Winners

by Danielle Steel

  “She’s with an instructor from the ski school. Jason Yee.” The officer had already seen Jason’s name on a list of casualties but said nothing to Bill. “Her name is Lily Thomas. She’s wearing an Olympic ski team parka and helmet,” Bill said, choking back tears of terror.

  “I’ll radio the patrol and the choppers,” he said quickly. “We’re having a tough time with the fog and the trees. The visibility is right down to the ground. We’ve only gotten two people down so far. If you wait over there, sir”—he pointed to the designated area again—“I’ll let you know as soon as we get word.”

  Bill nodded and went to stand with a cluster of anxious people who had arrived while Bill was talking. Two of them were parents of ski instructors who were on the mountain, and there were a handful of others who looked panicked. Most of the people on the scene were rescue workers, and a fleet of snowmobiles had raced past them only moments before. All available instructors had been mobilized to join the ski patrol in the search for injured people. The operator wasn’t sure how many had gone up in all since most of them had day passes. All he knew was that the chairlift had jammed for an instant, and the next thing he was aware of was that the cable had gone slack, and the chairs had gone down one by one. Someone in the group said it had sounded like a crack of thunder, louder than the dynamite they’d been detonating, which had stopped now. All Bill could hear around him were the rescue vehicles arriving and men shouting.

  It was another hour before a sled sped down the mountain with men from the ski patrol all around it. Bill couldn’t stop himself and raced forward, but he could see instantly that it was a young boy, who looked dazed as they lifted him into an ambulance on a backboard, and he heard someone say that both his legs were broken, but he was alive. His older brother was brought down on a sled, with a tarp covering him. He was dead. They had pulled him out of the ravine on ropes. The younger brother had fallen into a snowbank right before it. It was rapidly turning into a grim scene as Bill watched, overwhelmed by panic. There was no news of either Jason or Lily. He was unaware of the tears rolling down his cheeks as he waited, and more than once he couldn’t stop himself and went to remind the police and firemen of where he was standing and that Lily was wearing the jacket and helmet of the Olympic team, so they could identify her quickly when they found her.

  The ski patrol at the top were in constant radio communication with the men at the base, and warned them when people were coming down and what condition they were in. Only three survivors had come down so far, all suffering from hypothermia, and two people had been killed. But so far Lily was among neither the injured nor the dead. Only one man had escaped without injury. He was suffering from exposure and frostbite, but from what they could tell, he had no broken bones, and had fallen into a snowbank from the low part of the chairlift. All Bill could hope now was that Lily would be one of the lucky ones. Bill kept thinking of the night her mother had been killed, when the police showed up at his front door. She had gone to meet a friend for dinner, and died instantly when her car hit the ice and she ran into a tree.

  And then as another sled appeared, with ski patrol flying alongside it, he saw the familiar jacket and helmet. He raced toward it, as the men pulling the sled shouted at him to get out of the way. He stepped aside just in time and saw her face, deathly pale, with her eyes closed. She was covered with tarps and thermal blankets, the sleeve of her jacket had been cut off, and they had run an IV into her arm. Bill was next to the sled instantly, as the paramedics called out to one another and slid her into the ambulance. She was unconscious. Bill jumped into the ambulance with her. He told them rapidly that he was her father, and no one objected. The doors slammed as soon as he said it, and they drove away at full speed, as two of the paramedics took her vitals.

  Her temperature was icy, which one of the paramedics explained to him might have kept her alive, in spite of her injuries. They didn’t know what condition she was in yet, but were assuming she had back and neck injuries from the position they’d found her in, sprawled like a rag doll in the snow. The atmosphere in the ambulance was tense as they put more thermal blankets on her and heating pads to try and warm her up. Fortunately, she had been in the snow for only a few hours, longer might have been disastrous, but she wasn’t out of danger yet by any means. Her blood pressure was alarmingly low as her father watched her with a look of devastation and gently touched her hand. She never stirred as they continued to monitor her, and the ambulance flew toward the hospital at full speed, with its siren on. They were there in minutes, and a team was waiting in the parking lot for her. She was the fourth victim of the chairlift accident to come in.

  Lily was rushed straight into the trauma unit, with Bill running behind them. A nurse stopped him at the door.

  “You’ll have to stay in the waiting room, sir,” she said firmly, as his eyes blazed fire at her. No one was going to keep him from his daughter in the condition she was in. She looked more dead than alive. And as the nurse stopped him, they were already cutting Lily’s clothes off, while a team of doctors and nurses worked on her.

  “That’s my daughter in there,” Bill said with a grim look, trying to force his way past the nurse. “You’ll have to carry me out,” he said bluntly.

  “That can be arranged,” the nurse said with a look of equal determination. “You can’t go in.”

  “Watch me,” he said, and shoved past her through the trauma unit doors. He found Lily in the first treatment room, already naked, with monitors attached to every part of her, and electrically heated blankets being used to warm her up. “How is she?” he said in a hoarse voice to the doctor closest to him, who was too busy to answer, and shot a meaningful look at a resident to get Bill out before he got in their way. They were trying to save her life. She was young and strong, and they hoped they had a decent chance, but nothing was sure, and they hadn’t evaluated her injuries yet. They were dealing with the hypothermia, and her blood pressure. She was hardly breathing, and they were going to intubate her. And they wanted Bill out of the room for that.

  “You can’t stay in here,” one of the doctors said tersely, as the resident took Bill’s arm and led him out of the room with a strong hand. This time Bill didn’t fight him, he was overwhelmed by what he’d seen. Lily didn’t even know he was there—she was still deeply unconscious, and had been since they rescued her from the snow.

  The resident led him into the nearby waiting room, and Bill sat down, deathly pale himself. “Are you all right?” the resident asked calmly, and Bill nodded, but he wasn’t. He was terrified Lily was going to die, just like her mother. She had looked like she was barely clinging to life in the treatment room. “We’re going to do everything we can for her,” he reassured him, and Bill stared at him with panic in his eyes.

  “What happened? What’s broken?” he asked in a trembling voice.

  “We don’t know yet. We’re trying to assess that now.”

  “Her head?” Bill asked in a choked whisper.

  “The ski patrol reported that she had her helmet on when they found her. We’re more concerned about her neck and spine.” Bill nodded silently, and dropped his head into his hands, as the resident sat down in a chair across from him. “We need a history on her. How old is she?”

  “She just turned seventeen.”

  “Allergies?”

  “None.”

  “Medical problems? Heart? Lungs? Surgeries?”

  “Nothing. She’s fine … or she was …,” he said, as tears filled his eyes.

  “Any history of drugs—anything we should know?” Bill shook his head miserably.

  “How soon will you know what her injuries are? How far did she fall?”

  “From the high point of the chairlift. She just missed the ravine. Her instructor wasn’t as lucky,” the young doctor said grimly.

  “Jason?” Bill was shocked—he hadn’t heard that yet.

  “They found him before they found your daughter. She was deep in the snow. The only good thing ab
out that is that maintaining her body at such a low temperature kept the swelling down on her injuries. That could be helpful. I need to get back in now,” the resident said quietly. “We have an orthopedic surgeon coming in to evaluate her. And we have a neurosurgeon on call, if we need one.”

  “Who are they?” Bill panicked again. “I’m not going to let just anyone operate on her,” Bill said, suddenly fierce—he was a lion ready to defend his cub. “I want to know who they are. Can we fly someone in?”

  “That won’t be necessary. We have an excellent team here, the best there is.” He looked insulted, and Bill didn’t care. He wanted the finest doctors he could get for Lily. If she needed surgery, he didn’t want some local quack bungling it. They were at the most state-of-the-art hospital in Tahoe for trauma and orthopedic injuries, but he wasn’t ready to trust anyone with his child.

  “We may not have time to bring someone else in. We need to stabilize her, and do X-rays and exams, and scans. They’re doing that now. As soon as we know something, the head of the trauma unit will come out and talk to you.” He stood up then, trying not to appear nervous. Bill seemed as though he was going to throttle him if he didn’t come up with the right answers, or if they couldn’t save the girl. The resident had no idea if they would be able to save her, but it wasn’t looking good when she came in. The ski patrol and paramedics who had found her had thought she was dead at first and were stunned when they found a pulse.

  He left the room then, and Bill sat going crazy for two hours. He thought of calling Penny, but didn’t really want to talk to her. They had a good time together, but even after two years they weren’t that close. He had no idea who to call, and had never felt so alone in his life, not since a night fourteen years before, when Lily’s mother died. But he wasn’t going to let that happen to Lily.

  He was ready to try to force his way back into the treatment room when the chief trauma doctor came out. He looked like a college kid to Bill, and there was a tall, dark-haired man with him. He was wearing a lab coat, with his name embroidered on the pocket, it said “Ben Steinberg, M.D.,” and he appeared to be a little older than his colleague, in his late thirties or early forties. He introduced himself to Bill immediately, and said he was an orthopedic surgeon.

  “How’s my daughter?” Bill asked in a voice raw with worry and grief.

  “We’re trying to stabilize her. We need to get her body temperature up, before we can do any kind of intervention on her. We’re assessing her injuries. She’s still unconscious, which is partially due to the hypothermia. She was in the snow for several hours,” he explained. “We don’t know the extent of any internal injuries yet. She has a broken arm, and a spinal cord injury, but we don’t know the implications of that yet either. We’ve done preliminary X-rays, and a body scan, but they’re not conclusive. My partner is a neurosurgeon, and I’d like her to come in to evaluate your daughter for us.”

  “What does that mean? And what kind of spinal injury? Is she paralyzed?” Bill looked like a cornered bull as he said the words, and Ben Steinberg realized he needed to handle him with kid gloves. The resident had warned him of that, but he could see now the level of Bill’s anxiety for his daughter. He seemed like he was going to lose control any minute. He couldn’t bear what was happening to her.

  “We don’t know any of that yet, which is why I’d like a neurosurgeon to evaluate her. My partner is one of the best there is. I called her a few minutes ago, and she’s coming in. We need a little more time to stabilize Lily anyway. We need to get her warmer and her blood pressure up before she could tolerate surgery.”

  “I haven’t agreed to surgery,” Bill reminded him. “And I asked you if she’s paralyzed.” His eyes blazed into Ben’s.

  “It’s hard to assess with her unconscious, but there appears to be limited function of her legs. We need to determine the degree of the injury before we can give you a reliable answer. We just don’t know the full extent of her injuries yet.”

  “When is the neurosurgeon coming in, and why the hell isn’t she here yet?” He was impatient for everything—for answers, but mostly for help for Lily.

  “She should be here in fifteen or twenty minutes. I just called her,” Dr. Steinberg said calmly. He sympathized with Bill’s concern about his daughter, and he had a soothing manner, but nothing was going to satisfy Bill now except the news that Lily was out of danger, and no one could tell him that, not even a neurosurgeon. She had had a very serious accident, and there was no way of telling yet if she would survive it.

  “May I see my daughter?” Bill asked, with agony in his eyes, and the orthopedic surgeon nodded. He hated to have her father see her in the condition she was in, but he didn’t have the heart to deny him. And maybe it would help him understand her fragile state. She was hanging on to life by a thin thread.

  Bill followed them wordlessly into the trauma unit. Lily had been moved into the trauma ICU, and there were two nurses and a doctor with her, checking her vital signs, and doing a neurological assessment before the surgeon arrived and would need the information. Lily was still covered by several electric warming blankets, her long dark hair was in a surgical cap, and her face looked ghostly. She had a breathing tube taped in her mouth, and a machine was helping her breathe. She had IVs in both arms, and monitors attached to her limbs gave them the information they needed, and would sound an alarm if her heart stopped or she stopped breathing.

  Bill was even more shaken the moment he saw her. There wasn’t an inch of her that he could hold or kiss, all he could do was watch her, and gently touch her good arm with his finger. The other arm was in a cast, and a nasty bruise had begun to show on one side of her face, where she had fallen. Bill just stood there crying quietly, and a few minutes later a nurse led him from the room. There was nowhere for him to stand without getting in their way, and as much as he wanted to be with her, he didn’t want to interfere with what they were doing. He had no illusions about how dire her situation was. He sat down in the waiting room again, and the nurse offered to get him a cup of coffee or something to eat. He just shook his head and laid it back against the couch and closed his eyes. After seeing her, it was almost impossible to believe she would live. And for the first time in fourteen years, he prayed.

  Chapter 3

  JESSIE MATTHEWS HAD been running all afternoon. Her days off were always like that, but it was inevitable with four young kids, and she loved it. Her oldest son, Chris, was eighteen now and allegedly more independent. He had a driver’s license and a car, but he still needed help with everything. He still consulted his parents on minor and major decisions, needed help with term papers and school projects, emptied the fridge, and forgot to do dishes. Jessie did his laundry, and he asked her for romantic advice. And he loved playing basketball with his dad when he had time. Both his parents were busy. His mother was a neurosurgeon, and his father, Tim, was an anesthesiologist. They usually took turns with their schedules, except for emergencies, which happened often, and then they were both out at the same time. Chris stayed with his younger siblings and drove them around whenever he had to. He was going to college in the fall and hoping to get into either UC Boulder or the University of Denver, for the skiing. He could hardly wait to go. And Adam, his eleven-year-old brother, said he couldn’t wait for him to leave too. It seemed sometimes like they had been arguing with each other since the day Adam was born, or very shortly thereafter, although they were seven years apart.

  Heather was fifteen, and a sophomore at the same school Chris attended. She and Chris got along fairly decently, except when she said he was acting like a jerk or a pig or refused to drive her somewhere because he wanted to see his girlfriend. But they’d been doing better since she’d been in high school, which was a relief to their parents.

  And Jimmy was everyone’s joy, at six. He had been a “slip” on Jessie’s part, five years after Adam, but she and Tim were infinitely grateful for it now. He was the most affectionate child she’d ever seen, and he made everybody l
augh. He loved his entire family. He was the sweetness and comic relief in the group. Tim had forgiven Jessie instantly for adding a fourth unexpected child to their already-strained finances, the moment he saw him. Jimmy was impossible to resist, and everyone who knew him loved him. His whole perspective on life was colored by the fact that he had never met anyone who didn’t like him. Strangers in line at the supermarket fell in love with him, and he made friends wherever he went. Even homeless guys on the street smiled at him, when Jimmy stopped to say hello and ask them how they were.

  Tim was just waking up when Jessie came in with the groceries. She had used her day off to do a million errands, dropped Heather off to do some shopping she wanted to do, and took Adam for a haircut he didn’t want and was furious about. Now she still had two loads of laundry to do, and she had promised to cook dinner. She and Jimmy were unpacking the groceries, when Tim walked into the kitchen in his pajamas, with a yawn. He had been up all night with four surgeries back to back, and didn’t get home till ten A.M. He put on a pot of coffee, and helped her put the groceries in the fridge.

  “Looks like you had a busy day.” He smiled at her over Jimmy’s head. It was the same smile that had made her heart race for all these years. They had married in medical school at twenty-four. And nineteen years and four kids later, they were still very much in love, and it showed. Adam rolled his eyes and looked disgusted whenever they kissed, and Chris and Heather looked embarrassed. Jimmy thought it was funny and had shown a picture of his parents kissing, at show and tell, that Jessie didn’t know he had taken. There was nothing improper about the picture, and his class thought it was funny. Tim and Jessie both knew it was rare for people to still be that in love with each other after nearly twenty years, but their kids thought it was normal.

  “Sorry I didn’t give you a hand today,” Tim apologized as Jessie put away the empty bags, and Jimmy went upstairs. “I was dead to the world.”