Left for Dead Page 6

  We retrieved Makalu at Base Camp and put him back in. We got the copilot and put him back in. We got all the gear that Madan had stripped off this machine, and we put it back in.

  That’s when I discovered that when Madan returned to get me, he was flying the Squirrel on just seven minutes of fuel.

  Madan is to me the most extraordinary person in this story, because he didn’t know me at all. He didn’t know my family, and he has his own family, for whom he is the sole provider. We were separated by language, by culture, by religion, by the entire breadth of this world, but bound together by a bond of common humanity.

  This man will never have to wonder again whether he has a brave heart.

  Madan:

  I had a talk with the Beck on the way back to Katmandu. He was very excited, crying and patting me on the back. He was crying and saying, “You saved my life.”

  Peach later would write Madan, thanking him again for his extraordinary act of courage in plucking me off the mountain. I later learned from Madan that in all the hundreds of times he had rescued individuals in the Himalayas, this was the first time he’d been so thanked.

  Maybe we all just take our heroes for granted.

  EIGHT

  David Breashears and others told me as we came down the mountain that all those deaths on Everest, and my own unlikely revival, were a major international news story. “Seaborne” Weathers’s battered profile would appear on page one of The New York Times’s May 14 editions.

  But the tragedy’s resonance outside the climbing community and our families did not hit me until we landed at Tribhuvan. Reporters, most of them Japanese, began banging on the sides of the helicopter the moment we stopped. Flashbulbs were popping like crazy.

  I really wasn’t ready to meet the press. I felt and smelled and looked like the inside of an overripe Dumpster, and I had hardly come to terms myself with what had just occurred. Moreover, I was dressed in full mountain gear, boots and coat and all, not the most comfortable getup for a morning press conference in steamy Katmandu.

  To my relief, the first person there as the helicopter door opened was David Schensted from the embassy. He introduced himself and then hustled me past the microphones and cameras and off to the Ciwek Clinic in Katmandu, where an American physician, Dr. David Schlim, would examine me.

  While I was at Schlim’s clinic, I also took advantage of my first chance to call home to Peach. Until that moment, she hadn’t been given a clear description of exactly what had happened. I explained that although I was pretty well bunged up, I thought that I was going to be okay. She told me that my younger brother, Dan, who is a physician and at the time was in charge of the emergency room at Medical City Hospital in Dallas where I also practice, was on his way to Nepal. This was especially welcome news: I had begun to wonder how I was going to get home with no hands.

  Peach:

  I deeply love my husband and always have. But when Beck left for Mount Everest in March of 1996—he spent our twentieth anniversary there—I decided this was the last time he would run away from us. Beck was living only for his obsessions, and I saw no further hope of making our marriage work. I simply would not live my life that way any longer.

  Beck seemed selfishly determined to either kill himself or get himself killed. He’d never admit this, but I think he went to Everest half convinced that he was going to die there. I sensed he was scared, even at the airport. I don’t know that I’d ever seen him really scared before. He didn’t articulate it, but you can just look at someone and tell. The body language, everything.

  When Beck went away on these trips we never heard from him. Weeks would pass with no word. We all could have been wiped out in a tornado and Beck would not have known.

  But this time he kept the lines open. I remember he called home on May 4 to tell us that after a month on the mountain they all finally were ready to climb it. Both Meg and I spoke to him.

  I got faxes from him at least every other night. He wasn’t so self-assured. Wasn’t having as good a time. Moaning and groaning a little bit. Mr. Bulletproof was scared, and he needed to communicate. I thought, If you didn’t want to talk to me here, why do you want to talk to me when you’re there? Something about this simply doesn’t make sense to me.

  When he didn’t hear back from me, he was concerned. “Why didn’t I hear from you?” Actually, I would type up faxes for him, but you couldn’t always get them through.

  Of course, the real question was: Why did he have to do this in the first place?

  While Beck was away, I watched a PBS program about this Scotswoman who had died climbing in the mountains. Her husband later took their two children back to the Himalayas so they could see where their mother died.

  I remember thinking at the time, Fat lot of good that’s going to do them, telling a four-year-old and a two-year-old, “Mommy’s up there in the clouds.”

  I thought, That’ll sure make them feel better. “Mommy was such a brave person.” That’s not going to help them when they fall down and skin their knees.

  On Friday night, May 10, I received a brief call from Madeleine David in New Zealand. She said that Beck had not made it to the summit with the rest of the climbers, but that he was fine, and that they all were now coming down the mountain.

  There was nothing in her voice to alarm me. Yet after the conversation, I couldn’t sleep. I moved from my bedroom into the den, and slept on the couch the rest of the night.

  When she called again the next morning to report Beck was dead, all I felt was shock. My worst nightmare had come true. But I couldn’t respond. It was the same as when you break your leg. Numb. I couldn’t cry. I just kept thinking, Oh my God, what will I do now? My children suddenly had no father, so there was a fair amount of anger there, too.

  I was alone in the house with our son, Beck, a junior in high school, who was asleep in his room. Our daughter, Meg, who was in the eighth grade, had spent the night at her school, chaperoning a group of younger children on a sleep-over.

  I didn’t want to have to tell either of my children that their father was dead, and so I tried to postpone doing so. Instead of going into Beck’s room and awakening him with the news, I first made several telephone calls.

  Instinct rules when a catastrophe strikes. My instinct that morning was to draw in my strength. So I called my brother Howie in Atlanta, and our Dallas friends: Terry and Pat White, Garrett and Cecilia Boone, Jim and Marianne Ketchersid, Linda Gravelle and Victoria Bryhan. I also called Beck’s younger brother, Dan. Most of them came over at once. Through the morning, I reached out to several more dear friends. I needed these people around me.

  They were my friends and Beck’s friends, people to whom I repeatedly had turned for help and strength over the past ten years. They were loyal to both of us.

  Once they arrived and I had no further excuse for delaying, I went to my son, woke him up, and told him that his father had been killed. Bub said something like “You’ve got to be kidding.” He didn’t cry. Bub never cries when you expect him to. He always cries later, at the funeral.

  Bub:

  I know a lot of people were afraid my Dad would get hurt on Everest. But I really hadn’t paid that much attention. There was nothing new about Dad being gone to climb mountains. I may have had a twinge of foreboding—Everest has a weight that no other mountain has—but to be honest, I think I was somewhat blissfully ignorant.

  Then I woke up that morning with these words: “Your father has been killed.” My mom told me and turned away and left the room.

  I thought, “All right, weird dream.” Then I realized what she had said. I didn’t know what to feel. More an absence of feeling than feeling. I got up. My mom’s friends were all bawling. I walked around the rest of the morning wide-eyed, my jaw open. I wasn’t in denial, I was just numb.

  I remember there was a lot of talk about how to tell my sister what had happened. Everyone agreed that neither my mom nor I should drive, so Mom’s friend Linda Gravelle drove us over to
Meg’s school.

  Meg:

  My science teacher got me up an hour early. “Your mom’s here,” she said.

  So I got ready and went downstairs. Everyone was looking at me weird. I was like “Okay …” We walked outside, where Mom says, “Daddy died.”

  There was a moment of shock, like maybe this was a dream. Then I burst into tears, dropped everything I was holding. I sank down. My brother picked up my stuff, and my mother got me into the car.

  We drove back to the house, and I just sat in a chair in the den, like in a dream. It wasn’t really me, but someone watching me. Eventually my friend Katherine Boone came over, and my other real, real good friends filtered over and we all sat in my room. I started saying, “I told him not to go! I told him to stay home! I begged him not to go to Everest.”

  A little while later, I was talking to another of my friends, Mariana Pickering, when I heard my mom on the phone saying, “Are you sure? Are you sure?” Then she turned around and said, “Beck’s alive.”

  I burst into tears again. Such is my wont. I had this overwhelming feeling then that he’d be fine. I know my Dad. If he lives through the initial thing—whatever it is—then he’s going to hang on, because we’re both really stubborn. If he’d held on to life all night on that mountain, he wasn’t going to let go now.

  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.

  NINE

  Peach:

  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.

  Cecilia Boone:

  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!

  Peach:

  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.

  Linda Gravelle:

  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.”

  Peach:

  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!”

  Dan:

  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.

&
nbsp; 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.