before hanging up on the man. 'Listen,' Abe tried again.
'Are you sitting down? It's the kind of thing that makes strong men weak,' Jorgens
barreled on. 'Even a bull like you.'
Abe said 'piss off' and hung up. He got as far as the hallway before the phone rang. It
was Jorgens.
'At least hear me out,' the man said.
'Whatever you're selling...'
'No, no.' Desperation came over the phone line. 'This isn't for contributions. Our war
chest is full. We're totally solvent. We're going. And we want you to go with us. We
need you.'
Abe was more mystified than annoyed by the man's persistence. This had to be the
worst sales pitch in history. 'Hurry up,' Abe growled.
'You're the one,' Jorgens said. 'Your buddy Corder said so.'
The name Corder tickled his memory, but not enough. Abe decided to finish this.
'Look, mister,' he told Jorgens. 'It's Christmas Eve, and you're not making any
sense.' Sometimes that worked on the Gomers, the get-out-of-my-emergency-room
riffraff destined for detox. A single moment of definition sometimes provided them a
floor to stand on. The screamers would shut up. The wild men would calm down. But
it only seemed to inspire Jorgens.
'You've heard of us,' he declared. 'The U.S. Ultimate Summit Expedition? The
Nordwand '92 team? That's us. We're in the latest Rolex commercial.'
'Rolex commercial?'
'The one with the ice climber, the backdrop...'
Abe's amusement expired. 'Time's up,' he said. 'Don't call here again.'
'Wait,' Jorgens shouted. He sounded shocked. 'Everest. I'm talking about Everest.'
It worked, that single word.
'Everest?' Abe breathed.
Now they started over again.
'My God.' Jorgens sounded chastened. 'I thought we'd lost you before we even had
you.' Abe could tell Jorgens was the nasty sort who believed in jumping out at people
to test their reflexes. Maybe next time he'd remember this backfire.
'I better start from square one,' Jorgens said. 'You've really never heard of us?'
They were a team of Americans going to the Tibetan side of Mount Everest. Three
days ago, their physician had fallen on a training climb and rebroken an old rugby
ankle. Almost on the eve of its departure for Asia, the U.S. Ultimate Summit
Expedition, a.k.a. Everest Nordwand 1992, was suddenly without medical backup. No
major expedition could afford to go without a doctor, not to a country as remote as
Tibet. But time was short. Their departure date was early February. A burst of phone
calls had failed to produce a single physician in all of North America willing to climb to
five miles high, commit to a hundred-day absence, and leave in five weeks.
'I've hunted hard these last three days. Days and nights,' Jorgens said. 'I've been
calling hospitals all across the country. I even hired a computer search of med
students and physician assistants and paramedics. And it all comes down to you.'
'You need a doctor,' Abe observed. 'An M.D. Not a paramedic.' He was too realistic
about mountain medicine to be modest. Whoever they took along would have to be a
walking hospital, capable of tackling everything from tropical parasites to compound
fractures.
'We've got you,' Jorgens said.
'I've never been to the Himalayas.' As much as he wanted to shout
be now, not halfway up a mountainside. Not even next week. If there was any chance
they would extinguish this dream, he wanted it over with. 'And you're weak on ice
experience,' Jorgens said. 'Don't worry, I've asked. But you can lead 5.11 on rock,
which is solid, not hot. Then again, I'm not looking for any more ninja, Mr. Burns. All
we need is a good bones man who can make house calls to eight thousand meters.
That's you.'
'What about the mountain?'
Jorgens filled him in. Over the last ten years, three different teams had attempted
the route, a vertical chimera of rock and ice known as the Kore Wall. It was known
among mountaineers as a severe creation – 9,000 vertical feet from top to bottom –
that approached the summit straight on, a direct or
the vast North Face. The first try back in 1984 had been all British, with the exception
of one American climber. After pioneering to 27,000 feet and surmounting most of the
geological barriers, they'd gotten mauled and surrendered. In '89, half of a New
Zealand expedition had vanished on the upper reaches in a storm. And last spring,
two Japanese and a Sherpa had been killed by an avalanche.
'So it's the Kore Wall three, climbers zip,' Jorgens finished. 'She's had a lot of suitors.
But we own her cherry.'
Abe didn't trust the overstatement.
'What about other lines?' Abe asked. He was already trying to visualize alternate
retreat routes for injured climbers, because that would be his job. But Jorgens took his
question to imply second-choice lines for ascent.
'Not interested,' Jorgens said. 'There's three other routes on the north side, but
they've all been done, especially the North Col. Frankly our team's too damn good to
be pulling a repeat. It's the Kore Wall or bust.'
Like most climbers, Abe had dreamed of Everest, tired and exaggerated as it was.
The mountain had handled too many people to deserve coveting, yet no one could
erase the memory of her glorious virginity. He'd wanted to go to the big mountain for
so long that the very idea had come to defeat him. But the Kore Wall?
'Four of our team's already in Kathmandu,' Jorgens said. 'The rest of us leave in
thirty-four days. That's five weeks minus a day,' Jorgens said. 'Can you handle that?'
'I could try,' Abe said.
'Is that the broader affirmative then? You can appreciate my need to know. Are you
with us, son?'
Abe knew ex-military when he heard it. Emergency work abounded with it: cops,
medicos, firemen. He had nothing against hierarchies and their jargon, but life was too
short to spend three or four months at high altitude fighting cabin fever with a
commander in chief. Jorgens was handing him Everest on a silver platter, and Abe
wanted it. But some inner radar told Abe that if he didn't back this man off right now,
even just a little, then he might as well not go. And so, though he meant yes, Abe said
maybe.
'I'll have to call you back,' Abe said. For extra weight, and just to prick Jorgens's
chauvinism, he added, 'My wife gets final say.' Then he hung up.
Jamie wasn't his wife, but Abe figured 'girlfriend' would never carry enough weight
with a man like Jorgens. He'd once asked Jamie to marry him, but the institution
hadn't worn too well with her. She'd already been married once, too young and to the
