‘Do you have any pain, Mr Andrews?’ Her voice was soft and gentle and the man turned his head towards her, his eyes glazed as he tried to focus.
‘Need to go home.’ He swung his arms wildly and tried to get up, but Oliver restrained him.
‘You need to keep as still ask you can for a moment,’ he advised. ‘There’s a steep drop down there.’
The man swung his arms again and Helen looked at Oliver in confusion.
‘Why is he behaving like this when we’re trying to help him?’ she asked, her eyes swivelling back to the man. ‘He’s very pale and sweaty.’
‘Yeah. I need to examine him.’
But it didn’t look as though that was going to be a possibility. The man snarled at them aggressively and suddenly he reminded Helen of a patient she’d once treated.
She gave a soft gasp. ‘Oliver, do we have any hot chocolate left in that flask?’
‘Yes.’ His eyes lifted to hers as he interpreted the reason for her question. ‘You think he’s diabetic?’
‘I don’t know. But his symptoms remind me of a patient I nursed once. Everyone thought he was drunk but he was hypoglycaemic. He was slurring his words like this and he was sweaty and pale. And I seem to remember that he was also pretty irritable.’
Oliver took another look at the man and gave a short laugh. ‘Well, it’s certainly worth a try.’ Rocking back on his heels, he delved into the rucksack and pulled out the flask. ‘I hope you’re right. See if you can find some sort of SOS bracelet or any medication on him.’
Helen leaned forward, her voice gentle. ‘Are you a diabetic, Mr Andrews?’ She spoke soothingly to the man, her fingers rolling back the sleeves of his jacket as she searched for clues. This time the man lay un-resisting. ‘No bracelet, no chain, nothing. But his pulse is very fast. I’m sure he’s a diabetic, Oliver.’
Oliver nodded. ‘I’m beginning to agree with you and we’re definitely going to give it a try. There’s not much else we can do until the team arrives anyway. We can’t get him off this rock by ourselves. All right, give me a hand to hold him while I get him to drink this. We’re lucky. Any longer and he wouldn’t have been in a state to eat anything, and I’m not in the habit of carrying injectable glucose when I go for a walk.’
They propped the man in a sitting position and then Oliver poured a small amount of their hot chocolate into a plastic mug.
‘Make sure it isn’t too hot,’ Helen warned anxiously, and Oliver tested the liquid quickly.
‘It’s fine. It’s not going to burn anyone. Just very sweet, which is exactly what he needs if his problem is what you think it is. He needs fast-acting oral carbohydrate.’
Helen bit her lip, her heart thudding hard against her chest. She hoped desperately that she was right.
But surely, if he was a diabetic, the man would have been wearing a bracelet?
‘Can you drink this for me?’ Oliver murmured, pressing the cup to the man’s lips and encouraging him to take sips. ‘That’s great. And more if you can. That’s it. I think this is going to help.’
Oliver persisted until the mug was empty and then turned to Helen. ‘There’s some chocolate in the front pocket of my rucksack. Let’s give him that, too.’
It was a slow process but gradually the man cooperated and ate the chocolate and his condition started to improve markedly.
Fifteen minutes after they’d given him the hot chocolate he was able to talk clearly. ‘Thanks.’ He wiped a shaking hand across his mouth. ‘I seem to have got myself in a spot of trouble…’
Helen shot Oliver an incredulous glance. As understatements went, it was impressive. The man had been incredibly lucky. Had they not been in the area he might have died before help had arrived.
‘You’re a diabetic,’ Helen said gently, ‘but I couldn’t find a bracelet or anything to tell us that.’
The man’s eyes drifted shut and he let out a long breath. ‘Don’t want to be labelled,’ he muttered, shaking his head slightly. ‘Don’t want it to interfere with my life. Just want to get on and do the things I’ve always done.’
‘Right.’ Oliver ran a hand over the back of his neck. ‘Well, you can do most of the things you’ve always done, providing you control your blood sugar properly. You’ve just done a fairly strenuous walk. Did you bring food with you?’
The man shook his head. ‘Didn’t plan to be out that long.’
‘You were suffering from something called hypoglycaemia,’ Oliver explained, ‘which basically means that your blood sugar was dangerously low. It usually happens when you take more exercise than you were planning or when you delay a meal. Or sometimes if you give yourself too much insulin. Presumably you attend a diabetic clinic?’
The man gave a grunt. ‘Load of bloody busy-bodies—always telling you what to do and checking up on you.’
‘They’re trying to help you control your diabetes,’ Helen said gently, giving his hand a squeeze, but he brushed her hand away.