Chapter 5
5
Vail, Colorado, USA
As I bid farewell to my kids for the day, and watched them disappear back to their accommodation, I glanced at the SMS on my phone.
Vail Hospital: He is awake.
My heart thudded, and I gasped, dropping my phone in the snow. After sitting by his bed every afternoon for six weeks while he was in an induced coma, the news that he was awake was akin to being told that the scientific community had cured cancer. The day they pulled me from my class to inform me he had crashed and had been airlifted to Vail with a suspected shattered spine was the worst day of my life. I had gone into shock, and my first reaction was to vomit all over the snow. Jodi, who had been tasked to tell me, had taken charge, allocating my class to a junior instructor and driving me to the hospital. I don’t remember the drive. Just her holding me as they told me that he was in surgery. Sitting in the sterile waiting room for hours, numb, not knowing if he was dead or alive. Knowing my life would never be the same.
When the surgeon had finally emerged, the grim look on his face told me everything and I crumpled into a ball on the floor, bereft. Owen was alive, but no one knew the severity of the damage until he woke. They would keep him in a medically induced coma for several weeks to give his body a chance to heal. Fractured skull, three fractured vertebrae, and a broken hip. The damage was extensive and severe.
Since that day, I had visited every afternoon, traveling straight from work, and staying until I was shooed out after dark. I knew from Dad that coma patients remembered things they heard while they were unconscious, and I talked to him every day, reading the paper, and telling him the news about town. But today was different. He was awake, finally.
“I’m so happy to see you!” I cried, rushing across the austere hospital room towards the single bed in the center. He lay facing away from me, looking out the window, his body held in place with pulleys and straps.
“Get out of here,” Owen snarled in a voice I had never heard him use, especially not towards me.
Hurriedly, I moved around the bed and pulled up a chair, sitting near his face. He closed his eyes and refused to look at me.
“Honey, it will be fine. You are alive, I’m here. I will take care of you.”
“I told them not to call you,” he hissed, the venom leaking from his mouth.
“Why? I want to help.”
“Help do what?” He snapped, his eyes opening and glaring at me through the pain. “I’m a cripple. Broken and useless. In five fucking seconds, my life is over. One ski binding released and here I am. The doctors didn’t sugarcoat it, babe. I’m fucked. Likely I will never walk again.”
“No, you aren’t,” I soothed.
“I can’t make this plainer. I. Am. Fucked. I can’t ski, can’t walk. Unlike you, Miss Perfect, skiing is all I know how to do. If I can’t ski, I can’t race, and I can’t coach. I will lose my job here. No one wants a broken coach.”
“Surely it isn’t that bad,” I urged, ignoring his insults. This was distress talking. “Rest. I will come back tomorrow.”
Each day I visited before work and after, but after the first few days, Owen refused to engage with me. Sometimes he snapped at me, telling me to leave, other times he blatantly ignored me until I left the hospital in tears.
By the third week, I dreaded visiting. Owen wasn’t the man I loved anymore. He was snappy and terse, often leaving me in tears. I knew it was the frustration of being stuck in a bed, let out only for physical therapy, and not even able to go to the bathroom unaided. After several surgeries myself, I had some idea of what this must feel like. Only I could go home. He was stuck here with hospital food and a cold hard bed, the view of his beloved mountain in the distance taunting him.
“I want you gone,” he announced without preamble as I entered the room.
“Can I stay a few minutes?” I asked, in as lighthearted a tone as I could. “I only just arrived.”
Owen ignored me. “Move out of my place. I am being released in a few days, and I want you out. I want to be alone.”
“Whaaa….”
“I’m going home to Michigan. There is nothing for me here. You need to leave.”
“Can we talk about this?” I begged, my eyes filling with tears. Before his accident we had talked about the summer, him coming to Australia with me, and meeting my family. Stupidly, I had dreamed we might get engaged and start making things official. Before he changed forever.
“Nothing to talk about. By Friday please.” Owen rolled to face the wall, and I knew that was the end of the conversation. Shamefaced, I slunk out of the room, avoiding the gaze of the hospital staff, who all knew me well by now. As soon as I closed the door to our apartment, the torrential tears started. This wasn’t him. I knew that. But he had made his feelings clear. He wanted to go home without me. Well, it was nearing the end of the season. I may as well do the same.
Blinded by hot tears, I logged into the travel site and booked the next flight to Sydney out of Denver. Tomorrow afternoon. Jodi or Leo would drop me off and my parents would collect me. I knew without question as I emailed them the itinerary. After emailing my boss about my travel plans and apologizing for leaving early, I slammed my laptop closed.
Over the next few hours, I threw everything I owned into bags, not caring if it was wet or dirty. Skis, boots, jackets, and clothes. I didn’t care if it was screwed up. I could deal with all of that at my parents’ place. Glancing around at the insignificant items of mine I couldn’t take, kitchen items and knickknacks, I turned away. Anything I cared about, I would box up and leave with a friend. Anything else he could toss. I didn’t care anymore. Every night since Owen’s accident, I had lain in bed and considered my options. Whilst I loved skiing, I was seriously contemplating finishing my degree and being stable. Maybe it was time to stop chasing the endless winter around the globe. My chest ached with every beat as the splinters of my shattered heart broke a little more.