Chapter Forty-One
Somehow, the Go Big expedition, which had been behind us all day yesterday, managed to weasel their way in among the Global teams right before A-Team started up the Lhotse Face. Jim was pissed, swearing over the radio, but no individual or expedition owned Everest, and there wasn’t anything that could be done except A-Team waiting an extra hour in our tents while the Sherpas guarded the route in case the Swedish expedition, also with us at Camp Two, got any ideas.
In the tent, I tried to close my eyes and get a little rest to make up for being virtually unable to sleep last night, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Luke. He had a pullover stashed here for the way back down, and I hugged it to my body, the smell of him in the fabric making me more heartsick.
What had I done? I was all set to go to Tanzania, but at the cost of losing the person who was the most important to me next to Dad.
It didn’t make sense, logically, how a single pink envelope could have that kind of sway over me. I’d kept Amy and all that had happened out of my mind for ten years, so how was it possible for her claws to be in me so deep that they’d overpowered all other factors and moved me to choose Tanzania?
But I also wasn’t wrong in putting a priority on independence.
You can’t be cut loose when you’re the center of your own world.
From outside the tent, Phurba called to me. It was our turn on the Lhotse Face.
By the time all of A-Team was clipped to the line, it was late morning and even hotter than our last trip up. Between my lack of sleep and not drinking enough water yesterday, I was struggling as much as the clients. Claudia’s brother, Juan, who had terrible blisters and could no longer keep pace with the Cubans, was climbing with A-Team today, and because of that, April was occasionally flying the drone over us. The heat made me so irritable that I wanted to swat at it as it hovered close above our heads.
Directly ahead of me, Phil somehow managed to get his ascender stuck on the line. It took me several minutes to untangle him. Then, out of the pure silence of the windless morning came a panicked yell, followed by the hiss of something big and heavy flying through the air. I ducked and screamed to Phil and Juan to do the same. It was an ice ax. The most deadly thing to drop. It had to be from the Go Big team; we made all our Global clients keep their axes on lanyards.
Tashi that no one had been hit. There’s no question the ax would have killed someone, even with helmets on. It made me think about regrets. Because I had one—a big one—that was very presently on my mind. Luke.
If nothing else, I should have tried harder last night to avoid telling him about Tanzania. He wasn’t faring well as it was, and I’d torn him up further. To not tell him would have been to lie, but maybe it would have been safer, and that was more important right now.
We forged on ahead. Foot down, slide hand, step, pull. Foot down, slide hand, step, pull. As if my mind and heartbeats weren’t already a mess, the dropped ice ax further exacerbated my tangled mess of anxiety, franticness, unrest, and regret. What was the worst thing that could have happened if I had decided to go to Washington? That it wouldn’t work out? Ironic, because every mountain I’d climbed in the Himalayas had higher stakes than that.
If I could get my head together, maybe I could talk things through more with Luke. Maybe he could help me see my errors. That is, if he was even willing to talk. He’d clearly said this morning that he wasn’t going to put himself in that position with me again.
Either way, thinking straight was not going to happen until I was on bottled oxygen. As it was, my blood pressure was high enough for me to feel my pulse in weird and painful places, like my temples. Why did people do this? I mean, look at us here, this huge gravy train of people. This morning, we’d all walked right by a corpse from last season and it didn’t faze anyone. All of it was totally irrational. But if Everest was proof of anything, it was proof of the power of irrationality.
By the time we made it to Camp Three, it was eighty-six degrees. I battled through deliriousness to help Phil, Glissading Glen, and Johnsmith with their oxygen. I meant to just rest in the sun break of the ladies’ tent for a few minutes before going to find Luke, but I collapsed to sleep practically upon impact and didn’t awake until Doc was shaking me.
“Emily, Thom has been calling you,” she said. “He wants you to meet with them over at the twins’ tent.”
I sat up groggily. My boots were still on, and I hadn’t changed out of my sweaty layers. Stupid. Even though it was warm in the tent, the sun would soon be setting, and I had a chill from being in damp clothes. In a majorly delayed reaction, I realized that the reason I was so groggy was because I’d gotten everyone else’s oxygen set up except my own.
I put on my oxygen mask and cranked the valve to max, taking some long, full breaths. In less than a minute, I was back to full force. Whew, ecstasy! I dialed the valve back to the minimum setting and quickly changed my clothes, hanging the damp ones over the tent poles to dry alongside Doc’s and Claudia’s.
Over in the twins’ tent it was Thom, Tyler, Hulk, and Norbu. Before I could even wonder where Luke was, I realized I’d walked into the middle of a conversation about how to rearrange the teams now that we didn’t have Luke anymore.
What?
Tyler filled me in: Luke had been in such bad shape by noon that he didn’t even argue when Doc point-blank ordered him to descend.
“How long ago did he leave?” I asked. If it was just a few minutes, I was going after him to make sure he was okay.
“Almost an hour.”
And where had I been through all of this? Sleeping!
“He’s with Phurba,” Tyler said. “Phurba will catch up with us in the morning before we leave for Camp Four.”
Jim came on the radio then, apparently not finished being angry at us for having let Go Big get ahead of us earlier. He ordered us to wake up early enough to not let that happen again, which was a legitimate possibility since Go Big’s tents were higher than Global’s and it would be easy for them to cut us off.
After Jim was done, I learned that Luke wasn’t the only one having serious medical problems. Two of the UW geologists were still recovering from the food-borne illness they’d picked up in Dingboche. Johnsmith’s knee was too stiff to bend, and some of Juan’s blisters were so bad Jim was considering not letting him continue on the summit bid.
Back in the ladies’ tent, Doc was eating a Toblerone candy bar. It was her favorite, but with the way she was biting each small triangle in half to chew and swallow, it might as well have been spoiled cheese or something.
“What’s going on with Luke?” I asked. “Is it pulmonary edema?”
“I honestly don’t know, and I didn’t get to properly examine him. He’s been coughing for a while now, so that points to a run-of-the-mill high-altitude cough, and I suspect he has a cracked rib from all the coughing. But I didn’t like how gray his lips were and how he was practically incoherent. It’s likely a combination of things, but he had to go down. He’ll be at Camp Two tonight, and if he doesn’t improve, the Sherpas will put him in the hyperbaric chamber.”
My stomach churned, thinking about Luke down there with only the people who might have secretly wished something like this would happen. My eyes welled up.
“I know,” she said, rubbing my shoulder.
“Greg to Emily,” came a call on the radio.
I switched over to nine-nine.
“Hi, Dad,” I said. It took an effort to keep my voice from wavering.
“How’s it going, MiniBoss?”
“Oh, you know. Tell me again, why is it we do this?”
He laughed. “Things are looking good with the winds for tomorrow night, but always keep an eye behind. Jim’s not up there with you. He’s not seeing what you’re seeing.”
“Okay, Dad, got it.”
“All right. You take care and stay safe. Would you mind passing along the same to Teresa?”
I raised my eyebrow at Doc. “Tell her yourself. We’re sharing a tent. She’s right here.”
“Hey, Teresa. You watch out for that weather, too.” He cleared his throat as he did only when extremely uncomfortable. “Okay. Both of you. Stay safe.”
I switched back to Global’s primary channel and gave Doc a pointed look. “Has there been a development in your love life that you haven’t mentioned?”
She blushed crimson.
Claudia, who had awoken from her oxygenated nap, was as eager for an explanation as I was.
“I’ve been dating this guy on-again, off-again,” Doc said to Claudia. Then, to both of us, “And as of three nights ago, it’s back on-again.”
I smiled smugly. “By guy, she means my dad.”
Claudia howled and slapped both of us on the back.
“Emily’s dad is Greg Winslowe, the owner of Winslowe Expeditions,” Doc explained.
I thought of the condoms she had shoved in my pocket. Were those really from the medical tent, or were they from her—or Dad’s—personal collection? No. I didn’t even want to know. Five gazillion times yuck.
“Just for the record, now that we’re out in the open, it would have worked out better for Greg and me if you’d gone to Townsend College like you were supposed to.”
Doc was joking, but her words were distressing.
“You know, if you had gone back, there’s a good chance he would have returned to the States next year. He’s got that land out by Mount Rainier.”
Yes, there was a small piece of land that had belonged to his grandparents. It was remote, especially by today’s standards. Once every couple of years Dad would bring up the idea of building a cabin there, and when we were last in Kathmandu, I’d seen him looking through a tiny-house magazine at the English-language bookstore.
“He can still go back even though I’m not,” I pointed out.
“That’s right. You have Tanzania. When in doubt, take a job in Tanzania.”
“It’s for Esplanade Equipment,” I said defensively. “It’s a great job.”
“What’s this about Tanzania?” Claudia asked.
“Emily is going to work in Tanzania after this.”
“I can’t tell…are congratulations in order?” Claudia said.
I said, “Yes,” at the same time Doc said, “Depends.”
After that, the three of us sat around in a weird high-altitude game of taking sips of electrolyte water. Physically, I felt much better than when I’d first arrived at Camp Three, but I was far from relaxed. How could I be, with what Luke was going through right now?
Just after nightfall, I went outside to pee and to gather more snow to make water for Doc, Claudia, and me. The partial, translucent cloud cover gave the fabric of the stars an ethereal quality. There were no clouds over the ridge of Lhotse, where the moon hung in a perfect sphere. I gazed down the twenty-five-hundred vertical feet to the glowing tents of Camp Two, where Luke could be lying in a hyperbaric chamber right now.
I have spread my dreams under your feet: tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
Against all protocol, I called Luke on the radio. I wanted to hear his voice. To hear that he’d be okay. To tell him I was thinking about him and that I’d do anything for him so long as he took care of himself and pulled through this.
I waited on the station for ten minutes. Then ten minutes longer. There was no response.