The Mountain Between Us

by Charles Martin

  The belt restraints on both seats were comprised of an over-the-shoulder harness system with a typical quick-release buckle. I loosened ours from our seat and used both pieces of one harness to secure the “poles” I’d just removed from the wings. The buckles, while bulky, gave me the opportunity to tighten and loosen the “brace.” I secured the brace around her leg, tightened the straps so they were snug, and placed the buckle directly above her femoral artery.

  Then I took a T-shirt from my suitcase, cut it in two, and wound each piece into a straight, taut, tubelike piece, which I placed beneath either side of the buckle. This allowed me to snug the buckles further, tightening the brace, while taking the pressure off the artery and giving her leg ample blood flow, which it was going to need.

  Lastly—and while she may not have liked any of my former actions, she certainly was not going to like this—I packed the area around the break in snow. I had to be careful to bring down the swelling while not dropping her core temperature.

  I reached further into my backpack and pulled out a pair of polypro long underwear and a wool sweater I wear when I’m on mountains. It’s a little tattered, but it’s lined with a wind-stopper fabric and it keeps me warm even when it’s wet. I pulled off her down jacket, her suit coat, her blouse, her bra, and checked her chest and ribs for any evidence of internal injuries. No bruises had surfaced. I slid her into my long underwear and sweater, which was too big but dry and warm. Then I slid her back into her down jacket, but didn’t pull her hands through the sleeves. I pulled the sleeping bag beneath her, wrapped her up like a mummy with only her left leg hanging out, then elevated and covered her left foot.

  We lose half our body heat from our head, so I pulled a wool beanie from my pack and slid her head into it, pulling it down over her ears and forehead but not covering up her eyes. I didn’t want her to wake up and think she’d either died or was blind.

  Once she was dry and warm, I realized how shallow my breathing and elevated my pulse had become. The pain in my ribs had intensified. I pushed my arms into my jacket, then lay down next to her to get warm. When I did, the dog walked across my legs, walked in two circles while his nose stretched to find his tail, and burrowed between us. He looked like he’d done that before. I stared across at Grover’s snow-covered body.

  I closed my eyes, and as I did, the fingers on Ashley’s left hand extended through her jacket and touched my arm. I sat up in time to see her lips move, but I couldn’t understand. I leaned closer. Her fingers squeezed around my palm, and her lips moved again.

  “Thank you.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  It’s daylight. The snow is still falling heavy and I can see my breath. Blowing smoke. It’s also really quiet. Like somebody hit the mute button on the world.

  Ashley is not doing too well. She may have some internal injuries. I set her leg and her shoulder, but she’ll need an X-ray on both and surgery on her leg when we get out of here. She passed out when I set her leg. She’s been asleep since. Talking some in her sleep.

  She’s got several lacerations on her arms, face, and head, but I didn’t want to move her any more than I had to. I need her to wake up and talk to me before I start sewing. I found a fly-fishing vest behind my seat filled with some monofilament that I can use for stitching.

  Grover, the pilot, he didn’t make it. Did I already tell you that? I can’t remember. He landed the plane after his heart had stopped. I don’t know how. Putting that plane down without killing all of us was nothing short of heroic.

  Me?

  I broke a few ribs. Maybe three. The pain on inhaling is sharp. Piercing. And I may have a collapsed lung. ’Course the elevation here is above 11,000 feet, so breathing isn’t all that easy anyway.

  I’ve been thinking about the possibility of a rescue, but I can’t think of any reason we should expect one. We didn’t tell anyone we were getting on the plane. Grover wasn’t required to file a flight plan. He never told anyone he had passengers, so the tower had no idea we were on the plane.

  From the side, Grover sort of looked like Dad. Or like the better parts of him. Although Grover struck me as a bit kinder.

  Some people said Dad was a jerk. Domineering. Others said I was lucky to have such a committed father. ’Course those folks wouldn’t have lasted a day in my house. Mom didn’t. He abused her, she crawled inside a bottle, and he made sure he had enough evidence to keep her hopping from one rehab center to the next, which allowed him to strip her of parental rights for good. He seldom lost. I don’t know the whole story. He let me talk to her by phone. Fleetwood Mac talks about leather and lace. My dad was handy with the leather. Our home had no lace—at least until you crept through the window.

  From the moment he clicked on the light at 4:55 a.m., I had five minutes to be standing at the back door. Dressed. Two pair of sweats, running shorts, and shoes.

  “Miles don’t run themselves. Get your butt out of bed.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Most nights I slept dressed. I remember the first time you snuck in and tugged me on the shoulder. You looked surprised. “Why you wearing all these clothes?”

  I looked at the clock and then the door. “You stay here about four hours and you’ll find out.”

  You shook your head. “No thanks.” When you figured out I was wearing two pair, you asked, “Aren’t you hot?”

  “You get used to it.”

  You tugged on me. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

  To the lifeguard station and back. Six miles. I don’t know why he chose six, but that was the number. He called it my warm-up. I think it had more to do with the doughnut shop than anything else. Cheating was impossible, because he’d drive to the shop, sit next to the glass, stare out over the ocean, coffee in one hand, doughnut in the other, paper flat on the table, checking my time as I trudged up the beach and slapped the red lifeguard’s chair. If I was up a few seconds, or fast, he’d finish his doughnut, beat me home, and say nothing. But if I was slow, he’d run out of the shop and shout across the sand. “Down seven!” or “Down twenty!”

  I learned how to run within myself, monitoring and gauging output and speed. Fear does that.

  When I got home he met me on the beach, where I was allowed to pull off both pair of sweats before I started my speed work. Mondays we ran twelve 660s. As in six hundred and sixty meters. Tuesdays were 550s. Wednesdays 330s. And so on. Sunday was my only free day, but it was a mixed pleasure because Monday was just around the corner.

  We always finished with a speed rope, sit-ups, crunches, pushups, a medicine ball, and whatever other pain-inducing thing he could dream up. He had this piece of bamboo he’d hold out above my knees.

  “Higher!”

  I’d lift them, but they were never high enough.

  He’d shake his head and speak softly. “Pain is weakness leaving your body.”

  I’d stand there, lifting my knees, staring down the beach and thinking to myself, “Good…why don’t we let some out of your body. I’m about out.”

  I lost a lot of pain in his house.

  By 7:00 a.m. I’d have run seven to ten miles depending on what day of the week it was. Then I’d go to school, try not to fall asleep in class, and then go to track practice or run with the cross-country team—both of which seemed mundane in comparison.

  Dad was managing his firm, fifty traders, all reporting to him, and if they didn’t pull their weight, he sent them packing. No mercy. Because the stock market closed at four, he would appear about four fifteen, loosened tie, stopwatch in hand, sunglasses, wrinkled forehead, staring at me over the fence.

  Yeah, he was committed all right.

  My freshman year I won the 400-meter dash in 50.9 seconds, anchored the 4 × 400 meter relay, and won the mile in 4:28. That made me state champion in three events.

  Dad drove me home in silence. No celebration dinner. No day off. No moment. He parked the car. “Five o’clock will come early. If you’re going to break four minutes by your senior year, y
ou’ve got some work to do.”

  Somewhere in there it occurred to me that, to my dad, I was only as good as my last time, and in truth, no time was ever good enough.

  When it came to school, Bs were not accepted. And an A- “might as well be a B+, so you’d better pull it up.” I had few friends, and if I wasn’t in school, I was either running or sleeping.

  Then came my sophomore year. I’d broken several state and national records. That didn’t necessarily make me the big man on campus—football players had that all wrapped up—but it did give me a reputation with folks who follow that stuff. Like cross-country runners.

  Like you.

  You entered the picture and lit my world with laughter and light and wonder. Welcome and warm. You ran by me, a dart of the eyes, a quick glance, flicking sweat off your fingertips, and I wanted to take a shower, wash off Dad, and bathe in you.

  So much of what I am, he made. Forged it in me. I know that. But Dad used pain to rid me of pain. Leaving me empty and hurting. You poured in you and filled me up. For the first time, I felt no pain.

  You gave me the one thing he never did. Love, absent a stopwatch.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  It was dark when I woke. I pressed the light button on my watch. 12:01 a.m. An entire day had passed. Then I checked the date. It took a second to register. Make that two days. We’d slept thirty-six hours straight.

  A billion stars stared down on me. Close enough to touch. The big green blob had come and gone, having spread a thick white blanket in its wake. The moon had appeared over my left shoulder. Big as Christmas. I squinted my eyes. If I could climb the mountain to my left, I could step right onto the moon and keep walking.

  As sleep pressed in, I made a mental list, which included two things: food and water, and we needed both soon. With emphasis on water. If Ashley was fighting infection, I needed to get her kidneys working and I needed to get her hydrated. Shock has a way of burning up your fluids, and while I may not have been conscious of it, I had been in shock and running on adrenalin since the crash. Tomorrow would be difficult. Especially at this elevation. If I could get the GPS working, I’d try to figure out where we were, ’cause I knew better than to expect a rescue.

  I considered the facts. We’d notified no one. And even if someone had known we’d gotten on the plane, we were—by Grover’s own calculation—more than a hundred and fifty miles off course, thanks to the storm winds. It’d be weeks before a search grid brought anyone this far out, if at all. If an air rescue were coming, and they knew exactly where to look and what to look for, we’d have seen or heard something. We had not. Or worse, we’d slept through it. Our only hope was the ELT.

  Daylight lit a blue sky. I tried to move, but I was so stiff it hurt to pick up my head. If you’ve ever been in a car wreck you know what I mean. The wreck hurts, but two or three days later the hurt really sets in. I sat up and leaned against a large boulder protruding from the snowbank. Given its location, I thought it might have been the rock that broke Ashley’s leg.

  Daylight and some clarity allowed me to see what had happened to the plane and us. When the plane touched down, we hit what looked like about eight feet of snow along with trees and the side of a huge rock. As we neared ground, a tree or rock outcropping ripped off the left wing. That left the plane heavier on the right, so with the right wing pointed toward the ground, we hit a second time, flipping us. Somewhere in the third or fourth flip, the right wing caught again and dug what remained of the nose into the snow, sort of corkscrewing us. That swept us into another rock outcropping, probably the one next to my head, which smashed the side of the plane and Ashley’s leg. The result left a relatively intact fuselage buried into a ten-foot snowdrift packed up against a rock ledge and what looked like trees growing out of the rocks.

  Bad news first. While Grover’s plane was bright blue and yellow, all but the left wing was buried several feet down. Needle in a haystack came to mind. Not to mention that the tail disintegrated when it hit the boulder. I’d found bright orange pieces of plastic, but no ELT. Hence, no signal on 122.5. No triangulation. No cavalry. The truth was hard to swallow. I didn’t know how I’d break it to Ashley.

  The only good news—if you can call it that—was that this “burial” gave us a measure of protection from the elements. Otherwise, we’d already be dead from exposure. Thirty-two degrees above zero is better than thirty-two below.

  Ashley lay sleeping and her face was flushed, which probably meant fever, which probably meant infection. Neither of which were good, but both of which I expected. I had to get some fluids into her.

  The best I could do was crawl, so I rolled to my backpack, dug out my Jetboil, and filled the canister with fresh powder from just outside the cave. I clicked it on, the blue flame erupted, melted the snow. As it melted, I added more. Either the noise of the burner or my movement woke her. Her face was puffy, swollen, and her eyes were slits. Her bottom lip was fat, and now that it was daylight, I needed to clean her cuts and start sewing the ones that needed stitches.

  I held a cup of warm water to her lips. “Drink this.”

  She sipped. I had a bottle of Advil somewhere in my pack. I desperately wanted to down about four, but I knew she was in more pain and would need them more than I in the days to come. I found them in a side pocket, dumped four into my hand, and held one to her lips. “Can you swallow this?”

  She nodded, I placed it on her tongue, and she swallowed. We repeated this three more times. Slowly. The snow around her leg had long since melted, so the swelling, while it might have gone down at one time, was back. And swelling brought pain. If I could reduce the size of her leg, I could also reduce the pain. The Advil worked from the inside, snow would work on the outside. I repacked her leg, gently, with snow and felt for the pulse around her ankle to make sure she was getting good circulation. I kept holding the cup to her lips until she finished the whole thing. That meant eight ounces. My goal for the day would be five more of those. Forty-eight ounces of fluid would remind her kidneys to get to work.

  I refilled the cup and the Jetboil, taking some fluid myself. Ashley forced her eyes open as much as the swelling would allow. She scanned the cave, what was left of the plane, the dog, her torn clothing, the brace on her leg, and then her eyes settled on Grover’s body. She stayed there a minute, then looked at me. “Is he…?”

  “He was gone before the plane touched down. Heart, I guess. I don’t know how he landed it.”

  She reached up, walking her fingertips across her face and head. Her expression changed.

  Slowly, I pulled her hand down. “I need to stitch you up.”

  Her voice was hoarse. “What day is it?”

  I gave her the short version. When I finished, she didn’t say anything.

  I dug through Grover’s fly-fishing vest and found some fine monofilament. I stripped one of the flies off the vest and removed all the stuff that made it look like a fly, exposing a single barbless hook. I needed to straighten the hook to more of a ninety-degree angle, but I needed a tool. Something to help me straighten the hook.

  Grover’s belt.

  I dug through the snow around his waist and found the Leatherman. When I popped open the snap on the holster, his stiff body didn’t move. I needed to bury him, but I also needed to get Ashley stitched up and I needed to find some food. He’d have to wait.

  I straightened the hook, threaded the monofilament through the eye, and tried to flatten the eye with the pliers. When I looked back at Ashley, tears were rolling down her face.

  She said, “I’m sure his wife is worried about him.”

  We hadn’t talked yet about our predicament. The being-stuck part. One of the things I’ve learned both in medicine and climbing mountains is that you attack one crisis at a time. The next was her face and head.

  I used the Leatherman and dug out a second shelf in the snow lower than the makeshift shelf on which Ashley now lay. In my practice, following surgery, I have a habit of going to my patients’ r
ooms and checking on them. Oftentimes, I’ll roll a stainless steel stool on wheels up to the side of the bed. The level of which actually puts me lower than most of them, allowing them to look down or at least straight at me. Ever noticed how it’s hard to look up when you come out of surgery? Me too. This shelf next to Ashley accomplished the same sort of thing. Maybe it has something to do with bedside manner.

  The wind gusted, scraping the branch across the Plexiglas. I was finally able to dig my sleeping bag out of my pack and spread it on the shelf next to her. Until now we’d been sharing; now we each had our own.

  I held the cup to her lips, and she sipped. I wiped the tear from her face. “What hurts?”

  She glanced at Grover’s body. “Him.”

  “What else?”

  “My heart.”

  “Physically or emotionally?”

  She laid her head back. “Do you know how long I’ve wanted to get married? Looked forward to, even planned, my wedding. Like…all my life.”

  “How about on your body?”

  “Everything.”

  “I’m not finished hurting you. I need to sew a few stitches.”

  She nodded.

  Three places. The first required two stitches in her scalp, which were relatively painless. The second was along the top of her right eye, running through the middle of her eyebrow. An older scar had split upon impact. I pierced the skin with the hook and said, “There’s an older scar here.”

  “Nationals. I was eighteen. Other kid caught me with a roundhouse. Never saw it.”

  I tied the first stitch and started on the second. “Knock you out?”

  “No. Made me mad.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cause I knew it was going to mess up my prom pictures.”

  “What’d you do?”

  “Caught him with a spinning back kick followed by a double round and finally an ax kick, which cockroached him.”

  “Cockroached?”