The Ledge (17 page)

All the while I try connecting with Mike, to keep him sucking in breaths.

“Come on, Michael, breathe!” I shout. “Breathe! Hang in there!”

Finally, I extricate my left arm from the snow. Frantic, I try to sit up, but can’t.

I hear his sputtering breath. Then an exhaling sigh. Then: silence.

I freeze, staring straight ahead. Eyes wide, I remain motionless, listening. Clutching the ice ax in mid-swing, I realize I’m holding my breath.

Maybe he’s just between breaths. Maybe I can’t hear him with all the snow crunching around my ears. Quiet!

I wait three, four, five seconds, and I know he’s really not breathing.

“Mike!” I scream in a rising pitch. I grab his calf and shake the
hell out of it. Through his climbing pants, I pinch his calf hard, trying to get a reaction. Nothing.

Panic clutches me, and I thrash violently at the snow, trying to break free, trying to get to my partner. In frustration I punch the snow pile.

“Mike!” I screech again, my shrill voice cracking.

I open my hand and let the ice ax go. I sense it slipping past my right ear and disappearing into the blackness behind me, far from reach. A critical voice in my mind hisses,
Stupid move
.

I try again to sit up. But something holds me back: my helmet. It’s caught on something behind me, probably my pack. I pull hard on the chin-strap buckle to loosen it. I yank the nylon strap up over my nose, and as it drags across my face, I feel stinging pain—I must be cut up. When I let go of the strap, my helmet falls behind me, and I hear it bounce away.
Clunk. Clunk
. Silence.
Clunk
.

I sweep aside mounds of wet snow with both arms, digging my way laterally toward Mike’s head, which is still out of sight and out of reach. I can now see along the backs of his legs up past his knees. My fingers hook on something as I dig, and when I pull, I snag the brim of Mike’s helmet. Touching his helmet confuses me, because it should be on his head, which is way down near my feet, not up here, next to my chest.

I dig again, and on the next scoop, I hit Mike’s sunglasses. Mike’s head seems to be here near my chest, facing upward. But that can’t be as his feet are here too, but facing downward. I brush aside loose snow next to his sunglasses and see Mike’s cheek. Relieved to have found him, I clear more snow off his face, but I’m still confused as to how both his head and his feet are up near my chest.

Then I understand.

Mike is on his back, facing up. His legs have been bent way too far up toward his head. So far that his feet are just behind his ears. He’s folded over.

I brush more snow from his face, and his head flops gently to the left side, toward me.

I reach into his mouth, pulling out a bunch of snow. I start to do it again, but I fear that I will make him vomit and choke, so I make a baby sweep with one finger.

“Mike! Mike!” I scream.

I grab his cheek, pinching and twisting the flesh as hard as I can, giving it everything I have. Pain is a powerful thing, and humans—even ones knocked out or on the edge of death—respond to it.

Nothing happens.

I rip a wet purple glove off my right hand and reach to his neck, checking for a pulse, but I feel nothing. My fingers shake against my friend’s neck.

This can’t be real. This can’t be real
.

EVERY SECOND THAT
ticks by, the chances that I can save Mike—or myself—drop perceptibly.

A little light filters through the gloom, and I can see some details. Mike, doubled over on top of me, is in big trouble.

With Mike’s head on my chest, and me still trapped behind and beneath him, I twist my upper torso and crane my neck sideways to look at his face. I detect no movement in his lips, nose, or cheeks. Tucking my face close to his, I feel for his breath against my cheek while I stare down at his torso. I pray to see his chest rise or feel his puffs of life against my wet face, but my spirits sink further as I detect nothing. Again I place my fingers on his neck and press, trying to find a pulse, but my hands are so cold from clawing at the snow for the last few minutes that I don’t know whether to trust the fact that I feel only stillness.

Random loops of our climbing rope arc in and out of the snow, snagging my arms and hampering my movements. Claustrophobia grips me as I tussle to maneuver while still buried to my sternum in our cramped little snow pile. Mike faces up with his legs doubled up toward his face, in a hyperextended pike position. His feet dangle up
by his head and by my head. One of his boots sticks in my face, next to my ear.

I know I must move his legs out of the way so I can reach his mouth and nose to breathe for him, but the thought scares the hell out of me. What if he has a spinal cord injury?

I realize I don’t have any choice—I’ve got to try to breathe for him, and the only way I can get to his face is to flip his legs out of my way. If I don’t breathe for him, it won’t matter if his spine is damaged.

I grab both of Mike’s legs and push them upright into the air, away from me, closing my eyes and turning my head away—I can’t stand to see it. Trying to lessen the impact, I grasp the loose nylon fabric of his climbing pants and ease his limbs downward. When the snow encasing me to my belly won’t let me stretch any farther, I open my hands and let go. Mike’s legs flop over to a normal position and his boots plop softly into the snow on the far end of the ledge. The thought of what I may have just done to my friend forces a small gurgle of horror from my throat.

Now I can easily get my face to his. With my right thumb and index finger, I pinch Mike’s nose closed. I open my mouth wide and seal it around his. I blow a puff of air into him, but it shoots right back out, as if it didn’t go very far.

Oh God, he didn’t use it
.

I tilt his forehead back a little and lift his chin, then give him another strong breath. I get more air in this time, and it seems like the air goes in deeper. When I pull my head back, I watch his chest and see it drop down: good. I got air in and it flowed back out. But it feels as though I’m just blowing into a balloon and the air is escaping as soon as I pull my mouth away.

I puff into him again. This time I just retract my lips and remain stationed right over Mike’s mouth. When the air rushes back out, it flows right into my mouth and nose. We are truly sharing breaths. In
our shared air I taste and smell a slightly sour odor. Is it me? Is it him? Doesn’t matter. It is us.

I HAVE TO
start chest compressions. Mike’s head rests on my chest, and I’m basically behind him, fighting the ice wall and the snow pile to position my left arm. I torque my shoulder, hover my left palm over his sternum, and push down hard with the heel of my hand. But with Mike resting on the layer of loose snow that’s trapped between us, it feels like all I’m doing is shoving him down deeper into the slop. It doesn’t feel as though I’ve compressed his chest enough to force life-giving blood through his body.

I know that I should be compressing with both hands, but I can’t. Our bodies are a tangled mess. Since I am trapped below him, I simply cannot get above him to do compressions the way I have been trained to. I’m forced to reach around from behind him and lift my left arm above us both just to get one hand over his heart. I can’t twist my body any farther or stretch my right arm high enough over Mike’s head to reach his chest with my right hand. Getting one hand on him just above the sternum is all I can do.

With the next compression, I again mostly just shove him deeper into the snow jammed between us, and I feel Mike get pushed down against my body. I realize that since I’m trapped behind Mike’s back, I can support him from below as I simultaneously press down from above. I sort of puff out my rib cage, wiggling so Mike’s shoulder blades are squarely against me. Now I press down with my left hand on his sternum while thrusting up my own chest against Mike’s back to support him, almost like sandwiching him between my open hand and my body. With me reaching around him from behind, it’s sort of like performing a one-handed Heimlich maneuver.

It works better. His chest recoils, and I can feel that I’m actually
doing some good. I get in another solid compression, and then switch back to breathing.

I blow a breath into his mouth, and seek some sign that he’s responding. Seeing nothing reassuring, I do CPR again, and again. I had hoped that after just a few cycles, Mike would recover, wake up, and everything would be fine. None of that is happening.

It’s not working
.

I settle into a pattern: compressing his chest as hard as I can, cradling his head and pinching his nose with my right hand and blowing air into his lungs, and sweeping away snow with my left hand.

Compressions. Breathe. Sweep.

As I move more snow away from me, I become slowly able to sit up a little farther. Working my way out of the snowbank, I rise a bit higher above Mike, and I’m able to give more forceful compressions. But I can still get only one hand on his chest, because my right arm is still torqued and trapped behind Mike’s head.

During all this action, I accidently knock off his sunglasses. I do not want to look right at Mike, but I need to. Although my training dictates that I study his pupils, I try hard not to actually stare into my friend’s eyes, into his being.

Clinically, I note that his pupils are fixed. To test their reaction, I cover his open eyes with my right hand for a few seconds, then pull it away to see if the pupils respond to the shaft of sunlight stabbing down into the crevasse.

They don’t. I shudder.

Maybe they’re not responding because it’s so dark in here. Keep going
.

I see what looks like bruising behind his left ear and along his jawline. That’s a bad sign, but I continue CPR. As I struggle to revive Mike, I begin to understand what is happening, though I don’t
want to accept it. It’s been a while since I’ve heard or seen any sign of life from Mike. I’m losing him.

Compressions. Breathe. Sweep.

A blast that sounds as if it’s from a rifle pierces the air, and instinct warns me that ice or snow has ripped free far over our heads and is screaming down through the crevasse. I lean over Mike’s head to protect him from the falling debris—just as the professional rescuers showed me on Longs Peak last year—and throw my hands above my head. A snow slab whistles by just past our feet, crashing somewhere far below us in a thunderous explosion. Two seconds later, snow dust billows up from somewhere below and settles around us.

The near miss unnerves me, but I realize that more light is now streaming into the crevasse. I can see more clearly, so I slide my hand in front of Mike’s eyes, blocking out the light. A new wave of sadness sweeps over me after I move my hand out of the way and confirm that his pupils don’t react. My training tells me that I’m supposed to continue resuscitation until I’m either relieved by another rescuer or the patient is declared dead by a doctor. But those things won’t happen—I’m the only one here. I don’t want to quit. Not on Mike. It’s not working, but I mechanically continue the CPR fight.

However, I also know that I can’t prolong this exhausting effort forever. At some point, I have to stop, and I have to escape the snow before it locks me in. The tension between needing to continue and needing to stop tears at my heart.

Finally, I check for a pulse again and glance at his lips; they look blue. I move my hand in front of his eyes, and again I get no response.

“I think he’s gone,” I say to myself quietly.

I stop CPR, staring at Mike for about ten seconds. Nothing changes. I hope, illogically, that he’ll take a breath. He doesn’t.
Dumbfounded, I lift Mike’s gloved hand off the snow. When I let it go, it flops limply back down.

I GENTLY LAY
my head down on his chest and rest my arms across him, shaking with fear. Tears well up at the corners of my eyes.

If you let that come up, you’re going to die down here
.

I fight to force emotion back. I stare ahead, numb on every level, unable to move.

A voice inside my head pulls me back, shaking me from the shock—a desperate voice of survival, half emotional, half logical.

Dig. Dig out of the snow. Get out before it freezes up
.

I pull my right arm out from behind Mike’s head and furiously paw at the snow with both hands. I don’t have the ice ax—I dropped it—and I’m momentarily angry at myself for that. A jolt of alarm hits me as I realize the consequences if I don’t get out before this slurry freezes.

My breath bursts out in heavy wheezes. I dig madly and manage to get down to about my waist. Finally, I can move enough to loosen my pack’s shoulder straps and waist belt and wiggle free.

Logically, rationally, I know I should keep digging to gradually free myself from the grip of this icy debris. My gut reaction, however, is to just wrench myself loose. I panic and try to push out of the snow all at once. But I’m stuck fast. It’s like being buried in the sand at the beach.

“Slow down and dig,” I say in a sort of lecture to myself.