The accident

Living in Rome, getting from A to B is a nightmare, like in any big city, I presume. I used to live in the historical centre, that wasn't too bad due to the limited traffic zone but still getting anywhere else in the city would prove problematic. One of the downsides to Rome is the traffic. In an average Roman family, every family member has a car and even to go half a mile down the road, they use it. Roads are congested, the driving is ludicrous and one of the things you'll surely remember about your trip to Rome (if you've ever been) is how often and how furiously you hear car horns pomping!


I currently live just outside Rome and to get into the city I take a main road which is quite narrow, full of curves and all the maniacs seem to be allured to it. Every day you'll see bunches of flowers strapped to fences and walls and lampposts and every day you'll be sure to see police cars and ambulances at the scene of a crash. Quite a dangerous road you may be thinking, well it is but somehow when you need to get somewhere you seem to just take it without thinking.

Well on this treacherous road on the 12th Jan I was driving into Rome. The cars were going at a reasonable speed, I had the radio turned up, probably singing to it too. All I can remember is seeing the car in front right in front of mine and it had stopped all of a sudden. I put my foot on the brake as hard as I could and my car came to a screeching halt. I heroically missed even bumping into the car in front. Within a split second, though, I felt the impact from behind of those speeding cars that didn't have time to stop and one after another hit into each other in a chain reaction. It was a violent impact, something I'd rather not remember. My head was spinning and my neck felt as if it had detached from my shoulders.

A took me to the hospital. All I was worried about was that embryo. My child. I desperately desperately didn’t want anything to have happened to it. I wasn’t bleeding so that made me optimistic, but I feared for the worst.

The doctor dimmed down the lights, squeezed that blue gel onto my thin stomach and started the scan. She looked at the screen attentively. After a few seconds she said ‘there’s the heartbeat’. I breathed a sigh of relief. ‘But the sac has detached two centimetres from the womb in two places’. I didn’t really know what this meant, but I imagined. She looked terribly pessimistic. I felt sick.

‘I’m afraid you’ll have to bed rest, it’s the only thing you can do to save the pregnancy’.

I asked what the probability was that the pregnancy would go ahead. ‘I really can’t say, it either will or it won’t’

She asked me if I wanted to stay overnight at the hospital so they could monitor this detachment but she said it was optional and that I might actually feel better going home and resting as at this stage of the pregnancy it was the only thing I could do. I was only 8 weeks pregnant and the embryo was still so small and weak. I decided to go home but I couldn’t stop crying. The feeling that I might lose this magical bean that had started living inside me made me awfully sad. I was relieved though that the bean was actually hanging on to its life and just knowing it was still alive gave me hope.

I went home, rang my parents and prepared to get into the place I’d become very familiar with for the next couple of weeks. My bed.