Staying Out for the Summer

by Mandy Baggot

  He nodded. ‘Yes, my surgery.’

  ‘Michalis!’

  ‘What?’ he queried. ‘You are a nurse. You can do the stitches.’

  ‘I want a doctor’s opinion on it first,’ Lucie stated.

  She was holding his shoulder, tilting him to the right a little so as to keep his body in the best position for his wound. She was so beautiful and he saw that deep genuine concern for him reflected in her eyes…

  ‘You have a doctor’s opinion,’ Michalis answered. ‘Mine.’

  ‘You know that’s not what I meant.’

  ‘And… we had a conversation about nurses being the real decision makers when it counts,’ he reminded her. ‘When the consultants are… too busy at their meetings or… are delayed saving the lives of others. That’s what you do every… day of your life.’

  ‘Michalis, I…’

  ‘I am not going to the hospital,’ he said. ‘Please know that.’

  Lucie saw he definitely meant it and the tone of his voice also told her the discussion was over. But how was she going to get him back to Sortilas?

  ‘Loosely!’

  Miltos’s shout broke into her thought pattern. They were coming now, Tonika obviously finally moving, and between them they would think of something to do. Wouldn’t they?

  ‘Over here!’ she called.

  ‘Does he have the fruit van… somewhere?’ Michalis asked, the beginnings of a wry grin on his lips.

  ‘That thing?’ Lucie said, adjusting his position again as gently as she could. ‘I’m unsure of its suitability as a vehicle on proper tarmac, let alone on a track like this. On parts of it, it was barely wide enough for the donkey.’

  ‘You really have a donkey?’ Michalis asked, with half a laugh.

  ‘Did you think I was making it up?’ She saw sweat was beading on his forehead now and she was concerned it wasn’t because of the summer temperatures. She hoped she hadn’t missed anything. She had taken his word for it that he wasn’t hurt anywhere else…

  ‘Oh, good heavens!’ Meg announced as the donkey – still a little hesitant – arrived at the scene.

  ‘What’s happened? Shall we call an ambulance? I know the Greek number for that. I memorised it before we came,’ Gavin gasped.

  ‘It is three digits,’ Miltos remarked, looking bemused.

  ‘No… ambulances,’ Michalis spoke up.

  It looked like talking was taking considerable effort now and Lucie turned away from her patient for a second and looked to Gavin, who was stripping himself of his tangerine flight bag. ‘Gavin, can you bring over the water?’

  ‘I am on it,’ Gavin stated, pulling out an unopened two-litre bottle of Zagori and hurrying over.

  ‘An ambulance would never get up here,’ Miltos said rather unhelpfully. ‘It sometimes takes hours for one to arrive in Sortilas by the main road.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you have a first aid kit?’ Lucie asked Gavin.

  ‘Of course I do. I never go anywhere without a first aid kit and a golf ball.’

  Lucie swallowed. He was her best friend and she really didn’t know where these balls fitted into things… then again, perhaps it was best not to know exactly where they fitted into things.

  ‘You get him drinking and I’ll get the pack,’ Gavin said. He passed Lucie the bottle of water and headed back to Tonika.

  She unscrewed the lid on the bottle and proffered it towards Michalis. He looked very pale now and he either needed to get into the shade or move out of here and back to the village. ‘Here, drink some of this.’

  He moved his mouth over the bottle as Lucie slowly tipped. She watched him ingest some, but a little spilled out over his lips. Before she had thought about it she caught the droplets on her finger, touching his bottom lip as she did so. Those hot lips together with the bare torso would ordinarily be ticking all the lust boxes. But he was her patient now…

  ‘Miltos, help me get down from this donkey,’ Meg ordered.

  ‘No, Meg,’ Lucie countered, refastening the lid of the bottle and turning to look at her aunt. Meg was rocking frustratedly, attempting to shuffle herself off the mule who was starting to pad at the ground, its eyes on the black horse who thankfully currently seemed to be more snort than buck. ‘You’re going to Perithia, like we planned. Stay where you are.’

  Lucie was working things out in her head. Michalis. The first aid kit. How far it was back up the mountain. If Michalis was alert enough to guide them…

  ‘Gavin,’ she called, decided. ‘Once we’ve dressed this wound as much as we can, I want you to take half the water supplies and go with Miltos and Meg to Perithia.’

  ‘O-K,’ Gavin said, scurrying back over with a zip-up pouch. ‘And what are you going to do?’

  Lucie took a deep breath and eyed the tied-up horse. ‘I’m going to ride Michalis back to Sortilas.’

  Forty-Two

  ‘I want you to tell me if you start to exhibit any of the signs of shock,’ Lucie ordered. She couldn’t quite believe she was in this position, but she and Michalis were on the back of a so-far-behaving Bambis, her in front and Michalis behind, his arm around her waist, his body weight leaning against her. She knew nothing about riding, could count on one thumb the number of times she had been on a horse, but her focus was on getting Michalis to the surgery conscious and not too dehydrated.

  ‘I have no chest pain. I am not confused. I am sweating profusely only because it is warm today,’ Michalis answered, his voice so very close to her ear, his breath was tickling the skin. He was still shirtless, body slathered in sun cream, a procedure that Gavin had insisted he helped with. If they weren’t in the absolute midst of a crisis it would be almost holiday romance goals.

  ‘How is your pain everywhere else?’ Lucie asked. She was digging her heels into the horse a little, urging him to move a bit faster. She didn’t really want him to take off like he was a steed under Oisin Murphy, but this plodding was taking much longer than she was comfortable with with an injured person behind her.

  ‘Manageable,’ came the answer.

  ‘That’s doctor-speak for “it hurts like hell but I’m damned if I’m going to admit it”. I think if I asked what your pain level was from one to ten, you would probably say something like “four”.’

  ‘Maybe a three and a half,’ he answered with a jagged breath.

  Lucie shook the reins a little. Yes, the terrain was rocky and clumpy but didn’t horses thrive on that sort of land? Weren’t they clever? Knowing exactly where to plant their hooves?

  ‘You do not need Bambis to go any faster,’ Michalis whispered.

  ‘I do,’ she replied, knowing a little fear was creeping into her voice. ‘Because you’ve had the maximum amount of ibuprofen and paracetamol and we need to get that wound properly cleaned and sewn up.’

  ‘I actually had one more of each tablet when your back was turned,’ Michalis told her.

  ‘What?!’ Her whole spinal cord reacted to that statement and set off a concoction of emotions she seemed to have no control over. Before Lucie even realised it, tears were springing out of her eyes and her hands started to tremble. ‘Why… why would you do that?’

  ‘Because, you are right, it hurts more than a three-point-five and I knew the recommended dose on your English medicines was too low.’

  ‘What are you talking about? You… can’t go taking more pills than the packets tell you. And you’re a doctor!’ Her heart was thumping against her rib cage now, like someone was playing basketball with it, throwing it against the wall time after time.

  ‘Lucie,’ he breathed close. ‘An extra two hundred and fifty micrograms of each tablet is not going to kill me.’

  She closed her eyes then. Not a sensible move when she was in charge of a horse she had been told could turn into a marauding monster at the flick of a grass blade. She opened them again and tried to concentrate on the task in hand. ‘You shouldn’t have done that. You’re my patient.’ She sniffed, attempting to conceal the depth of feeling that w
as leaking out and wetting Bambis’s mane. ‘You said I was making the decisions.’

  ‘And… you are,’ Michalis responded. ‘What is wrong?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘I can tell you are crying.’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Lucie…’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Does this have something to do with the pain in your back? The fact that you do not take medication.’

  Lucie sighed, pulling the rein back a little so Bambis could navigate a tricky ascent to the next section of track. Michalis had remembered what she’d said on the beach outside Fuego Bar and somehow he was putting two and two together. Thoughts of her mum were flooding her mind now. All the grief she had witnessed but was too young to understand, the sketchy explanations even now, being torn between asking for details and clinging onto the sugar-spun reality Meg continued to always feed her…

  ‘Just because I work with medicine,’ she said to Michalis. ‘It doesn’t mean I don’t believe there are alternative ways to heal.’

  ‘I agree.’

  ‘I would rather… lie on my acupressure mat for twenty minutes and relieve pain that way.’

  ‘I agree. But… Gavin did not seem to have one of those in his orange bag.’

  His comment drew a smile from her and she gave a short laugh. ‘Gavin has literally everything else in that orange bag, believe me.’

  ‘And I am grateful,’ Michalis told her, his body somehow moving even closer into her.

  The heat from him, coupled with the heat rising up from Bambis’s saddle and the sunlight shining down on her shoulders, gave rise to an internal quiver that made Lucie have to swallow. Could she tell him about her mum? Was that the sort of thing you shared with a holiday romance? Columns in women’s magazines did seem to think that sharing worries with a stranger did wonders for the soul…

  ‘Pass to me the reins,’ Michalis said.

  ‘No way.’

  ‘We can go a little faster, but Bambis is strong.’

  Lucie held onto the leather straps, making tight fists and steeling herself for greater motion. ‘Yes,’ she breathed with renewed determination. ‘But so am I.’

  Forty-Three

  Villa Psomi, Sortilas

  ‘I don’t know how to get you down.’

  Lucie had descended from Bambis, secured him to the fence outside the property and she was now looking up at Michalis like the bottom could, at any moment, drop out of her world. Michalis stilled, putting a hand to his side where thankfully the dressing was holding its own. He had seen that look before. Many times. But, yes, that one time had been the most haunting. It was the expression that had hurt him the most, the one that stayed with him and was present during every procedure. The one he saw when he got those text messages from Thekli.

  ‘I can get down,’ Michalis insisted quickly. He shifted around and onto his good side. OK, so it wasn’t going to be as easy as he had hoped. Bambis was not a small horse and the animal was currently stamping on the courtyard and blowing steam from his nose as if he was inviting the grasshoppers into a duel.

  ‘Don’t be stupid, Michalis. Let me help you.’

  Perhaps now was not the time for being brave. He didn’t want to risk injuring himself further for the sake of needing to be like that poster image of himself he loathed. He shook his head. ‘OK.’

  ‘OK,’ Lucie said, arriving at his side. ‘Just gently ease yourself over and I’ll catch you. Well… you know… I’ll grab you… by the jeans or something and… we’ll see what happens next.’

  Michalis didn’t doubt her inner strength, but he knew once he was sliding off this animal the only way was down and he didn’t expect there to be the greatest outcome if he couldn’t find his balance when he hit the floor. But, he had to get off the horse to get himself repaired and, as much as he hated to admit it, he was feeling weakened.

  ‘OK… go,’ Lucie directed.

  The pain ripped through him as he tried to slow his slide, but the horse’s coat and his bare flesh slick with perspiration was not the best combination. He landed, feet meeting cobbles, and then listed, preparing to feel the ground on every single other part of his body. But then he stopped leaning, his balance catching up and Lucie, as she had promised, captured him.

  He was suckered to her, her petite form wound around him tight, softening the jarring, stopping the toppling and easing his body into a safe and secure dismount. She looked up at him then, a smile forming on her lips and, despite the agony that was currently rolling through him, he couldn’t help but mirror her expression.

  ‘Caught, like a boss,’ she told him.

  God, he liked her. He liked her so very much it was crippling him on the inside. But Thekli catching up with him again, taunting him, wanting to hurt him and punish him, it was surely proof that, when you got attached to someone, the price you paid in the end was always some form of heartache. Was it worth taking the chance?

  ‘Do you have the spare key for my surgery?’ he asked, shifting from her embrace and hobbling across the courtyard to the white wooden door.

  ‘Yes,’ Lucie answered. ‘I will go in and get it.’

  *

  Lucie had put Michalis on a wobbly and frankly archaic-looking ‘examination table’ with the plastic covering coming away from the foam on some of the edges, and then she had looked in the cupboard he had directed her to for the things she needed to inspect this wound, sterilise it and close up.

  ‘Michalis,’ she said, raising her head from the supplies. ‘There’s barely anything in here. I don’t know if we have enough—’

  ‘I did stitches on a goat bite the other day. There are suture kits and sterilising wipes… and there is ouzo.’

  She looked back in and located the alcohol. ‘You said there are sterilising wipes.’ She came back up, bottle in hand.

  ‘Sure,’ he answered. ‘The ouzo is not to sterilise, it is for me to drink. And for you, if you are going to panic about this.’

  Why was she panicking? This was all in a day’s work for her. She was good at stitching, really good, much better than Gavin and he freely admitted it. Except her patients never usually made her weak under the PPE. But there was no adequate PPE here, only a box of large-sized gloves that looked like they were going to be gigantic on her hands. She drew them out anyway.

  ‘The gloves will be too big for your hands,’ Michalis said, as if reading her mind. ‘All my health screening is up to date.’

  The words ‘health screening’ reminded her of the welcome goat excretions on their first day here. ‘Mine too,’ she answered.

  ‘Then just wash your hands and let’s get this done.’ He held his hand out for the ouzo bottle.

  *

  ‘Please don’t look at me doing this,’ Lucie begged. Her hands were shaking as she worked with the needle driver and toothed tweezers, drawing the silk through his skin. The studio room was exceedingly hot and this wound was deeper than it had first looked. But, on the plus side, it didn’t appear there was anything inside the tear and she had cleaned it to within an inch of its life while Michalis gritted his teeth and kept silent with the pain. ‘There’s a fantastic view from that window over there and it’s so much nicer than watching your skin being sewn together.’

  ‘You are doing very neat work,’ Michalis told her.

  ‘I know,’ Lucie answered. ‘I am very good at this.’

  ‘I can see.’

  He was smiling now and she knew those extra tablets he had popped, plus the amount of ouzo he had ingested since she handed him the bottle, had gone some way to stabilising him. She would feel happier if he had at least another litre of water when she had finished though.

  ‘But there is something you are not so good at,’ Michalis continued.

  ‘Oh, there’s a whole list of things I’m not so good at and apparently now I can add riding a banana to it.’

  ‘Sharing,’ Michalis said, putting the ouzo bottle to his lips again and taking a swig.

  �
�I think you might want to swap that spirit for water. I shared a whole horse with you down a very unsuitable track for what felt like hours.’ It had been over an hour but hadn’t quite reached two. She had had confirmation from Gavin that he, Meg, Miltos and Tonika had reached Perithia without incident and they were now all receiving refreshments from the cafeneon. And, once they had found somewhere for Tonika to rest up for the evening, Gavin and Miltos had been offered a ride back up to the village by rickshaw. She could only imagine how bone-shakingly tough that was going to be on all of them. And would it really fit along some of those narrower sections of the path?

  ‘Why do you not take pills?’ Michalis asked. ‘Will you tell me the real reason for that?’

  Lucie paused in her stitching. The Greek aperitif seemed to be making Michalis very forward. And his directness was unavoidable as there was nowhere for her to go. You couldn’t exactly run away with stitching implements in your hands…

  ‘I’ve never taken them,’ Lucie admitted.

  ‘Never?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘But… if you get a fever then—’

  ‘Cold flannel. Get in a lukewarm bath. Suck on ice pops. Drink water.’

  ‘A headache?’

  ‘Cold compress. Magnesium. More water.’ She sighed. ‘I could do this for hours if you want to name another ailment.’

  ‘But why?’

  There really was no backing out now. And perhaps it would do her good to be unburdened. How could she criticise Meg for never talking about her mum if she couldn’t open up herself?

  ‘My grandparents and my aunt kept all medication in a locked cupboard in our house,’ she began, refocussing on drawing the thread through Michalis’s skin. ‘They had to have some tablets for certain ongoing conditions they suffered from, but apart from that, no one in our house took painkillers and definitely nothing more than painkillers.’

  He didn’t say anything and Lucie knew that it wasn’t because he had nothing to say, but that he was giving her space to continue if she wanted to.