Winners

by Danielle Steel

  Chapter 22

  LILY WORKED HARD at school into the winter months. She stopped and saw Teddy every day after school faithfully, knowing how much it meant to him. It had become a ritual, and he was working diligently with Phil Lewis to train for chair rugby, and playing practice games. They were rough, but Teddy loved it, and Phil was tireless at coaching him. Teddy was determined to be in the rugby demonstration at the Winter Paralympics that were being held in Aspen at the same time and in the same location as the Olympics. Lily had gone to see almost all of Teddy’s games and they looked brutal to her, but Teddy had a great time doing it and was incredibly deft at moving his chair with the joystick and catching the ball with the sticks in his gloved hands. They applied a sticky substance to the ball so it was easier to hold on to.

  And things were going well at school for her. She made new friends, and at the first snows, she started skiing again. She had contacted her old coach and explained what she was doing. He was stunned to hear from her and was still mourning her tragic accident when she asked if he would train with her again. He had gone into retirement after she fell.

  “You’re skiing again? That’s not possible.” Despite what her father had told him, when he had seen her after the accident, he had realized she would never walk again.

  “Yes, it is possible,” she laughed. “Come and watch.” He came to Winter Park where she skied. She wanted to enter the Alpine skiing event, which was downhill racing, on the monoski fitted with the chair, and her old coach was in awe of what she could do, and the speeds she achieved. She was as strong as she used to be, and as fast on her new ski, dangerously so in fact. It terrified him, but he was thrilled to see what she was doing. He was Austrian, and had been a ski instructor in his youth, and a famous Olympic coach later on. He had worked with her for five years and prepared her for the Junior Olympics.

  “I want you to help me win again,” she said to Oscar after the first time he’d seen her on the chair ski, and she showed him films of the Winter Paralympics. She still had a hunger for the gold. “Will you do it?”

  “Does your father know about this?” He looked worried. He knew how devoted Bill was to Lily and how protective of her.

  “Yes, and no. He came to watch once in the beginning, but he doesn’t know how serious I am about it. And I’ve gotten better and faster since he saw me. Last spring I was in rehab when I did it. But now I really want to train. Every day, if you think we need to.”

  “Yes,” he said with a stern tone that was familiar to her. Sometimes it used to annoy her, but now she was thrilled. It meant he was taking her seriously. “And we will go to Aspen and ski the mountain there. But I want to learn more about how your new chair ski works, and just how fast we can go. I will speak to some people at the Paralympics and maybe some of the skiers. I will do research.” And she knew he would be merciless with her once he did, which was just what she wanted. She wanted him to push her as hard as ever, so she would win.

  Oscar did the research he had promised, and they started training in late October, every day after school, and she’d go to visit Teddy briefly after that, and then go home to do her homework. She told the head of the PE department at school what she was doing, and he let her out early whenever he could so she could train. After school she met Oscar at Winter Park, and they skied until the lift closed, and all day on weekends. She was tireless, and doing exercises at home to strengthen her arms and upper body, she was in better shape than she’d ever been. And her father was skeptical about what she was doing, but didn’t object, since Oscar was skiing with her, and he knew he couldn’t stop her. He had no idea how hard she was pushing herself, or how fast she skied. Bill had heard about the Paralympics, but assumed it would be a very tame event. It was obvious he’d never seen it, and for now Lily preferred it that way. He paid Oscar’s coaching fee, and left Lily to have her fun. He was busy every day and on weekends at The Lily Pad.

  By November, Lily was training as intensely as she had for the Olympics, and keeping up with her schoolwork. She was also busy filling out college applications, and she ran for class president. Walker Blake won and appointed her vice president, which looked good on her college apps, along with her previous skiing history, and her training for the Paralympics now, which wasn’t why she did it. She did it for the love of it. And the day she’d made a breakthrough when Oscar helped her increase her speed, she wanted to tell Teddy all about it on her way home.

  She went to look for him in the gym and couldn’t find him anywhere. She found him in the infirmary instead. He had caught a bad cold after a rugby game, when he had sweated a lot and got in a draft. He was wheezing and they had to press on his chest to clear his lungs. And Lily knew how dangerous a cold was for him. He had a fever when she saw him, and she sat with him for an hour until he went to sleep.

  She was worried about him, and when she came back to see him the next day, they had moved him to the hospital facility at Craig, and he looked worse. They were afraid of pneumonia, and as she sat with him, she was terrified he was dying. A nurse told her that they had called his parents, which she knew was a bad sign, and she wondered if they would show up. And he was worse the next day. Lily sat stroking his face and his shoulders so she knew he could feel her touch.

  “Hey, you, we’re in training, remember? You’ve got to get better soon,” she said softly, and he nodded again and drifted off to sleep. And they kept waking him to clear his lungs, since he couldn’t do it himself. Phil Lewis came to see him several times a day too, and Lily could sense that Teddy was slipping away. And his parents still hadn’t come. She called her father and arranged to spend the night with Teddy, and even skipped her sessions with Oscar for a few days. She was afraid that if she left Teddy, he would die. He was nearly there. And on the second night when she slept in her chair next to him, she woke in the middle of the night, and he looked frighteningly still.

  “Oh my God,” she said, sure that he had died. “Teddy? … Teddy!” She shook him gently and started to cry, and he opened one eye.

  “What? Stop shaking me, you jock. You’re loosening my teeth,” he said with a grin in a hoarse voice. The fever had broken in the night. He was still very sick and was in the hospital for two more weeks, but by Thanksgiving he was back in training again with Phil.

  “You scared the hell out of me, you know,” she told him after he recovered.

  “Yeah, me too,” he admitted, and neither of them commented on the fact that his parents had never come. They had called him a few times, but he had been too sick to talk, and that was it. It was a sad statement about his parents and for him.

  He shared Thanksgiving with Bill and Lily, and Joe came too. He had decided not to visit his kids that year, and stay in Denver. He had too much work to do, and didn’t want to leave. It was Lily’s first Thanksgiving in a wheelchair, but she felt as though she had much to be grateful for. And she spent the weekend in Aspen with Oscar afterward, learning the mountain there on her new ski, and he was pleased. She had done well.

  And in Squaw Valley it was Jessie and her children’s first Thanksgiving without Tim. Chris came home for the holiday, and she had just seen him two weeks before in Denver. She was there about once a month now, and they were forging ahead with new hires and new plans. Carole had been to Denver twice more, and she spent time with Lily and Teddy and made lists of all the things they would want in a rehab. She questioned them mercilessly about every kind of entertainment, recreational activity, device, sport, counseling feature, high-tech gadget. Teddy said he would love to run a peer counseling group, and Lily’s emphasis was on sports, and an annual event, like the Paralympics but on a smaller scale, with more sports categories, and medals for the winners. It was a long list, and gave Carole a lot of information to work with, and she discussed it all with Joe afterward. He was impressed and a great sounding board for her plans.

  Carole and Jessie had overlapped several times. They were all busy with their respective areas. Jessie was focusing on hiri
ng the staff with Bill, and they were putting together a remarkable team. And Carole and Joe were designing programs, and once they refined them, they discussed them with Jessie and Bill.

  “What about Phil Lewis, Dad?” Lily suggested one night at dinner, after she’d seen him at one of Teddy’s rugby games. “He’d be great as head of your physical therapy department.”

  “Do you think he’d be interested?” Bill looked intrigued. He knew that Lily and Teddy loved him and he had done wonders with them.

  “I don’t know, ask him. He’s the best.” She had come to see his merits, just as Teddy had, and Bill liked the idea of approaching him. He invited him to lunch several days later, and was pleased at how interested Phil was. He came out to The Lily Pad to see it for himself and fell in love with it, and he accepted the job. Lily and Teddy were thrilled.

  “As long as my parents let me transfer to The Lily Pad,” Teddy said with a worried look.

  “They have to,” Lily said with a fierce glance.

  After Thanksgiving she got serious about her college applications. She applied to Princeton, Harvard, Brown, and NYU, and her first choice was Princeton. Her father wanted her to apply to the University of Denver, and she wouldn’t. She still wanted to go away to school. But she helped Teddy fill out his application to DU, it was the only school he was applying to, and he prayed he would get in. He wrote a brilliant essay about what his artwork meant to him, and he submitted two of his paintings as part of his application, and Lily thought they were his best. He added that he was training for a demonstration at the Paralympics in chair rugby, and he asked Phil to write one of his recommendations. It was an impressive application, and he had good grades, and good test scores, as did Lily. But she didn’t know if her grades were strong enough for Princeton. She put her skiing history on her application, listed her previous medals, and added a photograph of herself on her chair ski.

  She showed her applications to Carole the next time she saw her, and she was impressed, but not surprised.

  “If any school turns you down, they’re crazy,” she said. Lily started mailing them before Christmas, although the deadline wasn’t till January but she wanted to get a head start. She had to explain that she had been injured and in a rehab hospital for five months of junior year, but her grades had been good in spite of it, although they were better now, in senior year, even though she was spending hours training with Oscar every day, and he was satisfied with her progress. It all took so much time. Her schedule left her little free time to spend with friends, and it bothered her sometimes that she was never asked out by any boys, but she was so busy training, doing homework, and finishing her applications that she scarcely had a moment to think about it. And she still visited Teddy every day.

  Lily managed to do her Christmas shopping on the last weekend before school closed. She bought a beautiful coat for her father, because he never liked to shop for clothes himself, and a warm sweatshirt for Teddy to wear after his games, and a stack of music, and she bought a sweater for Carole, and a warm scarf for Joe, and she bought a pair of fur earmuffs and sent them to Jessie for when she came back to Denver, but said she could wear them in Squaw too. Bill hadn’t told her that Jessie was moving out in June to be the director of the center, since her own kids didn’t know yet, but he had bought the house he had promised her, and on Jessie’s last trip out before Christmas, he drove her there one evening on their way back from The Lily Pad.

  “I need to make a stop. I hope you don’t mind,” he said casually, as they drove to his place to have dinner with Lily.

  “That’s fine,” Jessie said, going over some of the notes they’d made that day. They had just hired two more physical therapists, one of them specializing in young children.

  “Do you want to come in?” Bill asked her as he pulled into the driveway. It was a neat three-story house, with a well-tended garden and two big trees in front. It was white, with a heavy brass knocker on the door, and a big backyard that was fenced in. It looked like an ad for the perfect family house. Jessie glanced up as he asked her, and shook her head with a smile. The house was lit up—she didn’t know that he had asked the broker to do it that night. The sale had gone through a few weeks before.

  “No, I’m fine, I’ll wait here. We did so much today, I want to make sure I got my notes right and didn’t screw it up.” She felt like she was doing homework every night, but she loved it. It was exciting knowing she would be part of it as the director.

  “Actually, I wanted to introduce you to a friend,” he said, and waited for her to put her notes away. “It’ll just take a minute.” She put the notes in her bag and suspected nothing as she followed him to the front door, and was mildly surprised when he knocked with the big brass knocker, opened the door, and walked in. The broker had left it open, per Bill’s instructions. And she was even more surprised when she saw that the house was empty and there was no furniture, but all the lights were on. It looked freshly painted, and there were beautiful dark hardwood floors, a big front hall, a wide staircase, and a big living room with a fireplace. Even empty, the house had a friendly feeling to it, and she turned to Bill with a puzzled expression. Why was he meeting a friend in an empty house? Bill stood there smiling at her, as her eyes widened.

  “Welcome home, Dr. Matthews,” he said with a warm smile and handed her the keys. “As the director of The Lily Pad, I am happy to present you your new home. I hope you’ll be very happy here, Jessie.” Her eyes filled with tears, and she threw her arms around him and hugged him. She had never seen such a beautiful house, and the thought of living there with her children undid her. She kept hugging him and thanking him, and he showed her around. There was a handsome master suite, and four additional bedrooms. There was a family room upstairs and another one in the basement, a living room, a dining room, den, and a big country kitchen. Each bedroom had its own bathroom, and there was a powder room downstairs, and a two-car garage. It was a dream house, and Jessie felt like she’d won the lottery, not just a job.

  “I’m overwhelmed. I don’t know what to say,” she said, breathless, as they returned to the front hall. “I’ve never even dreamed of a house like this.” The neighborhood was a perfect family, residential area, a few blocks from where he lived. “Bill …” She stood there crying again, and he put an arm around her shoulders, as they walked outside. She had never been so moved in her life, or felt as lucky.

  “I hope you’ll be happy here, and at The Lily Pad, for a long time.”

  “I don’t deserve this,” she said humbly. No one had ever done anything like it for her before. She could live there rent free as long as she was the medical director of The Lily Pad.

  “Yes, you do,” he said with a broad smile. She could hardly wait to bring her children there—it was so much nicer than the house they had now. They were going to love it, even Heather, once she got over the shock of moving. Jessie was still speechless as they drove back to his house, where Lily was waiting for them. She had made a very nice dinner and was turning into a very decent cook. Lily noticed that Jessie said very little, but she looked happy, and finally got more talkative at dessert. She asked them about their Christmas plans. She could hardly wait till Chris came home for Christmas break from DU.

  “We’re going to be here,” Bill said comfortably, “just the two of us.”

  “And Teddy,” Lily added.

  “And Teddy,” Bill corrected himself, “and then Lily and I are going to Aspen for a few days with her coach. I want to see this chair skiing she’s been doing, getting ready for the Paralympics.” He still expected it to be a relatively calm event, and had a shock in store.

  The holidays were quiet in both Denver and Squaw. Jessie’s Christmas with her kids, their first without their father, was predictably hard. And they were relieved when it was over.

  On the day after Christmas Bill drove Lily to Aspen with Oscar, and they rode up the chairlift together that afternoon. Lily was undaunted by it now. And at the top of the mountain, as
her father watched, she took off like lightning, using her poles with the little skis on them for balance, as she had learned to do. Her balance was still perfect, and her speed astounding as she flew down the mountain. Bill watched her with tears in his eyes. He had no idea of what she could do until he saw it for himself.

  “Holy God,” he whispered as he watched her, and followed at his own speed. Lily was as fast as she had ever been, and as skilled, and maybe more so. A year after her injury, she was as fast as the wind, and Bill had never been as grateful in his life. She was an amazing girl, and he realized that Jessie’s prediction for her was coming true—she was going to lead an amazing life. She already was.

  Chapter 23

  BY THE TIME Bill, Oscar, and Lily left for Aspen the week before the Olympics in March, everyone they knew was so excited they could hardly stand it.

  Bill had reserved a house for them right in town, with an apartment below for Oscar. Jessie was flying in from Squaw and meeting Chris there. Carole was coming from Boston, and Joe wouldn’t miss it for the world, and was going to stay at a hotel. Walker Blake had organized a dozen people from school to attend Lily’s Alpine race in the Paralympics. Teddy was coming with Phil, and participating in the chair rugby demonstration to promote the summer games. He wasn’t competing this time, but he planned to in the summer, and the rugby demonstration was a featured event and a big deal. They were filming it for ESPN.