The Long List Anthology Volume 7, page 4
But I sometimes wondered. Now that I was actually on Everest the mountain felt like that gourmet burger restaurant Ronnie bought a few years back. Bad decor and overpriced food yet always filled with tech bros and hedge fund managers whose haircuts cost more than a hundred bucks. Ronnie loved the restaurant and took his top people there most weekends for beers and laughs. No matter that we were sick of the damn place. That we couldn’t eat another of those fancy burgers even if our mommies kissed our cheeks and begged us to swallow.
But eat them we did. And convinced ourselves we loved them. Because Ronnie did.
As I climbed the last few meters to the top of Everest, I wondered why summiting felt like another weekend at that damn burger place.
My body was so weak it felt as if I swam through wet concrete. I gasped at the oxygen streaming into my mask. I stepped to the top behind Ronnie. We were the last to summit. Nyima was already descending with the others in our group.
Ronnie took a photo of me at the summit. When I offered to take one of him he shook his head and said we needed to descend.
I stared at the distant Tibetan plateau. At the other nearby eight-thousanders. Lhotse. Makalu. Kangchenjunga. All mountains nearly as tall as Everest. All their peaks in the same death zone which was killing me, my body unable to grasp enough oxygen even with this mask.
“Someday we’ll climb them all,” Ronnie yelled. “We need to go.”
Distant clouds swirled one of the mountain ranges. For a moment Ronnie looked worried. He stepped forward and slipped, only his climbing axe keeping him from sliding toward the edge of the mountain. I wondered if the effect of not using oxygen was getting to him.
But I said nothing and followed him. Because at this point what else could I do?
• • • •
By the time we climbed down the Hillary Step the clouds were closer. From this distance they looked pretty. But darkness was also falling, with the sun so low that the side of the mountain we climbed down was now in a giant shadow. We had to reach the temporary camp at South Col before the pending storm reached us. Below us in the distance I saw Nyima and the other expedition climbers—it looked like they’d make our overnight camp before the storm hit.
We turned on our headlamps and staggered forward.
I focused on following Ronnie, forcing my exhausted body to take step after step, and almost ran into him when he suddenly stopped. We stood near the rock overhang where the climber had been freezing to death. Maybe Ronnie wanted to see if we could still help.
But there was no one under the overhang.
Ronnie stumbled backwards, knocking me down. I slammed my climbing axe into the snow to steady myself as Ronnie backed up even more.
The woman in the faded red coat stood before us on the mountain’s edge, right beside a sheer drop of a thousand meters or more. Her face and hands were no longer covered now that the sun was hidden by shadows. She cradled the frozen man in her arms like a child and bit into his neck. Red sprayed across the spindrift snow. The man didn’t move, either dead or so far gone he felt no pain.
The woman turned toward me and Ronnie and smiled, the blood on her lips and chin instantly freezing.
“I waited for you two,” she said. “You’re already dead, you know.”
Ronnie held his climbing axe before him like a weapon, but I didn’t move. We barely had the strength to reach camp let alone fight. Besides, it would be so simple for her to knock us off the mountain if she desired.
The woman shook her head. “Don’t worry—I won’t kill you. But you started your descent too late. The jet stream’s shifting. The storm and wind will hit before you reach camp.”
Ronnie stepped forward as if to swing his axe at the woman. I grabbed his shoulder, stopping him. She was right. Down below us I saw the other climbers already blurring as the increasing wind stirred up the snow.
The woman turned back to the mountain’s edge. She held the frozen man out as if offering him to the sky before tossing his body into the air. The man soared for a moment before dropping out of sight.
The woman stepped back to the rock overhang, allowing us room to pass. “You idiots call that the Rainbow Valley,” she said, pointing to the drop-off. “From all the dead climbers in their bright parkas and gear. For what it’s worth, I didn’t kill any of them.”
Ronnie staggered past the woman, keeping as far from her as he could without falling.
I crept by closer to the woman, afraid I’d fall if I hiked that close to the edge. As I passed she said, “I’m Ferri.”
“Keller,” I said back, whispering inside my oxygen mask. I didn’t think she’d hear me. But she nodded as if she’d heard and followed me as I climbed down.
• • • •
Ronnie and I made it to the South Summit before darkness and the full storm hit. But my oxygen tank had run out minutes before. I gasped at the dry air, my body hyperventilating but still not getting enough oxygen. Panic shook me. I felt like I was drowning. I prayed I wouldn’t pass out.
Nyima and the other guides had cached oxygen bottles here yesterday, but I didn’t know if I’d last long enough to reach them. As Ronnie led me toward the cache between two rocks, the weather cleared for a moment. I saw the headlamps and illuminated tents at South Col and the lights of the other climbers who were nearly to the camp. Then the wind shifted and I again saw only a half-dozen meters in the swirling snow.
“There’s only empty bottles,” Ronnie screamed, leaning over the cache. A number of red bottles lay scattered across the snow and rock, left from when the other members of our expedition changed out their oxygen earlier. But one of the bottles still had the seal over the threads to keep out ice and snow — it hadn’t been used.
“That one,” I said, pointing at the full bottle. “They left it for me.”
Ronnie picked up the bottle. But instead of handing it to me he threw it with a strength he shouldn’t have had. The bottle bounced off a rock below us and tumbled over the edge of the mountain.
“It’s empty,” Ronnie yelled. “Empty. But there’s air all around us. Breathe it, Keller. Breathe!”
I fell to my knees, lightheaded, as Ronnie began descending again. Was he going to leave me here? I collapsed onto the empty bottles, my gloves smacking each one, begging for one to have oxygen in it. Unlike Ronnie, I hadn’t trained my body to climb Everest without extra oxygen. I gasped for air, desperate to breathe. I couldn’t die here. I couldn’t.
“Your friend’s an asshole,” the woman in faded red yelled as she sat on one of the rocks beside me. “Yeah, he’s addled from oxygen deprivation, but he’s still an asshole.”
Ferri. That was her name. I tried to stand but my vision swirled and I crashed to the frozen ground.
Ferri leaned over and stared into my face. Her lips were glazed in frozen blood. She pulled her worn backpack off and opened it. Inside were the gloves and sunglasses and mask she’d worn earlier along with a fresh oxygen bottle. She replaced my bottle with the new one. My mind and vision cleared as oxygen again flowed into my mask.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“I only did it to keep your blood fresh.”
Ferri stared at me with a blank expression, the right side of her mouth open slightly so I could see a single long fang.
“Sorry, bad joke. I always carry an extra bottle in case someone needs it.”
I stood up on shaking legs. “If I die out here …”
“If you die out here I’ll drink your blood.”
“Then maybe I shouldn’t die.”
“Always a good idea.”
I staggered after Ronnie as Ferri followed.
• • • •
Wind and cold and snow bled the mountain and ripped through my thermal coat and gloves and boots. I had to make camp or die. But in the blizzard I couldn’t see anything. I’d already lost sight of Ronnie in the howling snow and could easily walk off the side of the mountain. Fall a thousand meters, my body never to be found.
Ferri walked behind me. When I stopped she stopped. When I struggled against the whiteout wind and snow, she followed. Never giving me a hint on which way to go to reach camp.
For a moment the snow above me parted and I saw the stars, bright as a million spotlights in the thin air. I glanced down and saw, a few meters away, Ronnie crouching next to a small boulder.
I stumbled over and collapsed beside him. His face was porcelain, his nose and cheeks polished into white river stones by frostbite like the dying man we’d seen earlier. He must have lost his insulated face mask at some point.
“Where’s camp?” I yelled over the wind.
Ronnie shook his head.
The boulder partly protected us from the jet stream but we couldn’t stay here. We’d be dead in an hour if we didn’t get out of the storm. The camp was likely only a hundred meters away. But if we stumbled around we’d more likely fall off the nearby cliffs.
Ferri sat down beside us. Ronnie glared at her. “Where’s the camp?” he yelled.
“She won’t help us,” I said.
Ronnie yanked my face mask off, the precious oxygen bleeding into the blizzard. “She found you an oxygen tank,” he yelled, pointing his ice axe at her. “Where the hell’s our camp?”
I shook my head, not knowing. Ronnie turned his anger on Ferri, shifting his ice axe so the pick end pointed at her chest. His eyes, which had seemed hopeless moments before, sharpened into the fire which anyone who opposed him in the tech world knew only too well.
Ferri stared blankly at Ronnie before she smiled. But not a real smile. More a smile given by someone who’d copied smiles she’d seen on the faces of others. As if Ferri had long ago given up on feeling any actual emotions.
Ferri blandly pointed into the whiteout around us. Ronnie staggered to his feet and stumbled in that direction. But was he heading toward camp, or had she directed him toward a cliff?
“You’ll die if you stay here,” Ferri said in a flat voice barely heard over the howling wind.
“I thought we were already dead.”
“You are. But if you follow him you may end up dying later.”
I stood and staggered after Ronnie.
• • • •
We stumbled through the white. With each step I expected Ronnie to vanish before my eyes, falling to his death down some forever cliff.
I shook my head, trying to focus.
Ronnie stopped and I stood next to him. We heard a faint clanking.
“Move it or die,” Ronnie yelled as he grabbed my arm. As if he was again in charge of his own destiny.
We shuffled through the snows and wind until we saw a bright orange tent. Then a red tent. The wind blasted the tents so they barely stood, but I didn’t care if they were about to collapse as long as I could climb inside one.
A western climber stood beside the red tent banging an ice axe against an empty oxygen tank. Nyima argued with the climber, trying to convince the man to go out into the blizzard with him to find us.
They both stopped when they saw us.
“You two are damn lucky,” Nyima said as he shoved us into our tent. “Did you hear our banging?”
I fell on my sleeping bag, not even able to take off my boots or crampons. “Only heard it … right before we saw camp,” I said, my words shivering like my body.
“Then how’d you find us?” Nyima asked. He handed me a thermos of lukewarm tea, which I swallowed desperately.
Ronnie stared out the open tent flap looking for Ferri. We could only see a meter or two with the blowing snow. Who knew where she’d gone.
“We took a chance,” Ronnie said. “Took a chance.”
Ronnie wiped his frozen face and paused, reevaluating his words.
“No,” he said. “We made it work.”
• • • •
The situation at camp wasn’t much better than what we’d experienced coming down the mountain. Despite the best weather forecasts used by Ronnie and the other expedition leaders, the jet stream had unexpectedly shifted and now blasted the camp. Nyima said that so far the tents were holding up, but no one knew if they’d last through the night.
“It’ll clear by morning,” Ronnie announced.
“How do you know?” Nyima asked.
“It will.” Ronnie pulled his sleeping bag around himself and didn’t move.
Nyima returned to his tent. The tent fabric beside my head rattled and howled, the support rods bending dangerously close to breaking. I rolled over and looked at Ronnie, whose face showed severe frostbite. Nyima had wanted to bandage Ronnie’s face, but Ronnie waved him away. I still wore my oxygen mask and, for a moment, considered offering him some of my air. Oxygen helped the body fight frostbite. If Ronnie used some, he’d have a better chance of avoiding permanent damage.
I would even swear to Ronnie that I’d tell no one. Anyone who asked would be told he’d climbed Everest without supplemental oxygen.
But I knew Ronnie. If I helped him he’d grow angry. Not today—today he’d be grateful. But back home, at work … when we returned to life … he’d find a way to hurt me. To show that he didn’t need to rely on me for anything.
That he was the master and I was nothing.
I rolled over, breathed deeply of fresh oxygen, and fell into a fitful sleep.
• • • •
The storm continued the next day.
When I’d first seen Everest several weeks ago from base camp, I’d watched beautiful wisps of cloud and snow spiral off the summit. Only later did I discover those wisps were hurricane-force winds. Ronnie always paid for the best forecasting and had assured me we’d never be in the death zone when the weather was this bad. This was something that only happened decades before when people had climbed the mountain without adequate technological support.
I wanted to laugh but was too exhausted.
Even with a tent and sleeping bag it’s nearly impossible to sleep in the death zone. The oxygen mask gripped my face like a stranger’s hand strangling me. But when I removed it I couldn’t get enough air.
Still, I drifted in and out of something like consciousness. I remembered Nyima coming to the tent and telling Ronnie the other expedition leaders wanted to meet with him. The two of them crawled into snow blowing by like a jet engine, unable to stand without being knocked over. After crawling barely a meter they vanished in the blizzard.
They’d left the tent flap open and I tried to raise enough energy to sit up and zip it shut. Before I could, Ferri climbed into the tent and closed the flap for me. The tent was being blown almost flat and she lay on Ronnie’s sleeping bag so she could look into my face.
“This tent isn’t much protection,” Ferri said. “The wind’s blowing at more than 100 kilometers an hour. Your tent could parachute in the wind and drag you over a cliff before you’d know what’s happening.”
I stared at Ferri as I gasped at oxygen inside my mask. I remembered all the times my little brother was sick when we were children. He told me once his body felt so numb and exhausted that he pretended it was a puppet he controlled. Twitch a string and his arm moved. Touch another string and he’d smile to allay our mother’s concern.
I felt the same right now. My mind tugged a string and my head nodded to Ferri’s words.
Ferri leaned over me and sniffed my blinking eyes. “You’re dying,” she said. “I can smell it. Your body’s so weak your digestive system has shut down. Every second your cells wink out by the thousands, all of them angry as they scream for more oxygen.”
Ferri stuck her tongue out as if to lick my eyeballs before pulling back. “If you stay here much longer you’ll die. If you go out in this blizzard you’ll die. What are you going to do?”
“Ronnie said the forecasts are for the jet stream to shift again. The winds will stop and we’ll descend out of the death zone.”
“That’s what he told you?” Ferri asked. “Before I came here I listened outside the tent where Ronnie and the other expedition leaders are meeting. Turns out the forecast was always iffy but Ronnie convinced everyone to push to the top. And now the forecast isn’t supposed to change for several days.”
I twitched the strings holding my body together, making my body shiver slightly. Every climber knew what happened if you stayed for days and days in the death zone.
While Ferri stared at me the entrance unzipped and Ronnie climbed into the tent, pausing halfway in. He glared at Ferri, backed partly out, stopped again in the doorway.
“Want me to move over?” Ferri asked. “There’s room for all of us.”
Ronnie glanced outside at the snow gusting past.
Ferri picked herself off Ronnie’s sleeping bag and kicked it toward him. “I don’t need it,” she said.
Ronnie took the bag and disappeared into the blowing snow to find another tent.
“He doesn’t like you,” I said.
“He shouldn’t,” Ferri said. “But it doesn’t matter because he’ll be dead before he gets off this mountain.”
“He won’t like that.”
“Most men don’t.”
• • • •
My oxygen tank emptied before nightfall. When Nyima checked on me and heard my gasps for air, he brought me another tank. But he refused to enter the tent to hand it over, forcing me to crawl outside.
“She’s dangerous,” Nyima yelled over the howling wind. “Bring your bag and we’ll double-up in my tent.”
I shook my head and climbed back inside. Nyima shrugged and crawled to his own tent.
I clicked the oxygen tank into my regulator and breathed sweet, deep air again. I collapsed back on my sleeping bag.
Ferri grinned her fake smile. “Should I like being called dangerous?” she asked.
“Does Nyima know you?”
“I’ve seen him up here many times. Seen most of the Sherpas and westerners over the years. Sometimes they recognize me. Most of the time they think I’m just another climber.”
But eat them we did. And convinced ourselves we loved them. Because Ronnie did.
As I climbed the last few meters to the top of Everest, I wondered why summiting felt like another weekend at that damn burger place.
My body was so weak it felt as if I swam through wet concrete. I gasped at the oxygen streaming into my mask. I stepped to the top behind Ronnie. We were the last to summit. Nyima was already descending with the others in our group.
Ronnie took a photo of me at the summit. When I offered to take one of him he shook his head and said we needed to descend.
I stared at the distant Tibetan plateau. At the other nearby eight-thousanders. Lhotse. Makalu. Kangchenjunga. All mountains nearly as tall as Everest. All their peaks in the same death zone which was killing me, my body unable to grasp enough oxygen even with this mask.
“Someday we’ll climb them all,” Ronnie yelled. “We need to go.”
Distant clouds swirled one of the mountain ranges. For a moment Ronnie looked worried. He stepped forward and slipped, only his climbing axe keeping him from sliding toward the edge of the mountain. I wondered if the effect of not using oxygen was getting to him.
But I said nothing and followed him. Because at this point what else could I do?
• • • •
By the time we climbed down the Hillary Step the clouds were closer. From this distance they looked pretty. But darkness was also falling, with the sun so low that the side of the mountain we climbed down was now in a giant shadow. We had to reach the temporary camp at South Col before the pending storm reached us. Below us in the distance I saw Nyima and the other expedition climbers—it looked like they’d make our overnight camp before the storm hit.
We turned on our headlamps and staggered forward.
I focused on following Ronnie, forcing my exhausted body to take step after step, and almost ran into him when he suddenly stopped. We stood near the rock overhang where the climber had been freezing to death. Maybe Ronnie wanted to see if we could still help.
But there was no one under the overhang.
Ronnie stumbled backwards, knocking me down. I slammed my climbing axe into the snow to steady myself as Ronnie backed up even more.
The woman in the faded red coat stood before us on the mountain’s edge, right beside a sheer drop of a thousand meters or more. Her face and hands were no longer covered now that the sun was hidden by shadows. She cradled the frozen man in her arms like a child and bit into his neck. Red sprayed across the spindrift snow. The man didn’t move, either dead or so far gone he felt no pain.
The woman turned toward me and Ronnie and smiled, the blood on her lips and chin instantly freezing.
“I waited for you two,” she said. “You’re already dead, you know.”
Ronnie held his climbing axe before him like a weapon, but I didn’t move. We barely had the strength to reach camp let alone fight. Besides, it would be so simple for her to knock us off the mountain if she desired.
The woman shook her head. “Don’t worry—I won’t kill you. But you started your descent too late. The jet stream’s shifting. The storm and wind will hit before you reach camp.”
Ronnie stepped forward as if to swing his axe at the woman. I grabbed his shoulder, stopping him. She was right. Down below us I saw the other climbers already blurring as the increasing wind stirred up the snow.
The woman turned back to the mountain’s edge. She held the frozen man out as if offering him to the sky before tossing his body into the air. The man soared for a moment before dropping out of sight.
The woman stepped back to the rock overhang, allowing us room to pass. “You idiots call that the Rainbow Valley,” she said, pointing to the drop-off. “From all the dead climbers in their bright parkas and gear. For what it’s worth, I didn’t kill any of them.”
Ronnie staggered past the woman, keeping as far from her as he could without falling.
I crept by closer to the woman, afraid I’d fall if I hiked that close to the edge. As I passed she said, “I’m Ferri.”
“Keller,” I said back, whispering inside my oxygen mask. I didn’t think she’d hear me. But she nodded as if she’d heard and followed me as I climbed down.
• • • •
Ronnie and I made it to the South Summit before darkness and the full storm hit. But my oxygen tank had run out minutes before. I gasped at the dry air, my body hyperventilating but still not getting enough oxygen. Panic shook me. I felt like I was drowning. I prayed I wouldn’t pass out.
Nyima and the other guides had cached oxygen bottles here yesterday, but I didn’t know if I’d last long enough to reach them. As Ronnie led me toward the cache between two rocks, the weather cleared for a moment. I saw the headlamps and illuminated tents at South Col and the lights of the other climbers who were nearly to the camp. Then the wind shifted and I again saw only a half-dozen meters in the swirling snow.
“There’s only empty bottles,” Ronnie screamed, leaning over the cache. A number of red bottles lay scattered across the snow and rock, left from when the other members of our expedition changed out their oxygen earlier. But one of the bottles still had the seal over the threads to keep out ice and snow — it hadn’t been used.
“That one,” I said, pointing at the full bottle. “They left it for me.”
Ronnie picked up the bottle. But instead of handing it to me he threw it with a strength he shouldn’t have had. The bottle bounced off a rock below us and tumbled over the edge of the mountain.
“It’s empty,” Ronnie yelled. “Empty. But there’s air all around us. Breathe it, Keller. Breathe!”
I fell to my knees, lightheaded, as Ronnie began descending again. Was he going to leave me here? I collapsed onto the empty bottles, my gloves smacking each one, begging for one to have oxygen in it. Unlike Ronnie, I hadn’t trained my body to climb Everest without extra oxygen. I gasped for air, desperate to breathe. I couldn’t die here. I couldn’t.
“Your friend’s an asshole,” the woman in faded red yelled as she sat on one of the rocks beside me. “Yeah, he’s addled from oxygen deprivation, but he’s still an asshole.”
Ferri. That was her name. I tried to stand but my vision swirled and I crashed to the frozen ground.
Ferri leaned over and stared into my face. Her lips were glazed in frozen blood. She pulled her worn backpack off and opened it. Inside were the gloves and sunglasses and mask she’d worn earlier along with a fresh oxygen bottle. She replaced my bottle with the new one. My mind and vision cleared as oxygen again flowed into my mask.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“I only did it to keep your blood fresh.”
Ferri stared at me with a blank expression, the right side of her mouth open slightly so I could see a single long fang.
“Sorry, bad joke. I always carry an extra bottle in case someone needs it.”
I stood up on shaking legs. “If I die out here …”
“If you die out here I’ll drink your blood.”
“Then maybe I shouldn’t die.”
“Always a good idea.”
I staggered after Ronnie as Ferri followed.
• • • •
Wind and cold and snow bled the mountain and ripped through my thermal coat and gloves and boots. I had to make camp or die. But in the blizzard I couldn’t see anything. I’d already lost sight of Ronnie in the howling snow and could easily walk off the side of the mountain. Fall a thousand meters, my body never to be found.
Ferri walked behind me. When I stopped she stopped. When I struggled against the whiteout wind and snow, she followed. Never giving me a hint on which way to go to reach camp.
For a moment the snow above me parted and I saw the stars, bright as a million spotlights in the thin air. I glanced down and saw, a few meters away, Ronnie crouching next to a small boulder.
I stumbled over and collapsed beside him. His face was porcelain, his nose and cheeks polished into white river stones by frostbite like the dying man we’d seen earlier. He must have lost his insulated face mask at some point.
“Where’s camp?” I yelled over the wind.
Ronnie shook his head.
The boulder partly protected us from the jet stream but we couldn’t stay here. We’d be dead in an hour if we didn’t get out of the storm. The camp was likely only a hundred meters away. But if we stumbled around we’d more likely fall off the nearby cliffs.
Ferri sat down beside us. Ronnie glared at her. “Where’s the camp?” he yelled.
“She won’t help us,” I said.
Ronnie yanked my face mask off, the precious oxygen bleeding into the blizzard. “She found you an oxygen tank,” he yelled, pointing his ice axe at her. “Where the hell’s our camp?”
I shook my head, not knowing. Ronnie turned his anger on Ferri, shifting his ice axe so the pick end pointed at her chest. His eyes, which had seemed hopeless moments before, sharpened into the fire which anyone who opposed him in the tech world knew only too well.
Ferri stared blankly at Ronnie before she smiled. But not a real smile. More a smile given by someone who’d copied smiles she’d seen on the faces of others. As if Ferri had long ago given up on feeling any actual emotions.
Ferri blandly pointed into the whiteout around us. Ronnie staggered to his feet and stumbled in that direction. But was he heading toward camp, or had she directed him toward a cliff?
“You’ll die if you stay here,” Ferri said in a flat voice barely heard over the howling wind.
“I thought we were already dead.”
“You are. But if you follow him you may end up dying later.”
I stood and staggered after Ronnie.
• • • •
We stumbled through the white. With each step I expected Ronnie to vanish before my eyes, falling to his death down some forever cliff.
I shook my head, trying to focus.
Ronnie stopped and I stood next to him. We heard a faint clanking.
“Move it or die,” Ronnie yelled as he grabbed my arm. As if he was again in charge of his own destiny.
We shuffled through the snows and wind until we saw a bright orange tent. Then a red tent. The wind blasted the tents so they barely stood, but I didn’t care if they were about to collapse as long as I could climb inside one.
A western climber stood beside the red tent banging an ice axe against an empty oxygen tank. Nyima argued with the climber, trying to convince the man to go out into the blizzard with him to find us.
They both stopped when they saw us.
“You two are damn lucky,” Nyima said as he shoved us into our tent. “Did you hear our banging?”
I fell on my sleeping bag, not even able to take off my boots or crampons. “Only heard it … right before we saw camp,” I said, my words shivering like my body.
“Then how’d you find us?” Nyima asked. He handed me a thermos of lukewarm tea, which I swallowed desperately.
Ronnie stared out the open tent flap looking for Ferri. We could only see a meter or two with the blowing snow. Who knew where she’d gone.
“We took a chance,” Ronnie said. “Took a chance.”
Ronnie wiped his frozen face and paused, reevaluating his words.
“No,” he said. “We made it work.”
• • • •
The situation at camp wasn’t much better than what we’d experienced coming down the mountain. Despite the best weather forecasts used by Ronnie and the other expedition leaders, the jet stream had unexpectedly shifted and now blasted the camp. Nyima said that so far the tents were holding up, but no one knew if they’d last through the night.
“It’ll clear by morning,” Ronnie announced.
“How do you know?” Nyima asked.
“It will.” Ronnie pulled his sleeping bag around himself and didn’t move.
Nyima returned to his tent. The tent fabric beside my head rattled and howled, the support rods bending dangerously close to breaking. I rolled over and looked at Ronnie, whose face showed severe frostbite. Nyima had wanted to bandage Ronnie’s face, but Ronnie waved him away. I still wore my oxygen mask and, for a moment, considered offering him some of my air. Oxygen helped the body fight frostbite. If Ronnie used some, he’d have a better chance of avoiding permanent damage.
I would even swear to Ronnie that I’d tell no one. Anyone who asked would be told he’d climbed Everest without supplemental oxygen.
But I knew Ronnie. If I helped him he’d grow angry. Not today—today he’d be grateful. But back home, at work … when we returned to life … he’d find a way to hurt me. To show that he didn’t need to rely on me for anything.
That he was the master and I was nothing.
I rolled over, breathed deeply of fresh oxygen, and fell into a fitful sleep.
• • • •
The storm continued the next day.
When I’d first seen Everest several weeks ago from base camp, I’d watched beautiful wisps of cloud and snow spiral off the summit. Only later did I discover those wisps were hurricane-force winds. Ronnie always paid for the best forecasting and had assured me we’d never be in the death zone when the weather was this bad. This was something that only happened decades before when people had climbed the mountain without adequate technological support.
I wanted to laugh but was too exhausted.
Even with a tent and sleeping bag it’s nearly impossible to sleep in the death zone. The oxygen mask gripped my face like a stranger’s hand strangling me. But when I removed it I couldn’t get enough air.
Still, I drifted in and out of something like consciousness. I remembered Nyima coming to the tent and telling Ronnie the other expedition leaders wanted to meet with him. The two of them crawled into snow blowing by like a jet engine, unable to stand without being knocked over. After crawling barely a meter they vanished in the blizzard.
They’d left the tent flap open and I tried to raise enough energy to sit up and zip it shut. Before I could, Ferri climbed into the tent and closed the flap for me. The tent was being blown almost flat and she lay on Ronnie’s sleeping bag so she could look into my face.
“This tent isn’t much protection,” Ferri said. “The wind’s blowing at more than 100 kilometers an hour. Your tent could parachute in the wind and drag you over a cliff before you’d know what’s happening.”
I stared at Ferri as I gasped at oxygen inside my mask. I remembered all the times my little brother was sick when we were children. He told me once his body felt so numb and exhausted that he pretended it was a puppet he controlled. Twitch a string and his arm moved. Touch another string and he’d smile to allay our mother’s concern.
I felt the same right now. My mind tugged a string and my head nodded to Ferri’s words.
Ferri leaned over me and sniffed my blinking eyes. “You’re dying,” she said. “I can smell it. Your body’s so weak your digestive system has shut down. Every second your cells wink out by the thousands, all of them angry as they scream for more oxygen.”
Ferri stuck her tongue out as if to lick my eyeballs before pulling back. “If you stay here much longer you’ll die. If you go out in this blizzard you’ll die. What are you going to do?”
“Ronnie said the forecasts are for the jet stream to shift again. The winds will stop and we’ll descend out of the death zone.”
“That’s what he told you?” Ferri asked. “Before I came here I listened outside the tent where Ronnie and the other expedition leaders are meeting. Turns out the forecast was always iffy but Ronnie convinced everyone to push to the top. And now the forecast isn’t supposed to change for several days.”
I twitched the strings holding my body together, making my body shiver slightly. Every climber knew what happened if you stayed for days and days in the death zone.
While Ferri stared at me the entrance unzipped and Ronnie climbed into the tent, pausing halfway in. He glared at Ferri, backed partly out, stopped again in the doorway.
“Want me to move over?” Ferri asked. “There’s room for all of us.”
Ronnie glanced outside at the snow gusting past.
Ferri picked herself off Ronnie’s sleeping bag and kicked it toward him. “I don’t need it,” she said.
Ronnie took the bag and disappeared into the blowing snow to find another tent.
“He doesn’t like you,” I said.
“He shouldn’t,” Ferri said. “But it doesn’t matter because he’ll be dead before he gets off this mountain.”
“He won’t like that.”
“Most men don’t.”
• • • •
My oxygen tank emptied before nightfall. When Nyima checked on me and heard my gasps for air, he brought me another tank. But he refused to enter the tent to hand it over, forcing me to crawl outside.
“She’s dangerous,” Nyima yelled over the howling wind. “Bring your bag and we’ll double-up in my tent.”
I shook my head and climbed back inside. Nyima shrugged and crawled to his own tent.
I clicked the oxygen tank into my regulator and breathed sweet, deep air again. I collapsed back on my sleeping bag.
Ferri grinned her fake smile. “Should I like being called dangerous?” she asked.
“Does Nyima know you?”
“I’ve seen him up here many times. Seen most of the Sherpas and westerners over the years. Sometimes they recognize me. Most of the time they think I’m just another climber.”
