Above All Else

by Dana Alison Levy

  I don’t say this, though. I just ask him if he’s ready to go, and we start moving.

  The climbing’s harder now, and the familiar movements are a kind of homecoming, even as the air thins and spots swim in front of my eyes. It’s reassuring, carrying none of the terrors of the last few times I tried. Compared to what’s ahead, climbing is the easy part. My body knows what to do. The pull of my arms against the rock. The ache in the ball of my calf when I push to reach higher than I can really go. I loved this once, maybe love it still. But not here. Never ever here, at 22,000 feet and praying to find my friends alive.

  The sun’s hot, even with the wind, and we stop again and again to drink water. Each time we radio Yoon Su, asking her how she’s doing. Her answers are single syllables, barely enough to let us know she’s alive.

  Finally we’re near enough to Camp Two that Ang Dorji says we should start searching.

  We look for over an hour, combing through rocks and cornices that veer off from the trail. There are no footprints; everything’s been covered by snow. I spot a flash of red in the distance and rush over, fast as my oxygen-deprived body can move.

  It’s not Luc and Yoon Su. It’s a body, a fucking corpse, long dead by the amount of skull showing. The faded red down climbing suit and stiff plastic yellow boots are in pretty good shape.

  Turning away, I puke on the snow, again and again, until nothing is left.

  “You are okay?” Ang Dorji asks. He puts his hand on my shoulder. I am crouched, trembling only feet from the dead guy. “Do we need to descend?”

  I shake my head. “No. I’m fine. I…How long has that guy…?” I gesture to the corpse.

  “Ah.” He nods understandingly. “You were surprised by Yellow Boots. We should have warned you.”

  “Yellow Boots?” I say.

  “That’s what he is called now. He is a climber from a long time ago, but, like most corpses here, he remains where he fell. Nobody knows who he was, but now he is a marker. Climbers know they have missed the route to Camp Two once they see him.”

  There’s nothing to say. I take the canteen Kami offers and rinse my mouth. I kick snow over all the puke. I’m in hell, plain and simple, and there is nothing to do but find Luc and Yoon Su and get out. Still, I can’t make myself walk away from this climber—Yellow Boots—without looking again. I walk over to where he lies and crouch down.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “What a shitty thing, to die here, be left to rot, and then be used as a goddamn signpost. I’m so fucking sorry.”

  I stand and go back to the Sherpas, letting my eyes comb the snow, looking for signs of life.

  More hours, more searching. We’re about to return to the trail and try the other side when I see a flash. It looks like sun on glass, glaring and bright.

  “Hey!” I call. “Over there! Is that something?” After Yellow Boots there is no way I’m walking over to check out anything until someone’s with me.

  Dorji comes quickly and then yells in Nepali to Kami. Together we walk toward the light. As we get closer, we hear a voice, and the sound makes my skin crawl. It’s the sound of terror, of panic, more animal than human.

  Chapter Thirty-Four:

  Rose

  May 17

  Camp Four/South Col

  26,000 feet above sea level

  Until now I never really understood how people could say the summit of Everest is the halfway point. After all, once you get there, you’re going down, gaining altitude, working with gravity, not against it. Now I know.

  “I need to stop,” I mutter for the fourth time since we left the summit. My head is pounding so hard I’m afraid I might throw up, even though there’s nothing in my system.

  Finjo’s on his radio, scowling. I barely notice, too focused on trying to breathe.

  Paul hands me water, but I push the bottle away. Swallowing anything will definitely make me lose it. I lower my head between my knees and try to breathe.

  Finjo turns to us. “We need to keep moving. Let’s go!” He starts heading down again without waiting for an answer.

  I groan. Apparently, he’s all done coddling the clients. But Paul grins. “Good. I’m ready to get out of the death zone. Hell, I’m ready to walk all the way to Base Camp and celebrate with a beer!”

  His good mood is infectious, and I start to move more quickly. After resting at Camp Four we will get down to Camp Two tonight and Base Camp tomorrow. We are so close. As we descend lower, reaching the fixed rope below the Balcony, I can barely hang on. Some combination of excitement and utter exhaustion has taken over, and a weird kind of euphoria settles over me.

  I summited Everest. I did it. It doesn’t seem to matter anymore how long it takes to get down. I can walk forever, placing one foot in front of another. I am no longer cold either. It’s pleasant, this numbness.

  Paul doesn’t approve, though. Finjo is so far ahead I can barely see him, and Asha stays behind me, urging me forward. Paul seems worried. He keeps stopping to check on me, and several times he waits until I’m down the ropes before moving on. I try to give him a thumbs-up, but I’m not sure my arms actually move. I am fine. We are almost done.

  The sun is blazing in the sky and there is no wind, and before too long the tents of Camp Four are in view. Safe. We will be safe. We are less than 500 feet from the tents. I imagine lying down, imagine Sherpas handing me hot tea, imagine letting my body rest, finally. It is agonizing, these last dangerous steps. I want to be there already, to let go of the tension I’ve been holding for so many days. My legs tremble uncontrollably, and I stop again and again. Falling now could mean a broken leg or, worse, a slide off the edge to a thousand-foot drop. Paul waits for me, and together we walk into camp.

  A sense of utter safety and even coziness comes over me. We are safe. We’ve made it. Without even taking the tea, I stumble straight into my tent, remove my boots, and crash face forward into the sleeping bag. Pulling it over myself, I try and relax, but the more I try, the harder I shiver. I shake and shake until my teeth rattle. Paul comes in and wraps himself and his own sleeping bag over me, and slowly the shivers stop. My thoughts are thick and slow. I whimper a little, suddenly tensing up like I had fallen asleep on the fixed rope.

  “It’s okay, Rose,” Paul says softly. The wind is so loud I can barely hear him. He has gotten into his bag and curled up around me. “Rest. We can rest now.”

  I nod and burrow deeper. We can rest. We have made it to the top of the world, and now we are safe.

  Chapter Thirty-Five:

  Tate

  May 17

  Above Camp Two

  22,000 feet above sea level

  When we get there, Yoon Su’s screaming, trying to wrap herself around Luc, who’s lying half-undressed in the snow.

  “LUC! Luc man, we’re here. We can help. We got this. Don’t worry, man, you did great. We can fix this!” I shout. It’s bullshit, of course. I have no idea what to do, no way to know how to help them. But I keep talking, repeating myself over and over, trying to calm them, or myself; I don’t even know.

  Yoon Su has ice caked onto her skin in a sick kind of mask, and her eyes are swollen almost shut. Her nose is a scary blue red. I try to smooth out my face, try not to show the horror.

  “You did amazing,” I say again. “You’re going to be fine.”

  Yoon Su looks at me like I’m a ghost, like I’m the horror movie monster, not her. “He tried to protect me. All night. He lay on top of me, shielding me from the wind. Then this morning…This morning he moved…. He tried to take off his down suit. And he is so strong—I could not stop him.”

  Ang Dorji and Kami rush over. They grab Yoon Su, who’s gone limp. I move closer to Luc, terrified of what I’ll see. Carefully I pull his down suit back on, zipping zippers and closing flaps, like this will save him. His hands are bare and a hideous blue white, curled into claws. I
look around for his mittens but don’t see them. Pulling off my own, I try and get them on his hands, but they’re so stiff the mittens fall off. I’m too freaked out to rub them or breathe on them or do any of the normal things I’d do for mild frostbite. Luc’s hands are nothing I’ve ever seen, something out of a medical textbook or a nightmare.

  He’s moaning, the sound coming out of his frozen un-moving mouth. The sound’s awful, the soundtrack to night terrors, and my hands shake as I try and wrap the reflective heat blanket from my pack around him.

  Over by Yoon Su, the two Sherpas are pulling layers over her, injecting her with a steroid to try and reduce the blood flow. She’s moving, though. She lifts one arm, then another, as they work a rope around her, then around one of the Sherpas. They’re getting ready to short rope her down the mountain, which is brutal for them but will get her down to where a helicopter can land.

  “What about Luc?” I ask, desperate to hear that they have a plan.

  “He is too far gone.” Dorji’s face is hidden. “There is no way we can move him when he is unconscious like this. He has lots of body—we cannot carry him.”

  It is a strange phrase: “lots of body.” I look down at Yoon Su, so tiny. She is barely there, just a small, lightweight shell. But at these words she starts to scream and thrash. Kami nearly tumbles over.

  “NO! NOOOOOOOOOO! YOU WILL NOT LEAVE HIM HERE!” she shrieks. She looks possessed, flailing against the ropes that hold her to Kami. “HE WILL DIE HERE!”

  I want to close my eyes and disappear. “Yoon Su, you have to go. You can’t…You need to get down…” I try to get her to see sense, but she’s beyond hearing, beyond responding.

  “HE SAVED MY LIFE! I WILL NOT…I CANNOT LEAVE! I WILL NOT LEAVE HIM….” Her voice dissolves into screams that turn into sobs.

  My own tears pour down my face, soaking the scruff of beard. I move to wrap my arms around Yoon Su, bracing for her to flail more. But she hangs against me, sobbing.

  “You need to go down,” I whisper. “Think about your sister. And your parents. They’re waiting for you. You need to go down and get help, Yoon Su. Okay? I’ll stay with him. I’ll stay with Luc. But you need to leave.”

  Her eyes are rolling, barely able to stay open. “STAY,” she says. “HELP HIM.” Her voice scrapes against my soul.

  “I will. I promise, Yoon Su. But you go. Your mom and dad need you to go down now, okay?”

  She nods, barely.

  Ang Dorji gets off the radio and turns. “We go down now. If we are going to save her, we must leave.” He pauses and looks at me, then down at Luc.

  “I am sorry for this. We will say prayers for his soul to move quickly. But he is dead.”

  As though in answer, Luc moans louder, and his horrible claw hand reaches up and tries to grab me.

  I scream. I can’t help it. “Jesus, Dorji. We can’t…We can’t leave…” I trail off because I know exactly what he’s going to say. That we have to. That on this mountain, where you can barely ever rescue survivors, nobody risks their life to bring down a body.

  But he’s not a body. Yet.

  I know he’s right. I get it, but I can’t deal with it. Can’t deal with a place where the best thing to do is to walk away from a dying friend.

  Luc moans, and I put my arms around him, trying to lift him onto my lap.

  Ang Dorji says something in Nepali, and Kami and Yoon Su—who’s now slumped over but standing—start moving incredibly slowly, away from us.

  “You need to come now,” Ang Dorji says to me. “We will keep looking for Bishal and Dawa, to see if we can find them. Dawa has no radio because he left it with Yoon Su. And Bishal’s has been off all night. But we will try.”

  I shake my head. “I can’t. I’m sorry. I know you’re right and we can’t bring him down, but I can’t walk away.”

  “You can do nothing!” Ang Dorji snaps. It’s the first time I’ve heard him raise his voice.

  “I can stay with him. I can—” I try to remember the phrase Paul used once. “I can bear witness. I can keep him from being alone.”

  “Until when?” he says. “Until darkness comes and we have to come back and rescue you?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t think it will take that long. I’ll come down…” I pause. I don’t want to say it. “I’ll come down soon. We’re only around forty minutes from Camp Two. It’s not like I can miss it.” It’s true. Without a snowstorm, the path down to camp is clear, if treacherous. They were practically there.

  Ang Dorji stands for another moment. He doesn’t look pissed. He looks…tired. Tired and older than his thirty-whatever years. “Fine,” he says. “You stay for now. You keep the radio on. You look at your watch and come down before evening.”

  I nod, and he turns to leave, following the others down the mountain.

  Luc’s quiet. I wonder if he knows I’m staying.

  “Don’t worry,” I tell him. I hold his claw in my hand. “I won’t leave. I promise. I’ll stay right here, and you won’t be alone. You did it, you know. You summited Everest, and you kept Yoon Su alive. She’ll be okay because of you. Her sister and parents and students are all going to be so amazed and grateful…. You’re a goddamn hero. You saved her.” I keep talking. I don’t know what else to do.

  “I’m here,” I say, stupidly. “I’m right here.”

  It makes no difference. None at all.

  Chapter Thirty-Six:

  Rose

  May 17

  Camp Four/South Col

  26,000 feet above sea level

  After a few hours, Asha wakes me. “We need to keep moving,” she says. “I will melt some snow and get your bottles filled.” She heads back out.

  I hurt in a way I have never imagined. The closest I remember is when I took a bad fall on Half Dome and had bruises from shoulder blade to calf as well as a gash on my thigh that took eighteen stitches. This is worse. Groaning, I head out to meet Paul and Asha.

  When I get to them, my eyes land on Paul’s face. He too has lost weight, but mostly it looked good on him. Not now, though. His face is gaunt and almost haunted, and I do a double take. Has he looked like this all along and I never noticed?

  “Rose,” he starts, and when I hear his voice, I know that, no, he has not looked like this until right now. It is his professional doctor’s voice, one that gives bad news to parents about their children, that tries to calm terrified kids in the night.

  “What? What’s wrong?” I ask.

  “Luc and Yoon Su got lost in the storm on their way down from the summit. They spent the night out in the storm, with Dawa and Bishal. They—”

  “But they were at Camp Two! Finjo said so!” I interrupt. We thought they were drinking beer last night.

  “It was a mistake.” Asha’s voice is quiet. “Cameron could not get Dawa on his radio because the batteries were low. So he spoke to a Peak Experience guide at Camp Two who said he saw four climbers return and go into the Mountain Adventure tents. Except he was incorrect. The climbers he saw were from a different group.”

  “But when…How…?” I can’t get the words out.

  “Cameron heard from Yoon Su late late, in the middle of the night. It was too dark to do anything. Then he tried to get Finjo, but as you know—”

  “Finjo couldn’t get Cameron on the radio before he left for the summit. That’s why he talked to the other guides up here about the weather.” I feel sick. “When…When did Finjo…?”

  Asha looks down. “At the summit. When he called Cameron to give our good news.”

  “At the—but why didn’t you tell us?”

  Asha shakes her head. “There is nothing we can do up there. There is no way to get to them fast enough. So Finjo says to let you have your celebration, then he will go down, fast fast, and try to help.”

  At the summit. While I stood there, victorio
us and celebrating, my friends were dying. That’s why he was in such a rush on the descent. I gasp, then getting no oxygen, start to cough and choke.

  “Rose,” Paul starts, coming toward me.

  “They’re dead, aren’t they?” I interrupt. “Yoon Su is dead.” Because suddenly I know. I know Everest won’t let us go without taking one of us. Nausea breaks over me, and I gag a little, trying to swallow down the bile.

  “NO! No, honey, she’s alive. In rough shape but alive. She’s being brought down to Camp Two right now, and Finjo’s meeting them there, working to get a helicopter to evacuate her to Kathmandu.”

  I nod, trying desperately to catch my breath. This isn’t the worst news, then. But Paul’s still talking.

  “Luc—he’s…It’s bad.” His voice quavers a little.

  Asha speaks. “He is unconscious, and there is no rescue possible. He is too far gone.”

  “Luc?” It makes no sense. It can’t be Luc, who made everyone laugh, who promised me a dance party back in Lukla and champagne in Kathmandu.

  “You know how very difficult and dangerous it is to rescue people on the mountain,” Asha says. “Luc will not survive. He cannot move. It is not right to risk more lives to try and bring him down. Possibly later, a crew will be able to retrieve his body.”

  Retrieve his body. The words fall like rocks. I nod, tears streaming down my face. “So he’s all alone? Dying?”

  Paul and Asha exchange glances, and then Paul speaks. “No, honey. Tate climbed up to be with him. And he says he won’t leave until he’s gone.”

  Tate? It makes no sense. He didn’t even want to be here.