Solidarity, affection, friendship as fundamental values, those good feelings that allow you to never feel alone.
Their friendship was born by chance: Mr. Francesco has been forced to undergo dialysis for just over 5 years and Lillo Zito is a nurse in the Diaverum centre in Castelvetrano. It is in those dialysis rooms that a relationship born between them, a relationship that goes beyond patient and nurse. And it is thanks to this that the life of the 75-year-old elderly man was saved on Sunday 23 May.
It is a happy ending story, the story of the important friendship between Lillo, a 50-year-old nurse working in Diaverum Castelvetrano clinic, and Francesco, an elderly man who lives alone in a house in the hamlet of Triscina.
"With him, from the very first days he arrived at the clinic, I started talking - says Lillo Zito - he told me about his life, about the choice to live alone".
A friendship relationship born. Lillo gets his phone number, the two start a relationship outside the hours of dialysis sessions, talking and sharing time together. Indeed, every Sunday Lillo goes down from Castelvetrano to Triscina to go with the elderly gentleman to the bar for a coffee together.
It should have happened last Sunday as well. "I called him on the phone all morning - says Lillo Zito - but he didn't answer. Then in the afternoon I went down to Triscina, I knocked on his door, but no one opened the door, so I got suspicious, and I notified the police».
They arrived quickly, both, policeman and Lillo climb over the surrounding wall and manage to enter from a half-open window. They find Mr. Francesco lying on the floor, near the bed. "On Saturday night he fell out of bed, but he didn't have the strength to get up - says Lillo - he was alert but couldn't even pick up the phone". The prompt arrival of an ambulance made it possible to stabilize the elderly.
Why telling the story of the friendship between Lillo Zito and the elderly Francesco?
Because it is thanks to affection and keeping in touch that this elderly man life was saved. "He should have come to the Clinic on Tuesday - says Lillo - so for two days, probably, nobody wouldn't have looked for him and he would have stayed on the floor alone".
In a time of Coronavirus, where loneliness becomes even more pronounced, stories of affection, love, and solidarity like these still give hope, the hope that nothing, neither a sneaky virus nor people's cynicism, and all the restrictive measures to which we are subjected to limit the infection, can make us forget the importance of human life and of the true, undisputed and fundamental human values.