The inseparable destinies of Giulia and Chiara: lost the leg to save her friend. “Graduation together 4 years after the accident”

Terminals are connected by a thread so thick that nothing can ever break. Giulia and Chiara they know this is how it is for them, it has always been this way. They learned to walk together, they played together, they studied together, they are they ended together in the same misery and now, needless to say, I am graduated practically togethera few days apart. Three-year degree: Giulia in Modern Literature in Salerno, Chiara in Biomedical Engineering in Turin.

Giulia is Giulia Muscariellothat girl with long light hair who is now 22 years old and we learned to know her when she just turned 18. On the night between 30 and 31 July 2020 she was sitting on a wall next to her friend Chiara Memoli, who was seventeen, in Cava de’ Tirreni, Salerno. They were chatting when the roar of a car entered the scene and in a few minutes it became louder than their voices. Giulia immediately realized that the car would not break, she pushed Chiara to avoid the impact but she did not have time to save herself. He woke up in the hospital with his left leg amputated at the height of the waist and that was day zero since it started again. With Chiara by his side, as always.

Her friend started a fundraiser for her carethe story of their friendship and the gesture of Giulia’s generosity reached the Quirinale, where Sergio Mattarella announced his General Carrier of the Republic. A fairy tale made about a friendship that was not even slightly affected by the distance dictated by university choices.

And so, here they are, Giulia and Chiara in the front row celebrating each other’s graduation. But there is more. That’s it Chiara chose Biomedical Engineering dreaming of being able to support and help her friend with prosthetics. “After the accident – he says – I began to see, just by watching Giulia, what wonderful things an engineer could do in this field. And so it is thanks to her that I came to this world and chose this degree course. Now I have registered for a master’s degree in Biomedical Instrumentation which deals, among other things, with the design of electronic components of individual instruments or sensors and connections to the application such as those that will Giulia uses for her leg.”

The accident? “We hardly talk about it anymore”swears Chiara. “Also because there’s nothing left to say. That’s how it went. From time to time everything will come back to the surface when she may be worried or unsure about something. I always tell her: you were able to overcome what happened to you, don’t be afraid of a small choice! She is truly special. On her graduation day I was there and at the end I woke her up and cried like I probably never did from that sad evening. I’ve metabolized everything, finally.”

With his laude 110 cum in his pocketGiulia started her master’s degree at Sapienza di Roma in Philologyand if he has to think about a happy future he sees himself behind a university chair teaching. She, who has always been in love with words, says that she borrowed from her favorite Greek: ananthèo, to succeed again. Exactly what he did in these four years, despite the problems of the first months after the accident and the death of his mother to whom he dedicated a thesis in Latin literature on the myth of Narcissus.

“I would never have thought that I could live alone in a big city,” she admits, thinking back to the fearful and desperate Giulia of the summer of 2020. «But a- now i know i can do it. I am self-employed, I drive, I have found a home, I have many friends. It’s a beautiful thing to have people close to you who can help you, but I had to understand if I could manage on my own and now I know the answer is yes. ”

The biggest obstacle? « Show me, especially at the beach. I had a hard time getting through this step but finally I realized that I had to turn that weakness into a strength, and do you know what I did? What? “I tried to make my prosthetics more beautiful. The beach is now shiny pink, the everyday is yellow.”