“What do you mean?” Van asked.
Bakari shrugged. “We are so close to the summit it can be faster to go up and over, then descend quickly if someone has started to feel sick.”
“Areyouokay, Frankie?” Scotty asked. “You don’t look so great.”
I hadn’t realized it, but I was hunched over the table, one hand braced against it. Breathing harder than I had the whole trip. I kept squeezing my eyes shut, but my vision was definitely blurry. “I think I’m in one of those better-to-hurry-up-and-get-to-the-top situations.”
“I have dexamethasone,” Brooks said. “Do you want some?”
“What’s dexa…?” I asked. There were so many medications we’d talked about at various points for the altitude, malaria, stomach issues. I knew all about Diamox, which I was already on, but I had no idea what medication Brooks was talking about.
“It reverses cerebral edema once it sets in. Or slows it down.Ifthat’s what’s happening,” Richard said. “Brooks’s doctor wasthe only one who offered it. Probably because he’s delicate.” Richard smiled at his own joke, but the concern in his eyes was unmistakable.
Cerebral edema was the part of AMS that killed you, and quickly. I knew that much. Brooks handed me the pill as Kito gave me the oximeter: “Eighty-five, one twenty,” I said. My numbers were worse again. A long time elapsed while we sat in silence. Or maybe it was seconds. Time kept stuttering forward and then reversing.
There was something going wrong with my brain.
I swallowed the pill.
“I’ll be okay,” I said. “I want to finish—I need to.”
Bakari shook his head. “Sometimes it is not your day. The most important thing is to be safe so that there will continue to be other days.” He considered. “We will wait a little while to see if the dex begins to work. There is a chance…” The usual humor in his voice was gone. “If your numbers do not improve, we will call for evacuation.”
I nodded.
“For now, everyone eat quickly and drink,” Bakari said. “Especially you, Frankie. Even if you do not want to.” He exited the tent again.
I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it, but the fog lifted slightly as I finished my soup. Even the tingling in my hands had lessened—the dex, maybe. It was designed to act fast, though admittedly not that fast.
“Thank you, Brooks,” I said. “I think the medication is starting to work.”
“Good,” he said, shooting a look in Richard’s direction. “Side benefits of not being overconfident.”
When I’d finished my bottle of water and drunk some tea, Kito passed me the pulse oximeter. Everyone watched as I inserted my finger and fixed my gaze on the flashing red dashes, waiting for the results to appear.
Eighty-eight over 100.
“Improving! Good. How do you feel?” Kito asked.
“Better, actually,” I said. “My hands are still tingling a little, and my vision isn’t perfectly clear. But everything else—the headache and the nausea—is lessening.”
“Her numbersarebetter,” Kito said to Bakari as he came back into the tent.
But Bakari’s eyes narrowed as he regarded me seriously. “We can very easily, very safely take you down now. It is always a risk to continue. A very big risk. People do die, Frankie. Not often. But, as we have said, it happens. Do you want to continue?” He wanted to be sure the moment he put my life in my own hands was made very, very clear and for the record. “But with your numbers improving, the decision is now yours.”
“I want to finish,” I said without hesitating. “Yes.”
“Okay.” Bakari nodded. “And everyone else is okay to continue? We are one hour with a very steep incline, poor footing, but no scramble. Then—the summit.”
A chorus of quiet but sturdy yeses from the group. All ready. We slowly gathered our things, adjusting our gear as we had done countless times in the preceding six days. But this was it. The end.
There was still a chance for me to become someone else, or maybe to be all the parts of me—even that seventeen-year-old girl I judged so mercilessly.
“Okay, then,” Bakari said, turning to face the mountain. “Slowly, slowly. To the summit.”
***
“Frankie—what’s wrong?” Noah sounds startled and half asleep when he finally answers his phone. It’s nearly 2:00 a.m. He keeps his phone on at night only when he is on call, and I’d been crossing my fingers tonight would be one of those nights. “What time is it?”
