New Years Day 2022
Bang. Crack. Nothing. My eyes must have been closed. As light filters through my goggles, my first breath cries for someone. Echoing from peak to peak, my voice traveled to all the places I wanted to be as I lay immobile. I take a breath and cry, my lungs expand, pressuring my fragile spine. I think I finally took my first full breath the second I saw you. I knew whatever was going to happen next, I wouldn't be alone. That very moment between relief and agony, I knew I was safe and it’ll be okay in the end. I couldn’t hide my vulnerability any longer; I had to put down my brave, independent mask as I cried for comfort and support.
My once mountain top view became a glassy series of unfamiliar faces and fluorescent lighting. Familiarity is a privilege, to know something or someone concrete in times of chaos is a privilege. I laid there waiting for someone to restart time again. More and more figures surrounded and huddled the space above me, pushing the familiar one away. I knew the drill, I’ve studied it, practiced it, directed it; “We’re going to put you on a backboard Mara” the lead Ski Patrol told me. There was a younger rookie on the patrol team, she had been at my left shoulder throughout the transfer, she was one of the only faces I could see with how I was positioned. I must have scared her with my cries and anxious eyes because she looked at me as if she could barely watch what would happen once off the hill. More bodies piled in blocking any view I had of what surrounded me. Solely aware of the ache and shooting pain that surged when my pelvis suspended inches from the snowed mountain side, I was finally about to make it to the bottom. I once thought the top of the mountain was the scariest, but now I knew having to make it to the bottom was going to be a challenge itself. The thing that frightened me the most was the only way down. I laid in the toboggan attached to this strange man, to whom I never got a clear image of his face, begging for the pain to stop only to inevitably hit the bumps with speed. I couldn’t bear to open my eyes on the way down, too focused on the pain to care where I was. Clouds of relief passed over me when I looked up and everything was above me, I was at the bottom and I wasn’t alone. My heart raced like a winning racehorse, pumping blood giving a nice rosiness and warmth hue to my skin.
My sentences formed between the gasps and wails with every breath while they ask standard health and contact information. With my sunken, tired, glassy eyes I wander the room, piecing together the room everyone is pacing in while I remain stuck in time on my back answering questions between moments of pain. My breath slows down, all I wanted was to close my eyes and take a break to dreamland. I can feel the vibration of my phone in my pocket, the thought of talking seemed more like a chore than anything so I let it ring. My gaze still anxiously wandering the room landed on you, you took my hand and held it as tight as possible as I tried a breath and smiled. Once more, I knew it would be alright whatever would come our way, you were strong when I couldn’t be. Not sure where I’m going they wheeled me out to the truck I should’ve been in the following week.
I felt it, the loneliness of no visitors by my side in a city I’ve never been to.
