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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I PLANNED TO HAVE IT out with Alicia first thing in the morning. I intended to make her admit she had lied to me about the man killing Gabriel and force her to confront the truth.
Unfortunately, I never got the chance.
Yuri was waiting for me in reception. “Theo, I need to talk to you—”
“What is it?”
I took a closer look at him. His face seemed to have aged overnight; he looked shrunken, pale,
bloodless. Something bad had happened.
“There’s been an accident. Alicia—she took an overdose.”
“What? Is she—?”
Yuri shook his head. “She’s still alive, but—”
“Thank God—”
“But she’s in a coma. It doesn’t look good.”
“Where is she?”
Yuri took me through a series of locked corridors into the intensive care ward. Alicia was in a
private room. She was hooked up to an ECG machine and a ventilator. Her eyes were closed. Christian was there with another doctor. He looked ashen in contrast to the emergency-room doctor, who had a deep suntan—she’d obviously just gotten back from holiday. But she didn’t look
refreshed. She looked exhausted.
“How is Alicia?” I said.
The doctor shook her head. “Not good. We had to induce coma. Her respiratory system failed.” “What did she take?”
“An opioid of some kind. Hydrocodone, probably.”
Yuri nodded. “There was an empty bottle of pills on the desk in her room.”
“Who found her?”
“I did,” Yuri said. “She was on the floor, by the bed. She didn’t seem to be breathing. I thought she
was dead at first.”
“Any idea how she got hold of the pills?”
Yuri glanced at Christian, who shrugged. “We all know there’s a lot of dealing going on in the
wards.”
“Elif is dealing,” I said.
Christian nodded. “Yes, I think so too.”
Indira came in. She looked close to tears. She stood by Alicia’s side and watched her for a
moment. “This is going to have a terrible effect on the others. It always sets the patients back months when this sort of thing happens.” She sat down and reached for Alicia’s hand and stroked it. I watched the ventilator rise and fall. There was silence for a moment.
“I blame myself,” I said.
Indira shook her head. “It’s not your fault, Theo.”