“Yes,” Dorje answered feeling confident he had put her mind at ease. “Tomorrow I shall make a torma as beautiful as you and color the hair bright gold.”
“I would like that,” she whispered and he felt the tension gradually slipping from her as she drifted into sleep.
CHAPTER 23
Dorje awoke to Beth heaving in his arms, her body dripping with sweat. She pushed away from him, rolled onto her opposite side, and vomited. As if suffocating, she took long, gasping inhales and began trembling uncontrollably. Dorje panicked. “Father, what can I do?”
Off the bench and at his side immediately, Mingma felt her skin and looked at his son helplessly.
“This demon’s too powerful for our gods and healers,” said Dorje. “We must take her to the doctor in Khunde and do it now.”
“Get her ready while I prepare the yaks.”
When Dorje started moving again, the pain that had lain silent while he slept screamed, but he stilled the cries. The only voice Beth would hear was his reassuring love. Dawn was struggling with heavy, black-tinged clouds veiling the sun. Watching his breath puff and blow back in his face with each step, Dorje knew the journey would take them more than four cold hours.
They arrived in Khunde just before noon. First the New Zealand doctor questioned Beth about her activities and contacts the past few weeks and then checked her pulse, skin, eyes, mouth, and chest. The rash and high fever alarmed him the most. “Are you sure you haven’t had unboiled water?” he asked a second time. “Maybe a handful from a stream on your way up?”
“Positive. I’ve been very careful.”
“Well, your symptoms indicate a severe case of typhoid but I can’t be certain without a blood test.”
While awaiting the result, Dorje sat tracing Beth’s long, slender fingers and telling her everything would be all right. Suddenly, a familiar voice in the outer room pulled him from his seat and into the hall as Hamar pushed past the nurse demanding to see a doctor. He was hot and felt miserable all over.
Hearing him, Beth slowly drew her hands down over her face. “Of course,” she said with a sigh. “How could I have forgotten or been so stupid. One day, he gave water to Lhamu and me. He must have filled his bottle in a stream.”
Mingma waved a menacing red sleeve at Hamar in a gesture that said Sit down and be quiet. To Dorje’s surprise, the big Norwegian complied. “I will never have that power,” Dorje confessed to Beth. “Look at him. Without a word, he can do more than I can yelling.”
Twenty minutes later, the doctor confirmed his typhoid diagnosis in English. “Both of you are also suffering from severe dehydration, malnutrition, and exposure. Rest here until evacuation arrangements can be made, hopefully by helicopter to Kathmandu tomorrow. You can’t make the long trip down to Lukla. At home, check into a hospital for a fluid and salt drip plus antibiotic treatment.”
“Will we be all right?” Beth asked.
“I think so. Most cases are cured, but there is always a risk of complications such as bleeding of the intestines and kidney failure. I’m not equipped to treat those.”
The roar of an avalanche paled to the words emanating from the doctor’s mouth. Dorje glanced at his father who had not understood. It had taken the rape of an entire country to separate him from the woman he loved but only a few sips of bottle of water to wrench Beth from Dorje’s arms. In shock, he didn’t know whether to scream, curse the gods, blame Hamar’s recklessness or worse yet himself for allowing her to go up there.
Absorbed with guilt, Dorje wasn’t listening until the doctor shook his arm and brought him back to consciousness. “You have what’s called a flail chest,” he said in Nepali. “Many ribs are broken in several places. The whole side of your chest is floating free with broken bones acting like sharp knives. That’s why you’ve experienced so much pain.”
“Can my son die from this?” Mingma asked.
“Not if he’s careful. Eventually the ribs will heal by themselves, but I want to keep him here to make sure his lung doesn’t collapse or he doesn’t get pneumonia.”
Dorje only half listened because without Beth he didn’t care anymore. Holding her with his mouth to her ear, he whispered, “What am I to do? If you stay or go, either way I risk losing you.”
She ran her fingers up the back of his hair and pulled him closer. “I came half way around the world to find you and I’m not letting go.”
“But if you don’t get help . . .” He paused, unable to voice the unspeakable.
“I’ll come back if you’ll wait for me.”
In words that seemed to come from far away, the doctor spoke to his father in Nepali about getting a helicopter for Beth and the Norwegians. “I know a man in Namche who has such connections,” Mingma said, “and will go to him immediately.” Hearing his proud father offer to seek the help of his greatest enemy told Dorje of the sacrifice he was willing to make. He vowed to never utter an angry word to him again.
Hamar remained at the hospital in one room with Lhamu while Dorje and Beth shared a bed in another. Lying on his back with Beth against the full length of his healthy side, Dorje felt her heart beating and the rhythm of her breathing. He gently stroked her hair and inhaled its aroma to saturate all of his senses for recall when she was gone. Dreading the first blush of dawn, he held her through the night fighting sleep so he wouldn’t miss a moment of their time together. Sadly, it arrived much too soon with its pale light filtering through smoky clouds. Dorje watched it steal through the window and along the floor whispering, I’ve come to take her away
No! You can’t have her, he yelled in a silent scream.
But dawn was heartless and cruel. She lit the way for his father and doctor to enter. “We must go,” said Mingma. “Yesterday, Pemba radioed Kathmandu from the police post above Namche. A helicopter will be here in two hours. He and the other two Norwegians will meet us there.”
“Give us just five minutes.” After Mingma exited, Dorje lightly kissed Beth’s forehead and watched her slowly emerging from sleep. “They have a helicopter and are waiting for us.”
“I hoped it wouldn’t be so soon. I can’t believe this is happening.” She held her hand to his cheek. “But we’ll be together again. I’ll return in the warmth of spring after I finish writing about you.”
The Norwegians and Pemba were waiting with everyone’s belongings at a level stretch of ground near the photo rock. “You look like shit,” Royd told Hamar. “I don’t understand what Pemba was saying but got the message we have to leave today.”
His face still flushed with fever, Hamar said, “I have typhoid and the doctor wants me to go home, but I’m staying here.”
Removing his toothpick, Kirk asked, “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I love Lhamu and she loves me.”
“For God’s sake, how do you know that? You don’t even speak the same language.”
“Love needs no words.”
“You big dumb Norwegian,” said Royd. “You’re in lust not in love. Now get on the damn helicopter.”
Feet planted firmly and arms folded across his chest, Hamar said, “No. I’m staying. You know how much I wanted to come here. This is my home now.”
Turning to Beth, Royd said, “Don’t tell me you’re caught up in this insanity too.”
Dorje squeezed Beth’s hand wanting her emotions to rule, but her old rational self reigned. “No. It’s too risky. I’m going back to recover and write my Sherpa piece. I’ll return in the spring.”
As they approached the helicopter, Nima stepped from the crowd of curious onlookers that always gathered when the flying machines arrived. Releasing Dorje’s hand, Beth said. “Let me go say good-bye to him.”
Dorje had hoped time would erase Nima's hurt and anger, but they still loomed in his brother’s eyes. And when Beth returned, Dorje watched Nima erect a wall as impassable as the Nuptse Ridge standing between them and Everest. After a last, lingering kiss, Dorje reined his emotions by performing a tradition
al farewell. He placed a white silk kata around the necks of the two Norwegians and finally Beth, biting his lips as he gave hers a little tug. “Namaste,” he whispered. “I love you.”
“Me too,” she whispered. “I’ll be back.”
When the door closed, Dorje clung to himself to keep from splintering further apart. The blades spun, churning the ground into great whirling, dust clouds, and the helicopter magically lifted into the air with a deafening noise. He walked to the end of the ridge and gazed as it flew past soft-splayed hills and finally disappeared. The anguish in his heart was like a glacier scouring a valley and leaving behind only a cold, rocky moraine where once marigolds mingled with wildflowers. His life had just been stripped of lush meadows and left in muddy debris.
CHAPTER 24
The pilot gave Beth and the Norwegians cotton for their ears and hard candy to suck on. Biting the insides of her cheeks to keep from crying, she pressed her face to the glass and watched Dorje as they lifted off. As he became smaller and smaller and finally disappeared, her eyes clouded over. Hamar had the courage to remain. With her body and heart aching for Dorje, why didn’t she? Because it was a foolish, irrational thing to do and those words had never defined her, but nor had passion and love until a few weeks ago when she felt fully alive for the first time in her life.
Below her lay the serpentine valley of the Dudh Kosi with trees clinging to the sides and edged by huge, precipitous peaks that seemed to be leaning inward. As they flew over Lukla, the muscles in her face strained to ward off tears as she remembered Dorje’s first gaze. Beyond the landing strip, terraces unfolded like dark wrinkles across the mountain face. Fifty-five minutes after leaving the snowy depths of the Khumbu, they reached the verdant Kathmandu Valley with the ancient cities of Bhaktapur, Patan, and the capital itself. Seeing the city now after being in the hills, Beth was in awe of the achievements of this medieval, fairy-tale kingdom struggling to come of age.
Pemba had contacted the American consulate who sent a representative to assist Beth in getting a flight home that departed just two hours after her arrival. After thanking Royd and Kirk for their help and wishing them good luck, Beth boarded the plane that would whisk her away from Shangri-la. Still feeling nauseated and feverish, she took a pill for motion sickness and slept intermittently, waking for meals and the frequent cups of hot tea advised by the doctor. Stepping off the plane in New York, groggy and blurry eyed, Beth felt quite disoriented. For weeks, the Himalayas, Buddhist temples, avalanches, Sherpas, yaks, and yetis had been her world. Suddenly plopped down in the 20th century again, how could she move from that reality back into this one? Standing in line at immigration beside men in pinstriped suits and carrying brief cases, Beth felt strangely alien to them. And later, gazing at the drinking fountain, she couldn’t force herself to turn the handle and drink until someone impatiently demanded she hurry up. Never before had she immersed herself so completely in another culture. It was disquieting.
She called Eric to ground herself. “I’m in New York,” she said yawning, “waiting for the plane to Denver. Can you meet me?”
“Of course, Babe! How are you?”
“Okay. Just a little feverish from drinking some water, but I’ll be fine after checking into a hospital for a couple of days.”
“How’d that happen? You’re always so careful.”
“It’s a long story but I don’t want to go into it now. We’ll have plenty of time in a few hours.”
“I can hardly wait.” His voice softened. “Still love me?”
“Of course,” she said not having the strength or courage right now to tell Eric the truth—that she loved him but was not in love with him. For now, her recounting of the trip to Gokyo and the storm on the Cho La would have to exclude any mention of her relationship with Dorje.
Meeting her at the gate with an armload of flowers and a shower of trembling kisses, Eric pulled Beth to the nearest chair and sat staring at her. “I just need to look at you for a minute. It seems like you’ve been gone forever.”
Beth held his hand and smiled, telling herself that fatigue and illness were dulling her emotions and a week from now things would feel different. “So tell me about the Galapagos,” she said when they started for the car. “I want to hear all about it.”
He boasted of landing at 9300 feet in Quito with no ill effects after being in Nepal and raved about the giant tortoises weighing up to 550 pounds and living 100 years, the iguanas, and hundreds of land and sea birds. “I missed you so much and wanted you with me. I would have taken better care of you.”
“I missed you too,” she murmured with her heart whispering, Be kind and don’t hurt him.
Beth spent five days in the hospital, resting and organizing her notes. Before going to Nepal, she had read numerous anthropological studies on the Sherpas but found the works dry and too analytical. She wanted to offer an intimate portrait of their lives that would engage readers. During visiting hours, the Denver world closed in on her, usurping her thoughts and emotions. Eric came every day with pictures of Galapagos and Nepal, saying she could keep the latter to choose which ones best illustrated her work. Friends from the Colorado Mountain Club seemed to come in designated shifts to ask about trekking in Nepal, a goal many of them shared.
When finally alone, Beth placed two pictures side by side: one with her standing on a rock next to Eric and the other with Dorje. Such different emotional realms. In the still of the night with only occasional hushed voices coming from the nurses’ station, Beth nestled her head in the hollow of Dorje’s shoulder, clasped her arm around his neck, and slid her leg snugly between his as they had slept in another hospital bed. Then she quietly escaped into the deep cavern of her loneliness where dreams yearning for his reality echoed off the walls. Was he thinking of her too? When she promised to write, he explained that letters never made it to Namche. So she could only fantasize about the moment they would reunite and hoped those images would pull her through the cold winter of writing.
Beth finished the longest work of her career in early February after spending the holidays with Eric’s family. They were kind and caring people who treated her well. His sister Carolyn and her husband became the siblings she never had. Since her father had never resurfaced, Beth didn’t know whether he was dead or alive and holidays with her mother and the current live-in sugar daddy and lesbian lover were insufferable and generally a designated time for the annual suicide attempt. Having resigned from the post as her mother’s keeper a year ago, Beth was now alone with painful memories of other holidays that even Eric’s loving family couldn’t expunge.
By mid March, the accolades for her work were overwhelming. It was the best she’d ever done and Beth glowed with satisfaction. “It belongs to you too,” she told Eric at dinner the night she received an award. “You’re an amazing photographer. I admire you tremendously.”
“And love me too,” he said smiling but with the faintest inflection at the end—not really a question but a glimmer of doubt.
“But of course,” she gave as her stock answer and added a playful kiss on his cheek. How handsome he looked in his tuxedo and so debonair as he led her onto the dance floor.
“You’re radiant tonight,” he whispered in her ear, “and seem much more present than you’ve been since returning from Nepal.”
“Really?” she said leaning back to look at him. “And how is that?”
“I don’t know. I can’t define it, just something that I feel.”
Moving to the slow dance of lovers, she rested her cheek against his and wondered if she’d been away from Dorje too long. Was it possible to return to the harsh reality of his world after being at home these past months? Or could he feel comfortable here? She imagined him sitting at one of the tables dressed in a tux and trying to converse about politics or religion. Most likely, he’d be miserable and feel out of place. In the Khumbu, he was a high-ranking sirdar who shone brilliantly among the other Sherpas, but would he garner the same respect here sit
ting among her cohorts? And would she feel the same about him? At times, the whole Everest experience seemed a distant dream now.
Eric’s hand interrupted her thoughts as it moved along her side and brushed the fullness of her breast. She hadn’t rejected his advances since her return but had often feigned the throes of passion. As long as the orgasms shook his whole being and he fell asleep spent and satisfied, the little gnats of doubt and guilt left her in peace. Feeling giddy with success tonight, she appreciated who he was and what he meant to her. When they returned to the table, she slipped her hand under the cloth and along his thigh. He jumped and glanced at her, his mouth agape. “Let’s go home,” she whispered. Thirty seconds later, he was out of his seat and seeking the waiter for the bill. Who cared that the main course had not yet arrived.
Beyond the summit: An Everest adventure and Romance Page 23