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Dammit, Haley, I thought to myself.You’re a damned Olympic qualifying skier. This is the kids’ slope. You can do this.
Of course, no amount of self-talk could change the sheer terror I felt as I climbed up the slope, looking behind me every step of the way and feeling wave after wave of vertigo hitting me. There was no way it was as high up as it looked… right?
I got to the top where there was a little bench for putting on skis, and I sat down to strap in. It took me a lot longer than usual with my hands shaking so badly. This terror wasn’t going to go away so easily, but my therapist would have told me I needed to get on with the program and prove to myself there was nothing to be afraid of.
Except that there was. I knew there was because I’d been trapped in what I was now afraid of.
I squared up with the top of the slope, ready to go down. I could see dozens of tracks already spanning the height of the hill, and I tried to aim for a fresh patch of snow, not wanting any chance of a well-worn area causing me to slip and fall. The last thing I needed was to rebreak my leg, or worse, my mind.
I started slow, continuing to turn the font of the skis in to brake as I went down, but as things went well, I started to feel like I could maybe really do this.
I let out a laugh of delight, but at that moment, a kid zipped by me going twice my speed, and I panicked. I began to slide out of control, and then I was met with such an extreme flash of memory that I lost my footing completely.
Suddenly, I wasn’t on this bunny slope. I was on the double black diamond at Brother Bears, zipping down the slope at breakneck speeds. There were a few slick spots, but I’d known how to navigate those almost since I could walk.
I slalomed around the flags and through the trees, avoiding obstacles while maintaining my speed and staying within the lines of the course to avoid penalties. When I finally broke free of the tree line, I could see the finish line far below me, and knew I was in the clear.
When I finally crossed, I looked back up at Anna and Max with a thumbs up I was sure they couldn’t see, then went to the tent where they allowed the competitors to warm up and listen to the commentary. According to the announcer, my time had been the best so far, and I got a few high-fives from other skiers in the tent.
After thanking everyone, I grabbed a cup of hot cocoa and sat down, closing my eyes as the announcer began to talk about the next skier, whose name I recognized. Sondre, a skier I’d met through Max.
Sondre must have been about halfway down when he fell, and they moved on to the next skier. I felt bad for the guy, to have come this far only to wipe out, but it didn’t sound like he was hurt bad, which was always a concern when skiing at these kinds of speeds.
Then it was the final skier, someone I didn’t know. He had barely started his run when a collective gasp went up from everyone watching, and a few people screamed. At first, I thought maybe he’d fallen, too, but then I heard it.
It started off low, like thunder far off in the distance, the kind that’s quiet but you can feel it in your feet. The ground began to vibrate, and it didn’t stop. I opened my eyes and sprang to my feet just in time to see the huge sheet of snow breaking away from the mountain and beginning to slide down.
I watched it overtake the skier who had just started his run, then plow through a patch of trees, which seemed to lay sideways under the pressure of the snow.
“Shit,” I said under my breath, knowing that there was no way I’d be able to outrun it, at least not in my ski boots. But I was sure as hell going to try. “Run!” I screamed to everyone else in the tent, and chaos overtook the entire area.
I grabbed one of the balloons they used to mark the tent and my ski pole, knowing that those two things might be the difference between making it and not.
Though when the snow did impact and I felt my leg snap under the pressure, I almost wished it had just killed me.
Instead, I survived, with the handle of my ski pole up by my face. I heard the balloon pop and despair began to sink in, even as the movement slowed and came to a stop. I had no idea how deep in the snow I was, just that it was deep enough for it to be dark. I began to punch at the snow around my face, using the handle of my pole to help clear the space so I could breathe, but I knew there wouldn’t be a whole lot of time that the small air supply would last for, and that was assuming the snow didn’t crush my lungs first.
I started to hyperventilate, which I knew wasn’t going to be any help, but the pain in my leg was so extreme that it took all my willpower not to scream, which would have robbed me of far too much oxygen, not that the heavy breathing was doing much good anyway.
I looked around me, trying to discern anything that might show me a way to get out. I tried to push my pole up throughthe snow in the hopes that someone might see it and know I was here, tried to see if the balloon had managed to stay above the snow even if it had popped, a marker to show where I was.
But I couldn’t tell a damn thing.
It took almost an hour before they managed to find me, and when they did, I began to sob with gratitude that I’d managed to survive, but the break in my leg was a bad one, and they needed to airlift me out. Thankfully, due to a fantastic medical team, my recovery was faster than average, something I couldn’t believe.
Partially due to the fact that it meant I had to face my fears that much sooner.
Almost every night since then, I’d had nightmares about it. Nightmares that I was still buried beneath the snow, waiting for someone to come get me, ones where the snow collapsed over my face, and I suffocated, ones where I was slowly crushed to death…
I tumbled over my skis and fell into a pile on the ground, sobbing and curling in on myself. Every single horrible thought and dream I’d had about the avalanche came to the front, and all the coping skills I’d been working on with my therapist went right out the window.
I was ready to give up and wait for the rescue crews to notice me, when I felt a pair of hands on my arms.
Max. He was back. It had to be him. No one else had been so loving to me when I was so scared. I looked up, my face already breaking into a smile, when I saw his face.
And it wasn’t Max.
It was James. He’d saved me from my despair, and as that thought occurred to me, I realized that since our kiss, I hadn’t had a single nightmare.
