Roberta was descending the Giant ski-slope from Cima Uomo down to the San Pellegrino Pass once more when she decided to stop, and turning towards the refuge halfway down she slid to a perfect halt beside its broad terrace alongside the slope.
The terrace was an essential stop for skiers, especially on such a splendid sunny day. The Pale di San Martino to the left, the Pelmo and the jagged peaks of the Col Margherita ahead and the Lusia on the right, soaring above the white sea of snow that had been so plentiful that year, formed a spectacle worthy not just of a brief halt but of a moment of almost ecstatic contemplation. But Roberta was not stopping to admire the view, though she might well have done so, as always; she was stopping because she could feel that her sugar reserves had been depleted by the effort of the descent.
She was a graceful, dark-haired, green-eyed girl, a brilliant law student and sportswoman who lived a normal and happy life, in part due to advances in medicine and diagnostics, despite the disease which had struck her some years earlier: juvenile diabetes. She had learned to recognize the early signs of hypoglycaemia, and she knew that all she needed was a snack to be able to continue skiing without problems.
With the confident gesture of an athlete who has just crossed the finishing line of the descent, she undid her ski bindings and then eased the clasps on her boots, savouring the instant of pleasure that comes when the feet are released from that unnatural grip. She entered the bar of the refuge, ordered a sandwich and a glass of fruit juice, and went to find a table. A little way off sat a group of five or six young men. They had obviously been there for some time, judging by the empty plates of strudel (they made it so well at that Refuge!) which cluttered the table, and they were on their second round of drinks – the bar speciality, bombardino. The name gave you some idea of what this drink might be like, but the reality far exceeded the imagination. This mixture of egg-laced liqueur, rum and who knew what other ingredients, piping hot and topped with a mountain of whipped cream, sent you back onto the slopes fit to ski naked to the waist, scorching the snow as you passed.
Their second bombardino finished, the boys began to get ready to leave, discussing their plans for their next descent. After various suggestions they decided to go off-piste a little lower down the slope on the left, towards the Lago Fuciade refuge, through the magical spruce forest covering that side of the mountain. Then they got up to go, passing close by Roberta as they did so.
At that moment another young man arrived, a tall boy in a bright red ski suit, and they greeted him warmly, as though they had been waiting for him, berating him for being so late.
“Come on, we’re off! We’ve decided to go down to Fulciade, hurry up!”
“I need to eat first,” the boy objected, but the others almost pushed him outside, laughing. “You can eat at Fuciade, they do a good strudel there too.”
Through the wide windows Roberta saw them putting on their skis and set off, following the slope until, as agreed, they turned off and disappeared into the spruce wood. The boy in the red ski suit brought up the rear.
Roberta finished her sandwich and left in her turn, preparing to set off again. She was already on the slope when it occurred to her that it would be fun to ski through the woods. Although she was not as confident on fresh snow as on the beaten piste, it would be easier now that she could follow the tracks of the boys who had gone down earlier.
She was immediately enchanted by the magical atmosphere of the wood in its cover of undisturbed snow, the shapes of trees and shrubs softened and rounded, and the silence only increased by the faint swishing of her skis on the snow. It occurred to her that if a group of gnomes or fairies were to emerge dancing from out of the bushes or beneath the pine trees she would not be in the least surprised.
She was considerably surprised, however, when at a certain point the deep regular tracks she was following, right-left, right-left, were suddenly interrupted by more superficial, less regular marks curving to the right and disappearing behind a large tree a short distance off.
Roberta stopped, considering. Why would one of the boys she was following have decided to leave the group, taking a direction that would not lead him to their agreed destination? Curious, she decided to follow the tracks a little way and, rounding the large tree, she saw him. The boy in the red ski suit lay on his right side a few metres ahead, lying against the slope, almost covered by a soft quilt of fresh snow. He gave no sign of life.
Roberta’s first thought was that he had fallen badly, but she realised at once that this was not possible. There were no signs of a fall, or of a collision with the trees or rocks. She unfastened her skis, made her way over to him and knelt by his side. The boy’s face was damp with sweat, his breathing irregular. A slight tremor shook his body.
Suddenly Roberta remembered what she had learned at the many lectures and courses she had attended on diabetes, and she remembered too that the boy had wanted to eat at the refuge and had been prevented from doing so.
She risked a diagnosis. To confirm it, she took of her rucksack, took out a little bag, laid it on the snow and set out the equipment she needed to test his glucose levels. This was an all-too familiar procedure, one she carried out on herself several times a day. With rapid, certain movements she pulled off one of the boy’s gloves, inserted a lancet in the finger-prick pen, loaded it and pricked the end of one finger. Then she inserted a strip in the glucose monitor to activate it, removed the strip and placed the reactive end on the drop of blood which had formed in the meantime. The strip absorbed the blood and she reinserted it in the monitor.
The figure that appeared on the display after a few seconds left her aghast: 35 milligrams of glucose per decilitre! Her diagnosis was right: hypoglycaemic coma.
Roberta did not lose her head because she knew exactly what to do: she took the thermal bag from her rucksack and took out a single dose syringe of glucagon that she always kept with her, along with her insulin. For a moment she hesitated, wondering where she should make the injection, as it was rather difficult to uncover an appropriate spot because of the ski suit. Then she drew the material close and tight across the thigh, inserted the needle firmly and injected the glucagon subcutaneously. There passed several long minutes, during which Roberta supported the boy’s head while she dried his face. Gradually the sweating diminished, the trembling ceased and the boy in the red ski suit began to come round, confused at first and then more conscious, until he managed to murmur the classic words “Where am I? …What happened?”
“It’s OK, it’s OK,” Roberta repeated. “It’s over.”
Then, still in her role of resuscitator and diabetes expert, she exclaimed “But what on earth were you doing? Are you mad?”
Still not entirely lucid, the boy asked once more, in a stronger voice, “Will you tell me what happened?”
“What happened is that you had a glucose reading of 35, you idiot,” she replied, her accent betraying her Tuscan origins.
The boy was taken aback, tried to gather his thoughts, reconstructed the events and said, “Ye-es, I wanted to stop, but I thought I could make it down. But you, how did you – are you a doctor?”
“I’m not a doctor”, Roberta answered, and she held up the glucose monitor in one hand and the finger-prick pen in the other.
The boy understood. “So you too…”
“Yes, and lucky for you,” she said, pretending to pull an angry face and making a mock threatening gesture with the finger-prick pen.
They had both began to laugh when the cell phone in the boy’s pocket began to ring. With some difficulty he pulled it out and answered. Roberta, who was very close, distinctly heard the voice of one of his friends in the group asking where he had got to, and if everything was all right. “Yes, yes, everything’s fine,” answered the boy in the red ski suit, smiling at Roberta. “I’ve met an angel…”
Author: Leonardo Lanari
Reproduced by kind permission of Assobiomedica, Italy (
www.assobiomedica.it)