Leaving Everest

by Westfield, Megan

  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.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  The two times I’d climbed Everest without oxygen had been no less than excruciating. For seventy-two hours straight, my lungs had been on fire. Even resting in my sleeping bag was no relief once we were higher than twenty-five-thousand feet. With every step—every single one—it was a fight not to give up. Not to collapse into the cusp of suffocation.

  Though I had plenty of oxygen flowing through my mask as A-Team baby-stepped from Camp Three to Camp Four, I was suffocating just as I had on my climbs without oxygen. A mental suffocation as I worried about Luke and second-guessed my Tanzania decision.

  I walked in a trance, my mind locked on Luke. With one step it was doubt. The next, doom. Then grief, denial, love. Then back to doubt.

  There was no talk about Luke’s condition over the radio. Jim would be working directly with the Everest ER doctors at this point and communicating on a different channel. I hadn’t been able to figure out which one, and it wasn’t for lack of effort.

  All I knew was that, as of this morning, Luke was sleeping and was not in the hyperbaric chamber. But had he been in one last night? Which camp was he in now? Was he going all the way down to Base Camp today? Was he truly strong enough to walk out on his own?

  I kept a careful eye on Johnsmith and Phil as we reached the Yellow Band, a steep limestone section that was bare rock even in high-snow years. As we ascended, our crampons screeched against the rock and ice like fingernails on a chalkboard.

  We moved out of the band and went off the fixed lines to slowly crunch across the long, wide plateau toward Camp Four. Phil was steady today, and for once he wasn’t the last one in the whole company: Juan was, because of his blisters.

  Ahead of me, Phil, Glissading Glen, and Johnsmith were stopped, looking up. Without looking myself, I knew we’d reached the Geneva Spur, which is a large stretch of patchy black rock that looks a lot more intimidating than it actually is.

  It wasn’t long after reaching the top of the Geneva Spur that my altimeter beeped, marking our arrival at twenty-five-thousand feet. We’d officially crossed into the Death Zone. Without supplemental oxygen in the Death Zone, most of us would be dead in twenty-four hours, assuming we didn’t succumb to hypothermia first. By thirty-six hours, all of us would be.

  As we reached the slight downslope that led to the South Col—and location of Camp Four—the guys stopped again. This time in awe. It was the first view of the summit of Everest they’d had since the trek in, unless they’d hiked Kala Pattar. I didn’t spoil the moment by telling them that it wasn’t the true summit they were seeing but rather the South Summit, which, at these guys’ pace, was two hours of climbing away from the true summit.

  As soon as we entered Camp Four, I sat with Phil while he waited for the Sherpas to finish pitching the A-Team tents. Because of the high winds, the Camp Four tents aren’t pitched until we arrive.

  “I know the hardest is yet to come, but I can feel it,” Phil said, his eyes fixed on the South Summit. “We are so close. I know I have it in me.”

  “You’ve just got to keep it steady. As long as you stay ahead of that cutoff you’ll be fine.”

  Phil took off a glove and pulled a tiny action figure out of his pocket. He handed it to me.

  “Is this Sir Edmund Hillary?”

  “Yes. It was my brother’s. We’ve been armchair mountaineers since we were boys. Read every book out there on Mount Everest. My brother’s not alive anymore, but I’m going to leave this on the summit for him.”

  I examined the toy. “That’s a really nice gesture,” I said. “We’ll make sure to get a picture of that for your family.”

  He shook his head. “There is no family. I’m the last one left.”

  I had no
idea. “I’m sorry.”

  “It was cancer. From a closed-down aluminum plant near the house where I grew up. My parents and two sisters went first. When my brother and I were diagnosed, we said that if we got through it, we’d climb Mount Everest.”

  Phil paused to catch his breath.

  “Don’t exert yourself,” I said.

  “My brother didn’t make it, but I pulled through somehow. Took me fifteen years to be strong enough to come on this trip, and I could have never paid for it if not for the victims’ compensation monies from the aluminum company.”

  What he must have gone through! I held the well-loved antique toy in my mitten for another minute before handing it back.

  “That plant took everything away,” he said. “But I have this.”

  Phil had always been our weak link. Even on his best day, it was a question of whether he’d be going fast enough to make the cutoff time on the final day. He’d worked so hard, and now I understood why. It wasn’t just his profession and quietness that had set him apart from the others. It was his focus and determination. He needed this badly. I would help him however I could tomorrow.

  The Sherpas called up to us; Phil’s tent was done. He tried to stand but was too tired and fell back to his bottom. I gave him a hand.

  Once Phil was in his tent, I went to the twins’ tent for our final guides’ meeting before the summit push. “Turnaround time is noon,” Jim reminded us on the radio. “No matter the circumstance, even if you’re two hundred yards short of the summit, you’re going to turn your client around.”

  We reviewed the conditions at each of the trouble spots between here and the summit, as well as the latest weather report, which looked good. Tyler assigned me to be with Glissading Glen and Phurba to be with Phil.

  “Do you mind if I pair with Phil?” I asked Tyler.

  Phurba looked relieved when Tyler said yes. Despite working on Everest for three previous seasons, he’d yet to have the opportunity to summit, and not being paired with the weak link meant his chances were much better. I was happy for him. I no longer cared about my own personal chances of summiting. It wouldn’t matter in Tanzania.

  After the meeting, I went to the ladies’ tent where I found Doc and Claudia haggard, to put it nicely. No one was interested in talking. They were barely functioning, even with the oxygen flowing. The three of us forced down energy gels and split the last two Loftycakes Luke had brought me in Tengboche that I’d saved especially for this day. Sadly, at this altitude, the cakes tasted no different than eating a piece of crumpled notebook paper. I got the stove going to make us some warm broth and tea. That was more palatable.

  It was still light outside, but it was time to attempt to get a few hours of sleep before nine p.m., when my watch alarm would go off for our ten p.m. departure. I took some painkiller for my shoulder that throbbed from the extra weight of the oxygen tanks in my pack. I called Dad on the radio, and over channel ninety-nine asked him to track down Luke and make sure he was getting the medical care he needed.

  Falling asleep was going to be next to impossible with all the adrenaline in my body. I tried breathing exercises. I tried mantras. I tried meditation. But nothing was stopping the twenty-minute time blocks that were slipping through my fingers each time I gave in to the urge to check my watch. Giving up, I fished my knife out of my pack. I ran my thumb over the ridges of the bracelet like a rosary, saying a silent prayer for Luke.

  It was such a cruel twist of fate, me being up here without him. We’d been able to break through so much to find our way to each other, only to have me let it disintegrate right in front of us.

  “I love you, Luke,” I whispered aloud.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  It was drizzling, the sky low and gray. Waves came to the shore near my feet, turning the smaller boulders as the water filled in. I picked up a wet rock and threw it into the water, and then another. Drops of accumulated drizzle fell from the rim of my hood onto my nose and cheeks.

  A dog ran up. A big, yellow dog that seemed to know me. It dropped a stick at my feet, and I threw it into the sea. The dog splashed into the water, but on the way back out, ran past me.

  I turned and there was Dad, and suddenly we were indoors at somebody’s apartment. It was modern, with big windows, tall ceilings, and white couches. Doc was in the kitchen, pulling something out of the oven. The dog was circling frantically, the stick still in its mouth, mud from its paws layering on the carpet with each circle until the whole floor was brown.

  Out in the living room, there were other people. I knew all of them, but the only faces I recognized were Theo, April, and Hulk.

  The yellow dog was still circling. Something was beeping. A fire alarm? No one else seemed to hear it. The dog barked. I looked back to the kitchen, but there was no smoke. The dog barked and barked. Someone whispered my name.

  I looked the other way, down the hall. Luke was leaning against the wall, watching everyone in the living room. Watching me. The dog ran to him, then back into the kitchen. Luke’s mouth lifted playfully, then it went serious. He turned away from me and walked toward the stairs. He stopped when his foot hit the first step, looking back to make sure I was coming. And I was, I was coming.

  The fire alarm was still going off, but he didn’t hear it, and it didn’t bother me anymore. I reached him, and he put his hands on my waist, drawing me in for a kiss. I was no longer wearing my wet jacket, and I didn’t care who saw us. He slipped his hand up my shirt, running it across my stomach before sliding it down my arm and lacing his fingers with mine.

  “You sure?” I asked.

  He moved up to the next step, still holding my hand. Our arms stretched across the distance.

  The beeping wasn’t a fire alarm; it was my watch alarm.

  I took a step closer to Luke.

  The beeping.

  I had to wake up. But I wanted to go up the stairs with Luke. Where was he going? He peeked back and his dimples were showing. I took a second step, then another.

  It was cold. There was something on my mouth. I couldn’t move my arms. I couldn’t see.

  I sat up, frantic to unzip my sleeping bag and free my arms. I tore off my oxygen mask.

  Luke.

  I leaned on my knees, trying to catch my breath.

  Luke. Luke. Luke.

  I didn’t want to move. I didn’t want to lose the dream. The feeling. It was just out of my grasp, and it was slipping further away. No.

  I wanted to be anywhere but here on Mount Everest. I wanted to be back on those stairs, following Luke to a bedroom, where it would be nothing but us. Indoors, where it was warm and where we had all the time in the world.

  Reluctantly, I felt for my headlamp and turned it on. Every surface inside our tent was covered with a crust of hoarfrost that glistened in the light. It wasn’t pretty. It was ugly and very, very cold.

  Where was Luke now? I wanted to assume that he was doing better, but altitude sickness was illogical. Just when you think someone’s in the clear, they don’t pull through.

  I leaned over Doc, shaking her gently until she awoke. Claudia was awake already but not wanting to get moving. I helped her sit up.

  With the severe cold and the lethargy of the altitude, it took us the rest of the hour I’d allotted for us to choke down a few bites of food, make tea, drink the tea, and finish getting ready.

  When we finally left the tent, Theo was waiting next to the door with his handheld camera to get a shot of Claudia departing for the summit. He asked her a question, but his voice was so slurred that I didn’t have the faintest idea what he said. Or what her response was.

  The three of them walked in the direction of the lights of the hovering drone, where the first members of the Cuban team had already started climbing.

  The best summit days are the ones where there is no wind, with no clouds blocking the light of the moon or the stars. On these days, it feels like you are walking on a trail right through the nebulas of the Milky Way.


  This was not one of them. Thick clouds made the night pitch-black and ghoulish. All any of us could see was what was directly in our headlamp beam, and up ahead, the line of pinprick dots of the team members’ headlamps disappearing into the distance. This was the scary kind of outer space. The lonely kind, like the Apollo had gone back to Earth, leaving us alone on the dark side of the moon.

  We trudged at our dreadfully slow but steady pace up the relentlessly steep, never-ending Triangle Face. I kept running through my dream, doing everything I could not to lose the feeling of it. As long as I could recall it, it was like Luke was happy and healthy and here with me.

  The beach in the beginning of the dream looked a lot like Golden Gardens in Seattle. Amy used to take me there. It was a wealthy area, and in retrospect I knew our visits there had something to do with the meth. She’d go inside a house, and I’d go out on the beach by myself. But I was never sad to be left alone there. I’d simply felt free, which had been the same feeling in the dream.

  The beach could also be the one from the Circ where Olivia had sat on the rocks while Luke was out paddleboarding.

  What did the dream mean? That beautiful things didn’t have to be spoiled because of Amy? That there was a place for me in Luke’s world? To not be afraid of being alone? Because in that dream I hadn’t been alone. There was that dog, and then my dad and Doc. April and Theo. All those people at the party. Luke.

  We took a short break when we reached the relatively flat section at the top of the Triangle Face called the Balcony. The front portion of A-Team, led by Hulk and Tyler, were already well ahead of us, moving up the southeast ridgeline.

  It was daylight by the time we reached the knife blade ridge of the Cornice Traverse, which provided clear views down the sheer faces on either side of us—eight-thousand feet below into Nepal on our left, and eleven-thousand feet below to Tibet on our right. I was too cold and my head too foggy to appreciate the beauty of it.

  We hadn’t gone much farther when there were reports of the Cuban team’s summits. I checked my watch and did a quick calculation. With the distance remaining and the time taken thus far, we were ahead of the turnaround time, but only by a hair, and with the distance we still had to go, we were bound to slip behind it.