Chapter Forty-Five
“Phil, you have to stand up.”
“Give me a minute.”
“No, now! You have to keep moving.”
I grabbed him by the armpits and yanked. My injured shoulder protested, and I let him go.
“We can’t be wasting time right now,” I said. “We have very little oxygen left to get back to the South Summit.”
Not to mention very few hours before dark. Or before the jet stream assumed its usual position right across the top of Everest.
I gave another yank, and this time Phil stood. He wasn’t being competent with his ascender on the fixed line. He stumbled on his crampons and fell face first into the snow.
Oh shit.
I yanked his pack open, quickly confirming my suspicion: he’d exerted himself so much getting to the summit that he’d blown through all of his oxygen. His tank was on empty.
I helped him sit and then called Jim on the radio. I prayed Dad wasn’t eavesdropping on Global’s channel, because if he was, he’d hear an edge to my voice that Jim and the rest of the guys wouldn’t notice.
No one rogered up. My gut churned. Were they busy with something else going on? I realized I hadn’t been paying any attention to radio calls in the last hour or two. At altitude, your mind sheds things without you even knowing it.
I waited, then repeated my call, practically yelling into the microphone to make sure I could be heard over the wind.
“Emily, did you just call?” Jim asked.
“Yeah. Phil’s out of oxygen.”
“Where are you?”
“Midway to the South Summit.”
“Hello, Jim, it’s Norbu. Ang Dawa is right at the cache. I’ll have him walk a canister back.”
“Okay, good,” Jim said.
In the meantime, I had to get him moving. I administered a shot of dex, and then short-roped him.
I stood in front of Phil, pulling at his arms like they were the reins of a stubborn burro. Eventually, I coaxed him to his feet and let him walk ahead while I held onto the rope I’d tied to his harness. It was like walking a Great Dane straining against its leash, and I had to brace with my full body to help stabilize him. I eyed the sixty-degree slope to our left and the eleven-thousand foot drop-off at the end of it.
Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit.
Jim called me on the radio. “Norbu’s sending Ang Dawa your way with oxygen for Phil.”
“Okay, roger,” I said.
“Emily, did you copy?” Jim asked.
Something was wrong with my radio. I clicked the button to see if it was sticking, which it was not.
“Yes, roger, copy,” I repeated.
“Good. Thanks, Emily.”
I tried not to be anxious with our slow and sloppy progress, but every minute that ticked by was a minute colder, a minute closer to darkness, a minute more of oxygen deprivation. Further, there was a lot of chatter on the radio, and being oxygen deprived and exhausted, I couldn’t make sense of any of it. Some sort of incident on the Yellow Band.
Ang Dawa appeared in front of us like an angel. With a fresh tank of oxygen, Phil came alive, like one of the windup dolls in the Nutcracker ballet my grandma had taken me to a couple of times. Now he was apologizing profusely, like Amy used to do when she was high.
“Never mind that,” I said. “Let’s get moving.”
It was way too late to still be above the place where the Hillary Step used to be. Dad would be losing his mind about now, but I gave him kudos for not interfering and tying up the channels. In the middle of the Cornice Traverse, my vision darkened like a tunnel. My oxygen had run out. I insisted Phil and Ang Dawa go ahead because I wouldn’t be able to keep their pace without oxygen.
By the time I got to the cache on the South Summit, I was so woozy that each step was like trying to stand up in a canoe. I dropped onto my hands and knees to swap out a fresh oxygen bottle and put my mask back on. The air was warm and moist, immediately easing my dry cough and spreading warmth through my veins. I let myself enjoy a few minutes of full flow, during which I was so high, I could have paraglided off the South Summit, no matter that I didn’t have a rig.
I clipped back onto the line to catch up with the others. The light was starting to fade. I was haggard and practically hypothermic, but this was normal on Everest. My mind went right back to where it had been before the summit.
Luke. Luke. Luke.
I had to get to Camp Four to tell him I was coming to Washington.
As I walked, I let myself dream. Would we switch our flights so we could fly out of Kathmandu together? Those long hours in the air together would be paradise. We’d play cards and watch movies and joke around and, since we wouldn’t have to hide our relationship anymore, we could also be holding hands freely and kissing.
There was still a lot of chatter coming across the radio, some of it in high-speed Sherpa. Now that I was on oxygen, I channeled my focus into the broken conversations to figure out what was going on.
“…I’m really concerned at this point.”
“…blood in the snow…frozen mincemeat…”
“Yes…bad situation.”
I couldn’t tell who was talking or who they were talking about. My body tensed. What if they were talking about Luke?
No, it wouldn’t be Luke. They wouldn’t be talking about him on this channel.
“…how long were they off?”
“At least thirty minutes. There was…”
How long was what off? It was Jim now, talking to Thom. There must be more than one situation going on down below us. I continued listening, trying to make sense of it. That’s when I heard something that made me stop in my tracks. Thom used the word “she.”
She’s totally blind.
The Cuban Team, minus Juan, had gotten into Camp Four a long time ago. There was only one other she in the entire Global outfit.
One of the people in trouble down below was Doc.