was a stranger to the mountain. Content to stay behind each time a plane lifted off filled with climbers her husband hoped to guide to the summit, she couldn’t know the gravity of their situation. For as long as he could keep it that way, she wouldn’t. This he’d promised from the first. Not as her pilot, but as a friend.
For three days, he’d kept his promise. He would keep it to the end. As long as there was a shred of hope, she, above all, would cling to the will to live.
“Maybe long enough for a miracle.” He didn’t realize he’d fallen silent, listening to the wind. Or that he’d spoken again. His voice was rough, but something in it touched a chord.
Rousing, she looked at him through feverish eyes. Struggling to one elbow, she tried to concentrate. “Jock?”
The mistake sent an icy dread through him. Hallucination; she was deteriorating more than he feared. But he wouldn’t give up hope. Not yet. “Shh.” With the back of a hand whitened by cold he traced the curve of her cheek. “We’ll talk when the storm calms.”
As if she didn’t hear him, catching his hand, turning his palm to her glazed gaze, she whispered, “You’re hurt?”
Realizing she hadn’t the breath for more, he assured her. “The burns will heal.”
“Burns? How?” The words were a gasp, the effort a struggle.
“Grabbed something hot.” Heartened by this lucid perception, as he took back his hand he added in a wry understatement, “Something I knew was hot.”
She laughed feebly. A caricature of the sound that brightened the lives of all who knew her. Caressing his face with fingers tipped by nails gone black, she whispered, “My fearless Jock. You never…” Each word was a ragged wheeze as she fought for breaths that never seemed to reach her lungs. Her gaze drifted. As she lost her point of focus, her eyes rolled back, nearly disappearing within their sockets.
“Joy!” Willing her to hear, he muttered, “Tell me.” Afraid before if she squandered precious strength to speak, he was more afraid now if she couldn’t. While the screech of the wind and a mad flap of canvas quieted, he brushed her cheek with his and kissed her temple as Jock would. “Talk to me, Joy.”
With her breathing eased in the lessened force of the wind, a tiny bit of the color returned to her face. Her lips moved, then there were words. “Never…” The chuckle was half cough, yet still her trademark laugh. “Never learn, Jockolove.”
“No, Joyful girl.” He was Devlin O’Hara, not Jock. But if it would help, he would be the person she desperately needed him to be. Murmuring the endearment he’d heard so many times, he slipped into the role of lover, for a friend. “That’s why I need you.”
She nodded, her chin resting so long against her chest, he feared she wouldn’t lift her head again. Recalling the name that defined her, he prompted softly, “Joyful?”
Lashes fluttering against her cheeks, she tried another laugh. As Joy always laughed, even in the worst of times. “Still here.” Her voice grew clearer. A fit of shivering abated, as if her body hadn’t the strength for more than one exertion. But when she lifted her gaze there was light, the illumination of a kind soul and happy heart. “Couldn’t wait for you to come down the slope. Couldn’t wait to tell you.”
“What was so important, sweet Joyful?”
As if it would listen, the wind calmed again, then ceased. From their paltry shelter, he looked on a desert of white. With every jagged pile of stone, every jutting rock obliterated by snow.
Silence, as deep as the peak was tall, crackled in still air. Wrapping her tighter in tattered clothing he’d managed to snatch from the burning plane, he lowered her to a makeshift pallet. With his arms cradling her, he waited.
So long after his question that he thought she’d drifted away, in a voice filled with a wonder, she told a labored story.
He didn’t mean to interrupt the broken flow, nor shatter the whispered hope, but once his control slipped. Jerking back, he stared down at her. “God help me! I didn’t know.”
The palm of her hand folded over his lips, her fingers curled around his chin. “Don’t! I know I promised, but the doctor thinks the damage the rheumatic fever…”
As her voice gathered strength, he listened to lilting words grotesquely at odds with the gray cast of her skin and the rattle of each hard-won breath. As mute as stone, as grave, he learned of the risk she’d taken to make this ill-fated flight.
Long after her story was finished, he held her. Long after she slept an unnatural sleep, he watched over her as he had for days. Finally he slept, as well.
When he woke, the day was brighter, impossibly tranquil. His first thought was of Joy. Touching her throat, he checked her pulse. The beat of her heart was erratic. But that it beat at all was cause for celebration.
Stimulated by a surge of adrenaline, an insightful mind began to function positively. What he’d perceived as the final disaster, he recognized as a final gift of the mountain.
Extracting himself from her embrace, praying one breath would follow another, he waited until a mild restlessness subsided. Reluctant to leave, certain he must if she would have any chance of living out a dream, he turned abruptly. Stepping from their shelter, pausing only to orient himself, he set his plan in motion.
Later, taxed beyond human endurance, with the sweat of his struggle turned to dangerous rime beneath his clothing, he staggered back to shelter. Back to Joy.
She neither woke nor stirred as he gathered her to him. Soon he was as silent, as still.
He didn’t wake when the Lama, a high-altitude rescue helicopter, passed over. Nor when it returned to fly so low its blades swept away the message stamped into rare loose snow. He didn’t wake when the first of its team reached the shelter. Nor did he hear the jubilant cry, “Survivors. Good God! We have survivors!”
In the midst of the exhilaration of four dedicated men, only a voice he knew and a hand gripping his arm roused him. But as numb senses rallied, eyes burned by glare wouldn’t see. “Jock?”
“Yes, Dev.”
The familiar voice echoed in the darkness of his mind. “I tried to keep her warm.”
“I know.” No one among the search team, least of all Jock Bohannon, could believe this man had done as much as he had, as long as he had. The message was a wonder in itself. “Give her to me, Dev. We have to get you out of here.”
He pulled away, his befuddled mind clinging doggedly to his one purpose. “I have to take care of Joy.”
“You have. Now let me.”
“Jock?” Memory sparked, the veil began to lift. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know about her heart.”
“She didn’t want you to. She didn’t want anyone to know.” Carefully prizing burned, frostbitten hands from their burden, Jock took his wife into his arms. “I’ll take care of her now.”
“The cold hurts. Don’t let her be cold.”
“She won’t ever be cold again.” There were tears on Jock Bohannon’s
