"I thought: I'm dead." Antonello Gregorini, a Cagliari-based professional and founder of Nurnet, had a tough time of it when he was hit by a car on Via Peretti last night around 6:00 PM. A street where, despite raised pedestrian crossings, crossing is still dangerous.
Gregorini recounts what happened from a hospital bed at Brotzu, where he is being treated for various fractures.
«I'm leaving the studio for a cappuccino to get at the Brotzu bar.
I pull over to the crosswalk. I wait for them to stop. The first one goes by at 50 miles an hour. He doesn't stop. I throw my trademark jabs at him," he says. Then "a second car arrives. It slows down. I pass. And then it speeds up. And a moment, just enough time to think, 'What the hell is he doing?'"
Gregorini is hit "full on. I fly like a sack. Hood, windshield, asphalt. Eight meters away, they measured. I think, I'm dead. Then I think, I'm alive. I can feel my legs, so I'm fine."
The driver stops and gets out. He says, "'I didn't see you.' And there he goes, I feel sorry for him too, but especially for myself. I'm on the ground, on the asphalt, they're holding my hand, one of them is caressing my face. I must be dying. I'm always thinking the worst. I can't move my left leg and I feel pain in my buttock. Then my ribs."
The process in the emergency room is long: "But I have to say," the injured man emphasizes, "I found polite efficiency; I must have been lucky." Also because he can tell what happened to him: "I made it public because people died there."
(Unioneonline/E.Fr.)