Free Left for Dead by Beck Weathers

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, Iwent 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 atme 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