The Ascent(63)

I raised my hand in a wave, but the figure did not respond. At this distance, it was impossible to make out any details, but there was no movement, no acknowledgment of my greeting.

It was then that I realized I was sweating through my clothes. I peeled my collar away from my throat, and a waft of warm body heat exited. All of a sudden, I was breathing in great whooping gasps, my heart rumbling like a freight train.

Something wasn’t right. This was more than just the fever I’d been fighting the past couple of days. My clothes started suffocating me, my helmet squeezing my cranium. It was as if I were growing to twice my size in a matter of seconds.

Unsnapping the buckle of my helmet strap, I pulled it off my head and tossed it aside. I dropped my pack and fumbled with the zipper on my parka. Then I took my parka off, whipped it into the snowbank, and lifted my anorak over my head. My flannel shirt and thermals were drenched with sweat. Wasting no time with the buttons, I tore the flannel shirt from my torso, the buttons popping loose and soaring through the air, then sloughed off the sopping wet thermal beneath it.

Petras closed one hand around my wrist. “What the hell are

you doing?”

“Gotta … get out of these clothes …” My voice was breathless, struggling. “Claustrophobic …”

“You’re not.” Petras grabbed my other wrist. I struggled to get free, but his grip was too tight. “It’s onset hypothermia. You’re actually freezing to death and dehydrated, but you feel like your body is on fire.”

“My heart,” I gasped. “Jesus … help …”

My eyelids fluttered, and the world tilted to one side, knocking my legs out from under me. I collapsed into the snowbank, the world grainy and distant before my eyes. My heart was like a jackhammer trying to drill through the wall of my chest. I actually placed one hand over my heart to steady it and could feel its reverberations against my palm.

“Hey!” Petras shouted to the others. “Man down! Some help here!” Strangely his voice was laden with echo. It took me several seconds to realize I was also hearing it come through the walkie-talkie affixed to my backpack, two feet away from me in the snow.

“I think … think I’m having a … a heart attack …”

Petras’s hand fell on my chest. “Be cool,” he said in his big bear’s voice. “Relax.”

I forced my eyelids open. They were gummy, and my vision was blurred. Once it cleared, I could make out the wind-chapped skin stretched taut over Petras’s high cheekbones and the flecks of snow caught in his auburn beard.

Suddenly I was a child in bed with a fever, and John Petras was my father, who incidentally was also named John. My father mopped my brow and smiled warmly down to me and told me to relax and stay warm. He told me of the birds roosting in the fig trees in the yard and how the limestone wall by the shore was becoming infested—absolutely infested—with lichen. It was nothing to worry about now, but I would have to scrub the wall clean once I was better, scrub that

moss and lichen and green slime right off.

And what I wound up doing was chiseling away sections of the wall, carving faces and hands so that it looked like people inside the wall pushing against it and trying to get out. My father was angry and sent me to my room for three days, though by the end of the three days, he came to my room and told me I shouldn’t have carved up the wall but that my carvings were very good and that he was impressed that they were very good …

I was lifted off the ground, my head cradled in someone’s hands, and my shoulders and legs were carried by others. I was wrapped quickly in a warm sleeping bag, while Andrew and Chad created a lean-to to keep the freezing winds at bay.

“You’ll be all right,” Petras said very close to my face. I could smell his sour breath and feel its warmth along the side of my face and down my neck. “Drink some water.”

I sipped water from a bottle. It seared my throat on the way down to my guts. My body was quaking, my teeth chattering. I thought I had gone blind until I realized I had my eyes shut.

Yet when I opened them, it was dark. A small fire burned outside the lean-to. My body had ceased quaking, and my heart had resumed its normal pace. I was alone beneath the lean-to. When I peeked out past the fire, I could see no one.

I pulled on a sweatshirt and edged out into the night. Petras was crouched low to the ground, filling water bottles with snow.

“Where are the others?” I croaked, my throat raw and abrasive.

“Making an advance up the east ridge. Andrew said the Hall of Mirrors is right over the next pass, which is the doorway to the Canyon of Souls.” He looked me over, his eyes like black pits in the firelight. “You look better.”

“I think my fever broke.”

“Gave us all quite a scare earlier.” He returned to his work.

“It was no picnic on my end, either. Need help?”

“I’m just about finished here.”

“It was like my heart was going to burst out of my chest. I’ve never heard of hypothermia causing a heart to race. In fact, it does the opposite, doesn’t it?”

“You were also sick as a dog,” Petras added. “Let’s not forget that.” “Still …”

“Still what?”

“Forget it. My head’s been funny lately.” What had Hollinger said? My head’s playing funny games. I can’t think straight.