CHAPTER 37
I fought down the urge to panic, looking round at our surroundings. The path led in two directions, one being straight up to what was clearly the summit caldera, zigzagging as it went, while the other stretched out to each side, looking as if there was a circular walk around the peak. I remembered reading that the final cone was some sort of special reserve, and it still looked a sizeable chunk of height left to gain..

Stop that, Enfys. Not important.

“Elen! Got any water left?”

She looked round, eyes everywhere.

“Got a bottle of Lucozade stuff, not the real brand, but the Spanish one, but it’s all warm now”

“Doesn’t matter. Can you come over here and give me a hand?”

“What are we doing?”

“Just need to move him into a safer position. Here… You get over onto this side of him, shade him from some of the sun”

“Want me to hold his head while he drinks?”

“Not yet, girl. Not when he’s out, not safe. Alys?”

My lover nodded.

“On it, love. What’s his pulse like?”

I had my fingers on the side of his neck by then, ready to pour Elen’s sugary liquid over the area.

“Fast. Really fast”

“OK. I’m off”

She scrambled to her feet and started jogging towards the cable car station, before stopping dead and shaking her head, then moving on again, this time at a walk.

“Elen. Elen. ELEN!”

“Er, yes?”

“In my rucksack. There’s a windproof jacket there. Can you pull it out, then pass me the sack?”

“Um. Yes. Here. Why the top?”

“Could you stretch it out, with your arms? Make a sort of shade of it? Get the shadow over his head?”

She nodded as understanding took her, and I started dribbling the last of the water from my hydration bag over his head and neck, washing away the sugar already crusting there from Elen’s energy drink. Check the pulse again, wishing I had a thermometer. Had to be heat stroke. Come on, Alys: do your stuff.

An age later, and there was a shout from a group of figures trotting from the buildings, and in my confusion I wondered why there were so many before realising that it was the rest of our people, along with several others in a lightweight uniform of polo shirt and shorts, one of them with a large backpack and two others carrying a rolled-up stretcher. They were with us in under two minutes, and Elen and I got a quick nod of recognition from the backpack wearer as she took in out improvised sunshade and the water pooling beneath his head.

The paramedic, first aider, whatever she was, rattled off several comments in quickfire Spanish, as she pushed a digital thermometer into Warren’s ear. More instructions, before she switched to English and directed our own men in helping her colleagues move Warren to the stretcher. One man to each handle, and they were moving at a steady clip towards the shade of the cable car station. I rose slowly to my feet, realising I had cut my knees a little on the harsh ground, and helped up a confused Elen.

“Is he going to die, Enfys?”

Break the rules, woman, but do it in hope, for the best of reasons.

“No. Not at all. Going to have the worst hangover ever, though”

I pulled her to me, as she started to weep, and slowly walked her towards the station. Our group were milling in the little space inside, and as I entered, one of the shorts-and-polo-shirt group spotted me, asking me in Spanish if I spoke that language or English.

“We all speak English. We’re from Britain”

“Ah. I was not hearing the English from you, is why I ask”

“We are all Welsh, is why”

“That is a part of English? England?”

“No. Not important, though. We all speak English. How is he? Our friend?”

“One moment. I ask Rosa”

He took a small radio from his belt, and after another rapid exchange in Spanish, in which his part seemed to consist almost entirely of saying “Si!” over and over again, he clipped the radio back onto his belt and gave me a smile.

“Rosa says it is what you call the ‘heat exhaustion’, or the ‘heat stroke’. She says your friend, he is not of an athletic nature?”

I shook my head.

“I think he plays a bit of rugby, but no, not seriously”

“Well, he will live. The sunshade, the water over the head, they were all good, but he has sugar on his skin. He is not, how do you say, diabetic?”

I actually managed to laugh.

“No. Our other friend had a bottle of energy drink she poured on his neck”

“Ah. The one… His…”

He tried a few Spanish words before saying simply, “His woman, yes?”

No, not really, but I nodded anyway, as it would be even harder to explain than the difference between Wales and England.

“We leave in half of one hour, on the telly ferricko. We have the ambulance to come, but not to here. We can take one person only, so we think his woman, yes? To the hospital?”

He caught my twitch, and smiled.

“No, not so. It is for the watching, yes? Rosa, she says not to worry. This is for the watching, the observation, and the advice to drink more and not get so hot in high places!”

I just nodded, reaction and relief starting to flood over me, and then there were arms around me as Alys returned and gave me the comfort I needed, before towing me over to the rest of our party.

They seemed to be looking for me to show some form of leadership, so I did my best.

“Got the word from the lady who’s treating him. Says he will be okay. They’ll take him down on the cable car in a little while, then he’s off to hospital, just for observation. Heat stroke, they say. There’s only space for one person in the ambulance, and it looks like that’s going to be Elen. Extravagant way to chat someone up, that; you have to admire his style”

The worst of jokes, but they clearly needed it, and I watched as a lot of their tension dissolved, before realising that Elen had rejoined us.

Alys was the first to hug her, which finally brought some tears from several of us, including myself. Elen smiled, in the weariest of ways.

“He’s awake again, but not making that much sense”

Colin snorted.

“Warren never did make any sense, girl!”

“Aye, but he is being insistent now. He is saying the rest of us shouldn’t have our holiday spoiled because he has been stupid. Enfys?”

“Yes?”

“You and Alys. He says you have to finish the walk. Don’t waste the trip just cause he has been stupid. I said he wasn’t, hadn’t been stupid, and that it didn’t matter, but he says he would feel even worse if you didn’t do the whole thing. Rest of you, he wants loads of pictures taken. His words: he wasn’t really paying attention when he got here, so he’d like some souvenirs of the trip that don’t involve a splitting headache”

She gave a long sigh.

“They had all sorts of stuff out of a freezer, packing it round him. The paramedic woman, Rosa, she said they had to get his temperature down, really quick. Had a hosepipe on him as well. All his clothes are… They took all his clothes off. I didn’t know where to look!”

Colin snorted once more, and as Sali slapped his head, he called out “But you did look, then, didn’t you?”, to Elen’s bright pink blush.

“They didn’t take his underpants off, though”

She smiled, quickly, then waved at us all.

“Pictures, all of you! You two, get back on the trail. I’m away to the hospital with him, and the rest of you can walk along the level stuff until the two mountain goats get beck. I’ll see you back at the rooms, or you can text me where you will be eating tonight. Go!”

There was no argument we could make. Alys and I looked at each other, but there was no way we could argue. As the others walked off, we started uphill once more, after filling my water bag and her bottles in the ladies’.

It was hard getting moving again, and the path had changed into a ragged set of artificial steps through the utterly desolate stonefields of the summit, but in the end, it was for Warren, and Elen, and we settled into that stare-at-the-next-two-steps mindset, as the steps found their way through an ever-stepper jumble of pale tan rocks.

Metal chains. A depression with a surface that looked like baked sand. And views that covered what seemed like half the bloody world, the sea blue all round us, and the sky seeming to be one copper bowl of blazing light. I took my sunglasses off to use my camera, and the reflected glare from the rocks left me in tears. I managed to snap a whole series of shots, with no guarantees, nor expectations of quality, and then settled onto a rock after a kiss, the traditional mindset in play: hard enough getting up, not going down.

Not for a while, anyway. We sat together, as others filed past us, a couple of them leaving a frown, or even a smile, as they saw how we were holding hands, and then, after a last few photos, we set off down. That gave us a different set of problems, because we were both very tired, and the steps down almost demanded more attention than we had left to spare, but we got there, to find our group assembled at the cable car entrance waiting for us.

Sali was clear.

“Got a text from Elen. He’s fine. They’re keeping him in overnight, but he should be back with us tomorrow. She’ll meet us for food, and asked if we could do that paella place again. He liked the tapas one, so she said we should go there when he gets out”

She stared at Colin for a second or two before adding, “And no taking the piss, okay? He could have died, and Elen says she has something to tell us”

There were a few mutters, but everyone was nodding, and when the gondola, cable car, telly ferricko, whatever, arrived, we piled in and rode down in comfort, if not quite in style. The minibus shuttle ran us back to town, and I will admit that I stood under a cool shower for far longer than was fair on the others waiting to use it. I would have shared it with Alys, but, well.

Anatomy. Even then, she had her moments of anxious discomfort and shame. Those were the times I found myself really hating Ifor.

Elen joined us at the paella place just as we were starting our first jugs of sangria, and simply sat down in silence until she had downed two glasses of the stuff, as Sali stared at her.

In the end, Elen set down her glass, and shrugged.

“What’s to tell? They worked miracles on him, Rosa and her team, and do you know how lucky we were? They were only there on an exercise, wouldn’t normally have been around. There was supposed to be a mock casualty out on the mountain that they’d have to find and bring down, all training stuff. That’s the funny thing, or the lucky one, or whatever. No charge for the rescue, because they said it was better practice then picking up Pedro or Carlos or whoever. Real live casualty…”

She looked at her glass, and poured another drink.

“Live, yeah? He is alive, and he nearly wasn’t. Stupid, soppy bastard!”

There was a chorus of interrogative grunts and questions, and she nodded, draining her glass in one go.

“He had spare water in his pack. He says he was saving it in case the rest of us needed it, that he would be able to manage!”