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She nodded happily and turned to watch Ben, who was ready to go the second I gave him the signal that I was ready to watch him.
He started off doing great, keeping himself upright with his poles, weaving just a bit as he did. He was about halfway down, when I suddenly saw him turn sharply to the side, like he was braking, but there was fear on his face as he tried to get himself facing forward again.
He’d hit a patch of slick snow and skidded on his skis to the edge of the slope where the trees grew thick, and he couldn’t stop himself. I kicked my skis off and tried to get to him as quickly as I could, to stop him from getting hurt, but I wasn’t fast enough. He stumbled over his skis and fell down the hill, rolling over himself until he came to a stop.
By falling head-first into a tree.
I rushed over to him as Katie screamed and Leann hugged her, looking just as scared as I felt. He had sat up and was crying. There was a decent-sized bump on his head that he was holding like he was in agony, which, for a kid his age, I was sure was pretty close to the truth.
“Ben,” I said as I fell to my knees beside him. “Ben, I need you to look at me.”
I needed to check him for signs of a concussion, to make sure I didn’t have to take him to the emergency room. With a goose egg like that, there was a decent chance he might have knocked himself out.
He wouldn’t sit up or look at me. He just lay there crying and holding his head. I grabbed a handful of snow and gently pulled his hands away from the bump and pressed the snow to it.
“This should help,” I said as he finally met my eyes. His pupils seemed to be normal, and his gaze wasn’t unfocused. There was still a chance he could have had a concussion, but it seemed unlikely.
Thank God. The last thing I wanted to do was explain to the guy I had started hooking up with—my boss, who was apparently “falling for me”—why his kid had to go to the hospital on my watch.
He was still sniffling as I pulled him into my lap and hugged him tightly. He was a pretty skinny kid, so it wasn’t hard for me to pick him up and carry him down the hill to where his sisters sat.
“Is Benny okay?” Katie asked as soon as I set him on his feet.
“No,” he said before I could answer, clutching the snow to his head and wiping away a large drip where some of it had melted onto his face. “I’m not okay. I hate skiing. I’m never doing it again.”
I wasn’t quite sure what to say. It wasn’t like he didn’t have a valid reason to be scared now. I’d taken a tumble like that when I was a kid, but I’d already been skiing for a while and had just overestimated my skill. I was pretty sure it was the same as what had happened to Ben, but I wasn’t sure.
“Why don’t we call it for today and we can all go inside and have some cocoa?”
Ben gave a big sniff and nodded his head, his tears subsiding slightly at the prospect of having some hot chocolate, and Leann and Katie seemed to share the sentiment. I walked up the hill to where Ben had fallen to collect his skis and poles while Leann fussed a bit over Ben’s injury. Then I grabbed his hand in mine and led all three children back into the lodge and up to the penthouse.
By the time we all got back to the suite, Ben’s snowpack had completely melted, leaving him with soaking wet hair. I helped him out of his snowsuit as he continued to sniffle, and dried his hair with a towel.
“I mean it,” he said suddenly as I rubbed a towel over his head. “I’m not skiing anymore.”
“That’s totally your choice,” I said calmly, trying to figure out how I could motivate him. I debated telling him how I bumped my head as a kid, but I had another story of a bigger-scale incident that might help him feel more understood and help him to see past this roadblock on his learning journey. “But you know… just a couple of months ago I got really hurt skiing.”
“You did?” he asked. “See, I shouldn’t be doing it! It’s dangerous.”
“That’s not my point,” I said with an indulgent smile. “Have you ever heard of an avalanche?”
He nodded. “Sometimes they happen around here. Dad always gets really upset when they do.”
“Because they can really hurt people,” she said. “I was skiing, and when I got to the bottom, the avalanche came down the mountain and hit me really hard.”
“It did?” he asked, looking up at me in wonder and horror.
“Yeah,” I said. “It broke my leg really bad. I had to go see a lot of doctors to get better. And you know what the first thing I did when I got better was?”
“Sell your skis?” he asked, though I could tell from his face he knew that wasn’t the answer.
I laughed at his precociousness. Then gave him a hug. “No, Ben,” I said as I pulled away. “I went out to try skiing again. And you know what?”
“What?” he asked.
“It was really scary.” I gave a bit of a shiver as I thought about that first time after the avalanche, looking down the hill and feeling like it was a million feet down. “But I had to remember that one bad day skiing didn’t change all the good days I had skiing. And I wasn’t going to let my fear control me. Do you want to let your fear control you?”
He shook his head. “I’m not scared. I just… don’t wanna do it anymore.”
