By the middle of the evening, almost all the injured had either been assessed and treated onsite, or taken to hospital. Cleo was so tired again she could barely speak and her body ached. One of the female nurses noticed and told her to get some rest.
‘We can manage now,’ she said in broken English. ‘You have been amazing today. You should get some sleep.’
Cleo nodded, rising stiffly from the hard, plastic chair she’d been sitting on.
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I’ll get a few hours in. Then I’ll come back and take over from you or someone else. We can sleep in shifts.’
She was still in the yellow-and-white pyjamas she’d worn in bed when the earthquake hit, with a grey sweatshirt on top given to her by one of the rescue team.
The pyjamas were filthy and stained and she hadn’t washed properly, cleaned her teeth or brushed her hair since the earthquake, either. She must look terrible, but she reckoned no one would care. She’d sleep first, wash after. She knew her priorities.
Stepping out of the tent, she blinked in the half-light and almost didn’t recognise Henrietta coming towards her. Cleo had been so busy, she’d temporarily forgotten about her, Mark and the rest of the original retreat group. What’s more, the first few days of the holiday before the earthquake seemed so long ago, they might have happened in another life.
Henrietta was grey-faced and grubby-looking, just like Cleo, but managed a small smile.
‘I’ve had a message from your daughter,’ she said, waving a mobile phone in the air.
Cleo started. ‘My daughter? How?’
Her own phone was missing, probably lying smashed on the floor of her bedroom in the villa. She’d had no time to think about Erica’s hospital admission and Erica was the last person she’d have expected to hear from.
‘She was obviously worried. She found my number on our website. She wanted to know if you were all right. I texted back and said yes. You can ring her quickly on my phone if you like,’ Henrietta added. ‘I’m sure she’ll be relieved to hear from you.’
Cleo paused for a moment, too exhausted even to think properly. She desperately wanted the comfort of hearing Erica’s voice, but knew at the same time she’d burst into tears and sound like a frightened child.
‘It’s OK,’ Cleo said, shaking her head. ‘She knows I’m alive. I’ll ring her after I’ve had some sleep.’
Night had fully closed in when Maya directed her to a different, largeish, empty tent with two rows of sleeping bags and pillows laid out neatly on the ground.
‘This’ll be ours for the duration now. Tash and I will join you, and I thought I’d put the nurses in here, too. I’ve given the small tent to the doctor.’
‘I feel bad, sleeping when you’re still working,’ Cleo said, rubbing her eyes.
‘Don’t be silly,’ Maya replied. ‘You’re a crucial part of the rescue team. We need you to be alert and rested. Tash and I will join you in a bit.’
Despite being worn out, this time Cleo had trouble dropping off. Her mind was restless, filled with images of the earthquake and constantly on alert for aftershocks.
They had already experienced some soft tremors today, passing through the ground, like a shiver underfoot, and conversation had stopped dead until they’d subsided.
Cleo’s worst fear was that there’d be more big tremors in the night and she’d wake up in utter terror.
Her brain kept ticking through half-formed plans, including how to keep people calm when the shock began to sink in.
Shock was the silent killer, she remembered. It came after the noise, when the adrenaline ran dry.
She was still fully conscious when she heard Tash tiptoe in and undress quietly before slipping into the sleeping bag next to her.
‘Are you still awake?’ Tash whispered.
Cleo rolled over with a sigh and opened her eyes.
‘Yes. I can’t sleep.’
‘I spoke to Danny – and my mum,’ Tash went on. ‘Apparently the earthquake’s all over the papers in the UK. It’s caused loads of damage and two Brits – a man and a woman who were on holiday in the area – are missing, feared dead.’
‘How dreadful,’ Cleo said with feeling.
‘You’d think I’d be used to this sort of thing – hospitals, alarms, all that waiting round and not knowing,’ Tash went on.
