Last Run

"Last run, make it count!" my friend shouts to me with a pat on the back as he blows past and starts down the slope. I look around and see that the chairlifts have all stopped; the shadows from so many lights and the snow-muffled silence make them seem almost eerie. I stand with my skis planted in the snow and watch him carve for a moment; he's an excellent snowboarder. As I watch, "last run" begins to stir in my mind.

I'm taken back to the "last run" of a ski trip from years ago. I was very young, I'd only been skiing for a year or two, and I was skiing with my parents and my younger brother. There were just a few days until Christmas. It wasn't late, probably not even six o'clock, but my parents had, against my wishes, decided that since we had three hours of driving ahead of us, it was time to go home.

I have flashes of memory, little more than incomplete images, beginning with the chair lift ride to the top of the peak. I remember looking out over the trees, seeing the whites and greens of the snow-covered pines and the pink of the recently set sun. The lift sets me down at the top of the hill where I, like a typical little boy, take off as fast as I possibly can.

Then, I'm lying on a cold metal table surrounded by people I've never seen. All I want to do is sleep, but there's too much commotion. Too many people; too much light. The fatigue overtakes me. It becomes more powerful than any noise and any light, and I try to lay my head down on the cold steel table to sleep. The second it touches the table the pain becomes unbearable.

Next I wake up on my back, restrained to a hard, flat piece of wood so tightly I can barely move. A pillow, if the hard block of foam can be called that, rises from under my head to tower above it on either side. All I can see are stars, and the heads and shoulders of a few strangers guiding my cart as it's rolled along. It's loud and windy, and I'm so cold. They stop and lift my piece of wood, and me in turn, into a small cabin. The board that still holds me is secured to the floor. I have one extremely vibrant memory, an image that stands out in my mind much more vividly than anything else, of the lights and air vents on the ceiling; just like the ones in an airplane.

My memory of the next two weeks is better, but it's still very much a blur. My first few days are spent sleeping, at least 22 hours a day, waking up only once every eight hours or so for a CAT scan. My first complete memory of the event comes several days later: I awaken, for the first time on my own, and ask for a drink of water.

According to my mother and father, I had fallen at the bottom of that last run. The fall was unremarkable; I had done the same thing a half-dozen times that day. But this time, my tumble was interrupted by ice left behind by dripping snow-makers. I imagine the ice faired better than my head did. The ski patrol had me ambulanced to a small local hospital. The staff there took a CAT scan of my head, assuming I had suffered a severe concussion. The resulting image revealed not only a severe concussion, but severe hemorrhage in my brain and five distinct cracks in my skull. The physician immediately made the decision to have me airlifted from the small facility to the Intensive Care Unit of Spectrum Health in a large city near by.

I spent my next two weeks in critical condition in the intensive care unit of that hospital. It would be another two weeks after that before I could go through the day without a nap, and months before I'd be allowed to return to school. When I finally woke up, I quickly discovered that pulling off a single one of the dozens of sensors on my body would bring doctors and nurses sprinting in. For the entirety of my stay, my head was CAT scanned three times a day to check the bleeding in my brain. If I had bled faster than it could drain, the pressure would have built up and crushed my brain against the inside of my skull. If that happened I'd be rushed into emergency surgery. Even if they could relieve the pressure, I would have been unlikely to escape severe brain damage.

A frigid gust of wind slams into my back, snapping me back to reality and nearly pushing me over the edge. My hair blows in the strong wind, but I stay nice and warm inside my clothing. I'd better, for all the gobs of money I've spent on it. I spot my friend about a third of the way down the run. "How long was it," I idly wonder, "before I skied again after all that?" Must have been 4 years. Maybe even 5.
My buddy passes the lift tower we had agreed on. I line up my skis and push off hard with my poles.

I beat him to the bottom.