#elpstarter

Once, back in Italy, Rosario had fallen down the stairs and smacked his head on the stone floor at the bottom. At the time, he had been too stunned to cry, and had just sat on the second step, dizzy and with blood weeping down his face, until his step-dad found him and took him to A&E. It was when he’d had to get stitches, five big ugly threads in his head, that he had finally burst into tears, once the shock had worn off.

Rosario had never exactly handled personal injury ‘appropriately’, as a child, but now he considered himself more able to deal with it. Now his concern was more that he was bleeding onto the smooth, clean floor, and it looked like he would need a bandage. So he ran his fist under the tap until it was numb, and then went to the medical office.