Winners (2 page)

Chapter 2

Bill watched the prices on the Dow Jones all morning, and then read
The New York Times
and the
Wall Street Journal
, which he had delivered to him by the hotel that serviced the house. He glanced out the window now and then and saw that the snow had gotten denser, and he could no longer see the mountain through the fog. He couldn’t even tell if the chairlift was operating, or if they had closed the mountain. But he was sure that if they hadn’t yet, they would soon. Bill was sure that she was safe with Jason, who knew the mountain like his own pocket, but Bill hoped she would come in soon. The weather was just too bad.

He often met her at the base at lunchtime, and decided to meet her there now. He was sure she’d be exhausted after several runs in the thick snow. Even at her age, it was heavy going, and required strength and concentration. He was hoping to talk her into a nice lunch, and maybe a swim in the hotel pool that afternoon, or a massage, which sounded good to him too. He got out his jacket and put on a cap and boots, as he heard sirens in the distance. He looked at his watch to see if it was noon, but it was only eleven-thirty, and then he saw a helicopter speed past their windows, followed by a second one, and he wondered if someone had gotten lost in the fog at the top of the mountain, or injured. It was an unpleasant feeling, thinking that someone might be hurt, but he was reassured it wasn’t Lily, since she was with Jason.

He drove his rental car out of the parking lot a few minutes later, an Escalade that had been perfect for the drive from San Francisco, and headed toward the base of the mountain, and when he got there, he saw several ambulances, police cars, and two fire trucks parked helter-skelter, and the ski patrol heading out on snowmobiles and pulling sleds. Bill was instantly concerned as he parked and got out of his car, and hurried over to ask a police officer what had happened. He could see then that the chairlift wasn’t operating, so they had obviously closed the mountain. And one of the helicopters whirled past them as he noticed how many rescue vehicles there were. Far too many for one injured person.

“Accident at the top?” Bill asked the officer, as he noticed people standing around with worried expressions.

The officer pointed to the chairlift, and as he did, Bill could see that the line was slack, and at first didn’t understand why. The operator was standing talking to some of the paramedics, and there was a cluster of people from the ski patrol conferring with them in somber conversation.

“The cable broke. We don’t know what happened yet. The ski patrol is up there. They’re bringing the first people down now.” Bill felt his blood run cold as he said it. All he could do was pray that Lily had gotten to the top before it broke. “The weather isn’t helping. We’ve got a lot of fog up at the top.” The choppers had disappeared into it, and were no longer visible from the base. The officer then asked Bill to step aside. There was an area they had designated for people to wait, behind a line of yellow tape, and he pointed Bill toward it.

“My daughter’s up there,” Bill said in a strained voice, as the icy snow and wind whipped his face. He could only imagine how bad the weather was at the top of the mountain, and seeing the injured people on the ground made it worse.

“Is she alone?” The officer sounded concerned, as more fire trucks with paramedics arrived on the scene.

“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 about 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.”