Chapter VIII The musician doctor Massimo Laurenti, sat at the piano after lunch, as was his habit. He improvised on a ragtime - he was an amazing player and Ms Dorota, who cleaned the house, made lunch for him and ironed his shirts, started dancing while cleaning the stoves. He started studying music when he was 6 years old, thanks to his grandmother who, in her time, had been a great concert performer. At a certain point in his life he had even thought about enrolling at the conservatory, to make that passion a profession. But his father, an austere and authoritarian cardiologist surgeon, was not going to let him. “You’ll become a doctor – he said just after his son graduated high school – because the world is always going to need doctors.” “The world needs musicians too” “May be, but they don’t save lives. And Paolo Borsellino said that there’s only 3 useful jobs: teachers, prosecutors and doctors.” “Well then let’s add one more: musician” “Don’t even think about it” Of course, Massimo Laurenti could have been a little more assertive - it was his life, after all. But he did not have the guts to face his father and he had no support from his mother. A southern woman who, for culture and traditions, would have never gone against her husband. Only his grandmother could have backed him up, but she was tired and made weaker by her age. Actually, Massimo Laurenti didn’t mind becoming a doctor: the only problem was that he could not really stand the sight of blood, suffering and pain in general. So, after a brilliant 110 cum laude, with great satisfaction of his father, he chose diabetology as his branch. “I’d never make a great surgeon, dad – is what he said – I’m sorry but I chose another path” “Is that out of revenge?” “No, I did it because I think that, being diabetic myself, I could better understand and listen to my patients. I do it because this could be the only branch in medicine where a doctor can share the patient’s disease. And I do it because I want to” “Well, it’s your decision. But if you wanted to be a surgeon I could have helped you, as a diabetologist I can’t. You’ll have to make it on your own.”
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