The Mountain Between Us Read online

  FOR CHRIS FEREBEE

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prelude

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Acknowledgments

  A Personal Note to the Reader

  Copyright

  PRELUDE

  Hey…

  I’m not sure what time it is. This thing should record that. I woke a few minutes ago. It’s still dark. I don’t know how long I was out.

  The snow is spilling in through the windshield. It’s frozen across my face. Hard to blink. Feels like dried paint on my cheeks. It just doesn’t taste like dried paint.

  I’m shivering…and it feels like somebody is sitting on my chest. Can’t catch my breath. Maybe broke two or three ribs. Might have a collapsed lung.

  The wind up here is steady, leaning against the tail of the fuselage…or what’s left of it. Something above me, maybe a branch, is slapping the Plexiglas. Sounds like fingernails on a chalkboard. And more cold air is coming in behind me. Where the tail used to be.

  I can smell gas. I guess both wings were still pretty full of fuel.

  I feel like I want to throw up.

  A hand is wrapped around mine. The fingers are cold and callused. There’s a wedding band, worn thin around the edges. That’s Grover.

  He was dead before we hit the treetops. I’ll never understand how he landed this thing without killing me, too.

  When we took off, the ground temperature was in the single digits. Not sure what it is now. Feels colder. Our elevation should be around 11,500. Give or take. We couldn’t have fallen more than five hundred feet when Grover dipped the wing. The control panel sits dark, unlit. Dusted in white. Every few minutes the GPS on the dash will flicker, then go black again.

  There was a dog here somewhere. All teeth and muscle. Real short hair. About the size of a bread box. Makes angry gurgling sounds when he breathes. Looks like he’s jacked up on speed. Wait…

  “Hey, boy…Wait…no. Not there. Okay, lick, but don’t jump. What’s your name? You scared? Yeah…me too.”

  I can’t remember his name.

  I’m back…was I gone long? There’s a dog here. Buried between my coat and armpit.

  Did I already tell you about him? I can’t remember his name.

  He’s shivering, and the skin around his eyes is quivering. Whenever the wind howls, he jumps up and growls at it.

  The memory’s foggy. Grover and I were talking, he was flying, maybe banking right, the dash flashed a buffet of blue and green lights, a carpet of black stretched out below us, not a lightbulb for sixty miles in any direction, and…there was a woman. Trying to get home to her fiancé and a rehearsal dinner. I’ll look.

  …I found her. Unconscious. Elevated pulse. Eyes are swollen shut. Pupils are dilated. Probably a concussion. Several lacerations across her face. A few will need stitches. Right shoulder is dislocated and left femur is broken. It didn’t break the skin, but her leg is angling out and her pant leg is tight. I need to set it…once I catch my breath.

  …It’s getting colder. I guess the storm finally caught us. If I don’t get us wrapped in something we’ll freeze to death before daylight. I’ll have to set that leg in the morning.

  Rachel…I don’t know how much time we have, don’t know if we’ll make it out…but…I take it all back. I was wrong. I was angry. I never should’ve said it. You were thinking about us. Not you. I can see that now.

  You’re right. Right all along. There’s always a chance

  Always.

  CHAPTER ONE

  SALT LAKE CITY AIRPORT TWELVE HOURS EARLIER

  The view was ugly. Gray, dreary, January dragging on. On the TV screen behind me, some guy sitting in a studio in New York used the words “socked in.” I pressed my forehead to the glass. On the tarmac, guys in yellow suits drove trains of luggage that snaked around the planes, leaving snow flurries swirling in their exhaust. Next to me, a tired pilot sat on his flight-weathered leather case, hat in his hand—hoping for a last chance hop home and a night in his own bed.

  To the west, clouds covered the runway; visibility near zero, but given the wind, it came and went. Windows of hope. The Salt Lake City airport is surrounded by mountains. Eastward, snowcapped mountains rose above the clouds. Mountains have long been an attraction for me. For a moment, I wondered what was on the other side.

  My flight was scheduled to depart at 6:07 p.m., but given delays was starting to look like the red-eye. If at all. Annoyed by the flashing DELAYED sign, I moved to a corner on the floor, against a far wall. I spread patient files across my lap and began dictating my reports, diagnoses, and prescriptions into a digital recorder. Folks I’d seen the week before I left. While I treated adults too, most of the files on my lap belonged to kids. Years ago Rachel, my wife, convinced me to focus on sports medicine in kids. She was right. I hated seeing them limp in, but loved watching them run out.

  I had some more work to do, and the battery indicator on my digital recorder was flashing red, so I walked to the store in the terminal and found I could buy two AA batteries for four dollars or twelve for seven. I gave the lady seven dollars, replaced the batteries in my recorder, and slid the other ten into my backpack.

  I had just returned from a medical conference in Colorado Springs where I had been invited to join a panel on “The Intersection of Pediatric Orthopedics and Emergency Medicine.” We covered ER procedures and the differing bedside manners needed to treat fearful kids. The venue was beautiful, the conference satisfied several of my continuing ed requirements, and most important, it gave me an excuse to spend four days climbing the Collegiate Peaks near Buena Vista, Colorado. In truth, it was a business trip that satisfied my hiking addiction. Many doctors buy Porsches and big homes and pay for country club memberships they seldom use. I take long runs on the beach and climb mountains when I can get to them.

  I’d been gone a week.

  My return trip took me from Colorado Springs to Salt Lake for the direct flight home. Airline travel never ceases to amaze me; flying west to end up east. The crowd in the airport had thinned. Most folks were home by this
time on a Sunday. Those still in the airport were either at their gate, waiting, or at the bar, hovering over a beer and a basket of nachos or hot wings.

  Her walk caught my attention. Long, slender legs; purposeful gait, yet graceful and rhythmic. Comfortable, and confident, in her own skin. She was maybe five foot nine or ten, dark-haired, and attractive, but not too concerned about it. Maybe thirty. Her hair was short. Think Winona Ryder in Girl, Interrupted. Or Julia Ormond in Harrison Ford’s remake of Sabrina. Not a lot of fuss, yet you could find the same style up and down Manhattan with girls who’d paid a lot of money to look like that. My bet was that she had paid very little. Or she could have paid a lot to make it look like she paid a little.

  She walked up, eyed the crowd across the terminal, and then chose a spot ten or fifteen feet away on the floor. I watched her out of the corner of my eye. Dark pantsuit, a leather attaché, and one carry-on. Looked like she was returning from a business overnight. She set down her bags, tied on a pair of Nike running shoes, then, eying the terminal, sat on the floor and stretched. Based on the fact that not only her head, but also her chest and stomach could touch her thigh and the floor between her legs, I surmised that she had done that before. Her legs were muscular, like an aerobics instructor’s. After she stretched a few minutes, she pulled several yellow legal pads from her attaché, flipped through pages of handwritten notes, and started typing on her laptop. Her fingers moved at the speed of hummingbird wings.

  After a few minutes, her laptop beeped. She frowned, stuck her pencil between her teeth, and began eyeballing the wall for an outlet. I was using half. She was holding the swinging end of her laptop’s power cord.

  “Mind if I share?”

  “Sure.”

  She plugged in and then sat cross-legged with the computer on the floor, surrounded by her legal pads. I continued with my files.

  “Follow-up orthopedics consultation dated…” I studied my calendar, trying to resurrect the date. “January 23. This is Dr. Ben Payne. Patient’s name is Rebecca Peterson, identifying data follows. Date of birth, 7-6-95, medical record number BMC2453, Caucasian female, star right wing on her soccer team, leading scorer in Florida, highly recruited by teams around the country, at last count she had fourteen Division I offers; surgery three weeks ago, post op was normal, presenting no complications, followed by aggressive physical therapy; presents full range of motion, bend test 127 degrees, strength test shows marked improvement, as does agility. She’s good as new, or in her words, better. Rebecca reports movement is pain free, and she is free to resume all activities…except skateboarding. She is to stay off the skateboard until she’s at least thirty-five.”

  I turned to the next file. “Initial orthopedics consultation dated January 23. This is Dr. Ben Payne.”

  I say the same thing each time because in the electronic world in which we live, each recording is separate and, if lost, needs to be identified.

  “Patient’s name is Rasheed Smith, identifying data follows. Date of birth, 2-19-79, medical record number BMC17437, black male, starting defensive back for the Jacksonville Jaguars and one of the fastest human beings I’ve ever been around. MRI confirms no tear in the ACL or MCL, recommend aggressive physical therapy and that he stay off the YMCA basketball court until he’s finished playing professional football. Range of motion is limited due to pain and tenderness, which should subside given therapy during the off-season. Can resume limited strength and speed training with cessation in pain. Schedule two-week follow-up and call the YMCA and tell them to revoke his membership.”

  I slid the files into my backpack and noticed she was laughing.

  “You a doctor?”

  “Surgeon.” I held up the manila folders. “Last week’s patients.”

  “You really get to know your patients, don’t you?” She shrugged. “Sorry, I couldn’t help but overhear.”

  I nodded. “Something my wife taught me.”

  “Which is?”

  “That people are more than the sum of their blood pressure plus their pulse divided by their body mass index.”

  She laughed again. “You’re my kind of doctor.”

  I nodded at her pads. “And you?”

  “Columnist.” She waved her hand across the papers in front of her. “I write for several different women’s magazines.”

  “What kind of topics do you cover?”

  “Fashion, trends, a lot of humor or satire, some relationships, but I’m not Jane Doe and I don’t do gossip.”

  “I can’t write my way out of a wet paper bag. How many will you write in a year?”

  She weighed her head side to side. “Forty, maybe fifty.” She glanced at my recorder. “Most doctors I know loathe those things.”

  I turned it in my hand. “I’m seldom without it.”

  “Like an albatross?”

  I laughed. “Something like that.”

  “Take much getting used to?”

  “It’s grown on me. Now I couldn’t live without it.”

  “Sounds like a story here.”

  “Rachel…my wife, gave it to me. I was driving the moving truck to Jacksonville. Moving our life back home. Joining the staff at the hospital. She was afraid of the schedule. Of finding herself on the couch, a doctor’s widow, a gallon of Häagen-Dazs and the Lifeway channel. This…was a way to hear the sound of each other’s voice, to be together, to not miss the little things…between surgery, making rounds, and the sound of my beeper at two a.m. She’d keep it a day or so, speak her mind…or heart, then pass the baton. I’d keep it a day or two, or maybe three, and pass it back.”

  “Wouldn’t a cell phone do the same thing?”

  I shrugged. “It’s different. Try it sometime and you’ll see what I mean.”

  “How long you been married?”

  “We married…fifteen years ago this week.” I glanced at her hand. A single diamond decorated her left hand. Absent was the wedding band. “You got one coming up?”

  She couldn’t control the smile. “I’m trying to get home for my rehearsal dinner party tomorrow night.”

  “Congratulations.”

  She shook her head and smiled, staring out across the crowd. “I have a million things to do, and yet here I am making notes on a story about a flash-in-the-pan fashion I don’t even like.”

  I nodded. “You’re probably a good writer.”

  A shrug. “They keep me around. I’ve heard that there are people who buy these magazines just to read my column, though I’ve never met them.” Her charm was magnetic. She asked, “Jacksonville still home?”

  “Yep. And you?”

  “Atlanta.” She handed me her card. ASHLEY KNOX.

  “Ashley.”

  “To everyone but my dad, who calls me Asher. He wanted a boy, was mad at my mom when I appeared with the wrong equipment, or lack thereof, so he changed the ending. Instead of ballet and softball he took me to tae kwon do.”

  “Let me guess…you’re one of those crazy people who can kick stuff off the top of other people’s heads.”

  She nodded.

  “That would explain the stretching and chest to the floor thing.”

  She nodded again, like she didn’t need to impress me.

  “What degree?”

  She held up three fingers.

  “I worked on a guy a few weeks ago, put a few rods and screws in his shin.”

  “How’d he do it?”

  “Kicked his opponent, who blocked it with an elbow. The shin kept going. Sort of folded it the wrong way.”

  “I’ve seen that before.”

  “You say that like you’ve been cut on.”

  “I competed a lot in my teens and early twenties. National championships. Several countries. I broke my fair share of bones and joints. There was a time when my orthopedist in Atlanta was on speed dial. So is this trip work, play, or both?”

  “I’m returning from a medical conference, where I sat on a panel, and…” I smiled. “Got in some climbing on the side.” />
  “Climbing?”

  “Mountains.”

  “Is that what you do when you’re not cutting on people?”

  I laughed. “I have two hobbies. Running is one…it’s how I met Rachel. Started in high school. Tough habit to break. When we moved back home we bought a condo on the beach so we could chase the tide in and out. The second is climbing mountains, something we started while attending medical school in Denver. Well, I attended, she kept me sane. Anyway, there are fifty-four peaks in Colorado higher than 14,000 feet. Locals call them ‘fourteeners.’ There’s an unofficial club of folks who have climbed them all. We started checking them off in medical school.”

  “How many have you climbed?”

  “Twenty. Just added Mt. Princeton. 14,197 feet. It’s one of the Collegiate Peaks.”

  She thought about that a minute. “That’s almost three miles above sea level.”

  I nodded. “Close, but not quite.”

  “How long does something like that take?”

  “Normally a day or less, but conditions this time of year make it a bit”—I shifted my head back and forth—“tougher.”

  She laughed. “You need oxygen?”

  “No, but acclimating helps.”

  “Was it covered in snow and ice?”

  “Yes.”

  “And was it bitter cold, snowing and blowing like crazy?”

  “I’ll bet you’re a good journalist.”

  “Well…was it?”

  “At times.”

  “Did you make it up and down without dying?”

  I laughed. “Evidently.”

  One eyebrow rose above the other. “So, you’re one of those people?”

  “What type is that?”

  “The ‘man versus wild’ type.”

  I shook my head. “Weekend warrior. I’m most at home at sea level.”

  She stared up and down the rows of people. “Your wife’s not with you?”

  “Not this time.”

  My stomach growled. The aroma from the California Pizza Kitchen wafted down the terminal. I stood. “You mind watching my stuff?”

  “Sure.”

  “Be right back.”

  I returned with a Caesar salad and a plate-sized pepperoni pizza just as the loudspeaker cackled.