Huhu, my dearest Sunday Lovers,

this time, I am writing to you from Italy. Yes, you read that right: Italy.

I am here in northern Italy to visit our production and, guys, everything is looking great. We went through materials, colors, options, and future plans. You are going to love it. Your home is going to love it.

Beautiful things take time. Especially the handmade kind.

For this Sunday, I brought you a moral, some puke, and an unplanned trip to the emergency room.

What else could you possibly need on a Sunday?

 

The Instagram Version

Being back in Italy brought up a lot of old memories. Especially when I saw one particular name on a highway sign.

Venice.

I truly love Venice. Preferably outside the high season, when you can actually see the city instead of just the backs of other tourists.

A few years ago, I traveled through northern Italy in a camper van with my parents and our dog Bridget, whom you may already know as our Sundays Plot delivery girl (yes, that Bridget).

Maybe the universe had already decided my professional future would somehow be tied to Italy. Or maybe it just wanted to prepare me for Italian chaos. Turns out it was both.

We stayed at a campsite outside Venice and took the ferry into the city. Nature and family time at the campsite, lunch and sightseeing in the city, drinks under the lights at night. The perfect combination. Well, on paper...

At the time, I was also very dedicated to Instagram. And by dedicated, I mean I was willing to make my father stand in the middle of Venice until he took a picture I was actually happy with.

Canal pictures. Bridge pictures. Lunch pictures. Walking through a narrow street while pretending I had no idea someone was photographing me.

You know. The natural moments. (Very candid. Very rehearsed.)

We spent several days exploring, not just the famous spots, but the streets where people actually live. Watching kids get picked up from school. Looking through windows into beautiful living rooms, imagining what a normal Tuesday in Venice must feel like.

And, of course, continuing the hunt for content.

 

Lights Out

Day three started with a short black fitted dress and a hat with a bow, something I imagined Princess Diana might have worn on an Italian summer vacation.

We walked. We had lunch. We kept sightseeing. Around five, we sat down at a bar for drinks.

Fifteen minutes later, I told my parents I did not feel well.

Not a little tired. Sick. Dizzy. Like my body had quietly decided to leave Venice without me.

I went inside, mostly because I preferred not to throw up in the middle of a crowded square. Apparently, I had turned so pale so quickly that my mother followed me to the bathroom.

She went in first. I stood at the sink, running cold water over my wrists as if that had ever fixed anything. It did not. My body kept shutting down.

My mother called through the door: “Don’t sit down in front of the door. Use the chair outside.” When she came back out, she and the waitress took one look at me and said the same thing at the same time: lie down. Now.

They tried to support me. I insisted I could walk.

I made exactly three steps.

Then I went down. My head hit the bar, the rest of me hit the floor. Lights out.

I came to on the floor, my mother’s fingers in my mouth, puke on the tiles around me. Full outfit intact. Small mercies.

Princess Diana had officially left the building.

 

Nurse Bridget

My father walked in with Bridget. One look at me on the floor and she broke free, launched herself at my face, and started licking it thoroughly, enthusiastically, with visible pride in her work.

Still unclear who found that more disgusting, her or me. My father tried to pull her back. Her loyal little soul had other plans.

So there I was: on the floor of a Venetian bar, black mini dress, a genuinely impressive amount of puke, probable head injury, emergency kisses from a loyal brown dog.

Less than an hour earlier, I’d posted a photo captioned something like life is perfect. Behind the scenes, the production values had dropped significantly.

 

Ambulance, Venetian Style

The bar owner called an ambulance. In Venice, ambulances are speedboats. Naturally.

Before I was fully conscious again, an Italian paramedic leaned into view. I don’t know if it was the head injury or simply Italy being Italy, but I swear I had never seen a more beautiful human.

Under slightly different circumstances, meaning less puke, a more flattering position, and better timing, I would have asked for his number.

Instead, they strapped me into a wheelchair and loaded me onto the boat. Dignity: gone.

To hook me up to the monitors, the dress had to go. So there I was, lying below deck on an ambulance speedboat, in my underwear, with puke still drying in my hair, directly in front of the single most attractive man I had ever seen.

Then I passed out again. Honestly, the only reasonable response left.

I woke up somewhere on the Grand Canal, a blanket over me, blue lights flashing as the boat sped through Venice. My father, who’d been allowed to ride along, said later it felt like a scene out of a James Bond movie. Minus the fun part, since he was genuinely terrified something was wrong with me.

The second I opened my eyes, though, he asked if he should grab a quick photo. For Instagram.

It was a joke. I laughed. It hurt. Worth it.

 

Pregnant or Brain Cancer?

At the hospital, they took me straight into the ER and started running tests. My English is usually fine. My English plus Italian-accented medical vocabulary plus a possible concussion is, apparently, a different language entirely.

First, they asked if I could be pregnant. I understood you already are. I did the math, panicked, and insisted this was completely impossible. My exact defense: “No, it’s not possible, I have a border inside me.”

Because apparently, in that state, my brain decided “border” was close enough to “IUD.” The doctor looked genuinely alarmed. Also fair.

A few minutes later, because I’d hit my head, they wanted a brain scan. I understood brain cancer.

So in roughly five minutes, I went from unexpectedly pregnant to terminally ill, purely because of translation errors. The monitors did not appreciate the plot twist, and neither did I.

They moved me through several parts of what turned out to be a genuinely beautiful old hospital, painted ceilings and all. If you’re going to panic about an imaginary pregnancy and an imaginary brain tumor, Venice will at least give you a nice room to do it in.

Everything came back clear. After four hours, I was allowed to go. But not before the doctor in charge wanted to speak to me.

He asked if I felt safe. Offered me a bed for the night. I explained I was traveling with my parents, who would take excellent care of me. He looked at my chart again, saw I was twenty-seven, and apparently could not understand why a grown woman was touring Italy in a camper van with her parents.

He offered the bed again, just in case. I declined again.

Meanwhile, in the lobby, my father was yelling at a nurse because nobody could tell him where his daughter was.

Fair enough, looking back. Not exactly helping my case.

 

Catching the Last Ferry

Outside, we discovered the last ferry to the campsite was leaving in forty minutes.

My father looked at me and asked if I could run. I reminded him that a nurse had removed the IV line from my arm roughly ten minutes earlier.

“That doesn’t answer the question,” he said.

It did not. We made the ferry anyway.

 

Everything After the Photo

The picture I posted that day was beautiful. The light was real. The dress was real. Venice was real. I really was having a wonderful trip with my parents.

The picture wasn’t a lie. It just ended fifteen minutes too early. Right before I collapsed onto a bar floor and spent the evening touring Venice by ambulance boat, half-dressed, convinced I was simultaneously pregnant and dying.

That’s the strange thing about a perfect picture: it’s one real second that leaves out everything around it. We see the highlight, but not what happened fifteen minutes later, or during the four hours in the ER that followed.

That’s usually where the real story is. Messier. Less flattering. Much more interesting.

I don’t remember the caption I wrote under that Venice photo. I do remember Bridget trying to clean my face, a surprisingly photogenic emergency room, a very attractive Italian paramedic I would never have met otherwise, the James Bond boat ride, and my father asking if I could sprint ten minutes after having my IV removed.

Those are the moments that stayed.

Not the pictures that looked perfect. The moments that turned into a story.

So: travel with your parents. They might take perfect pictures of you, discover new places with you, and save your life when the perfect picture turns into complete chaos. All in one trip.

Efficient, really.

 

Happy Sunday!

Victoria x