Chapter 105
Susan
Friday
The gardaí have finished questioning Jon, for now, about where he was the morning Savannah died, partly because he’s been able to show them a text he got from Savannah after he arrived in work that morning, with his assistant and colleagues vouching for his presence.
We do not talk about the elephant in the room, the question of why he was at Savannah’s house at all that morning, why he has a text from her.
We both know we have to talk about his affair, but Bella’s hospital bedside is not the place for that.
Greta will be able to vouch for him too, he says, once she’s well enough for questions, because she called by his office that same morning, saw him there.
Greta. I close my eyes and give silent thanks yet again that she’s alive. That I didn’t kill her. That the ambulance arrived in time.
It wasn’t just the ambulance that saved her, it was Greta herself.
An extraordinarily kind doctor came to find me in Pediatrics to reassure me that Greta was going to be OK, mostly because she’d taken a handful of naltrexone just before I injected her.
I remember it now: the bag on her lap, the look in her eye as she tried to tell me something, the cough into her hand.
Not a cough, a swallow. She took more naltrexone later, helped by Juliette, while they waited for the ambulance.
This left me baffled. How could her Long Covid medicine help with a heroin overdose? Because that’s what it does, Dr. Fitzgerald explained. Reduces the impact of alcohol and opiates. The tablets Greta took protected her somewhat when I injected her, and the extra she took with Juliette saved her.
I tell Jon about Maeve being knocked down, that Leesa is with her, that she’ll be OK, that Samir is flying home.
Then I stop. The effort of speaking is too much.
I don’t know what I’m feeling. Mostly, I’m numb.
Or in shock? Bella is safe. Greta is alive.
Maeve is recovering. Felipe is dead. Felipe.
Tears flow again. Jon and I don’t speak.
He grips my hand and we sit and watch our daughter.