Dreamscape
Trailing behind my partner Arnie and friend Tom, I ski toward Dreamscape lift down Déjà vu, an intermediate Park City run well within my skill set; I’m 69 with 35 years of experience under my parka although certainly not an expert. The air is afternoon crisp but my hands and toes are toasty thanks to my heated gloves and boots. I carve turn after turn after turn and hear my edges digging into the hard pack. The snow is slick. My mind wanders for a moment, a daydream maybe, and I miscalculate a turn. OHHH SHIIIIIIIT! I veer off the groomed terrain, impale my skis in a mogul, flip out of the bindings, catapult airborne, then land on my stomach and slide twenty feet down the hill. Somewhere along the way I hear a muffled crack. I let go of my ski poles, still oddly clenched in my hands, and roll over onto my back. I shake, shake, shake in shock. My right leg feels limp. Tom yells from below, “Can you get up or should I call ski patrol?” “Ski patrol,” I yell back. Pain begins to throb deep in my leg. The metallic taste of fear coats the inside of my mouth. Will my knee still bend? I don’t dare test it. I shake, shake, shake and I can’t make it stop! “Breathe,” I tell myself. “Breathe.” A panic attack will not help. I try to steel myself—such a weird expression. I think about Arnie who is likely at the lift and wondering where I am. Did she take a little tumble and have trouble getting up? Soon, the ski patrol will arrive with their tools and toboggan. I’ve watched them rescue other skiers after crashes and wipeouts and felt grateful I was upright. Now I will be their cargo, one of the fallen, wrapped in a blanket and ferried down the hill. I close my eyes and I wait, wishing, wishing, wishing this was all a dream.
Sharon Goldberg
Sharon Goldberg is a Seattle writer whose work has appeared/is forthcoming in The Gettysburg Review, The Citron Review, New Letters, The Louisville Review, Cold Mountain Review, River Teeth, Green Mountains Review, The Southern Indiana Review, The Lost Balloon, Best Small Fictions, and elsewhere. Sharon won second place in the On the Premises 2012 Humor Contest and Fiction Attic Press’s 2013 Flash in the Attic Contest. She is an avid but cautious skier and enthusiastic world traveler.
