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‘No. You?’
‘Nope. Matteo turned looking around. ‘He can’t have gone far...’
‘There...’ Rose pointed suddenly to a fold in the rock. ‘I see him. There...’
It looked as if the lad had crawled to the side of the escarpment, trying to get out of the heat of the sun. He was half sitting, half lying, and he wasn’t moving. Matteo scrambled over to him.
‘Oh, dear... His back’s as pale as anything, but his face and chest are bright pink, they look very sunburnt.’ He heard Rose’s voice behind him, telling him exactly what he needed to know.
‘Okay.’ Matteo tapped behind the lad’s ear with his finger. ‘Pete. Pete, can you hear me?’
Pete mumbled something incomprehensible and started to move. At least he was conscious, but he looked in a bad way. Suddenly he began to dry retch violently. Not a good sign. There was obviously no liquid in his stomach.
The men that his uncle were sending would be here any minute, and Matteo knew that he’d have trouble carrying Pete over the rocks on his own. It would be better to wait. He curled his fingers around Pete’s wrist, looking for the pulse, and he yelped in pain, pulling his arm away. Then he opened his eyes and started to curse violently.
‘Stop that now!’ Rose’s tone resembled that of the sternest school teacher Matteo had ever encountered. ‘The doctor’s trying to help you. Be still.’
That was one way of doing it. Pete obeyed her straight away, his eyes trying to focus on the face behind the voice.
‘That’s better.’ Rose’s voice took on a note of warmth, and she laid her palm against Pete’s, careful not to touch the sunburn on the back of his hand. Then she turned her gaze onto Matteo.
‘Go on then. Take his pulse.’ There was still a touch of the schoolmistress in her manner, and Matteo couldn’t help grinning. Not the time. This was definitely not the time for those kinds of thoughts...
He concentrated on taking Pete’s pulse. Much too fast. Pete’s skin was dry and hot, which meant that he’d already gone through the stage of sweating and a depressed heart rate, which signified heat exhaustion, and was moving into the far more dangerous territory of heat stroke.
Voices behind him told him that the men his uncle had sent were here. Good. When Matteo turned he saw that they had the carry chair from the winery’s first-aid cupboard. Even better.
‘Help me lift him.’ He spoke in Italian to them. ‘We’ll take the short cut, straight down to the clinic.’
Rose had soaked the striped towel in the cool water and they’d laid it over Pete’s body, trying to cool him a little. Then they lifted the canvas chair, one on each corner of it. The fastest way down to the village was over rough ground, but it was by far the quickest.
They cut down along the path of the river, wading across it at its narrowest point. Matteo couldn’t stop to help Rose, but she was keeping up, her canvas shoes and the hem of her dress wet now from the water. Every now and then she caught up with them, and she always had some breathless words of encouragement for Pete, who seemed to be drifting in and out of consciousness.
The clinic was deserted, and they carried Pete through to one of the rooms designed for overnight patients and laid him on the bed. He began to thrash around, mumbling incoherently, and Rose sat down beside him, calming him. In a quick switch of plan Matteo decided to leave her there with Pete and hunt down the ice packs himself.
‘Right. I want you to put these in his armpits, neck and groin.’ He handed Rose the icepacks, and turned his attention to the intravenous saline drip. The sooner he could get some liquids into him, the better.
‘He’s going to love that.’ A quiet flash of humour and then she did as he asked, placing the ice packs carefully and soothing Pete when he cried out. He didn’t even seem to notice when the needle went into his arm.
* * *
Matteo had told her that she should leave, but she’d stayed, helping him to watch over Pete, cooling and re-hydrating his body as quickly as they could, and applying salve to his burned shoulders and chest.
The news that the clinic had received its first patient had obviously spread, and Isabella turned up, still looking immaculate, to say that Pete’s friend was sunburned but feeling a great deal better now. After an hour, Pete was sleeping peacefully, and Matteo seemed pleased with his progress.
‘So you got to be the first to treat a patient here.’ Rose had caught the gist of the joke that Isabella had shared with Matteo in Italian.
‘Yeah. I’m not going to live that one down in a hurry.’
‘I think you deserve it.’
Matteo shrugged. ‘Everyone did their bit.’
‘What would have happened if this place hadn’t been here?’
‘I’d probably have taken him up to the house, cooled him down there and called an ambulance. They would have had a saline drip on board.’
‘But it would have taken a while. And it might have been time that Pete didn’t have.’ She lowered her voice to a whisper. She’d seen from Matteo’s face how grave the situation had been.
