Florence, Italy: Part II of II

We walk a few yards away from the cafe and begin to hear the screams. It is a woman's voice, shrill and Italian. We get closer and see that she is crouched on the ground beside a park bench shrieking: "GIULIO! AMORE! AMORE!" over and over again.

People are beginning to gather closely around her, staring at the figure under the bench whom she is shaking. We begin to cross the street toward them, and it becomes clear that her arms are covered in blood, and there is a man on the ground convulsing uncontrollably.

Death comes in threes. I am stopped in my tracks on the sidewalk by the horror of it and pray that I don't fall over into the street. I have become one of the worthless onlookers who are too dumbfounded to do anything. All I can do is mouth, "No," over and over again, as if that would stop this man from dying under the park bench right in front of our eyes.

Suddenly, I realize that the person by the man's side is Olivia, who's taken charge and is holding him on his side as he continues to jerk about. She later explained that because she had Red Cross training, she literally could not just walk by or gape at him. She knew she had to do something. She identified the convulsing as a seizure and knew that if he were on his back, he could choke on his vomit or his own tongue.

Suddenly, the man becomes still. She checks for his pulse, and it's not there. He's just died in my arms, she thinks.

"VIVE!" she screams at him, trying to think of the Italian word for "live."

I am not there because I have somehow gathered my wits about me enough to sprint back to the cafe and tell the English-speaking man that someone is dying outside, and he needs to call an ambulance.

Meanwhile, Olivia is holding the man and telling him to live although she thinks he's dead. Someone has confirmed for her that he is overdosing on some bad heroin.

All of a sudden the supposedly dead man opens his eyes wide, and she sees that they are a brilliant blue color. He throws up everywhere and then leaps to his feet and lunges for the woman who is covered in blood, perhaps from him or perhaps from the large open wound that has become apparent on the inside of her arm.

Just moments before, she was screaming "AMORE!" which means "love," in his ear, and now he is blindly attacking her with a rage that Olivia could only describe as inhuman.

She flees the scene because she thinks there is nothing more she can do. The man is so doped up that he cannot see and he cannot stand. He is falling repeatedly onto the pavement and grass as he desperately tries to hurt the woman who presumably gave him the bad heroin.

I run to Olivia's side, and we walk back to the cafe as she explains the situation. "If I hadn't had him on his side through the seizures, he would have died," she says.

She wants to wash her hands in case any unseen trace of blood or disease has gotten on them. In the bathroom she tells me she almost started crying and I can't bring myself to say, "Me too," judging by how much more she has just gone through.

I can't say anything because I'm completely blown away by her tremendous courage and the immediacy of her reaction. They don't teach you that in lifeguard school.

We exit the bathroom and approach the English-speaking man at the bar.

"Jack Daniels," Olivia says.

The man pours her an enormous shot of Jack. Three cheers for the European drinking age.

"Can I get you something a little harder, low-fat milk maybe?" Mr. Bartender says.

The funny thing about making jokes in a second language is that you have to do them in a deadpan voice because you never know how the other culture tells jokes.

We decide to leave for the train station again and he says, "I told you there are jumps along the way." Another joke as the disaster continues outside.

We try to be in higher spirits as we leave the cafe for the last time, but have to walk past the terrible scene in the park. The man is on the ground again, lying on his back.

"I have to go over there," Olivia says. "He's going to die like that."

I plead with her not to go as she begins to cross the street, knowing if she goes near him, he could very well attack her, too. At that moment we hear the sirens, and she decides there's no point in going back.

"All I kept thinking was how you said people die in threes," I say.

"Jesus," she breathes. She hadn't even had time to stop and think of that.

At the station, we have 45 minutes before our train leaves, so we slouch against a wall on the floor. "It was meant to be," she says.

I tell her she just saved someone's life, and it hits her. She thinks for a while and says: "You know how everyone wants to figure out their reason for being here, the one thing that happens that means they have made a contribution to the world? Maybe that was my moment."

This statement gives me the chills, and I tell her she's right. We remember wondering together about whether the sad soul who had written the graffiti had died on that bench, and realize that the man we saw nearly died under a bench in the very same park that day. If not for us missing the bus, being in the park, stopping for a late lunch and her Red Cross training that made her decide not to just keep walking, he would have continued to seize on his back and would have died. It truly was meant to be.

"The strangest thing," she says, "is that he had a rosary around his neck."

I get goose bumps again. The image of the dying druggie with a rosary around his neck is ironic but enough to confirm my growing suspicion that rosaries do offer some sort of spiritual protection. Perhaps, at least today, people don't die in threes.