I wrote the short story below for a contest on March 31, 2017. I did not win. I am not Chicken Soup for the Soul material.
No Man
“I’m bored, Mommy. I want to go.”
“It’s okay,” I looked up at him. “You can go. I’ll be okay.”
He said, “No, Mommy. I won’t leave you.”
How had I become a part of this elite force, whose motto was “No man left behind”?
We weren’t in enemy territory. We were at Snowbird, Utah. It was an icy ski day. My seven-year-old son and eight-year-old daughter were having no difficulties skiing the intermediate slopes. I couldn’t get my edges in. I felt as if I didn’t know how to ski at all even though I’d been skiing hundreds of times. It wasn’t enough. I felt afraid. So I fell. The first fall I went sliding down a slope on my back, straight down head first and very fast. After sliding for awhile, I thought I’d gently roll to my left to place my legs and skis back down and stop. I managed to lift my legs and roll to the side so that my skis didn’t get caught or come off. It worked. A man stopped nearby and asked if I was okay. I said that I was.
Isaiah was standing nearby me then, too. “Get up, Mommy,” he said. He repeated that many times as if I weren’t trying. After the long slide and many other falls before that, my ability to get up wasn’t so good anymore, which I explained to him. But at least I wasn’t hurt yet.
Hannah glided nearby and stopped to say, “Get up, Mommy.”
Isaiah said, “Take off your ski.”
I managed finally to get up without taking off my ski. Then I stood to take a rest and watched Isaiah, Hannah, my husband, and several others ski by. I tried again. I fell quickly that time and very awkwardly on my left side, hard, knocking the wind out of me. But this time was different than ever before.
I thought, I’ve broken my rib. It hurt when I breathed after that.
After that, I really couldn’t get up. My husband helped me up and asked me if I could make it down. “It’s still a long way down,” he said. “Do you think you can make it, or do you want a ride?”
Lying down on the ski patrol rescue toboggan, I thought, wouldn’t be a terrible idea. But it seemed like it wouldn’t be a great idea either. I wanted to try to ski.
I fell. I got up. I repeated the process several times.
I fell in a particularly slippery area. Then Isaiah refused to leave my side when I really couldn’t get up. He advised me again to take off my ski. I didn’t see my husband or Hannah anywhere or anyone else. It was starting to get dark. My rib was hurting. I took off my ski and stood up. Then I needed to get the ski back onto the boot.
“Mommy!” said Isaiah excitedly, “you need to put that part up.”
“Okay,” I said, having no idea what he was talking about and feeling frustrated as I was unable to make purchase as I tried to shove my boot back into the binding. I scraped the ice from the bottom of the boot against the side of the binding and tried again to get the boot back into the binding. I finally got it to go in properly.
I looked up and around the direction I was headed before I started off down the iced slope and saw my husband, who was trying to make his way slowly back up the hill toward me. I skied past him. Around the next corner, I saw Hannah, who must have been waiting the whole time.
I came to a narrow pass. Isaiah and Hannah came from behind me and passed me. My husband passed me, too. I cut back and forth through it as slowly as I could, but it was fast. I fell again on the next slope but was able to get up without much difficulty. Isaiah was nearby then, too.
I rested where I stood. I could see the parking lot at the bottom now. I started to ski, trying not to hit my children, who stayed close by me, and trying not to fall. I took wide cuts across the trail and slope whenever I had room.
When I saw the lift at the bottom, I skied straighter and faster. I passed Hannah now and stopped when I got to the lodge where I immediately took off my skis and placed them on the rack with my poles.
When we returned from Utah, I went to see my doctor. He called me soon after I left the radiologist’s office. He said I had a hairline fracture on number nine and that I should take it easy and try not to let that side of my ribs get hit again. I thought, Sure, of course, I’ll do my best. He said that I could take an NSAID or he could prescribe something stronger. I declined, saying the pain wasn’t that bad.
That afternoon when I picked my children up from school, I told them that my rib was fractured. Isaiah wanted to know, “What about Mammoth?”
We were supposed to go to Mammoth in about six weeks. I said, “We will go. If my rib feels okay, I’ll ski. If it doesn’t, I won’t.”