The Pass (Wattys 2019)

Chapter Twenty-Two

Growing up in the war zone that was the Orlov household, Nika's younger brother, Boris, had suffered from fits of anxiety. Every time tensions rose, he would become crippled with fear, in his bed with the blankets pulled over him, afraid of any sort of human interaction. He would cry, too: an awful, loud sobbing that made his entire body shake violently. That only ended with Nika's father angry and screaming at Boris to be a man, and it only made Boris' anxiety even worse. He only ever felt like himself when they were with their grandparents, but he still refused to talk about it: he said that the mere thought of his fits made him feel anxious, and she didn't push him. She hadn't seen or heard much from him since he moved to Leningrad for school, but she'd always wondered whether or not her brother still had those fits, or if they'd gone when he'd left.

That night, Nika suddenly understood the emotional hell her brother had lived through. The God awful sensation of having her ind tear itself into pieces, an elephant sitting on her chest, the world crumpling around her as if she were stuck in a tin can getting crushed under the tire of an indifferent car. Her mind was on fire, with a single thought in her head: Get out! You're suffocating; get out!

Nika didn't think about it, didn't pull on her coat or her boots; she frantically crawled out of the tent and into the night.

The cold bit right down to the bone, shocking her awake. It was dark, the sky covered in dark clouds. The wind blew and sounded like an angry animal. Every sense she had was enhanced. She heard voices in the wind that weren't there, saw shadows moving, clawing at her. All she could think about were the darkest moments of her life.

Those moments hit her harder than the cold, or any other horrible sensation she was feeling. All she felt was that soul-crushing weight of hopelessness. She heard her father's screams in the wind, felt ice growing into old wounds. It felt as if she'd gone right back to being a child in that God-forsaken house, listening to her father hurl insult after insult, watching him beat anyone who crossed him. All the things she'd tried so hard to forget since she moved away from that monster.

She collapsed in the snow about twenty meters from the tent. She hadn't even realized she'd been running from the tent until then. Hadn't realized that she was crying until she realized that the tears had frozen her eyelids shut and she couldn't see anything.

More fear crept into Nika. It didn't take much time for hypothermia to set in when one was in a winter storm in the mountains. Especially when one wasn't dressed for the weather. If she didn't get back to the tent, soon, she was going to die.

Is this it? She thought to herself Is this really how I'm going to die?

Nika had come close to dying, before, especially on expeditions. She'd nearly died on Annapurna when the sheet of ice fell; if it had fallen just a few seconds earlier, it would've killed her instead of Nikolai. Hell, it had only been a month since Matveyev had almost fallen off of K2, and nearly took her with him. Never, before, had she been so aware of her own mortality, so afraid of death.

God, help me! She prayed.

***

Peter woke up with a sick feeling in his stomach in the middle of the night. That awful feeling that came with waking up from a bad dream. He couldn't remember what it had been about; the only clue he had was the awful feeling of hopelessness that sat heavy in his stomach, as if he'd just swallowed a bunch of rocks.

It was odd; he hadn't woken up with that feeling in a long time, not since he'd grown out of his night terrors, dreams that made him scream and thrash in his bed, but rarely remembered in the morning.

Immediately, Peter felt embarrassed. On his first hiking trip with his school, he'd been too afraid to use the bathroom in the woods and ended up wetting himself in front of every boy at his school Granted, there were only ten other school-aged boys in his tiny village, but it was still absolutely mortifying. He would've much rather had a repeat of that incident than wake everyone up with night terrors.