Ascent

by Roland Smith

  I ran back to the bridge. The soldiers had arrived and were standing around Lwin, pointing their rifles at him. Zopa and the major were just stepping off the bridge.

  I quickly explained what had happened as I rummaged through my pack for the first aid kit. The major peppered me with questions, which I ignored. I grabbed the kit, a pair of socks, and Ethan’s boots, and ran back into the forest.

  Ethan was struggling to sit up, but Alessia was having none of it. “Stop,” she said firmly. “You must lie there like I have told you.”

  “It’s just a bump on the head,” Ethan protested. “Quit fussing over me. Jeez. Are those my boots?”

  His boots were dangling around my neck. I handed them to Alessia. Ethan tried to sit up again.

  “Not yet.” I gently pushed him back down.

  “I just need to put my boots on.”

  “And I need to clean up your head wound.”

  “I will put your boots on,” Alessia said.

  “I’m cold,” Ethan said. “Dizzy. Yeah, put my boots . . .”

  He passed out.

  “Is it bad?” Alessia asked.

  “I think so.”

  I put my headlamp on so I could see better. The bloody wound was covered with forest litter. I sluiced water over it. The nasty gash was an inch long, and deep. He was lucky to be alive. I disinfected my hands and picked the big pieces out with my fingers. Tweezers were next. When I finished, I poured more water over the wound, dried it with a sterile cloth, then looked at Alessia.

  “This next part is going to wake him up. You’ll need to hold his shoulders and head down.”

  She put her knees on his shoulders and her hands on his forehead. I poured disinfectant over the wound.

  Ethan’s eyes snapped open. “Hey!”

  “Stop fighting it,” I said. “Don’t be a baby. Do you want your head to rot off  ?”

  Ethan bit his lower lip. I noticed that his right pupil was bigger than his left. A sure sign of a concussion. I dabbed the peroxide off.

  “You need stitches, but that’s way beyond my skill set. I’m going to use butterfly bandages, then wrap your head.”

  I started to apply the bandages.

  “I think I pretty much screwed up,” Ethan said, wincing.

  “You finally figured that out, huh?”

  “My head is killing me. It feels like it’s going to explode, but that’s not the worst of it. I’m hallucinating.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Right now I see Zopa standing behind you in his monk clothes.”

  I turned around. Zopa had walked up behind us without making a sound. As usual.

  Alessia laughed. “No. He is really here.”

  “How did—”

  Zopa stepped forward and put his finger to his lips. “Do not talk. You need to be calm.” He examined Ethan’s head wound, then looked at his eyes. “You must lie completely still. Just breathe.” He stepped away.

  I finished applying the bandages, then wrapped his head to hold everything in place. Ethan had closed his eyes again and was either asleep or unconscious. I walked over to Zopa.

  “What do you think?” I asked quietly.

  “It is a bad injury. We need to get him to a hospital.”

  “But first we need to get him to the bridge, where he’ll be more comfortable. I’ll go talk to the major.”

  “Major Thakin is gone.”

  “What?”

  “He and the soldiers took Lwin south.”

  “Already?”

  I didn’t know if I was happy or ticked off about this. The soldiers could have helped us carry Ethan to the bridge, or maybe farther, but then we’d have had to deal with Major Thakin, who I didn’t want to spend any more time with than I had to.

  “We will make a litter and take him to the bridge,” Zopa said. “We will watch him closely tonight. Perhaps he will be better in the morning.”

  Nineteen

  Ethan was not better the following morning. He was worse. He kept drifting in and out of consciousness. When he was awake, he was confused and frightened. He had no idea where he was or who we were. Alessia and I didn’t leave his side all night long.

  Nick crawled into the tent at sunrise to see how Ethan was doing.

  “I’m not a medical doctor,” he said. “But I think he’s suffering from severe brain trauma. We need to get him to Yangon. That’s the closest hospital that can deal with this kind of injury. I think he’ll die if we don’t get him there soon.”

  “I’m calling Chin,” I said.

  I found Chin’s card and grabbed Ethan’s sat phone. There was no signal from our campsite. The only clear spot in the canopy was the center of the bridge. I hurried along the slippery dew-covered boards and held the phone up. It acquired a satellite immediately. I punched in the number. It rang and rang, then went to voicemail. Frustrated, I left a message and disconnected.

  Now what? If I left the bridge, I’d lose the signal and Chin’s callback. If he called back. There was no guarantee of that. He could be anywhere now. He might be out of the country. And who knew if he was sincere when he had made the offer. And where was he going to land? There was no open space here. We’d have to move Ethan to get to the helicopter. How far would that be? Would he survive the move?

  Zopa was tending the fire. The porters were still asleep on the ground near the donkeys. Nick was sitting outside his tent, writing in one of his notebooks. Ethan was inside his tent with Alessia. I sat down and let my legs dangle over the edge of the bridge. It was like sitting on a giant swing. Climbing Hkakabo Razi was over now, but I didn’t care. It was a ridiculous idea in the first place. What were we thinking? I smiled. We were thinking like climbers. Optimistically. How else can you climb impossible things? Twenty minutes went by. Zopa took the rice off the coals and offered some to Nick, who joined him at the fire. Ten more minutes went by. Zopa disappeared into Ethan’s yellow tent with a bowl of rice and a cup of tea. Five minutes later, he came back out. He waved and started toward the bridge. The sat phone rang.

  “Peak?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is the emergency?”

  I told him.

  “Where are you?”

  I gave him our coordinates.

  “One moment please.”

  Zopa started across the bridge.

  “Peak?”

  “Yes.”

  “I will call you back. I need to check with my pilot. Do not move from where you are. The signal is good.”

  Chin disconnected. I was relieved, even though he hadn’t said that he was going to come, or when. Zopa was halfway to me. With his long robe, it looked like he was floating. For all I knew, he was floating. The bridge barely moved as he approached. Maybe he didn’t even need a bridge. He sat down next to me.

  “You talked with your friend?”

  “Chin. Yeah. He’s going to talk to his pilot and call back. How’s Ethan?”

  “No change.”

  “Is Chin the man’s given name?”

  “No. His name is Zhang Wei.”

  “Chinese.”

  “But he lives in Burma now.” I explained how we had met him and his background.

  “Ah, a climber,” Zopa said. “They are everywhere.”

  I could no longer endure the mystery. “Why are you here, Zopa?”

  “That remains to be discovered, but it is becoming clearer. I heard that you were climbing Hkakabo Razi.”

  “How did you hear that? I didn’t know I was climbing Hkakabo Razi until I got to Burma.”

  Zopa laughed. “Your mother called me. I was in Tibet visiting monasteries not too distant from here.”

  Hundreds of miles, maybe a thousand miles, from here, I thought. Most of it on foot or in the back of dilapidated trucks, and this was not the only way to reach Hkakabo Razi. He could easily have missed us in the rainforest. There was more to this than he was saying. With Zopa there was always more.

  I glanced at Ethan’s tent. “Well, we’re
not climbing the mountain now.”

  Zopa shrugged.

  The phone rang.

  “Peak?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Good. Ethan is still with us?”

  “Yes.”

  “We will pick Ethan up. There is a small logged-off area about six kilometers north of your current location. I will text you the exact coordinates after we finish this call.”

  “How soon will you be here?”

  “Three, maybe four hours. I have spoken to a neurosurgeon in Yangon. His name is Vivek Deshmukh. He is the best. He will be calling you soon to ask about Ethan’s symptoms and make some suggestions about how to transport him. He speaks Hindi, Burmese, and French. I would suggest you have Alessia speak with him.”

  “Okay. We have someone else here who could translate.”

  “Very good. I will come with just the pilot. The helicopter is very small. There will be room for Ethan to lie down with only one other person in back, and they cannot bring any equipment.”

  “No problem,” I said. The other person would be Alessia. I walked here. I could walk back. But I would be lying if I said I was looking forward to it. I’d have to figure out a way to get their gear back to them. Nick could probably help me with that.

  “I will have Dr. Deshmukh call in ten minutes.”

  “Thank you so much! I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this.”

  “I hope I am in time.”

  He disconnected.

  “Now you must go out and do good things,” I said quietly.

  “What is that?” Zopa asked.

  “It’s just a saying. Chin is flying in to pick up Ethan. He’ll be here in three or four hours. We need to move Ethan six kilometers to the north. He said there is a clear-cut where the helicopter can land.”

  “I know the place,” Zopa said.

  I switched with Alessia, watching Ethan while she stood on the bridge awaiting Dr. Deshmukh’s call. Alessia had removed the camo paint from Ethan’s face. He had looked better with the camo. His face was bloodless, his pulse weak, and his head was swollen. Zopa and Nick were outside redesigning the crude litter we had put together the day before. I opened all the flaps and fanned Ethan with a map to keep him cool and the insects away. I talked to him on the off chance that he could hear from wherever he was. I told him about Zopa appearing out of nowhere. Chin coming to pick him up. Alessia’s takedown of Lwin—​

  “He is conscious?” Alessia asked, putting her head in.

  “No. I’m just talking to him. Letting him know that I’m here.”

  “I have been doing the same. You told him about Lwin?”

  “Of course. I think that’s one thing he would have liked to have seen for himself. What did Dr. Deshmukh say?”

  “That we need to keep him as still as we possibly can when we move him. He said that we should strap him to the stretcher. Keep him level. Stabilize his head.”

  Luckily we didn’t have any more switchbacks or giant hills in front of us, except for the mountain of course. If the map was right, there was a plateau a couple miles to the north leading up to Hkakabo Razi. I told Alessia that I thought she should accompany Ethan back to Yangon.

  “This is my climb,” she said. “And my fault. If I hadn’t talked Ethan into—”

  I put my hand on her shoulder. “Stop. You didn’t talk Ethan or me into this climb. We were eager to go, eager to put the Pamirs behind us. Remember?”

  She started to cry. I put my arms around her.

  “You should fly back with Ethan,” she said between sobs.

  I held her at arm’s length and wiped her tears. “With your connection to the embassy, you’ll be able to get him better care than I could.”

  She gave me a reluctant nod. “Perhaps Chin can fly back and pick you up.”

  “I’ll be fine. I’ll have Zopa with me. At least I think he’ll be with me. I haven’t talked to him about it yet. I really don’t like to ask Chin for another favor. He’s done enough. Yangon is a long way from here. It’s costing him a small fortune, to say nothing about his time.”

  “I do not think he would mind.”

  “We’ll see what happens. I can stay in touch with you on the sat phone if the battery doesn’t go dead.”

  “We will ask Chin for fresh batteries.”

  Nick stuck his head inside the tent. “I think we’ve cobbled together a decent litter. We should probably go.”

  The litter was fine, but it was nearly impossible to keep it level as we carried Ethan up the gentle grade. There were seven of us, including the porters. One of the porters had stayed back at the bridge to guard our gear and keep an eye on the donkeys. We took turns, stopping often to switch off and give our arms a rest. Ethan did not regain consciousness. We checked his pulse every time we stopped. It was weak, very weak.

  It took us a little over three hours to get to the clear-cut. Ethan’s condition was unchanged. We laid him in the shade of a tree, and Alessia wet a towel and wiped his face down in an attempt to cool him.

  “I’ll get more water.”

  Zopa and I walked across the clearing to a small stream. I took a drink. It was ice cold.

  “Glacial,” I said.

  “Hkakabo Razi is not far from here,” Zopa said. “A day’s walk to the base.” He started filling our spare bottles.

  I had seen several of these clear-cuts during our trek, but all of them had been next to villages where they had used the wood for fuel and to build houses.

  “There was no village here, so why did they cut the trees?” I asked.

  “There used to be a village here,” Zopa said, pointing to the western edge of the clearing. “A long time ago. People move on. The forest takes the land back.”

  I didn’t see any sign of a village, but there was no other explanation for the clear-cut.

  “Have you been here before?”

  “Yes, on my way to find you.”

  We carried the water back to Alessia and waited. An hour passed, then another. Ethan was still breathing, but he looked like a corpse. If Chin didn’t arrive soon, it would be too dark to land. I didn’t know anything about brain injuries, but it didn’t look like Ethan would make it through the night. I called Chin. It went to voicemail.

  “I’m not sure how well sat phones work in a helicopter,” Nick said. “It’s hard to acquire a satellite while you’re moving. I suspect he’s on his way and will be here soon. I’m going to send the porters back to the bridge.”

  There was no point in his men sitting around and swatting bugs with us. The porters picked up what little they had brought with them and headed south.

  Another hour passed. I started pacing like Ethan would have done if it had been me lying there dying. Zopa had found a shady spot at the edge of the clearing. He had been sitting for two hours and hadn’t moved. I figured he was meditating, or maybe praying, or maybe both. He hadn’t raised a hand to swat insects, and I was sure there were hundreds of them feeding on him.

  I started to call Chin again, but my number punching was interrupted by the unmistakable sound of an approaching helicopter.

  “Thank God,” Alessia said.

  “Amen to that.” I looked over to Zopa. He hadn’t moved.

  The helicopter circled the clearing a couple of times, sending every bird and monkey within miles fleeing for their lives. The third time around, the pilot feathered the helicopter in for a perfect landing fifty feet away from us. Chin was out of the cockpit and moving toward us before the rotors stopped.

  “How is he?” He looked down at Ethan. “Not so well I see. I am sorry I am so late. We had to set up our refueling back to Yangon so we didn’t have delays. We also removed the back seats from the helicopter so he would be more comfortable on the flight, and brought a real stretcher for him.”

  The pilot was pulling the stretcher out of the helicopter. Nick jogged over to give him a hand.

  “Who is going with him?” Chin asked.

  “Alessia,” I said.
>
  “Good. What about you?”

  “I’ll walk back. No big—”

  “I will be with him, Zhang Wei.” Zopa had walked up behind us.

  Chin turned around and stared at Zopa in shock.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you,” Zopa said.

  Chin bowed. “You are he.”

  Zopa returned the bow. I had no idea what they were talking about.

  “I am glad you survived. When I left you, I wasn’t so sure. I hear that you took my advice.”

  “Now you must go out and do good things,” Chin said with another bow.

  Part Three

  Hkakabo Razi

  Twenty

  It was a hasty departure. We transferred Ethan to the new stretcher, carried him carefully across the clear-cut, then slipped him into the helicopter. There was no time for Chin and Zopa to talk about their miraculous reunion, and barely time for me to say goodbye to Alessia. A hurried kiss. A worried look. Chin gave me a spare battery for the sat phone. And they were off.

  “Damn!” I shouted.

  “What?” Nick asked.

  I pulled Ethan’s spoon out of my pocket. “I meant to give this to Ethan before he took off.”

  “That’s the least of his problems at this point,” Nick said. “You can give it to him when you see him. I better check on the porters. You coming?”

  “I’ll be along soon.” Everything had happened so quickly that I needed a few moments to wrap my mind around it. I sat down on one of the stumps in the clearing. Zopa took a seat on the stump next to mine. To the north I could just see the tip of a mountain peak, which one I didn’t know, realizing that this was the closest I was going to get Hkakabo Razi.

  Zopa pointed at the peak. “Hkakabo Razi.”

  “You’ve climbed it?”

  “Not to the summit. I had to bring Zhang Wei down. This is where the village was. I am not certain he realized that when he landed here. He looks very much the same as he did back then.”

  “You must look the same too. He recognized you immediately. What are the chances of you meeting him out here in the exact same place you carried him?”