Leaving Everest

by Westfield, Megan

  The full force of the wind hit us once we exited the icefall. Here, I should have been able to see up the Western Cwm to Camp Two, but all that was visible was Camp One and the slope of the cwm that seamlessly blended into the clouds ahead and to the sides. Hulk and Tyler and the others at the front of the group were already hidden by those clouds.

  Camp One was vacant when we arrived. Having pushed our clients through the last half of the icefall, I wasn’t sure they had enough power left to make fast enough progress up the cwm before we were trapped in the storm. I halted Phurba and Dorje to discuss it. “Think we should hold off here?” I asked.

  Phurba glanced around and nodded. “Yeah, maybe.”

  I swallowed. It was such an easy slope, but the storm… You don’t risk getting caught in any storm outside of camp on Mount Everest. Or anywhere in the Himalayas, period.

  “Jim, this is Emily,” I said into the radio. “We’re in Camp One. I’ve got Phil, Glen, Johnsmith, Phurba, and Dorje. We might need to call it here.”

  “Okay, Emily, hold on.” The wind howled so loudly I could barely hear him. Even though my back was to the wind, ice flakes lashed the exposed slivers of skin between my glacier glasses and balaclava.

  “Emily, this is Jim. We have some supplies at Camp One, but the sleeping bags are up at Camp Two. It’s just a straight shot from where you’re at. How long do you think your clients will take?”

  If it was just me, I could do it in forty-five minutes. I looked over to Phil, our weakest link. He was coughing but otherwise holding up okay.

  “If your guys can manage it, I’d rather not have the group separated when this storm hits,” Jim said.

  It could take two hours for Phil to cover the distance.

  “Yeah, yeah, Mr. Jim.” It took me a second to realize that this was Dorje responding to him in the radio. “We keep going.”

  Before I could question Dorje, he was signaling for our clients to get moving. My body bristled. This was not the right decision.

  But, then, what did I know? Look what happened in the icefall last time. And in the mountains, it wasn’t a question of risk or safety, it was choosing your risk. Getting stranded at an unequipped camp wasn’t a good option, either.

  We kept going, and it seemed visibility was worsening by the minute. After a half hour of walking, I insisted everyone rope up so no one could accidentally wander out of sight.

  After an hour—the point that Jim would have likely expected we would arrive at Camp Two—he called me on the radio.

  “Total whiteout here,” I yelled over the wind. “Can’t see the camp.”

  “You lost line of sight?”

  “Never had it.”

  He spouted off a list of instructions straight from Mountaineering 101, including roping up, planting pickets as we progressed, and turning on headlamps. Already done, done, and done.

  “Just keep going. Be sure to stay on the boot-packed trail so no one ends up nose diving into a crevasse.”

  Great.

  Phurba was at the head of the rope. I was at the back with Dorje. Johnsmith was slowing down. Why hadn’t I noticed how bad his limp was getting? I clapped his shoulder. “Keep moving,” I told him. “We’re almost there, and we’ll bring you to Doc Teresa so she can look at your leg.”

  We kept on in faith. Yes, it was a low angle and there was no skyscraper-tall cliff to walk off, but it was damned scary to be in a whiteout with three grown men all depending on me and the Sherpas. The lack of visibility made me claustrophobic, and I yearned to pick up the pace and get the heck to Camp Two. Instead, I did the only thing I could: wiggled my fingers and toes and rubbed my arms and thighs in an attempt to stay warm.

  Up ahead, at the max point of my visibility, Phurba waved his arms in excitement. “I see the tents,” he told me over the radio.

  I couldn’t see anything but whiteness beyond him, but by the time my trailing end of the rope arrived at where he had been standing, I saw the tents through the shifting snow. Phurba was helping Glissading Glen off the rope and into his tent.

  Thank god.

  Phurba and Dorje took care of Phil and the rest of our group while I walked Johnsmith into the cook tent, where Tyler volunteered to get Doc.

  I tried to conceal my chattering teeth from Thom and the Sherpas while I looked anxiously at Johnsmith, praying it was just his leg that had slowed him down. What if I’d missed signs of altitude sickness? It was hard to tell, not knowing him very well and being delirious with cold myself.

  Doc entered noiselessly and checked Johnsmith’s vitals.

  “He’s just chilled, and his knee is swollen. We’ll give him some heat packs and ibuprofen.”

  Doc made sure he took the right amount of medicine, then stood back with me. “Get to your tent and warm up, Em.”

  My tent, where Luke would surely be. Doc broke open two packets of hand warmers for me and nudged me toward the door.

  When I reached our tent, I struggled to unzip it with my stiff fingers, then practically fell inside as a gust of wind trucked by and pushed me down. Luke was lying in his sleeping bag, listening to music on his phone. It wasn’t as big of a deal to see him as I’d thought. That’s the blessing of being hypothermic. You don’t care about anything.

  As soon as I managed to get my boots off, I slipped deep inside my sleeping bag, cinching the cord around the top of my head. I pulled the hand warmers out of my pockets, rubbing them across my body—feet, knees, sides, hands.

  Dorje had made the right call today about continuing to Camp Two. We’d have been in grave trouble if we’d been stuck in Camp One without sleeping bags. At the moment, I was thankful to be right where I was, even if the other person in the tent hated me.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Everything was all messed up. There were seracs the size of semitrucks falling toward me like dominoes, but they disappeared before they hit. There were huge pine trees and rain. Headlights that flashed from side to side as cars drove a wet, windy road. The cars morphed into people with headlamps, and the road became a trail. The rain turned into snow that was being sucked down a gorge toward the raging river at the bottom. I was being pulled, slowly, by my waist, into this gorge. There was nothing to hold on to. Nothing to stop me.

  I knew, logically, I was having a nightmare, but my brain was curious what was going to happen next, and it took me a long time to wake up. When I finally succeeded, I sat up and calmed myself by stretching my aching shoulder.

  Luke’s back was to me, his itchy, dry cough repeatedly interrupting whatever he was listening to on his phone. With the storm howling all around us, the tent was in constant motion as the wind pulled it one way, then pushed it hard in a different direction.

  I was dying of thirst. I pulled my water bottle out of my pack, but it was frozen solid. I would have to boil some water if I wanted anything to drink, but that would involve melting snow on my stove, and that meant going outside to get the snow, which was the last thing I wanted to do.

  Luke flipped over to his back, pausing abruptly when he noticed I wasn’t asleep anymore. His neutral expression was forced. He was not happy to see me.

  “You were shaking,” he said.

  “Yeah. It was damn cold out there, and it’s supposed to get even colder.”

  His only response was a single nod before facing away again and turning up the volume on his phone. This was going to be a long day.

  No. Not a long day. A long couple of days in the tent. Great.

  I grabbed my frozen water bottle and put it between my legs with the hope of melting enough for a swallow or two. Mr. Music over there, with his much faster clients, and therefore extra time in the tent, had probably already brewed a ton of water for himself, but I would rather die of thirst than ask him for any.

  I checked my water bottle. Still frozen solid. I tore open a pouch of energy gel and sucked it down, hoping it would make my dry mouth feel better. It made it worse. Now I was even more thirsty, and I had nothing to wash away the
super-sweet aftertaste.

  Irritable from my thirst and the icy chill from the bottle leaching through my pants, I glared at Mr. Music. It took some nerve for him to be acting like an asshole, especially when he had promised he’d be civil.

  I tapped him on the shoulder. He looked over. I motioned for him to sit up and was a little surprised when he actually did.

  “You said you’d be normal,” I said.

  His eyes were dead, and this gave me a pang of guilt. But I had to ignore it in order to keep going. “We have at least ten more nights sharing a tent before we tag that summit, and we have to be able to work together like civil people.”

  Still, he wasn’t reacting, and I struggled to keep hold of my anger. At the moment, it was the only thing protecting me from panic and grief.

  “Fake it?” he asked. “That’s what you want me to do? So, what, should we get the checkers board out and pretend we’re thirteen again?”

  “Yes!” Having to speak loudly to be heard over the wind gave me more conviction. For once, there was no worry about being overheard. “You promised you’d be civil.”

  “Well, Emily, guess what? It doesn’t work like that.”

  “It has to.”

  “Oh yeah?” His eyes were fiery.

  “Yes, definitely, yeah. You have to stop acting so…so angry.”

  “You’re so used to everyone walking around on eggshells. Your dad, you, the Sherpas—you guys are afraid to death of anything unpleasant. Well, I’m not acting angry, I am angry.”

  He put his earbuds back in.

  Blood burned beneath my wind-raw cheeks. He’d basically just slammed a door in my face. I got control of myself, then dressed to go out in the storm to get some snow to brew.

  Outside, the winds had to be at least fifty miles an hour, sustained. They pushed me so hard, I could barely zip the door. Keeping a careful hand on the tent frame, I went around to the back and packed snow into my three wide-mouthed bottles.

  I was covered in blowing snow from just a few minutes outside, so I zipped myself in the vestibule to shake it all off before going the rest of the way inside. The wind and cold had zapped my anger, though I still wished I was anywhere else in the world besides a five by seven tent with Luke.

  Now I perfectly understood why all those Going on Eighteen articles advised readers to not get tangled up with coworkers. It wasn’t the getting together part that was the problem; it was the falling out. They liked to warn about crossing the friendship line as well. Once things went bad romantically, the friendship would be gone, too.

  I had both cases on my hands, and in an isolated and high-stakes situation the Going on Eighteen writers could never have envisioned.

  My mind jabbed me with the words, fight for it, but at the moment, I couldn’t muster the strength. All I wanted was a drink of water.

  Back inside the tent, Luke continued ignoring me. I tried to not let it hurt.

  I set up my stove and dumped a bottle of snow in the pot to melt, but the push-button igniter wasn’t working. I lit one of the backup matches and held it next to the flow of gas. Nothing. Great.

  I turned off the gas and vented the tent door a little so there wouldn’t be a buildup of propane. I shook the canister. It was nearly full. I reassembled it and tried again. The stove would still not light. My nerves were tight with frustration. All I wanted was a drink of water, for god’s sake. I was thirsty enough to consider putting my face in the pot and taking a bite of snow despite the risk of contamination. I tried one more time to get the stove lit. It didn’t work. Damn. My whole body was shaking, and I was seconds from losing control and throwing the stove across the tent.

  It was like my inability to produce a sip of water was representative of all that was wrong in my life. I didn’t seem to be in control of anything, including the ability to reach the one person my soul needed as much as my body needed water.

  Just like that, my built-up frustration morphed into sorrow. Tears sprung to my eyes and ran down my cheeks, too big and too fast to stop.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  My tears were sorrow, but they were also relief. My back was to Luke, whose back was to me, and I knew the roaring wind would easily cover my sniffles, so I didn’t bother trying to stop.

  There was nothing left for me anywhere on earth. No home. No future. There was no one in my court, on my team. This was my truth. And it would be okay. It would somehow, sometime become okay.

  Something hard and heavy nudged my hip. It was one of Luke’s water bottles. I picked it up and drank gratefully but was careful to take only just enough to quench my immediate thirst.

  “Talk to me, Emily,” he said.

  He was saying this only because he felt sorry for me because of my crying. Out of pride, I was tempted to thank him for the water and crawl into my sleeping bag. To remain alone rather than risk further heartache.

  But I didn’t want to be alone. I wanted him. And even though it was from pity right now, I had his attention.

  Fight for it.

  This was my chance, possibly my only chance, to make things right. I pivoted on my sleeping bag and lifted my soggy face to him. If he wanted true and unprotected, this was what it looked like.

  “My very first reaction when you showed up in Tengboche was that I had a big problem on my hands,” I said. “Because my feelings for you were every bit as strong as they were two years ago. Stronger, even. They overpowered me, and I didn’t know how I was going to function around you and keep that fact hidden.”

  Luke’s water bottle was still sitting on my sleeping bag. I twisted the lid back and forth. “No matter what I’ve ever said or didn’t say, I hope you understand that none of it was intentional, and none of it was an indicator of my true feelings.”

  I stilled my fingers on the bottle, closed my eyes briefly, then lifted them to Luke. His face was emotionless, but at least he was holding my gaze.

  I reminded myself of the tears on his face at the Y in the trail. I loved him. Keep going. Fight for him.

  “You knew you’d be seeing me for months before you got here, but I had no idea I’d ever see you again. When you came back, you were so accomplished, and I felt like a straight-up failure-to-launch, a troll living in my dad’s basement. You were out experiencing the real world—a world I’m intimidated of going back to—and leading expeditions of your own. And even if I thought there was the remotest hope of my feelings for you being mutual, until recently, I thought you had a girlfriend.”

  I paused to take a breath. “You are the biggest happiness I’ve ever had. The biggest heartbreak, too. I just want to see that somewhere in your eyes there is still hope. That you don’t hate me. That there’s at least still a friend in there somewhere.”

  When I stopped to search his eyes, instead of hope, his face was even more statue-like than before. I looked down, ashamed.

  I almost didn’t catch it when he started to speak, because his voice was so quiet. I had to scoot closer to hear him over the wind. The familiar, woodsy smell of his deodorant overwhelmed me.

  “I’m sorry I’m angry and that I’ve been awful. You mean the world to me, but I feel like it’s all been an illusion. I’m going to lose you again in a few weeks, and I don’t know what to do.”

  The finality and raw emotion in his voice renewed my tears. This time, he put his arms around me gently. It was too loose, but I’d take it.

  “Tell me about your mom,” he said.

  I took a few breaths.

  “Dad and I didn’t set out to deceive people about her. It’s what people assumed, and we let them. It was just easier that way.”

  “No, tell me about her. As in, what she was like.”

  My chest clenched. “She was a lot different than me. She hated being outside. She liked perfume and makeup and dressing up.” And methamphetamine, I thought silently. “I was always getting in trouble. I was a hassle for her.”

  “You? Getting in trouble?”

  “Yeah, all the time. I w
as kind of sassy, and I would always get bored with the normal stuff.”

  “Like what?”

  “Oh, you know. Dolls and cartoons. Tea sets. Dress-up. So I wandered off a lot and would get messy and muddy and ruin my clothes and lose my jacket and mittens. I was always climbing things I shouldn’t, and then I’d get hurt. There were lots of trips to urgent care.”

  “I can’t picture it.”

  “I changed.” My voice cracked.

  Luke tightened his grip around me.

  “There was a child protective services investigation against Amy once because I kept getting hurt. And because of that investigation, she almost got caught. See, she did meth. And she sold it. To minors, too.”

  “And that’s when you changed.”

  “No. It was only later, after she did get caught.”

  “Emily…” He lifted his arms so that they were surrounding my shoulders protectively. “It blows my mind that we’ve been friends for ten years and I didn’t know any of this.”

  “I’ve never talked about it to anyone. Not even to Dad.”

  Even now, I didn’t like thinking about it, let alone talking about it or rehashing any of the details. It contained such ugly truths.

  “You never talk about your dad, either,” I said.

  “None of us talk about the dead.”

  “But still.”

  “Mom told me not to. Before you even got to Tengboche the first time.”

  “Because you thought my mom was dead?”

  “No. Because it was Greg’s expedition he died on.”

  Oh, Luke. Internally, I wept for him.

  “Mom didn’t want you to feel bad about it.”

  I slid my hand beneath his, and we threaded our fingers together.

  “It’s okay. I was only five. Pasang wasn’t even born yet. I have very few memories of him.”

  “But you have your name, and you hear that a hundred times a day.”

  He nodded slowly. “My dad loved working in the mountains, or so Mom tells me. There were a few years when he had the international record for most Everest summits. Because of his paid work with the Western expeditions. From what Mom has said, I’m sure he would have loved to have been a sponsored climber like your dad, but this was almost twenty years ago. The possibility probably never even crossed his mind.”