Above All Else

by Dana Alison Levy

  But she reaches out and stops me. “Tate, he did talk about your climbing. He said he wished you had never come.”

  Her words cut more than I expect. My stomach rolls as I think about him up here, wishing that his fuckup son was nowhere around. But she’s still talking.

  “You know he spent a lot of time in here. The altitude was not kind to your father, and he kept trying to push higher, only to get turned back again and again. He felt pretty rough. And the last night, as he lay here throwing up into a bucket and trying to keep the oxygen mask on, he talked about you. And he said how he hoped you would listen to your heart. ‘I don’t want my son to go through hell.’ Those were his very words.”

  Outside the tent door, another group is out in the sun, sorting their gear into massive piles, probably in anticipation of their ascent tomorrow. The buzz of their voices reaches us, but I don’t listen. I’m thinking of Dad, talking to this nice woman. He must have felt so shitty and so fucking sad to realize this adventure was ending before it ever really started. He must have known, on some level, that I was never going to climb.

  She holds my gaze. “I’m curious, if you’re willing to tell me. What changed, for you? Why didn’t you want to climb?”

  I try to figure out what to say. I think about the nightmares, the way panic held me down on the Icefall. “A few months ago, on a training climb, I took a bad fall that could have been way worse. I got lucky. I went into a crevasse, but my ice axes held, and I was okay.” I tell her about the fall, about the terror, about the way it circles and loops and comes at me just when I think it’s gone.

  “But it’s bullshit, you know? I’ve had plenty of gnarly near misses. You heard my dad, I’ve got that whole ‘Master of Disaster’ thing. So I was fine—”

  “Tate,” she interrupts me. “You weren’t fine. Obviously.”

  “But I’ve fallen before! I mean, scary crap-your-pants falls. And this wasn’t even that bad…”

  She shakes her head. “You don’t get to make that distinction. You’ve heard of PTSD, right? Post-traumatic stress disorder?”

  I nod. “Sure, but—”

  “But nothing. Again, you don’t get to choose if what you experienced was ‘bad enough’ to deserve it. We don’t know why people react the way they do, but what you experienced is classic textbook trauma.” She looks at me. “Did you tell anyone about how you were feeling? About the panic attacks?”

  I shake my head. I don’t bother telling her that between extra tutoring and special accommodations at school and having to see Jimmy the shrink as a kid because of my temper, I was reallyreallyreally done with being that guy, the one who couldn’t hack it, who needed extra help. “No, with Rose’s mom getting her awful diagnosis—you know she was going to climb but got diagnosed with MS?—and everything else going on, it didn’t really seem like the time.”

  Dr. Celina smiles and shakes her head. “My friend, you seem like a smart guy, but let me give you a little wisdom, part medical, part personal. This isn’t the kind of thing that you can outmuscle. You can’t ignore it and hope it’s going to go away any more than you can ignore cancer. You can fight it, and beat it, but not by pretending it isn’t there. Trauma is real, Tate. And requires treatment.”

  I can’t quite process her words. My chest feels tight and my head throbs. “What are you saying? That I’m fucked up? That I’m nuts?”

  “No! Not at all. But nearly dying in a crevasse a few months before heading up on an incredibly challenging climb is going to take a toll on you. You’re not nuts…I can tell that after ten minutes with you. But you’ve got some powerful demons dogging you, and it probably would have been better to face them than try to run.”

  She looks at me, and I don’t know, something about her eyes makes me bite my lip, hard, to keep from crying.

  “I’m so sorry, Tate,” she says quietly. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”

  I breathe. Chew my lip. Try not to picture the falling, the terror. When I’m sure I can speak normally, I ask the question. “Do you think if I had gotten help and talked about it, I would have climbed?”

  “Who knows?” she says. “Are you sorry? Does any part of you wish you had stayed with the expedition?”

  Finally, it’s easy to answer this question. “Not even a little bit,” I say. “It’s weird, but I don’t want it. Not at all. I love climbing, or at least I did, but this kind of expedition, with all the crowds and the waiting around? Nah. No part of me wishes I were climbing this mountain.”

  “Okay then.” She nods. “There you go. Climbing this thing…You have to want to, so badly you feel a little crazy.” She laughs. “Let me be clear, Tate. If anyone’s nuts, it’s the people who want to do this. Not you.”

  I laugh a little. “Well, I don’t want to, so I guess I’m cool.” And saying it straight out, to this smart doctor, it stings a little less.

  I don’t want to do this. It’s too bad I didn’t figure it out a while ago. Like five years or so, before we planned it all. But then I think about Rose, alight with excitement, her hands flying in the air while she describes some massive cornice of ice. Would she be here if my dream had died all those years ago? Would she have done this without me? Maybe my getting this far is part of what will get her to the top.

  “Huh?” I say, turning back to Dr. Celina. “Sorry, what did you say?”

  “I said that I talked to Rose before she left. She’s doing really well, and wow, is she driven. No ambivalence there! She wants this so badly.”

  “What did she say?” I ask. It’s pathetic, how much I want her to have said something about me. But Dr. Celina’s answer is even better.

  “She said, ‘I really, really want to get up this mountain. But I’m sure as hell going to get down it.’ Smart girl, that Rose.” She smiles. “You know, you could probably get a hold of her. To say good luck.”

  “Get a hold of her?” I repeat stupidly.

  “On the radio. They’re only going to Camp Two today. It should be pretty easy to talk to them.”

  My pulse speeds up a little. To hear her voice…to tell her how much I love her, how safe she needs to be…

  I thank Dr. Celina and head out, back to the Mountain Adventure tent. I want to talk to Rose.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight:

  Rose

  May 13–14

  Camp Two

  21,000 feet above sea level

  It is almost noon when I flop into my tent at Camp Two, where Luc and Yoon Su are already resting. The heat is appalling, over ninety degrees as the sun cooks us in the solar bowl of glacial ice. Sweat drips down into my eyes, and my tongue is swollen with dehydration. Paul isn’t much better. And of course there’s the chance that the temperature will drop into the single digits if the clouds roll in. Still, even with a woozy head and cramping feet, excitement blazes through me. We have made it through the Icefall, and now there is only one last reason to pass through it; on our descent.

  I shake my head to clear it and sit up slowly. Finjo and Asha are outside, melting snow and ice so we can rehydrate. The water is warm and metallic, but I make myself drink, filling my cup again and again until some of the dullness in my head fades. Then I collapse in my tent, grateful for the rest. The summit is still two vertical miles above us, and thinking about it exhausts me to my core. I am so close to this goal that I have wanted for so long, that I am convinced will make me stronger, forge me like steel. But the Dread still hovers, whispering horrors of Mami’s sickness and Tate’s anger and everything else I can’t control. Even here I can’t outrun it. I make myself breathe. Remember that this is my climb.

  Asha sticks her head in. The slash of sunlight startles me.

  “Rose! Good afternoon. There is someone on the satellite phone for you.”

  I sit up, panic clutching at my chest. “Is there bad news?”

  “It is Tate. He is at Base Camp
now and wishes to talk.”

  I freeze, remembering our last conversation. I called him a coward. He called me selfish. We walked away from each other, not even saying goodbye.

  “Tell him…Tell him I’m asleep,” I say, finally. “I’m not feeling great.”

  Asha’s eyes stay on me, but I look away, down at my sleeping bag. Finally she withdraws, the tent falling into darkness as she closes the door.

  My climb. My summit. I won’t…I can’t talk to Tate right now, can’t try and survive his voice. Not now. Now with the mountain waiting.

  * * *

  —

  Later Yoon Su, Luc, Paul, and I cram into their tiny tent, and it feels like a celebration. I forget how abandoned I felt when Yoon Su left without us and instead focus on the fun of being all together, at least for tonight.

  “Wait until we’re back in Kathmandu!” Luc says as we clink our cups of water. “There will be champagne, even if I must storm the French consulate to get it.”

  Yoon Su hits my cup so hard my water splashes out. “To champagne!” she shouts.

  “To showers!” I answer.

  “To plumbing,” Paul adds, and we continue, each adding things we miss.

  Finally Luc holds up his hands. “D’accord, let us focus on what we do have. To my amazing companions and ze mountain, which offers us this challenge! May we emerge victorious!”

  When I climb back to my tent, my cheeks hurt from smiling. Excitement builds hot and fierce, and I wish more than anything we could leave with them in the morning instead of taking a rest day. But Finjo insists.

  I am not delighted with this plan. I want to move, want to start actually climbing again. Hunger like a fire burns through me, and I remember reading about Everest fever, a kind of crazed ambition that can take over on the mountain. I get it now. This breathless waiting is enough to kill us without any help from the mountain itself. I’m ready. But Finjo makes the rules, so we will wait.

  * * *

  —

  The next day we rest, the camp newly quiet with Luc and Yoon Su gone. The radio chirps again and again as Finjo and Asha get updates on weather, on other expeditions, on climbers farther up the mountain.

  * * *

  —

  “Luc and Yoon Su are still at Camp Three. They should get to the South Col by tomorrow, and tomorrow night they’ll start for the summit,” he reports after yet another call. “They are moving fast. A rock fell and hit Luc on his helmet on the Western Cwm, but he is okay.” The Western Cwm is a massive ice-walled valley that leads from Camp Two to Camp Three. We climbed through on an earlier acclimatization run, and the thought of a rock hurtling down while we hang there on the fixed ropes like sitting ducks is not a happy one.

  “Was he hurt at all?” I ask.

  Finjo shrugs. “He says he is still grooving. Or groovy. It was difficult to hear. But he is still going up.”

  I do quick calculations in my head. If they are heading to the summit tomorrow at midnight, we might pass them heading down as we head to Camp Four at the South Col. Camp Four is our last stop, where we’ll attempt to rest at 26,000 feet until nighttime, when we make our push for the top. They could be back down at Camp Two celebrating before we even summit.

  Almost there. Almost there. The words loop in a refrain as the night wears on. I roll over in my sleeping bag, but I can’t sleep. My mind drifts back to Tate, again and again. Should I have taken his call? What did he want to say? A tiny sliver of fear needles me; when will I next hear his voice?

  Paul’s med school training still holds; he’s snoring. I count my breaths and try to rest, listening to the distant moan and crash of ice far away on the mountain.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine:

  Tate

  May 16

  Everest Base Camp

  17,600 feet above sea level

  I replay my conversation with Asha. Rose was right there, she had said. But then…She wasn’t. She couldn’t speak to me. Or maybe wouldn’t. Did she know I was on the phone? Did she know I had come here, trying to find her? Did she care? Our angry words fester and push against my brain, and I wish, for the hundredth time, that I had gotten to Base Camp before she left. That I had gotten a chance to wish her good luck, to tell her to be so fucking careful in the ice. To tell her that I love her.

  But I left it too long, screwed up the timing again, like always. And she’s gone up higher than I’ll ever go, and I’m stuck here, praying she makes it back down, trying not to think about all the things that can go wrong.

  * * *

  —

  It’s possible that Cam wants to kill me, but I don’t really care. He’s the great and powerful Oz, the man behind the curtain who controls Rose’s fate. Okay, maybe not entirely, but he tracks the weather on the summit and forecasts what the coming days will bring. And his word dictates Finjo’s choices, which dictate when Rose climbs. So he better be fucking excellent at his job.

  “You’re excellent at this, right, Cameron?” I ask, a few days after getting back to Base Camp. There’s nothing to do here but track the climbers, who stay in touch via radio. So far everything is fine, though plenty of things have gone wrong or forced changes in plans: broken crampons, malfunctioning radios, horrible crowds on the fixed ropes…all typical Everest situations. Still, I think about Bo’s words, how small things can snowball, and wish more than anything that Rose and Paul were safely down already. “Let me ask another way: If there were an Olympic sport of Everest weather forecasting, would you be in the middle of the podium? ’Cause I’m not going to lie, I don’t want the bronze medalist reading the tea leaves on this shit.”

  Cameron, luckily, is unflappable. An extremely low-key Canadian, he mostly ignores me but occasionally takes pity on me and tells me again about how much he knows. He knows a lot.

  Rose and Paul left Camp Three, at 23,500 feet, this morning and should be heading to Camp Four to get ready for their summit bid. Luc, Yoon Su, and around twenty other people from Adventure Experts and Peak Adventures summited today; the Sherpas sent down announcements in the afternoon. Luc, Yoon Su, Dawa, and Bishal didn’t summit until 3:30 p.m., way later than most people. Ang Pasang, who’s in charge in the Mountain Adventure tent now that Finjo is climbing, is pissed.

  “It is too late. They should have turned back earlier, even if it meant missing the summit. It is dangerous. The summit, it is not the end! It is halfway. The hard part remains…coming down.” He shakes his head and stomps back over to one of his assistants, Devi, who silently hands him tea.

  Cam shrugs. “They were making good time on the descent and planning to motor down as far as they can. Yoon Su’s oxygen regulator isn’t working right, and they don’t want to get stuck in the death zone.”

  I shudder. From everything I’ve read, the idea of spending the night after a summit climb stuck at the South Col sounds brutal.

  “It’s almost dark. When are they supposed to get in?” I ask.

  Cameron grabs some tea and swings his legs over a bench, sitting down. “Dawa’s radio was dying and he didn’t want to stop and put in the spare batteries, so I’m not sure. I’ll try him again in a few.”

  It’s almost dark out, and I’m back in the kitchen tent, eating some of Ang Pasang’s food. He seems delighted to cook for me. Probably because I’m the only one happy to eat his ambitiously planned pizzas, noodles, and soups.

  Cam and I talk surfing. Then he tries to convince me to take a year traveling around the world before college, while he attempts again and again to get Dawa on the radio, with no luck.

  “He might have crashed once they made it down,” Cam says. “I’ll check with some of the Camp Two guys and see what’s up.”

  It takes a while, but finally Cameron gets a hold of one of the Peak Experience guides, who confirms that shortly after dark four Mountain Adventure climbers stumbled into camp exhausted and immediat
ely fell asleep in their tents. Cameron kicks his feet up, looking relaxed.

  “There. Two clients safely down, two cuddled up at Camp Four. This wind should blow in and out pretty quick, and hopefully Finjo and the crew will get their shot. Otherwise they’ve got a shite day of waiting at Camp Four. Still, looks like the wind could quiet in time…This is going to be fast and furious.” He leans back. “But meanwhile, time for grub!”

  The sun’s fallen behind the mountain, and the temperature’s dropped hard and fast. Still, the kitchen tent’s warm, and I’m happy enough listening to the conversation around me and dozing on the bench. Rose and Paul are safe, and hopefully they’ll be trying for the summit tomorrow; soon everyone will be down, and we’ll be able to get out of this place once and for all. I try not to think about where she is now, about the cold, the thin air, the endless, screaming wind. She’s so far away, and there’s nothing I can do for her.

  “Yo! You alive over there?” Cameron asks, kicking my chair. “Do you want me to deal you in?”

  I shake my head and get the images of the ice and rock out of my brain. “Yeah. Sorry—deal ’em,” I say. And we start to play.

  * * *

  —

  Hours later in my tent, I wonder what new hellscape we’re in. The wind’s monster strong, pushing the walls of the tent in so far over my face that I’m afraid of being smothered. The scream and howl’s so loud it’s like trying to sleep next to a jet engine. I squint at my watch, the icy air freezing my wrist. Midnight. Hours until daylight. I lie down again but immediately sit up as the tent nearly folds in half. Screw this.

  After throwing on all the clothes I can find, I grab my headlamp and head out to the kitchen tent. I’d rather sit by the fire and drink tea than pretend I’m going to get any sleep. Luckily I moved my tent closer when the climbers all headed up, or I’d be afraid of getting lost in the wall of snow that’s slanting sideways. As it is, I nearly get frostbite on my face in the two minutes it takes to dash over. When I get there, Devi’s dozing near the fire, but Ang Pasang’s awake. He nods at me but doesn’t speak, and I bring a chair by the heat and stare into the flames.