Take Me Higher by Pamela Clare
Chapter 13
Megs couldn’t bringherself to leave Mitch’s side. Now that he was conscious enough to feel pain, she wanted to be there to make sure he got his morphine on time in case the nurses got busy or forgot. Debby, Jackie, Fabiola, Kim, and the other RNs were excellent at their jobs, but no one loved Mitch the way she did.
The night came with the same care routine as the daytime, meaning she got very little sleep. But by morning, there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that Mitch had progressed to a minimally conscious state. He tracked Megs with his gaze. He rubbed the bandages over his clavicle. And once, when Megs laughed at a joke, he smiled.
Megs’ heart skipped a beat. “You’re smiling.”
Dr. Schwartz made his rounds early. “We’re taking him to the OR to remove his intracranial catheter today. The pressure has continued to decrease, so it’s time.”
Megs stayed with Mitch until they rolled him away, then made the short drive back to the hotel, where she slept for a few hours. When she woke, it was already mid-afternoon. She took a quick shower, updated their social media accounts, and answered emails from Conrad and Rain.
Megs’ phone buzzed.
It was Gridwall. “How are you holding up, Megs?”
“I’ll be okay.”
“Hey, it’s me. I know you better than that. Mitch is everything to you.”
This was true.
What could Megs say? “I’ll be fine when Mitch is fine.”
“Fair enough. What can we do to help?”
“Help me put together a ‘wear your fucking helmet’ campaign. Mitch would be dead without his helmet. So many younger climbers think helmets are uncool. I guess they ruin their selfies or some shit. So many climbers refuse to wear them.”
“Kids today are stupider than we were.”
Megs couldn’t resist. “Oh, I wouldn’t go that far. We helped invent this insane sport, remember?”
Gridwall chuckled. “I’ll get in touch with the rest of the dirtbags. We’ll get on it and come up with some kind of PSA. Maybe I can get a sponsor to help us.”
“Thanks, Jim. You’re a good friend.”
Back in the ICU, she found Debby on duty and Mitch unconscious.
Or was he sleeping?
“We had to sedate him. He’s progressing, but he’s not aware enough to understand that he can’t mess with the subclavian line or the vent. Also, he’s been fighting the ventilator, trying to breathe on his own. We have to ensure his care, and sometimes that means sedation.”
“I understand.” Megs took Mitch’s hand, waited until Debby had left them alone. “I hear you’re causing trouble, giving the nurses a hard time. But to be honest, you look more like yourself without a catheter sticking out of your brain.”
It was a big step, but they still had so far to go.
She told him about Gridwall’s call and her idea for a helmet campaign. “If we can get some of the big gear brands to join us, we ought to be able to reach a lot of people.”
She shared the news with Rain via text message, then dozed in the chair—until radiology came with their mobile X-ray unit to check his lungs once again. “You’re going to get superpowers from all these X-rays, love.”
When the X-ray tech had gone, Megs walked back to Mitch’s bedside.
He watched her, his gaze aligning with hers.
Was her Mitch in there? What must he feel right now? What was he thinking? Was he afraid? Did he have any memory of what had happened?
She took his hand, kissed it. “This must be confusing as hell, but you’re getting better. Every day, you’re getting better, Mitch. So many people around the world are pulling for you, praying for you. Try to relax and let your body do what it needs to do to heal, okay?”
His forehead furrowed as if he were trying his best to comprehend her words.
“Can you understand me? Squeeze my hand if you understand me.”
His fingers tightened—and held.
Not a reflex. Not a coincidence.
Megs’ throat grew tight. She squeezed back. “You’re the strongest man I know. You will get through this. I’ll be here the whole time.”
She would have picked up the journal to read to him again, but he didn’t let go of her hand, holding on as if he didn’t want her to leave his side. She spoke softly to him for an hour at least, telling him about the headlines, the weather, the results of his latest X-rays when she had them.
“Your lungs are clearing up. You’ll be able to get this damned vent out soon if you keep that up. Do you know how much I miss the sound of your voice?”
Jackie came with his next dose of sedative. “Say goodnight.”
“Sweet dreams, love.”
Soon, his eyes drifted shut.
She picked up the journal and the recorder and scanned the pages. “Oh, God. The day your father and uncle showed up and demanded you come home. I didn’t make it any easier on you, did I? In my defense, I was a teenager.”
She turned on the recorder and began reading.
Two daysafter their successful free ascent of Half Dome, Mitch was lying on the boulder at the tarn, Megs beside him, the two of them holding hands and watching the clouds drift across the sky. He pointed. “That one’s a chicken.”
“Ahearn, man!” Gridwall ran out of the trees. “Some square with glasses and a crew cut who claims he’s your old man is waiting for you in camp with some dorky-looking guy he says is your uncle. He’s come to take you home, man.”
Mitch sat up. “Is this some kind of joke?”
Gridwall looked dead serious. “He saw the news coverage of you on Half Dome and says your mother wants you to spend the rest of the summer before classes start at home. I guess you freaked her out.”
Megs sat up, too, her eyes wide. “You don’t have to go, do you? You’re twenty-one. You’re a legal adult. He can’t tell you what to do.”
“He can when he pays my tuition.” Mitch laced up his boots.
“But the war is mostly over, right? They’ve stopped calling guys up.” She reached for her socks and boots. “You don’t need college, so you don’t need his money.”
Mitch helped Megs to her feet. “I didn’t go to college to escape the draft, Megs. I went because I wanted an education. If I drop out, I’ll dishonor every man who fought—and my father would probably disown me.”
Megs looked both frightened—and furious. “You’re going to let him drag you away? You’re going to leave me?”
Mitch drew her into his arms. “I don’t want to go. It’s just until next June. Then we’ll both be in the Valley again—and you’ll be a few months away from turning eighteen. When you do—”
“Next June is ten months from now!”
“You’re going to be okay without me. You were okay before, remember?”
“I wasn’t nearly as happy. I’m going to miss you, Mitch.”
“You can write me letters.”
“Will you write back?”
“You bet.” Then Mitch turned to Gridwall. “I’ve got a message for you and the rest of the dirtbags. Can you deliver it for me?”
Gridwall nodded, seeming happy to be trusted with something. “Yeah, man.”
“If any of you disrespect Megs, touch her in any sexual way, offer her alcohol or drugs, or get her into any trouble, I will hunt you down and kill you. There won’t be anything left but blood and hair. You dig me?”
Gridwall’s expression was so grave Mitch might have laughed. “Yeah.”
Megs glared at Gridwall. “You won’t have to kill them. I’ll do it.”
Gridwall chuckled. “Yeah, you probably would.”
Now that they’d settled that…
The hike back to Camp 4 was hell, anger at his parents making Mitch’s pulse pound, Megs doing all she could to talk him into telling his father to shove it.
“You could do what Gridwall does and hide. Gridwall can tell him we didn’t find you, that you’re off somewhere climbing. He’s good at lying, right? If your dad can’t get a hold of you, he can’t threaten to take away your tuition money.”
Gridwall nodded emphatically. “Good idea. Yeah, I can do that.”
Oh, Mitch was tempted.
“I need to graduate. When I’ve got my degree, I’m moving out.” He would do what Megs did—hold a string of seasonal jobs that enabled him to buy gear and gas and keep climbing.
Then it hit him.
What if she didn’t wait for him? What if she found some other man, one who didn’t care about consent laws who was willing to do what he hadn’t? What if she fell in love with someone else and forgot about him entirely?
He stopped. “Gridwall, you go on ahead, tell them we’re coming—and deliver my message. I’m dead serious, man.”
“Yeah, yeah. You’ll kill us. Got it.”
When Gridwall had gone, he took Megs’ hands. “Megs, I know ten months is a long time, especially when you’re only sixteen. But I’m making you a promise, okay? Are you listening?”
“Yes.”
“On my honor, I promise that I won’t date or sleep with any other woman while we’re apart. The next time I have sex, it will be with you—if you still want me on your eighteenth birthday.”
“If I still want you? You’re all I think about—well, you and climbing.”
That made him laugh.
“I promise I won’t sleep with anyone, either. You’re the only man I want, and you’re leaving.” She looked like she might cry.
“You’re going to be okay.”
“Are you sure you’ll come back? You won’t fall in love with some pretty co-ed?”
He wanted to tell her that he couldn’t fall in love with anyone else because he was already in love with her, but something stopped him. “I’ve never met anyone like you, Megs. You’re the freshest breath of fresh air on this planet. You have nothing to fear from any other girl. Any chick who wants to be my girl has to free climb Half Dome.”
That made her smile.
He held her hand all the way back to camp, stopping before they reached the clearing to hold her tight and give her one last deep, slow kiss. “I’ll see you in ten months. You be here in camp by the end of May next year, and I’ll see you then.”
“I’ll be here.”
His father and Uncle Frank were waiting by his father’s black Buick, looking comically out of place. While Megs went to sit with Gridwall and the dirtbags, Mitch broke down his tent, packed his gear, and said one last goodbye.
“See you next summer. Until then, climb on!”
Cheers, fists in the air.
“You know it, man!”
“Right on!”
“The dirtbags rule!”
He started toward the car, but his father’s snort of disgust stopped him. “Put on a shirt, son. Is this how you walk around—half-naked?”
The dirtbags, shirtless apart from Megs, laughed.
Genuinely angry now, Mitch yanked a shirt out of his pack and pulled it over his head. “Happy now?”
“Watch your tone!” Uncle Frank snapped. “You scared your poor mother half to death messing around on that cliff. What were you thinking?”
“We made history.” Mitch stashed his gear in the trunk.
“The history of stupid stunts, perhaps.”
Mitch ignored his uncle’s insult, looked back at Megs.
She was standing now, the grief of the world on her face.
He blew her a kiss. “Remember the promise.”
She nodded, her lips curving in a sad smile.
He climbed into the car.
His father started in on him right away. “You need to get your head on straight. If you want a girlfriend, there are plenty of nice girls at Stanford, girls from good families, girls with the sense not to camp in the wilderness with a bunch of men. First this rock-climbing nonsense, and now you’re hanging with loose women.”
Mitch snapped. “It’s fine with me if you think climbing is a waste of time, but you will not say another unkind word about Megs. She’s not loose. She’s sixteen and a virgin, for God’s sake! Not another word about her. Do you understand me?”
“Don’t talk to your father like—”
“Shut up, Uncle Frank! Jesus! This doesn’t involve you!”
“Don’t you raise your voice to your elders, son, or—"
“Or what? You’ll disown me? Maybe I’ll disown you.” Mitch didn’t care what his father said. “I’m an adult. I can make my way in this world without you. I’d rather climb than go to school anyway. There’s only so much shit I’m willing to take from you and Mom before I decide it’s not worth it. You leave Megs out of this. Got it?”
They drove all the way to Stanford in silence.
Megs flippedto the back of the journal and found all of the letters she’d sent him during those ten long months. She read through a few of them, smiling at the teen angst that radiated off the pages. Then she tucked them away once more.
“I still have your letters, too. I think they’re in a shoebox in my closet. I checked the mailbox at the lodge every day that fall. If there was a letter from you, I was happy. If not, the entire day sucked. There was no in-between.”
She’d stayed in Yosemite until the weather had turned, putting up new routes with Dean, Gridwall, and the others. Then she and Dean had driven down to Joshua Tree National Park, where it was warmer. She’d applied for a job cleaning rooms at a hotel in Twentynine Palms, but then something had happened that she could never have imagined.
“We were in camp, getting ready to climb, when a man in a Porsche drove up and asked if I was Megs Hill, the girl who’d free climbed Half Dome. I thought the dirtbags were going to beat the shit out of him at first.”
The man turned out to be François Charbonneaux, the famous climber from the 1950s who’d first climbed the Regular Northwest Face. He now owned an outdoor clothing company and was quite wealthy. He’d offered Megs and Dean five hundred bucks a month just to wear his line of clothing when they were climbing.
“I thought he was insane, but Dean knew who he was. He negotiated the deal for us. The next thing I knew, I was wearing all of this hip climbing stuff. That was the end of waiting tables and cleaning hotel rooms. François came back to Joshua Tree to climb with us. He brought a photographer and did a photo shoot for a catalog.”
That had been Megs’ modeling debut and her first sponsorship. François had wanted to offer Mitch the same deal, but Mitch hadn’t been there. He and François had connected the following summer.
“I was able to climb full-time, but it wasn’t the same without you. Dean and the others were good, but they weren’t you. I suppose it’s like having the perfect dance partner and then having to dance with someone else. It works, but it doesn’t feel right.”
Her seventeenth birthday came and went, the dirtbags sticking a lit match in a bran muffin as a treat. That winter, Megs had pushed herself until her taped fingers bled, demanding more of herself, teaching herself new climbing moves and techniques.
“It wasn’t really about climbing. I was just trying not to miss you.”
Then Christmas had come.
One by one, the dirtbags had left to spend the holiday with their families—all except for Gridwall, who wasn’t welcome at home. Megs had expected to spend another Christmas alone. She had resigned herself to a Christmas Eve of stars and instant noodles, when Dean pulled up in his van and told her to pack her shit and climb in.
“God, that was a fun trip. We sang along to his eight-track the entire way. I’d never been to the city. I was so excited to see the Golden Gate Bridge.”
But Dean had been plotting with Mitch.
“I didn’t notice that we’d driven to Stanford. When we turned that corner and I saw you waiting on the sidewalk in front of your parents’ house, I couldn’t believe it.”
Megs could still remember the elation she’d felt at that first sight of him, their first kiss, the feel of his arms around her, the scent of his skin. “We kissed in the back of the van while poor Dean drove to his sister’s place in the city. To be fair, four months is a long damned time when you’re seventeen—or twenty-two.”
Dean’s brother Chris, and his sister-in-law, Renee, had welcomed them like family, giving Megs the guest room while Dean and Mitch slept on the family room floor. They’d even had gifts for them.
“They gave me one of those newfangled climbing hexes. You gave me another book—Kerouac’s Scattered Poems. That was the first Christmas since my father’s death where I felt like I had a family. You and Dean had become my family—and the dirtbags, too.” Megs laughed. “Gridwall and the others were the dysfunctional cousins.”
They’d spent ten whole days together from Christmas Eve through New Year’s, sharing a kiss at midnight, starting 1974 together.
“You leaned in close, nuzzled my ear, and said, ‘This is the year you and I become lovers.’ I melted. Damn. That still gets me.”
Then, all too soon, it was time to go. Dean drove Mitch back to Stanford to face his parents’ anger for having ditched them. Megs kissed him goodbye. Then she and Dean made the long drive back to Joshua Tree.
Grief broadsided Megs as it often did when she thought of Dean, her throat going tight. “He was like a big brother to me and a good friend to you.”
Heart heavy, Megs set the journal aside and went to stand next to Mitch once more, taking his hand. “I miss him. I know you do, too.”
She set Mitch up with the recorder, waited until he got another dose of morphine, then kissed his cheek and headed back to the hotel to catch up on sleep.