Mitch nodded stiffly, his smile wide now.
“From then on, the Seventies were basically fucking and climbing.” She thumbed through the entries. “Oh, yes, here’s the time we got busted by a ranger for illegal parking while having sex in your van. That was fun. And then the first time we made love up at the lake. Our free climbs all over Joshua Tree that fall. Do you remember those?”
Mitch’s eyelids seemed to grow heavy, but he nodded.
She kept turning the pages. “Oh, yeah. Remember that day when François showed up in Joshua Tree? I thought he was going to demand that we pay for all that wine. Instead, he wanted to fly us to Europe and sponsor some climbs there. We got to take one other person, and we chose Dean. Gridwall was bummed.”
Italy, Germany, France, Spain—they’d climbed in all the hottest places with Dean, with François, his wife, Melody, and a photographer, Greg, tagging along. François had been trying to glamorize the sport of climbing, while promoting his line of sportswear. It made business sense for him to try to launch a trend—and it worked.
“That trip piqued our interest in alpine climbing. Dean talked us into climbing the Eiger and the Matterhorn, and we couldn’t get enough.” She turned the pages. “I see you made lists of the gear we took in our packs. It wasn’t exactly ultra-light climbing in those days, was it?”
They’d left Yosemite and started climbing big peaks, bagging the most challenging alpine climbs in Europe, the US, and Patagonia, before attempting the 8,000-meter mountains in the Himalayas.
“Meanwhile, Gridwall and the other dirtbags were putting up incredible first ascents in Yosemite.” She laughed. “I’ll admit it. I was a little jealous. No matter where we traveled or what we climbed, I loved Yosemite best.”
She looked up, saw that Mitch was exhausted. “We’ll read more later.”
She set the journal aside, opened the foldout chair, and stretched out for a nap beside him.
Chapter 18
Megs sat beside Mitch,holding his hand, wishing she could do more to help him through what had to be one of the most difficult days in his life. “She did say that she’s seen people recover completely. It’s going to take time, but if anyone can do it, you can. I believe in you, Mitch.”
Dr. Linda White, the neurologist who’d evaluated him this morning, had diagnosed Mitch with non-fluent aphasia, which meant he could understand language, but couldn’t put words together to speak. He’d also been diagnosed with deficits in short-term memory, balance, and, to a lesser degree, his fine and gross motor skills. She had referred him to a speech-language pathologist to help him learn how to speak again, a physical therapy team, and an occupational therapist.
It had been a lot for Mitch to take in all at once.
He sat, silent, his expression unreadable, his fingers twined tightly with hers.
Megs knew that it could have been worse. He could have lost his ability to comprehend language at all. He could’ve lost his ability to make sounds, smile, and even swallow. He could have lost all of his fine motor skills. He could have lost his ability to take a single step. He could have died. But she didn’t think that hearing this would make the journey ahead easier for him.
“I’m excited to see those communication apps that Dr. White recommended. They’ll make it easier for you to share what’s on your mind. Rain is picking up a tablet for you to use. Do you remember Rain?”
He tried to say her name, a furious expression on his face when he managed only to make aWrsound.
Megs could see that her Susie Buttercup routine—all this positivity—wasn’t helping him. “I cannot say how sorry I am you’re in this shitty situation, Mitch. I’d doanythingto change it for you, but I can’t. It breaks my heart to see you suffering like this. It was bad fucking luck that the rock fell when it did, and now you’ve got a long struggle ahead of you, one that you didn’t choose. Ihatethat this is how it is for you now, and I know you hate it, too.”
The two of them had never faced anything like this.
Then again…
“Do you remember when we climbed K2? We got pinned down by some of the worst wind and cold we’ve ever encountered near The Bottleneck. We still had about ten hours of climbing to reach the summit. I was chilled to the bone, exhausted. I was coughing and was worried about high-altitude pulmonary edema. Dean had lost feeling in his toes. I thought we were going to be a statistic—part of the twenty-five percent of climbers who die up there.”
Megs couldn’t do the physical misery justice, not with words. She’d have to resort to interpretive dance or primal screams. Climbing K2 had been the most brutal experience of her life. But she’d gotten through it—thanks to Mitch.
“Yougot me through it, remember? You told me that this mountain was a climb like any other climb. You said we would succeed one step at a time like we always did. No matter how painful it got, we would focus, keep our minds sharp, reach the summit— and go home alive.”
She shifted so that Mitch could see her face and took both of his hands in hers. “Mitch, love, you have been in the Death Zone. When we arrived here at the hospital, the doctor told me you had only a forty-percent chance of surviving. Onlyfortypercent. That’s worse than the odds on K2 or Annapurna.”
She let that sink in. “You pulled through, and now you need to finishthisclimb. It’s not going to be easy, but you need to do what we did then—focus, keep your mind sharp, and take it one step at a time. I’ll be right here.”
She saw despair in his eyes—despair, fear, anger.
Then his gaze softened, and he nodded.
A knock at the door.
“Come.”
