Chapter 58
LIV
When we finally got home from the hospital, we were both bleary eyed with exhaustion.
We had called Linda from the car on the way there to let her know what was going on and she had told us to take as long as we needed.
After we had seen her off, we went upstairs and crept into Finn’s bedroom; without voicing it, I knew we both needed the same thing.
We needed to physically see our son, to touch him and feel his aliveness beneath our fingertips.
As we watched his shallow breathing and stroked his perfect skin, we felt so grateful that our son was at home safely in his bed and not in the ICU like Elliot was.
‘I pray Elliot pulls through,’ I sobbed as I lay against Jay’s chest when we went to bed together that night, both too disturbed and wired to sleep. ‘I can’t bear it; poor Maya doesn’t deserve this.’
Eventually, Jay’s soft snores told me he had conceded to sleep as I lay there wide awake thinking about Maya and Elliot.
It was sometime after 3 a.m. when I heard my phone go and I saw it was Maya. I answered it quickly, eager to help. I prayed she was calling me with good news.
‘Maya,’ I began, climbing out of bed and leaving the room so as not to wake Jay. ‘How’s he doing?’
‘He’s still the same. He’s stable and the nurses are happy with that so all we can do is take it one step at a time.’
‘Of course. I’m praying for him. You’re both in my thoughts.’
I could sense Maya hesitate.
‘Is everything okay?’ I pressed.
‘There’s something I need to ask you… A favour, I guess…’ she trailed off.
‘Anything,’ I said. ‘You just have to ask. You know that.’ I thought she might want me to grab her a change of clothes or perhaps some toiletries from home.
‘Well, the Gardaí have been in…’ she went on.
‘Really?’ I replied, uncertain where she was leading with this.
Although Jay and I had discussed whether we had a moral obligation to inform the Gardaí about what had happened to Elliot tonight, in the end, we had agreed that it had to be Maya’s decision.
But who could have informed the police? I wondered.
There were only the four of us there and I knew it wasn’t Maya or Hugo.
Or another possibility floated into my brain that perhaps Elliot’s injuries weren’t consistent with the story they had both concocted which had raised red flags with his medical team.
I knew it happened from time to time when doctors had a duty to inform child protection services if they had suspicions about a child’s injuries.
Usually, it amounted to nothing – the child was overly clumsy or perhaps bruised easily or had weak bones – but on rare occasions, it did lead to discoveries of cases of child cruelty.
‘They wanted to know more about the circumstances of the accident, so I… eh… I told them that Elliot’s injuries came from falling down the stairs, that he had been sleepwalking—’
‘You lied?’ I said in disbelief.
‘What else could I do, Liv?’ she pleaded desperately. ‘The truth could see Hugo go to prison and we all know it was an accident. You were there, you saw what happened.’
‘I see…’ I said, taking a moment to digest this fact and its implications. It seemed Maya was going to stand by her man.
‘If they ask you and Jay what happened, I need to you to stick to this story,’ she warned.
I felt a sweat break out across my neck and I shivered in the cool night air. ‘Y-you want us to lie too?’
‘No, Liv, I don’t expect you to lie.’ Her tone was weary. Exasperated. ‘You could say that you and Jay remained in the kitchen the whole time and didn’t see what happened.’
‘That doesn’t even make any sense; if we heard him falling down the stairs, of course we would have rushed out behind you from the kitchen to help. And anyway, when the paramedics arrived, he was lying on the kitchen floor so the story doesn’t add up.’
‘I told them that Hugo carried him from the foot of the stairs to both of you in the kitchen because you’re both trained medical professionals.’
The first rule in emergency medicine is never to move a person where there was a chance of spinal injury. It’s the thing taught at every first aid course, you see it on every TV hospital drama and yet she expected the Gardaí to believe that she and Hugo had never known about it?
‘And they bought it?’ I asked in disbelief.
‘I don’t know, to be honest; I told them we were in shock, that we weren’t thinking straight…’
‘Look, Maya, the Gardaí haven’t been over to us yet.
Hopefully, they’ll accept your story and we won’t need to be put in that position,’ I said coolly.
I knew she was in a horrible situation but she was asking for something too great and I wasn’t making any promises.
I would need time to think it through, to go through the repercussions for all of us if Elliot took a turn for the worse.
‘I’ll need to talk to Jay, get his take on it all. ’
‘Thank you,’ she gushed, as if I had already agreed to her request. ‘I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. You’ve been such a rock for me; I can’t tell you how grateful I am.’
That was the thing with people like Maya, I suddenly realised: they always got their own way.