High-Altitude Doctor Read online

  How could she have forgotten how it felt? The heat of his mouth on hers.

  Even now, so many hours afterwards, her lips were still tingling and her body was quivering with frustration.

  The lama continued to sing and chant prayers until finally he gave the signal and the Sherpas lifted the puja prayer pole into position, a long stick of bamboo. Lengths of coloured prayer flags representing the elements—earth, water, fire, cloud and sky—stretched from the top of the pole and were secured to the glacier by heavy rocks. The flags fluttered and spun around in the wind, an eye-catching splash of colour that brightened the drab, glacial terrain and lifted the mood.

  Juliet threw rice and flour and took the alcohol handed to her by a grinning Sherpa.

  She took a sip, choked and then froze as Finn walked up behind her.

  ‘Drink,’ he said in an undertone, ‘or you risk offending them and their mountain goddess.’

  He looked tough and male and unbelievably sexy, and she felt her stomach drop. How had she managed to live without him in her life for so long? ‘Just as long as you’re ready to resuscitate me when I collapse from alcohol poisoning,’ she muttered, taking another reluctant sip and trying not to screw her face up. Maybe the alcohol would dull her senses. Maybe it would make her less aware of Finn. ‘I don’t know how they can drink this stuff. It’s like paint stripper.’

  ‘They’re going to have headaches tomorrow.’ Finn smiled down at her and threw another handful of sacred flour into the air. ‘I just had a call from the clinic in Pheriche. Your injured Swedish climber is doing well, Dr Adams.’

  Did he know how good-looking he was? ‘That’s good news.’

  The temperature suddenly dropped and Juliet huddled deeper into her down jacket.

  For her the religious ceremony had great significance because it meant that tomorrow they would climb into the dreaded icefall for the first time.

  Juliet glanced over her shoulder towards the daunting, threatening frozen waterfall that guarded this route up the world’s highest mountain. What perils lay ahead?

  ‘Makes you wonder why we do it, doesn’t it?’ Finn stood beside her, his gaze following hers, understanding in his dark eyes as he turned to look at her.

  ‘Plenty of people wonder exactly that. I even wonder it myself sometimes.’

  Her mother had lost a husband and a son and yet still she was here. The surviving daughter…

  Finn nodded, a slight smile touching his hard mouth. ‘But we know why, don’t we?’ His voice was soft and she nodded.

  ‘There isn’t anywhere like the mountains.’ She tilted her head back and breathed, inhaling the scent of cold air and burning juniper. ‘When I’m up there I think about nothing but the next step. Survival.’

  Perhaps only another climber truly understood the climber’s need to reach the top, to tackle new peaks in the face of extraordinary danger; how the outside world, with all its trivial problems and complications, somehow ceased to exist.

  Finn understood. Finn felt the same way. It was why he’d always been so dangerous. Apart from her brother, he was the only person who had ever truly understood her.

  The atmosphere was becoming more and more merry as the Sherpas consumed increasing quantities of the local brew.

  Then the lama offered to bless their climbing equipment and they all went back to their tents to retrieve various bits and pieces.

  Juliet brought three different ice axes which she placed on the altar.

  Finally the lama left and the various teams wandered back to their tents to make their own preparations for the next day.

  The fun and the celebrations were over.

  Tomorrow the tone would be serious. They would begin the climb.

  Juliet and the rest of her team rose in darkness to start the climb through the icefall to Camp I. The smell of burning juniper still wafted over Base Camp, an offering to the ‘goddess of the sky’ from the Sherpas.

  At the edge of the icefall Juliet fastened her crampons, the sharp spikes that attached to the boots and enabled a climber to walk on snow and ice.

  The cold night air bit through the padding of her clothing and for a moment she thought longingly of her tent and her sleeping bag.

  This was undoubtedly the hardest thing about climbing at high altitude, she reflected as she started the walk into the icefall, feeling her crampons bite hard into the ice. During the day the sun’s blaze would weaken the ice and walking in such hot temperatures was too exhausting, so much of the climbing was done in darkness.

  She clipped the karabiner that was attached to her harness to the fixed rope that ran upwards along the icy terrain. At the beginning of each season a group of skilled Sherpas—the ‘icefall doctors’—and climbers established a route through to Camp I using ropes and ladders as a means of crossing the many lethal crevasses that lay deep and deadly, ready to swallow up an unlucky or careless climber.

  The route shifted with the movement of the ice and needed to be regularly maintained. Above her, huge blocks of ice hovered in frozen suspension, silent and threatening, each section in danger of imminent collapse.

  The truth was that, no matter how many ropes or ladders were used, the Khumbu Icefall would never be safe.

  Approaching the first ladder crossing, Juliet paused and wondered for a wild, terrifying moment what she was doing. She was about to walk above a yawning chasm on a ladder, wearing a pair of unwieldy boots with spikes attached.

  She knew only too well that the impression of safety was simply an illusion. The icefall was a living, moving thing. A crevasse could shift, sending a ladder tumbling down into fathomless depths. An ice screw could come loose; a rope might not hold. Her crampons might stick on the rungs of the ladder—

  ‘Jules?’ Finn trudged up behind her at a steady pace, careful not to expend too much energy. ‘Are you OK?”

  ‘I’m fine.’ With a determined gesture she placed her foot on the ladder, letting the rung settle between the teeth of her crampons. Then she picked her way carefully across, trying not to look at what lay below. Trying not to think about falling.

  But she didn’t lose her footing and she moved steadily onwards and upwards, clipping onto the next rope, crossing the next ladder, and then the next until she finally stopped for a rest and a drink. She was panting for breath.

  The sun was growing stronger and she applied thick sunblock, knowing that skin could burn in a matter of minutes.

  Blue ice stretched up above her, as high as an office block, and she saw the surface glistening in the heat of the sun.

  Deciding that to rest for too long simply increased the likelihood of disaster, she forced herself to carry on.

  An hour later she still wasn’t near the top of the icefall and Camp I, and Finn trudged up to her.

  ‘It’s getting late to be up here. We need to turn around.’

  She took several deep breaths, sucking the thin air into her lungs, swamped by disappointment. ‘I’m too slow.’

  Finn watched her. ‘It’s your first time in the icefall. You’ll be faster next time. You know how it works.’

  ‘Yeah.’ She knew how it worked. Each time you climbed slightly higher and the increase in height allowed the body to gradually adjust to the altitude. Theoretically. Not everyone did. She knew plenty of people who never made it out of Base Camp.

  ‘We’ll turn around and if you get really lucky I’ll buy you a yak burger for supper.’ Finn reached out and put a hand on her shoulder and she knew he understood her disappointment.

  ‘I wanted to make it to Camp I today.’

  His firm mouth curved into a smile. ‘Typical Jules. Always racing ahead. Always aiming high.’

  ‘I can do it.’

  ‘I know you can do it.’ His hand dropped to his side. ‘But not today. Today you’re going back down before this place becomes any more dangerous than it already is.’

  She didn’t argue with him because she knew he was right. It was time to go back down.

&nbs
p; She looked at him, noticing how strong he looked and how easy he made it seem, and it occurred to her that he should have been ahead of her. A long way ahead. And yet he was behind her.

  ‘Are you taking on the role of bodyguard?’ She glared at him suspiciously and he gave a shrug, not pretending to misunderstand her.

  ‘I’m climbing the way I always climb.’

  She narrowed her eyes but decided that this was not the place to pursue the subject. They were standing in lethal terrain and they needed to get away from it.

  Finn proved to be right in his prediction.

  The next time she climbed through the icefall she was much faster, aided by the fact that her body was gradually acclimatising to the altitude.

  Five exhausting hours after she’d left Base Camp, she hauled her body over the lip of a huge serac and saw the Western Cwm, the huge bowl at the top of the icefall. The mountains rose from this plateau and the scenery was breathtaking. This section of the climb was relatively protected from the wind and she knew that temperatures here could soar to more than 30 degrees Celsius and then drop below freezing in a matter of minutes as the sun plunged behind the surrounding mountains. Up here, an unprotected climber could burn severely in minutes.

  She lay for a moment, struggling for breath, her eyes on the view.

  ‘Do I need to give you the kiss of life?’ Finn slumped down next to her and put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m more than all right.’ Despite her exhaustion and the fact that she could hardly breathe, she grinned at him and then waved an arm. ‘Just look at that…’

  ‘I’m looking.’

  They sat for a while in silence, their problems temporarily forgotten while they shared the beauty, and then they finally lumbered to their feet and staggered towards the tents.

  Camp I, 6100 metres above sea level

  They spent the night at Camp I to acclimatise.

  Juliet slept fitfully, crammed in the tent that she was sharing with Anna, the only other woman in their party, knowing that this pattern would continue now until they made their summit bid in a few weeks. They would climb up and down the lower sections of the mountain, getting gradually higher to force the body to acclimatise and then dropping down again to allow the body time to recover.

  She woke early in the morning when Anna sat up and a shower of icicles fell from the inside of the tent onto her sleeping bag.

  ‘Ugh. Thanks a lot.’ Juliet sat up, groggy and breathless and coughing badly. ‘Talk about starting the day with a cold shower.’

  Anna gave a shudder. ‘You forget how much colder it is up here,’ she muttered as she finished dressing and shuffled towards the entrance of the tent. ‘Your cough sounds bad. And you’re our doctor.’

  ‘Everyone coughs up here,’ Juliet croaked, dressing as quickly as she could and pulling her hood up tight. Outside the tent the wind would be biting cold and she wanted to be as well prepared as possible. Her head was pounding and she felt dehydrated, despite all the water she was trying to drink.

  Today they were planning to climb a little higher towards Camp II before dropping back to Base Camp for a rest.

  She wondered, not for the first time, how she was ever going to get any higher than this and yet, before the climb was over, she would have climbed back up through the icefall and Camp I more times than she wanted to count.

  Best not to think about it, she decided as she fastened her crampons before pushing the rest of her equipment back into her rucksack and unzipping the door of the tent.

  Best just to concentrate on today.

  Finn was climbing with them and from time to time Juliet stopped to rest and watch him in action.

  His movements were skilled and economical, designed to conserve energy and minimise risk. He was strong and sure and steady, totally at home in these harsh surroundings.

  And he was nothing like her brother.

  Even as a child she’d been aware of the differences between them. Her brother had embraced risk, even courted it in a wild, almost adolescent carelessness for the fragility of life. In contrast, Finn was mature and careful in his decision-making, skilled and steady, measuring and minimising risk wherever possible.

  Juliet trudged across the Western Cwm, painfully slowly, aware only of her own breathing and the heat of the sun in the airless, scorching desert of snow and ice.

  She’d stopped to rest when Billy and Finn came back along the rope towards her.

  ‘They’ve had a problem in the icefall. One of the Sherpas has fallen into a crevasse near the top.’

  ‘Again?’ Juliet sucked in the oxygen-depleted air and tried to clear the muzzy feeling in her brain.

  ‘The icefall is particularly dangerous this year,’ Billy agreed, watching as she clipped herself onto the next section of fixed rope.

  She was only a short distance up the slope to Camp II. She could be back down to Camp I at the top of the icefall in less than twenty minutes.

  ‘Let’s go.’ Without arguing or wasting precious time asking questions that Billy wouldn’t be able to answer, she turned and started to plod back down, grateful for the thick layer of sun cream and her sunglasses.

  She was slower than the others and when she eventually reached the top of the icefall she saw several figures bunched together over a body lying on the snow.

  She plodded up to them and then stood for a moment, gasping for breath and coughing hard. ‘What’s the damage?’

  ‘We’re just taking his suit off to take a better look.’ Finn frowned at her. ‘You walked too fast. How long have you had that cough?’

  ‘It’s nothing. I’m fine. Everyone coughs up here, you know that as well as I do.’ She took her pack off her back and then dropped to her knees beside the injured climber, recognising him immediately as one of the Sherpas leading the New Zealand team. ‘Lopsang.’

  The Sherpa gave her a weak smile but it was obvious that he was in a great deal of pain and once his down suit had been removed it was possible to see why.

  ‘I felt it break when I landed and crunching when I tried to move. Very bad damage,’ he groaned, and Juliet exchanged looks with Finn.

  Both of them suspected that they were dealing with a lower leg fracture and an injury of that severity above the treacherous icefall was no joke. Evacuating him was going to be problematic, to say the least.

  ‘There’s swelling and bruising over the tibia,’ Juliet muttered, gently palpating the injured leg and comparing it to the uninjured leg, ‘and it’s obviously very tender. Did he fall far?’

  One of the other climbers, who had been just behind Lopsang, recounted what had happened while Juliet continued examining the injured man.

  ‘There’s spasm of the surrounding muscles and it feels very rigid.’ She checked the circulation distal to the suspected fracture and then glanced at Finn, who was spreading out equipment. ‘His pulses are OK at the moment but we need to splint it and get him down somehow.’

  ‘I agree. We’ll splint a joint above and below the injury using ice axes and we’ll use sleeping pads for comfort,’ Finn said calmly. ‘And we need to keep a close eye on his distal circulation and before and after splinting.’

  They worked smoothly together to apply the splint and once it was in place they checked the Sherpa’s circulation again.

  ‘Can you feel this?’ Finn checked for sensation and movement and then gave a satisfied nod. ‘That’s fine at the moment but we need to keep checking to make sure that the splint wrap isn’t too tight. We’ll recheck pulses, capillary refill and distal limb colour periodically, along with nerve function. Lopsang, any change in sensation or pain, I want you to tell us. Loudly. Understood?’

  The Sherpa gave a weak nod. ‘Understood, Dr Finn.’

  While they’d been stabilising the injured Sherpa the other climbers had been planning the evacuation. Transporting an injured climber from the icefall down to Base Camp was a risky business that required much thought, effort and co-operation on e
veryone’s part.

  ‘He can’t walk. We could ask for a helicopter evacuation,’ Juliet suggested tentatively, but Finn shook his head.

  ‘It’s been done, of course.’ He gave a rueful smile. ‘The highest Himalayan rescue in history. But we have to remember that you’re risking the life of the pilot. If we can get this chap down by stretcher, that’s what we’ll do.’

  Juliet sat back and nodded agreement, knowing that he was right. And his measured, thoughtful approach was just another example of the way Finn handled risk.

  He wasn’t prepared to endanger the pilot’s life by requesting an evacuation from Camp I if it was possible to get the injured climber down any other way.

  ‘There’s plenty of us up here at the moment.’ Finn glanced at the number of climbers milling around. ‘We can get him down.’

  And they did.

  With the help of amazing teamwork from Sherpas and climbers from all countries, they finally trudged into Base Camp four hours later.

  Finn and Juliet took the injured climber back to the Everest expedition medical tent while the others set about shifting rocks and flattening a large enough area of Base Camp for a helicopter landing.

  ‘We need to make sure there’s no loose dirt or snow. The helicopters are modified but, even so, flying at 17,600 feet is a dangerous enough undertaking without the additional hazards of flying debris. He’ll come in the early morning, while the air pressure is at its highest,’ Finn said, removing the bandages from the climber’s leg and checking the circulation. ‘Let’s hope for good weather.’

  There was a sprinkling of snow over Base Camp but the skies were clear and early next morning they heard the familiar clack-clack-clack of the approaching helicopter.

  Finn had cleared the area and ensured that all tents and loose objects had been secured and that everyone knew the drill.

  Juliet was preparing to move her injured patient out of the medical tent when the noise of the helicopter abruptly ceased.

  For a few breathless seconds she stood still, her hand on Lopsang’s splinted leg, trying to work out why it had gone quiet.