by Jeff Long
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.
'Don't do too much,' Daniel pleaded with Abe from the tent door.
Abe opened the kit he'd never imagined using. He didn't dwell on the instruments,
barely knowing how to use them anyway. He wished now that it were a real physician
standing here in his place. Stump choked back his repulsion enough to disinfect the
toes by pouring a bottle of purple Betadine solution over them. Abe selected what
looked like a pair of stainless steel garden shears and Stump dumped Betadine over
them, too.
Abe was surprised by the shears' leverage and sharpness. The bones parted with a
snip. He stayed as distal as possible on each toe, figuring he could always trim them
more aggressively as the gangrene advanced. As it was, he had to prune most of the
joints anyway.
Stump poured more Betadine over what was left and Abe lay cotton dressings on
top and taped it lightly. The two of them finished washing Gus's thin body, then
dressed her in clean clothing and put her on oxygen. Finally they laid her in the
eight-foot-long plastic Gamow bag and pumped it tight with a foot pump. Each time
Abe peered through the clear face panel, Gus looked a
little more at ease.
'That was an ugly job,' Stump told Abe. 'You did it well.'
'Now she has her chance,' Abe said.
'I guess,' Stump allowed.
'I need to take these rags to the garbage pit,' Abe said.
'I'll do it,' Stump said.
'It's okay,' Abe insisted.
The trench to the pit was still frozen and slick. He dumped the rags on top of other
camp refuse, then headed off toward the stone hut. No one had approached the Tomb
since the storm. It took Abe ten minutes to plow his way up the little hill.
Inside, the fabric ceiling bulged down under the weight of snow. Abe pried a stone
out of the floor and laid the tiny fetus underneath. Then he tamped the stone tight
again and left. No one would ever know – not Daniel, not Gus. Conceived here, this
one secret, anyway, would stay here.
The sun came hot that day. It blazed away at their cirque, triggering avalanches on
distant slopes and melting nearly half the snow in camp. By midday, the trenches
between tents had become waterways. Everest glistened to the south, once again
untouchable.
Every hour or so Abe peered through the face panel on the Gamow bag to check on
Gus. The big plastic tube lay in one corner of the mess tent like a piece of furniture no
one wanted to talk about. They ate lunch and dinner in there, but scrupulously
avoided mentioning it.
Abe slept beside the Gamow bag that night. He wanted to be close for any
emergencies, and it was up to him to know what an emergency looked like.
Periodically he opened the chamber to check on Gus's oxygen supply and take her
pulse and respiration, then closed it up and pumped it full again. At one point, he woke
and the beam of his headlamp caught Daniel's gleaming eyes. He was crouched on the
far side of Gus's chamber.
'Can we take her out of there?' he asked Abe. 'I want to hold her. Just for a minute.'
'If you do that, she'll die,' said Abe.
'But it looks like a coffin,' Daniel said.
'Not yet it's not.'
Daniel placed one hand on the chamber. 'Before it's too late,' he begged. 'One more
time.'
'Not yet,' Abe said.
'I have to tell her something.'
Abe knew what Daniel had to tell her, he'd been hearing Daniel whispering to the
comatose woman for days now. He loved her. He forgave her. If she loved him, she
should forgive him. And she had to fight and live because they had a life to share.
'Maybe later,' Abe said.
'Later... it might be too late. She needs to know.'
'Maybe she hears you.'
'But if she doesn't...' His desolation was breathtaking. Daniel was in mourning. No
one believed in Gus's capacity to survive anymore. How terrible, thought Abe. One
more terrible thing.
'I'm afraid, Abe.'
'The trucks will come,' Abe said. 'They'll take us out of here. Gus will go to a
hospital.'
'The trucks won't come. I know.'
Abe dropped it. 'Go to sleep, Daniel. We need to sleep.'
The issue of their evacuation was on everybody's minds. In the beginning, they had
waited for yaks to move them away from it. Their helplessness seemed never ending.
The alternative to waiting was also on everybody's minds. Daniel knew the way out
of here. They had followed him up the Hill. If need be, they could follow him across
one of the high passes into Nepal. But no one favored such extremes. For one thing
they knew from Daniel's experience the awful price they were likely to pay for
crossing the range in the monsoon. His Lepers' Parade was not something anyone
wanted to join, especially after the spectacle of Gus's blackened foot.
The blackness spread. When he ran his fingertips along her ankle and shin, the flesh
crackled with subcutaneous crepitus. By evening it was clear Gus would have to lose
the leg to her knee or else die. Abe informed the others and asked for volunteers.
Never having done this, he had no idea how many people the operation might take.
Then he went off by himself to read in his medical books about amputation.
At the appointed hour, people came into the mess tent, even Kelly who still hadn't
recovered her vision. They took Gus out of the plastic chamber and laid her on top of
the wicker table that had served as their dining table a thousand years ago when
times still allowed for good jokes and big plans and long rap sessions. Abe steeled
himself. He emptied himself of emotion.
Under Abe's direction, they took up various assignments. Someone had to look after
her oxygen supply. Someone had to take her pulse periodically. Someone had to be in
charge of the blood pressure cuff Abe had fitted around her upper thigh for a
tourniquet. Someone else had to sterilize their scalpels and knives over a gas stove.
The Sherpas were instructed to take care of the kerosene lanterns and keep them
bright. And J.J. was charged with finding Daniel if he could, and even if he couldn't to
keep the man out of the tent at all costs.
Stump and Abe tied a piece of nine-millimeter climbing rope around Gus's black
ankle, then tossed the end over the roof support and hoisted her leg straight into the
air. Most of Abe's work was going to be on the underside of the leg. There were no
ripsaws or hacksaws in camp, much less a surgical saw, and so the leg had to be
separated at the knee joint itself. The front of the knee would be simple, all bone. It
was the back of the leg with its hamstring attachments and the veins and, most
important, the big popliteal artery, that would require all the unriddling.
Abe made his first cuts several inches down around the calf. Carefully he skinned
the flesh over the joint for flaps to later sew over the stump. The bone and muscles
stood exposed now in an eight-inch band at her knee. Abe wanted this to take fifteen
minutes, tops. Longer than that, and they'd have to loosen the tourniquet. Things
could start going wrong when that happened.
He found the big artery and fished enough into the open to clamp it with a hemostat.
Below the clamp, he sewed the artery tightly shut with suture, then cut the artery to
the lower leg.
'Fifteen minutes,' Carlos said.
The words startled Abe. He hadn't realized how silent the tent was. 'But I just
began,' he protested.
They loosened the tourniquet and there was some blood, but not as much as Abe
had feared. 'Let's keep going,' he said. 'Pump it tight again.'
Next he sliced the hamstrings, parting the meat from its white tendons. 'Thirty
minutes,' Carlos sang out. Abe exhaled. He was going too slowly.
'You're doing fine, Doc,' Stump told him. Frost coated the inner wall of the tent, but
sweat was gleaming on Stump's face.
Abe took a deep breath and bent to the task again and again. He cut through vessels
and nerves, only stopping long enough to cauterize the ends with heated knife blades.
The smell overpowered several people. Abe didn't know who they were, only that
they left. He could feel the cold air rush in each time someone went out or came in. He
could hear the night wind suck and slap at the tent canvas.
A blast of cold air blew in. 'Gus?'
Abe lifted his head. It was Daniel, eyes enormous in the kerosene light. A moment
later J.J. w
restled in through the door, bested again. 'I tried to stop him,' he said.
'For God's sake, get him out,' Jorgens said.
'Gus?' Daniel cried.
Her leg was cinched to the roof like an elk carcass. Most of the tissue had been
debribed. The bone was white and bare. The sight unhinged J.J. He just stood there.
'Get him out, damn it,' Jorgens yelled again.
'Daniel,' came a woman's voice. It was Kelly, blind in the corner.
Daniel was weeping.
'Daniel,' she said. 'Come with me now. Take my hand.' She was reaching from the
shadows. 'Lead me out.'
It worked. Daniel took her hand and they left.
Abe returned to the leg. Three hours passed. When he cut the final ligament, Gus's
thigh slapped onto the table. The lower leg dangled overhead while Abe raced to
finish. At midnight they laid her back in the chamber and pumped it full of air. For
another hour afterward, five of them sat around like tornado victims, speechless.
'Poor Gus,' someone finally pronounced. It was Jorgens. 'She's climbed her last
mountain.'
On the next afternoon, beneath another boiling white sun, they heard the sound of an
engine gunning through the snow. 'The trucks,' someone shouted, and everyone
poured into the blinding light to see their rescuers. The old herder's two yaks stood
nearby, grazing on the last of some dried grass scattered on top of the snow.
In the far distance a vehicle was cutting straight toward them from the north. All
they could make out was the glare of its windshield between two brilliant roostertails
of slush, a ship of pure light.
'Home! We're going home!' It could have been anyone's voice. It was everyone's
sentiment.
They gathered to watch the vehicle approach. Even Li emerged from his tent to join
in their excited babble. This was the first Abe had seen him since their retreat from
the face.
'Wait a minute,' J.J. said, shading his eyes with a piece of cardboard. 'That's no
truck. It's a Land Cruiser.'
'Makes sense,' Stump reasoned. 'You send in your icebreaker first. It's got
four-wheel drive and good mobility. The rest will come behind.'
'Come to papa,' Robby shouted at the Land Cruiser.
'Mr. Burns,' Jorgens said to Abe. 'Would you please ready your patient for transport.
Gus goes first.' For a moment, anyway, some of the timber returned to his bearing.