The bandage Krakauer had around his head was so blood-soaked that it was dripping down his chin. It made him look as though he was crying blood.
“Lawrence,” Messner quietly repeated, like a broken record player.
He just couldn't believe it.
“Lawrence.”
“Doc,” Rambo insisted.
The Baker Team doctor was scared to put his fingers on Messner's neck to check his pulse.
That gesture would finalize everything for Messner, making the fact he wasn’t coming back, final. If he couldn’t find his friend’s pulse, then that moment would haunt him forever, for the rest of his living days. As things stood however, that’s how things really were. War.
That was war and they all knew it very well.
Messner closed his eyes, exhaled and stretched his fingers to his friend's neck.
He stood by for a moment - a moment that never ended.
Lawrence, Lawrence Krakauer.
Lawrence, my friend.
Messner waited for a long time for that pulse to come back, but it never did.
Lawrence, I am begging you, please.
Please, Lawrence, please.
But it was too late, and the pulse wasn’t there.
End of the story.
“He’s no longer breathing,” Rambo added, in a strange voice.
It didn't sound like him at all.
Goodbye, my friend – thought Messner, to himself.