Battle of The Gods

Trentasei

In life, nothing can prepare you for terrible news, no matter how much you try to attempt to prepare for it. But when you get bombed with such horrible news, coming out of nowhere, it can break a person even more. It changes the person's life, the way they start seeing life after that, how they perceive living and dying, changing your priorities in a split second and suddenly, you feel like you're living another life, almost stepping on another planet.

Alessandra could barely recognise her surroundings as everything around her mashed together into one big blur, the sounds of the voices around her became muffled to the point that she could no longer make out the words, only inaudible blabber and mumbling. Her mind wasn't processing any of her senses, as her mind kept replaying what secret her parents were keeping from her for a few weeks, a secret that made Alessandra feel a way she feared feeling the most. What scared Alessandra more than anything was the feeling was helplessness. A woman, so composed and rational, always had a plan even for situations that seemed impossible to handle, was no longer there.

People around her did not see her the way she felt. To the outside world, she was still the same Alessandra, powerful and determined, non-stop working to improve on the car and how the team can outperform their rivals. To the outside world, everything was business as usual as they watch Alessandra analyse the data, and listen to her speak with such intelligence to her team. The outside world did not know that the boss who is standing so high and mighty in front of them, with a smile on her face as she was pleased with all of the work being done, was breaking from the inside, scared that any moment that her work would no longer be the distraction that could help her forget her personal problems, and crumble down, and maybe even bring the team down with her.

It was after the Ferrari clan had returned back to Maranello after the Japanese grand prix. As much as Alessandra was fully focused on her team to get the victory, when her father showed up to the Japanese grand prix, she had this weird feeling inside, as if to tell here that something was not right, almost feeling her whole life changing inside of her. She tried to push the feelings aside, but then she saw her father, and realised that his skin got paler, and looked like he had lost a lot of weight, and that nagging feeling came back, especially when she heard him express that he needed to sit down many times. That was an alarm for Alessandra, because she knew that her father hated nothing more than sitting around.

When they got back to Italy, the gnawing feeling started to accumulate Alessandra even more, and all she wanted was that the feeling she couldn't shake off was just her anxiety deciding to make a surprise appearance and worry her for nothing. But she knew that wasn't the case when her parents invited her over to dinner the next day, and she felt the dreading tension hover over them. She knew that she was leaving with no good news.

"Papa, mamma," Alessandra couldn't take the tension anymore as her and her parents sat in silence, feeling herself suffocate more and more as time passed, "what's going on? I know you didn't ask me to come here just to dine with you. What are you not telling me?"

She watched their eyes turn sorrowful in a split of a second when they glanced at each other, giving each other a nod before looking back at their daughter. No one has said a word yet, but Alessandra felt her heart drop in the pits of her stomach when she saw the tears fogging her mother's eyes.

"Do you remember the stories I told you about my dear brother, your zio Dino?" Alessandra nodded at her father's question, slightly confused as to where her father was getting at, "I told you he was born with a condition, which took his life so young."

"Yeah, he had Duchenne Muscular Disorder," she replied, "you said that it could be inherited, which is why you've always went to get tested for it every year, even my brothers and I. But we always tested negative for the gene."