emergencies, and it was up to him to know what an emergency looked like.
Periodically he opened the chamber to check on Gus's oxygen supply and take her
pulse and respiration, then closed it up and pumped it full again. At one point, he woke
and the beam of his headlamp caught Daniel's gleaming eyes. He was crouched on the
far side of Gus's chamber.
'Can we take her out of there?' he asked Abe. 'I want to hold her. Just for a minute.'
'If you do that, she'll die,' said Abe.
'But it looks like a coffin,' Daniel said.
'Not yet it's not.'
Daniel placed one hand on the chamber. 'Before it's too late,' he begged. 'One more
time.'
'Not yet,' Abe said.
'I have to tell her something.'
Abe knew what Daniel had to tell her, he'd been hearing Daniel whispering to the
comatose woman for days now. He loved her. He forgave her. If she loved him, she
should forgive him. And she had to fight and live because they had a life to share.
'Maybe later,' Abe said.
'Later... it might be too late. She needs to know.'
'Maybe she hears you.'
'But if she doesn't...' His desolation was breathtaking. Daniel was in mourning. No
one believed in Gus's capacity to survive anymore. How terrible, thought Abe. One
more terrible thing.
'I'm afraid, Abe.'
'The trucks will come,' Abe said. 'They'll take us out of here. Gus will go to a
hospital.'
'The trucks won't come. I know.'
Abe dropped it. 'Go to sleep, Daniel. We need to sleep.'
The issue of their evacuation was on everybody's minds. In the beginning, they had
waited for yaks to move them away from it. Their helplessness seemed never ending.
The alternative to waiting was also on everybody's minds. Daniel knew the way out
of here. They had followed him up the Hill. If need be, they could follow him across
one of the high passes into Nepal. But no one favored such extremes. For one thing
they knew from Daniel's experience the awful price they were likely to pay for
crossing the range in the monsoon. His Lepers' Parade was not something anyone
wanted to join, especially after the spectacle of Gus's blackened foot.
The blackness spread. When he ran his fingertips along her ankle and shin, the flesh
crackled with subcutaneous crepitus. By evening it was clear Gus would have to lose
the leg to her knee or else die. Abe informed the others and asked for volunteers.
Never having done this, he had no idea how many people the operation might take.
Then he went off by himself to read in his medical books about amputation.
At the appointed hour, people came into the mess tent, even Kelly who still hadn't
recovered her vision. They took Gus out of the plastic chamber and laid her on top of
the wicker table that had served as their dining table a thousand years ago when
times still allowed for good jokes and big plans and long rap sessions. Abe steeled
himself. He emptied himself of emotion.
Under Abe's direction, they took up various assignments. Someone had to look after
her oxygen supply. Someone had to take her pulse periodically. Someone had to be in
charge of the blood pressure cuff Abe had fitted around her upper thigh for a
tourniquet. Someone else had to sterilize their scalpels and knives over a gas stove.
The Sherpas were instructed to take care of the kerosene lanterns and keep them
bright. And J.J. was charged with finding Daniel if he could, and even if he couldn't to
keep the man out of the tent at all costs.
Stump and Abe tied a piece of nine-millimeter climbing rope around Gus's black
ankle, then tossed the end over the roof support and hoisted her leg straight into the
air. Most of Abe's work was going to be on the underside of the leg. There were no
ripsaws or hacksaws in camp, much less a surgical saw, and so the leg had to be
separated at the knee joint itself. The front of the knee would be simple, all bone. It
was the back of the leg with its hamstring attachments and the veins and, most
important, the big popliteal artery, that would require all the unriddling.
Abe made his first cuts several inches down around the calf. Carefully he skinned
the flesh over the joint for flaps to later sew over the stump. The bone and muscles
stood exposed now in an eight-inch band at her knee. Abe wanted this to take fifteen
minutes, tops. Longer than that, and they'd have to loosen the tourniquet. Things
could start going wrong when that happened.
He found the big artery and fished enough into the open to clamp it with a hemostat.
Below the clamp, he sewed the artery tightly shut with suture, then cut the artery to
the lower leg.
'Fifteen minutes,' Carlos said.
The words startled Abe. He hadn't realized how silent the tent was. 'But I just
began,' he protested.
They loosened the tourniquet and there was some blood, but not as much as Abe
had feared. 'Let's keep going,' he said. 'Pump it tight again.'
Next he sliced the hamstrings, parting the meat from its white tendons. 'Thirty
minutes,' Carlos sang out. Abe exhaled. He was going too slowly.
'You're doing fine, Doc,' Stump told him. Frost coated the inner wall of the tent, but
sweat was gleaming on Stump's face.
Abe took a deep breath and bent to the task again and again. He cut through vessels
and nerves, only stopping long enough to cauterize the ends with heated knife blades.
The smell overpowered several people. Abe didn't know who they were, only that
they left. He could feel the cold air rush in each time someone went out or came in. He
could hear the night wind suck and slap at the tent canvas.
A blast of cold air blew in. 'Gus?'
Abe lifted his head. It was Daniel, eyes enormous in the kerosene light. A moment
later J.J. wrestled in through the door, bested again. 'I tried to stop him,' he said.
'For God's sake, get him out,' Jorgens said.
'Gus?' Daniel cried.
Her leg was cinched to the roof like an elk carcass. Most of the tissue had been
debribed. The bone was white and bare. The sight unhinged J.J. He just stood there.
'Get him out, damn it,' Jorgens yelled again.
'Daniel,' came a woman's voice. It was Kelly, blind in the corner.
Daniel was weeping.
'Daniel,' she said. 'Come with me now. Take my hand.' She was reaching from the
shadows. 'Lead me out.'
It worked. Daniel took her hand and they left.
Abe returned to the leg. Three hours passed. When he cut the final ligament, Gus's
thigh slapped onto the table. The lower leg dangled overhead while Abe raced to
finish. At midnight they laid her back in the chamber and pumped it full of air. For
another hour afterward, five of them sat around like tornado victims, speechless.
'Poor Gus,' someone finally pronounced. It was Jorgens. 'She's climbed her last
