.
Yours,
Andrea Jura