For a long moment, Harrison was silent, the fingers of one hand curling into a fist. Kenzie found herself holding her breath, the nails of her right hand digging into her palm. She’d been in the Ops Room, listening in to the climbing website while he’d been fighting for his life.
“I shouted for them. No response. Then I understood. They were gone—all of them. I was in the crevasse and alone.”
The desolation in his voice put a lump in Kenzie’s throat. Not caring what Wendy might think, Kenzie reached over and took his hand in hers to find his fingers cold.
“How did you get out? What about the ladder?”
“The ladder had disappeared. I had to climb the ice.”
His fingers threaded through hers while he described a harrowing hour or more of using his crampons and ice tools to climb unstable ice.
“I had some broken ribs—I think I took a whipper into the wall of the crevasse when I fell—and that made it harder. I would climb a few feet, and the ice would break off and fall, taking me with it. I would have to start again.”
“How far did you have to climb?”
“It wasn’t that far—maybe thirty feet.”
That sounded pretty damned far to Kenzie.
“What were you thinking during that time?” Wendy asked.
“I kept telling myself to hurry because they might still be alive. That hope, that sense of urgency—it kept me going.”
“Did you truly think they might have survived?”
Harrison’s brows drew together in an irritated frown. “I didn’t stop to logic it out. I was running on adrenaline with a concussion and broken ribs.”
“You kept going.”
He nodded, his hold on Kenzie’s hand growing tighter. “I reached the top to find a jumble of ice—blocks as big as buses, as big as houses, piled on top of each other. The rope that had saved my life disappeared beneath that mess, Luka somewhere at the other end. I slashed at the ice with my ice tools, but there was no way I could get to them.”
“What did you do then?”
“I sat down. I just sat there. Was I in shock? I don’t know.”
“It was a rescue team of Sherpas that helped you back to Base Camp, right?”
He nodded. “They put up new ladders, sent a rope over, and belayed me back. I made my way with them down to Base Camp.”
In a voice almost devoid of emotion, Harrison told Wendy how he’d contacted Bruce’s wife and the twins’ parents the moment he’d gotten back to Base Camp. He told her how all climbing had stopped until monks performed a puja in memory of the three men. He told her how the camp doctor had tried to examine him, but he had refused.
“How was it to tell their relatives that they were gone? Bruce had a wife and kids. Luka and Felix were their parents’ only children.”
Okay,thatwas going too far. Was she trying to twist the knife?
A muscle clenched in Harrison’s jaw. “That’s none of anyone’s business. Those conversations were private.”
Kenzie gave his fingers a supportive squeeze.
Wendy changed the subject. “How did you end up at the Tengboche Monastery? Have you always had an interest in Buddhism?”
He shook his head. “I took what I could carry in my pack and started the trek back to Kathmandu. When I reached Tengboche, I just stopped. We had camped there on our way to Base Camp, admired the view of Everest, talked about the climb. Somehow, as long as I could see the mountain, it didn’t feel real to me that they were gone.”
Kenzie blinked back tears.
* * *
The only way tofinish this was to finish it.
