earthquakes had exposed their foolishness. They had lost their faith. Abe could see his
despair in the others.
On the fifth morning, Abe went ahead for help. The snows had gotten deeper and
bogged them down. Weak and slow, he feared the group wouldn't last another night
out.
Alone, he ripped a path through the frozen desert.
After many hours, Base came into view on the flat valley floor. The camp may as
well have been avalanched, for the blizzards had buried it under five feet of snow.
Fully half the tents had collapsed. Those remaining were connected by a network of
deep trenches.
Abe found the other climbers gathered for dinner in the big khaki mess tent. It was
dark and cold inside. A kerosene lantern hung from the bamboo roof support, though
it leaked less light than inky black smoke.
Abe took a minute to adjust to the dim light. The smell of food dazed him. They
didn't see him at first.
'Abe?' someone asked. 'Is that you?' The voice became a face. Stump had survived
the descent.
It looked like a bomb shelter in there. Part of one wall was lined with the remains of
their gear and food. At one time the expedition pantry had lacked for nothing. Now
they were ransacking the last of their stock.
Abe searched around for others. Through J.J.'s parka, he saw white tape binding his
rib cage. Thomas was slumped over the table behind a curtain of derelict hair, eyes
bloodshot. Robby lay propped in one corner with huge frostbite blisters bubbling
across his fingers. An ancient man leaned forward from the shadows. It was Jorgens,
emaciated. In the space of a week, he had aged a quarter-century.
'Impossible,' Jorgens protested. He was stunned the way men are upon learning
they've forsaken a companion.
'We called and we called,' he stammered. 'But the radio was dead. We waited for
you. We watched the Hill. But you were lost.'
'No one could have lived through those avalanches,' Thomas added. 'We got mangled
ourselves. And the snow was getting deeper. We had imperatives...'
None of them moved. Abe scarcely listened to them. He felt disembodied. The
climbers seemed less real than hallucinations.
'Are you the only one?' Stump asked.
Abe shook his head. The ice in his beard rattled like beads.
Thomas posed a different type of question. 'You made it down. But did you make it
up? Did you guys top out?'
Stump frowned at Thomas. The question of victory sounded mercenary. All the
same, Stump didn't tell Thomas to shut up. Like the others, he waited for Abe's
answer.
Abe looked from one pair of eyes to the next. His answer was obviously of great
importance to them, but he was suddenly unsure what the answer really was. For
some reason the summit tripod loomed large in his memory. It seemed close enough
to put his hands on, to tie his red puja string to the wire. He felt for the string at his
throat, but it was gone. He wondered where it could have disappeared to.
Abe tried putting it into words. At last someone led him to a chair. It was Krishna.
He placed a cup of hot tea on the table before him.
'Where are the rest of your people, Abe?' Stump gently asked. Abe heard his pity
and saw the doubt in his eyes. Stump didn't think there were any other survivors. It
took an effort for Abe himself to believe that his band of refugees was not a phantom.
'They're there all right,' Abe finally croaked.
'But where, Abe?'
'In the snow. On the trail.' That was the best he could do. He searched for something
more relevant. 'Hot tea,' Abe recommended. 'They would like that.'
Stump and Nima and three Sherpas set off to rescue whoever was left. At midnight,
by the light of their headlamps, they found the refugees. The night sky had clouded
over and so, fearing a new storm, they immediately started back down the trail. It
was nearly dawn before they reached camp.
They laid Gus on the wicker table in the mess tent because Abe's hospital had caved
in beneath the snow. At his request, the hospital had been partially excavated
overnight, and so he had access to all the medicines and oxygen and other supplies.
Steeped in caffeine and braced with hot food, Abe went to work on her.
The sun was just creeping over the east shoulder of the Rongbuk Valley, and the
tent wall lit up as he cut away Gus's bloody clothing and exposed her injuries to full
view. The months had taken their toll on Gus. Her beautiful athlete's body was gone,
replaced by a construction of sinew and bones. Every rib showed and her carefully
wrought muscles had vanished. Her moon-round breasts had withered.
'What's that stink?' Robby asked. From experience, Abe knew. Daniel would know,
too. Clostridia: gas gangrene. Abe dreaded what was coming. But first things first.
Because Daniel refused to leave, Abe gave him a Betadine scrub to wash Gus's upper
body. That let Abe consider the destruction below her waist.
With a pair of kitchen scissors, he finished cutting away her windpants and the
layered underclothing. Every snip of the scissors revealed more injury, more atrophy,
more loss. Between her legs, cupped in her panties, Abe found Gus's most secret loss.
She had been pregnant with Daniel's child, after all.
The remains were a week old, dating back to the avalanche. The mountain had
killed it. Quickly, so Daniel wouldn't know, Abe balled the desiccated sac inside her
panties and laid it in the pile of rags. Its disposal would have to wait.
Abe turned his attention to the injured right leg. He cut away Daniel's makeshift
splint and exhaled.
The leg was so damaged that the broken bones were almost secondary. Only now
did Abe verify that Daniel had rotated the leg properly. Daniel had done the best he
could under deadly conditions, but even so Gus's knee joint was completely
devastated.
'Daniel,' Abe said. Daniel paused in his tender cleansing of her bony arms. 'You need
to go away, Daniel.'
'I can't do that,' Daniel said.
'Okay,' Abe said. 'But look away.' With Jorgens's help, Abe began to reorganize the
leg. Bones popped and grated. Abe kept one hand on the knee and felt its parts leap
and dip. Jorgens – the ex-marine – had to leave the tent to vomit. At the sound of the
gruesome noises, Daniel crouched by Gus's ear and whispered, though she could hear
nothing.
That was just the beginning. Next Abe tried to determine the extent of her
fractures. The limb was so swollen he could barely trace the bones, much less find any
'override' of broken ends. There were at least three major breaks, possibly four, and
traction would have been his choice of treatment. But any sort of splints, even a soft
plastic air splint, would cut the blood supply to her mottled foot even more. He
couldn't afford that.
The frostbite had spread above her ankle. Every toe had turned black with necrosis.
They would have looked like mummified claws in a freak show, except the blackness
wasn't dry. It was draining and the unbroken blisters were inflated with gas. Death
was creeping into Gus through her toes.
'I'm sorry,' Daniel whispered to Gus. 'Forgive me.' The sight of her toes had set him
off.
'J.J.,' Abe said. 'Take him out of here.'
'I'm okay,' Daniel said.
Robby saw the toes and guessed what was coming. 'I'll help J.J.,' he volunteered,
and the two of them led Daniel out.