SAMU

SAMU is the French emergency medical service whose personnel respond to the aftermath of the Massé family tragedy. In the opening account, its responders treat both the mother, in acute shock after discovering her children, and Louise, who is found critically injured after attempting suicide. Their professional care places emergency medicine within the novel’s stark contrast between catastrophe and the practical work of keeping people alive.

Emergency Response

After the mother enters the room where her children lie, responders help police lift her despite her resistance, and a young SAMU intern administers a sedative. It is the intern’s first month of training. The scene presents her not as a detached observer but as a novice performing a specific task amid an overwhelming emergency.

Louise also survives. Responders assess her, place her on a stretcher, and the intern holds pressure against her neck while she is being treated. The juxtaposition is consequential: the person whose actions caused the children’s deaths is also a patient requiring urgent care. SAMU’s role is to respond to the immediate medical crisis, not to resolve the moral or criminal questions surrounding it.

Place in the Narrative

The emergency service appears through the conduct of its staff rather than through institutional description. Its personnel act with professionalism and objectivity toward both women, while the intern’s brief introduction gives the response a human point of focus without making her a central character.

That response establishes the aftermath as a sequence of simultaneous needs: the bereaved mother must be medically stabilized, and Louise must be kept alive. SAMU therefore marks the boundary between the violent event and the investigation that follows, providing emergency care before the account turns toward explanations and testimony.