Left for Dead (9 page)

The Saturday I died on Mount Everest was also to have been the day of Meg’s first real date. The things some fathers will do to keep their daughters away from boys. I had a lot of class, and all of it was low.

I now know that Madeleine David probably was trying to prepare me for the inevitable. Apparently everybody at the time thought Beck was dead, one way or the other. But all I registered was hope. There was a moment of relief and joy, then we all went straight into “How do we get him to safety?”

Emotions were luxuries for which I didn’t have time. My focus was on just gluing it together, just keeping it going. I surely did want to become hysterical. I wanted to go to my room with the vapors. But if I’d done that then, my kids would have become hysterical, too. That was not a choice.

The house was
full
of people all day. Coming and going. Kids. Older people. I’ll bet that at any given time there were
twenty-five or thirty people there. Peach was right in the middle of it, even washing tie-dyed shirts!

Meg had brought them home from school that morning, as part of her project, and they needed to be washed in cold water or something. So while everyone’s on the telephone, calling all over the place for help and advice what to do, Peach had these T-shirts in the washing machine!

We were not worried about getting Beck off the mountain. We didn’t know that was any kind of big deal, or what it entailed. We just knew he was in critical condition, and he probably was going to need better medical attention than what was available in Nepal. That was it.

So starting on Saturday and then on into Sunday—Mother’s Day—everyone worked the telephones. Terry White, who is a hematologist and oncologist, and Jon Esber, a partner in Beck’s pathology practice, organized a search for the nearest medical center staffed with U.S.-trained physicians. It turned out to be in Singapore.

Since we assumed Beck was frostbitten, Terry also led the search for a frostbite expert. The best one in the world was in Alaska, which we expected would be Beck’s second stop after Singapore, once we got him out of Nepal.

Our search for a way to evacuate Beck began with Kay Bailey Hutchison, the junior Republican senator from Texas, whom several of us knew. Her office stayed in constant touch with us.

Linda Gravelle called our governor, George W. Bush. His
twin daughters had gone to school with Meg, as well as Linda’s daughter, Gwyneth.

I called him on his private line in Austin and got his daughter, Jenna. I said, “I need to talk to your dad.” She said, “Well, he’s jogging,” or something like that. I told her what had happened, and that it was very important he call me back.

He did, and told me that this was a federal matter, that he could not deal with it on the state level. I said, “I cannot believe you! This is someone you know and you won’t even help me!”

He said, “I just can’t do anything. I don’t know what to tell you.”

I was pretty mad. We’ve seen him since, and the subject does not come up.

Then somebody said, “We need to get a Democrat involved in this.”

Cappy and Janie McGarr are friends of ours who are close to Tom Daschle, the minority leader in the Senate. They contacted him at home that morning. Daschle contacted the State Department, which contacted the embassy in Katmandu, which assigned David Schensted to the matter, which resulted in Madan K.C. risking his life to save Beck’s.

Madeleine David called me from New Zealand at about 10:00
P.M.
Dallas time on Sunday night to report that Beck had been successfully airlifted off the mountain. He’d be in Katmandu within the hour. I was ticketed to fly out to Nepal the following night at eight-twenty. But now that Beck had been
rescued and his brother Dan was due in Katmandu at any minute, Madeleine counseled me to cancel my flight. Beck and Dan probably would be headed home together before I could even get there.

About three hours later—around 1:30
A.M.
on Monday—Beck himself called from Katmandu. It was a familiar time of night to hear from him. While we were courting and Beck was still in medical school, he often called me in the middle of the night. I was used to it.

What made this call different from any before or after was Beck’s clear need to connect with me, to actually
talk
to me. It was unspoken, but I immediately sensed something completely different about my husband. He’d been transformed by some-thing—I didn’t yet know what—that went beyond a lucky brush with death. He’d had those before.

He assured me he was okay, and said he was being cared for by Dr. Schlim. I didn’t know anything about the rescue, or how dangerous it was, until Beck explained some of it during this call. I also did not learn of his epiphany until the next day, when we were being interviewed for the
Today
show.

That’s when Beck told the world about seeing the children and me in his mind. I was really surprised by it, and saddened, too, because it had required such a tragedy for that to occur. He had to nearly die before he opened his eyes.

After Schlim redressed my hands and gave me some antibiotics, I walked the block or so from his office to one of Katmandu’s better hotels, the Yak & Yeti, and checked myself in.

If you think that you have stayed in a full-service hotel, I suggest you probably don’t have a clue what full service can entail. The Yak & Yeti, aware of my helpless condition, was thoughtful enough to station a young man in the hall outside my room, in case I needed to have my fanny wiped. Fortunately, I did not have to involve him. I hadn’t eaten in days, which helped considerably.

A short time later, as I rested in my room, reflecting on my recent experience with the random quality of living and dying, my brother, Dan, appeared at the door, carrying a suitcase that contained a full complement of emergency room paraphernalia, as well as every drug known to man. I don’t know if he had enough equipment to cut my heart out and put it back in, but he wasn’t lacking much.

Dan also brought me a couple of changes of clothing I was elated to see him, and he was pretty worked up, too. We hadn’t exchanged but a few words before he blurted out, “Don’t you ever,
ever
again do anything that gets you on television!”

Over the years, I’ve had the responsibility many, many hundreds of times to share devastating news with others. But I had never received any before. It’s a lot different on the receiving end.

The phone rang at 7:22
A.M.
that Saturday morning. I was asleep, and before I could pick up the receiver the call rolled over to voice mail. I immediately went into the next room and called Peach, who abruptly said, “Beck’s dead.” She said she’d talk to me later.

I began screaming, which awakened my wife, Brenda. Then she and I and her son, Robert, sat on the floor and prayed and cried for a couple of hours. I went and wrote a letter to Beck. It read, in part, “Words cannot describe how much I’ll miss you. Throughout my life, whenever I tripped or fell you were there to pick me up … over and over again. Of all the people in my life, you impacted me most. Your love and support have always made the worst of times okay.”

I later gave it to him.

Then we got the second phone call from Peach. All she could tell me was that he was in critical condition. I immediately decided to go there.

This part is hard to describe. Beck is sixteen months older than I. Growing up, he and I shared the same bedroom for fifteen or sixteen years. We also shared apartments in college and medical school. We probably are as close as any two brothers, although we don’t really talk that much. I dearly love him.

I felt compelled to go to him. I didn’t care where he was. I didn’t really know where I was going, or how I would get there. But I figured I was going to find him.

I didn’t trust that he would have adequate medical care in Nepal, so I took a suitcase to the emergency department and explained to my head nurse what had transpired. I told her that I wanted as much medical equipment as possible packed in that suitcase. So the nursing staff gathered IVs, splints, bandages, catheters, medication. I went to the pharmacy and got morphine and Demerol.

Lufthansa was the only airline that flew from Dallas to Nepal, and the agent did not want to book me one way to Katmandu
on no notice. That is not an innocent-sounding trip. I had to explain the situation to the agent’s supervisor, that I was going to Nepal to find my brother. They booked me on a flight that left Dallas about seven that Saturday night.

I flew to Frankfurt, Germany, where I had a six-hour layover before connecting to Dubai and then on into Katmandu. In all, it took me thirty-some hours to get there, so I arrived in Katmandu around noon on Monday. I think that was just about an hour after Beck had arrived by helicopter from Mount Everest.

I did not have a clue where he was. The first thing I did was explain to the customs people exactly what I had with me, why I was there and what I intended to do. They were very polite and as helpful as they could be. They gave me a one-week visa, and I headed for a hotel.

I had just checked in when to my surprise a hotel employee told me some people were trying to find me. They were two employees from Adventure Consultants, who took me to David Schlim’s office. This all happened very quickly. Within an hour of my arrival in Katmandu, I was talking to David Schlim.

I really liked him. He told me that he had examined the Taiwanese climber, Makalu Gau, who looked a lot worse than Beck. Schlim said he thought that at least one of Beck’s hands was going to be okay. He also said Beck was not ill, systemically, that he had only third-and fourth-degree cold injuries to his extremities.

David and I talked for maybe half an hour, and then he personally took me over to the Yak & Yeti, which was just around the corner from his clinic. I had assumed Beck was in a hospital, and it wasn’t until David walked me past a young man standing
at Beck’s door and into his room that it dawned on me that this was not a hospital at all, but a hotel.

Beck was still in his climbing clothes, except for his boots. He smelled like a burn patient. Having cared for many such victims over the years, I recognized the smell of dead tissue.

From the get-go Beck and I had markedly different perspectives.

He was very, very happy to be alive, to be back from the dead. Very upbeat. But I focused on his injuries, which were devastating.

I knew he’d require amputation. There was no doubt. His right hand was stone-cold dead. Already the skin was retracting around the bones. It looked like it had been stuck in an incinerator and left there.

I had brought a lot of pain medication with me, but Beck didn’t need it. Once you recover from a third-or fourth-degree burn, or freeze, there isn’t much pain. The nerves are all dead.

His left hand looked better. I really thought he’d only lose the ends of his fingers—a distal phalanx amputation.

Without the use of his hands, Beck was helpless, which meant we established a relationship we’d never had before. I took care of his every body function. I did that gladly. He was skinny as a rail.

That afternoon I received a visitor from the Japanese embassy. He asked if I would meet with Yasuko Namba’s family. I of course said that I would, although it was not a meeting that I
relished. The man from the embassy had brought a small box of chocolates as a gift to honor the occasion.

When Dan and I were returning from dinner that night, I saw a group of Japanese sitting at a table near the main entrance to the Yak & Yeti. I knew instantly that they were Yasuko’s family: her husband, her brother and two friends.

They very much wanted to know about her and her last moments. I really didn’t know what to tell them. I searched for anything that might comfort them. But for one of the very few times in my life, the easy stream of words simply wouldn’t come. At some level I felt guilty standing there, alive, when Yasuko was gone. I couldn’t even offer meaningful consolation.