Katie’s tears are never far away as her husband, Martial watches over her. At their side, in a pretty house in La Guerche-sur-l’Aubois, Manuel Vieira recounts his mad brilliance. It was February 22, 2000. A Wednesday. He was cycling with his 8-year-old son on the Ver-vert trail. “The only day of rest” for this man who ran a brasserie in the station district.
Screams, a stopped bus attract his attention. “I heard: ‘The baby, the baby.’ And I saw like a package floating in the water. I said to myself: “It is now”. I saw the trajectory of this ‘packet’, I saw the current, I saw how far I had to swim to catch it”.
“I swam, I swam”
A trajectory that he visualizes in a flash. With the instinct of an animal. “I put my jacket down, I jumped into the water fully dressed, with my shoes on. I swam, swam. I grabbed the baby and came back to shore. I didn’t even take the time to turn the baby over, his face in the water. I climbed as best I could… No one held out their hand to me, while a dozen people were present on the bank. »
If the Bonnard family knew how Manuel Vieira had saved Estelle, 1 year old at the time, from the waters, listening to the story again still shakes Katie, the mother.
“We had met at the hospital, then rubbed shoulders with each other for a while, but I did not know all the details”
Katie Bonnard
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“We had met at the hospital, then rubbed shoulders with each other for a while, but I didn’t know all the details,” Katie says. Twenty-two years later, imagining Manuel Vieira giving mouth-to-mouth to his little Estelle, “wiping her nose, from which milk was coming out, with his scarf”, pressing her chest to bring her back to life , when she was “all blue”… brings a heavy silence to the Bonnard family’s living room.
premium Hervé found Jérôme, the little boy he saved from drowning in 1978 in Nièvre
Estelle, in video, as if nestled in the palm of her mother’s hand, listens. Now a nurse in Clermont-Ferrand (currently in the pulmonology department, it can’t be invented), the young woman is gradually erasing the traces of this trauma. “I now know that everything can change at any time,” she explains.
For a long time, she was afraid of water. Learning to swim was no easy feat… Katie remembers the “tremendous” support from her colleagues at the County Council, the support of child psychiatrists and the hospital’s pediatrician, Doctor Berger .
“Never would I have thought that the brain had registered all this; the consequences are unbelievable when she was a baby”
Manuel Vieira
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“When Estelle started having nightmares at the age of 6/7, I was warned. I was very supported, ”she explains. “Never would I have thought that the brain had registered all this; the consequences are incredible when she was a baby, ”says Manuel Vieira.
“Cats have seven lives, I think I can have a second”
The Bonnard family was able to cope. Martial made the decision to return to work near his home. And Estelle’s little brother, Romain, now a big guy of 18, doesn’t seem traumatized, despite the “hyper vigilance” shown by his mother.
Manuel and Estelle did not know each other before this month of March. “Life had taken us apart,” smiles Manuel, “until Katie contacted me through Facebook.”
The final word goes to Manuel Vieira, 61 years old recently: “I think I have bonus life points. Cats have seven lives, I think I can have a second.
Laura Brunet
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