Someone Else's Husband(87)

We paused briefly for group photos at the sign marking the summit and spent a few more moments taking it all in. I cried the whole time. Silently. But deeply. I wasn’t the only one.

We didn’t linger. I was feeling better, and I said as much. But Bakari was convinced we shouldn’t press our luck. Apparently, a woman with another group earlier in the season had been happily snapping photos at the summit when she suddenly crashed. And she’d been fine the entire climb.

“Did she recover?” I asked after Bakari recounted the story to get us moving along.

Bakari shook his head. “No, she did not.”



* * *



—

Sure enough, I started backsliding as we began to descend. My vision blurred, and the tingling returned to my fingertips. I felt like a giant marionette, all jutting knees and thrusting elbows, and I had to focus hard just to keep my body in proper walking alignment.

Bakari took up the front, followed by Scotty, then Richard, me, Van, and Brooks. Kito was bringing up the rear. We stayed mostly quiet on the descent, except for the usual warnings: “Watch,” “Left,” “Heads up,” in spots where there was a loose rock or where the sand was especially deep.

Kilimanjaro was as wide as a ski slope on the back side, the terrain now deep sand. Every fifth or sixth step you’d slide, sometimes wrenching your back or twisting an ankle. We were all complaining. After about an hour, we moved out of the sand to the side of the trail, where the footing was easier. While we were on the rocky edge, it was nowhere near as perilous as the Western Breach. Yet Bakari warned us several times to watch our step. Meanwhile, the light turned a magic gold as the sun sank. And despite everything, a sense of peace flooded me. I couldn’t stop smiling.

“Everything you were hoping for?” Richard asked. He glanced back at me over his shoulder.

“One thousand percent,” I said.

Richard laughed. “Glad to hear it, Frankie.” I floated for a moment on the sound of my name, so warm and full.

Brooks must have said something snide, but he was too far back for me to make it out. But I did hear Van, who was right behind me. “Leave it alone, Brooks.”

Our train stretched out as people tired at different rates. At one point, I avoided a large rock that Richard and Scotty had stumbled over in front of me. “Watch,” I called, or rather mumbled—my brain was moving so slowly. Then Kito was at my side, in the deeper sand.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Tired,” I answered truthfully. I was struggling, and it was a relief to be honest about it. No one could send me home early now.

Kito nodded. “Me, too.”

“That makes me feel better.”

He smiled. “You look better, too. You were very pale before the summit.”

“I’m better than then, for sure.”

“You let me know if you need anything. Or want to take a break. We can always—”

“Oh!”

Van. A surprised little gasp. Then scrambling feet, sliding sand, rustling fabric. Kito turning. Running back.

My heartbeat in my ears.

“Van!” Terror.

We all rushed to the edge of the mountain. But Van was just…gone.

“He tripped on that rock. He tripped,” someone said. Or did they? Maybe I just felt guilty I hadn’t called it out loud enough. Had I called it out at all?

We all raced over to the edge. Van was splayed out motionless on an outcropping of boulders below, blood quickly pooling around his head.

“No,” I whispered. And more than once.

Someone else kept shouting his name. “Van! Van! Van!”

As if he were just lost. As if he simply needed to know which way to go.

Scotty, I think, maybe.

Or Brooks or Richard.

Or it could have been me.

There was shouting then and rushing among the guides as they tried to figure out how to get down to Van. Ropes, pulleys—it was a very organized effort, but none of it seemed to be working. Calls to emergency services. After a few minutes or twenty or maybe thirty, Kito and two other guides were tasked with continuing with the rest of us to camp. Bakari would stay behind. There was nothing we could do to help, they said. And holding us at that altitude, running out of daylight when we were all so taxed already, wasn’t safe.

“They’re right,” Richard said grimly. “We should keep moving. This isn’t good for any of us.”

We did as we were told. By the time we arrived at the first camp on the descent, the sun was a brilliant red-hued circle at the edge of the horizon, the clouds a dazzling pink, a golden blanket below. It gave the moment a splendid kind of horror.

So did the buzz of the camp. It was much busier than any of those we’d stayed in before. The waves of excited laughter from climbers who’d just successfully summitted echoed from every corner like a taunt.

Have some respect! Someone is dead, I wanted to scream. I might have, too, if I could have managed to say a word.

I was haunted by that “Oh!” from Van. Surprise, but in a simple, ordinary way. Like Oh, there are my keys or Oh, I’ve lost my balance. Not Oh, I’m about to die. I wondered if Van had thought in those brief moments as he fell that they were probably his last.

At what point during a fatal fall did a person realize just how much trouble they were in?