But all that rain wasn't good for me. Back in Siena, I woke up the next morning and I couldn't stand up. Being sick is the one thing that can make you feel completely alone; and that was a feeling I didn't need reinforced. When I wasn't up for school, Signora Franci came into my dark, blue room. "Io sento malo," I told her. I felt bad. She immediately started rushing around, yelling at her son to call the doctor. I understood that much, but events were out of my hands. I lay in bed and she brought things to me: a hot water bottle, tea, soup.
I wondered how she could be so concerned, not knowing me, not even knowing my words. But I was so far away from home, I never needed taking care of so badly. I stared at that ceiling, and thought about every friend, every boyfriend, I ever lost too soon. I could see all the people I missed now. The people who hurt me, the people I didn't understand, just drifted away.
Hours later, Signora Franci came in again, this time with green velvet slippers she had bought because I always walked around in socks. She said something I equated as: Of course you're going to get sick if you have cold feet all the time—warm them. "Mille grazie," I said. But a day later, when I was feeling better much sooner than I thought I would, I wanted to thank her more.
It was three weeks into the trip, and she had made me realize why I came to Italy. It wasn't just to see art—though I saw it, and it made me feel creative and part of history and enriched. And it wasn't just to get away. What I needed, and what I never got from sweet Australians or kind teachers, was the returned belief in basic human kindness. Signora Franci didn't take care of me because of anything else but basic human concern: Someone is sick, she's away from her home, make her better. I was 25 years old, I had just started seeing more bad in people than good—and I needed to see that kindness in action.
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