"Can't you hear me?
I'm not comin' home."

My future
| Billie Eilish |
••••

    The silence, except for some sounds of the machines, where Leonora did not know she was, got ended by a noise in the form of a distant opening door, a few steps, and figures of women dressed in white.
 
    A bright light on the ceiling became clearer, and she became aware of the things that were placed on her body—an oxygen mask over her mouth, needles stuck in her arms, and a dress on. For a few seconds, her mind was like a 'tabula rasa'. It didn't tell her anything about what she was doing there or at what moment of time she was.
 
    It was the voice of one of the doctors, around forty years old, with long, black hair and the same colour eyes, who was calling her by name and asking if she could hear her, which reminded Leonora of Diana, her words about Blerimi, all the moments with him, the looks, the kisses, the marriage, the apology, what he had done to Anila, the separation, and his arms around her when she was shot by someone.
 
    She began feeling pain on the left side of her belly, and she widened her eyes with fear and sadness, not knowing anything about what had happened since she had passed out.
 
    Where was Blerimi? Had he been shot too, or had someone stopped the culprit in time?
 
    "Nora, can you close your eyes once if you can hear me?"
 
    The patient immediately obeyed the doctor, with black hair and bold Asian facial features.
 
    "Okay," the latter said. "Do you remember what happened to you? Close your eyes once if you do."
 
    Leonora agreed, with tears in her eyes, that she remembered.
 
    "Tell the patient's relatives," the doctor asked her colleague, and the other left the room.
 
    Leonora suspected it was Denada, but she didn't know who else was accompanying her.
 
    "Nora!" Denada rushed to her bed. "Oh, Nora. You woke up," she touched her messy hair.
 
    Leonora barely moved her head towards the door to look at Graniti as he entered. Denada must have told him about her, and that's why he was there.
 
    The doctor noticed in the machine how the patient's heartbeat increased immediately, and she looked at the two of her acquaintances.
 
    Leonora tried to ask Denada about Blerimi, but her voice didn't feel ready to convey the words yet.
 
    "Do you want to say something?" Denada went closer to listen to her. "What is it?"
 
    "Blerimi," the newly awakened one tiredly replied, as if she had been talking for too long without being able to breathe.
 
    Denada was immediately pushed back by the heavyweight thrown at her. Her eyes couldn't hold that weight for long and told, with tears in them, what had happened.
 
    Leonora deciphered the meaning of that look and closed her eyes, struck by grief for the next loss, the most catastrophic for her because she had hoped that, thanks to Blerimi, the word 'loss' would no longer be written in her history.
 
    She ignored the doctors' pleas to calm down and instead sobbed with only her shoulders and head able to move, realising that she was living in a world without him, that it didn't have to end that way, and that at least he should have been put in prison, not died.
 
    She tried to get up to go to the window and throw herself from there as the only way to finally escape from the suffering, but the doctors stopped her. Graniti didn't dare approach Leonora to calm her down, thinking that she would only be more enraged by his presence and would accuse him of being the one to blame for everything bad that had happened to her.
 
    He got out of the room without protesting when he and Denada were asked by the doctors to leave.
 
    "We need to find a psychologist," Denada said. "There is no other way for her to overcome this situation."
 
    "Try talking to her to cheer her up," Graniti asked. "She listens to you."
 
    "OK," Denada pursed her lips, and they waited silently for the doctor's permission to enter the room.
 
    She suggested to Leonora that she rest for a while, and then she would explain to her what had happened during the time that she had been in surgery and hadn't been awake yet, but Leonora insisted on knowing everything right away.
 
    "They had been taking him to the police station when someone had crashed the police car," Denada said while holding her left hand and sitting on the chair to her left. "Blerimi, the detective and the two officers had only been wounded from the crash, but someone had killed him afterwards. They say that everything was planned by Marinela Huba in revenge for Agustini's death. Marinela was also found murdered a few days after that accident here in Los Angeles. She was probably the one who shot you, too."
 
    Graniti was standing in front of his sister with his arms crossed on his chest and his gaze fixed on Leonora's face. From her bitter reaction through teary eyes, and without crying out loud, he understood that she had gone into the survivor's mode with the thought that it wasn't right, what had happened to her, but she accepted such a fate from life and would continue forward with the pain caused by that hit.
 
    The tears imprisoned in Leonora's eyes were begging her to release them from her eyelids, but she couldn't cry in the eyes of Graniti and prove to him that he had been right in repeatedly calling her weak and naive.
 
    And it seemed that he had indeed been right. If she hadn't been weak and naive and had talked back to him instead of being silent and waiting for Graniti to realise that treating her like that was a mistake, she probably wouldn't have fallen into that state. She wouldn't have used the first opportunity offered by Blerimi to escape from the agonising lack of love in her life. She would have learned to love herself, and she wouldn't have needed to wait for anyone's help.
 
    Life didn't need people like her to exist in it.
 
    "Nora, no one blames you for why things turned out this way." Denada squeezed her hand. "Life itself came to you like this. Bad people, who you had as a family, led you to this state."
 
    "Hey!" Graniti immediately turned his head to Denada with a sharply piercing gaze on her. He had told her to cheer Leonora up, not to fan the flames more.
 
    Denada raised a hand to reassure him that everything was going as he wanted, though it seemed the complete opposite, and she focused again on Leonora, who was half-raised on the bed with her head bowed and her lifeless gaze on her feet.
 
    "But everything has changed now," Denada added. "Your father and Zana are waiting for you in Albania; your brother is here for you..."
 
    Leonora didn't seem to consider those words at all.
 
    "Maybe even if you hadn't married Blerimi too soon and had waited, after getting to know him better, you wouldn't have found out about him and Anila," Denada guessed. "Maybe it was a test from life for you, a dilemma, whether you would choose Blerimi and give him a chance, considering how much he loved you, that he may have really regretted and Anila has forgiven him, or choose Anila, whom you don't know at all, and maybe if she were in your place, she wouldn't have chosen you, or maybe in the future, if you get to know her, she won't appreciate what you did for her. The only person to blame for everything is Amarildo Id..."
 
    "Don't mention his name!" Leonora asked sternly, and Denada was silent.
 
    "Blerimi's body is being held in the morgue. They are waiting for your decision. I have thought for Blerimi to be buried in Albania, next to his family. I can take care of all the procedures if you want."
 
    From late-evening conversations with Blerimi to discussing his funeral because he was dead, life couldn't be more trivial to be lived than in those moments. All the happiness was gone in the blink of an eye, as if Leonora had never deserved to experience such a sensation.
 
    "Okay," she agreed Denada's offer to help her.
 
    "The police will take your testimony about Marinela, and the lawyer wants to talk to you about Blerimi's will. After you're discharged from the hospital, if you are allowed by the police to leave, we'll buy a ticket for you, and we'll return to our country."
 
    "No," Leonora objected to Denada. "I'll stay here. I want to start my life over in America. I don't want to go back to Albania."
 
    Denada looked confused at Graniti, who seemed to be barely holding himself back from trying to overturn his sister's decision, but he couldn't speak of her right to do whatever she wanted with her life.
 
    "Okay, sweetie. Whatever makes you feel better." Denada smiled at her. "I can stay here for one more week, and then I'll go back to Tirana. If you change your mind, just tell me, and I'll buy the ticket for you too."
 
    Leonora looked bitterly at her brother.
 
    "When will you leave?" She clearly expressed in the harshness of her sharp voice, like an icy, strong wind, the wish to get rid of him as soon as possible.
 
    "A week after Denada," he lied. He had no intention of leaving her alone in that state. He would wait a little for the situation to calm down and see what he could do to change her decision.
 
    "I want to rest a little alone." Leonora subtly ordered them to go outside, and both obeyed without saying a word.
 
    "I'm going to buy something to drink," Denada said to him in the corridor. "Do you want anything?"
 
    "No."
 
    Graniti sat down in one of the chairs in front of the room where his sister was and waited in silence with his right ankle placed on his left knee, one hand on the chair, and the other on his left leg.
 
    He looked at the clock on his phone and calculated what the time would be in Albania to inform his parents about Leonora's condition.
 
    He stared at the hazel door, and as soon as he heard a noise from inside her room, he kept ear, without moving, to see if he would hear more, and got up to go into the room and check.
 
    He opened the door without a sound, saw that the bed was empty, and his blood froze when he found his sister near the open window, with her hands placed on the ledge, to climb on it and...
 
    "Nora," he managed to stop her with his voice, shocked by what she was trying to do. 
 
    Leonora only turned her head back, admitting with a bitter look that he was right in his suspicion that she had just tried to kill herself, and she left the window.
 
    Graniti approached her, still stunned by the shock, to help her lie on the bed.
 
    "Don't touch me," she pushed him away, and with her hand placed on the stitched wound near her stomach, she approached the bed with slow steps and a distorted face from the pain.
 
    He strengthened his hands' fingers that were distanced from each other, not to lose patience, and shout to her not to repeat such an action again.
 
    "I don't want to see you anymore, opening this window," he threatened Leonora with an authoritative tone of voice to hide the fear of losing her and went to close the window with the thought of asking the doctors for her sister to change the room and stay somewhere where there was no window at all.
 
    "I open it whenever I want. Nobody asks you," she refused to obey him.
 
    "When you're not my sister, you won't ask." Graniti specified.
 
    "I know it myself, when I ask," Leonora added a contemptuous look to her stubborn attitude, which took his patience out of control.
 
    "Ey!" He approached her with a feral stare in his stormy blue eyes. "Don't give me that kind of look, unless you want to be stricken at a wall!"
 
    "Try it!" She strengthened her defiant eyes, not at all affected by his threat.
 
    Denada opened the door and found them in blind readiness to throw themselves at each other's throats. 
 
    "Look at you. Acting as if you're peer kids," she complained about their fight. "Do you want to make us the news of the day in America? 'California, the thirty-three-year-old man from Albania confesses: My sister started the fight first.' "
 
    Leonora withdrew from the argument and sat up with difficulty in bed.
 
    "Why did you get up, Nora?" Denada approached her to help her.
 
    "No reason," replied the patient dryly, hoping that Graniti wouldn't tell anything, and her brother remained silent for her sake.
 
    "I'm going out a little," he said to Denada. "You stay with Nora. Don't leave her alone."
 
    "OK," she agreed, and Graniti left to call his parents and tell them about Leonora's state.
 
    When he returned, panic gripped him easily when he noticed Denada in the corridor, talking to a nurse, and thought of Leonora alone in the room. How long had she been like that?
 
    "Where is Nora?" He approached Denada with quick and alarmed steps.
 
    "She's sleeping in her room," she said, confused by his panicked state.
 
    "You left her alone?" He raised his voice and commanded his legs towards Leonora's room, not accepting to lose another second, to listen to Denada's answer.
 
    'No, no, no, no!' His mind could only give so much as a sign of reaction, apart from the very constricted throat, the heart stopping by the shock, and the revolting shaking of the head to believe that his sister had been so merciless towards him that she hadn't thought for a single moment how much he would suffer from her loss, and she had committed suicide just to punish him.
 
    He stopped in front of the door with his fingers wrapped around the handle and stood motionless. In those moments, in the ignorance of what had been done with Leonora, he had hopes that she was alive, but after he opened that door and found out what the truth was, he would never go back to the illusion that he still had a sister.
 
    He gripped the icy handle, and, not able to live any longer under that torture, knowing that sooner or later that bubble of illusory comfort would burst, he pushed the door forward.
 
    He closed his eyes and sighed deeply, his blood still frozen.
 
    When he saw Leonora sleeping peacefully and feeling thankful that she was alive, he went closer to sit at the end of the bed with his almost broken gaze towards the window. How was he going to succeed in keeping her alive? She seemed determined that she didn't want to continue living any longer, but he couldn't let her go.
 
    He had left her alone after her divorce from Albioni and his and Agustini's murder so that his sister could experience the freedom of living as she wished without being afraid that someone was watching her, and he had endured the torture of just needing to know how she was and nothing else, but he hadn't taken any such action, hoping that Leonora would want to meet him.
 
    He wouldn't repeat that mistake again. He would show her that he was ready to stay by her side, no matter how much she tried to push him away.
 
••••
    Leonora waited for Denada to leave for Albania and then to act. The next day she would leave the hospital, and only that night was left to her advantage. Graniti rarely left her alone out of fear that she could attempt suicide again.
 
    On that evening, before they left, he was sitting in the chair at the end of the room, resisting the urge to sleep.
 
    Leonora had fallen asleep a little while ago. Maybe if he closed his eyes for a quarter of an hour, nothing would happen. Then he would wake up and be able to sleep again after making sure that everything was in order. His heavy eyelids closed, and his body finally found rest.
 
    Leonora opened her eyes and watched him, without moving her head, at the end of the room as he slept quietly with his head slightly bowed, his left hand resting on the same leg, his right ankle on his left knee, and his right hand on the chair. She placed her outstretched palms on the bed to get up, but immediately pretended to be asleep when he opened his eyes attentively and surveyed the room. 
 
    The blue of his eyes brightened more, and the sharp features of his face softened when he saw his sister sleeping, unbothered. He let out a deeper breath than usual and closed his eyes again.
 
    Leonora moved as slowly as she could so as not to wake him.
 
    She looked at him longer than usual, aware that those were the last moments between them in the same life, she felt sorry for what she would cause him, and she put herself in his place, how much trauma would be left for her if her brother or sister, whom she loved and for whom she was ready to give her life, committed suicide, she immediately prevented the creation of regret when she thought about what he had caused her and that Graniti would be free from her if she committed suicide, and she left the room.
 
    In the corridor, she hurried her steps to go to the elevator and arrive as soon as she could on the terrace.
 
    The sky was the limit, and her mind was the only thing that could stop her, but now Leonora had its support more than ever to not give up. She was only a lifetime away from her final freedom. There would be no more suffering, no self-hatred for the mistakes she had made, no excruciating regret for the past that she had lived that way, and no danger of what awaited her in the future.
 
    She reached the edge of the terrace, and she looked away. The wind brushed a few loose strands of hair behind her, and Leonora smiled happily.
 
    The end had never looked more beautiful than in those moments. She didn't feel that she was going to miss the stars that she would no longer be able to see, the moon and the soft-petaled flowers, practicing the profession she loved, being awake by the sun's rays in the morning, seeing the comets, as they burned in the Earth's atmosphere in the evening. Nothing seemed more important to her in those moments than falling into the free space of that building and freeing her soul from her body.
 
    "Finally!" Leonora said excitedly that she was writing the end of her story as she wished and got ready to jump from the terrace above the twelfth floor of the hospital.