Winners Read Free

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