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The Goddess Speaks Sue Bernstein |
Islanders save the day
after unHamill-like moveIT was going to be my Dorothy Hamill moment. I hadn't skated in my home state since the days that predate major television coverage of figure skating, days for me that almost predate the Zamboni, when we had to resurface our ice with tea bags.
On this day in March, the little rink at Park City, Utah, was an inviting, tiny spotlight under the lodge to amuse the skiers coming off the mountain. But it was well placed for my private comeback. It symbolized the triumph of figure skating -- matching the skiers for beauty -- and it symbolized the triumph of my childhood city in hosting the Olympic flame, the Winter Games for 2002. It was a perfect sheet of ice in the sky.
My arthritis was under control. I would quietly step out on this ice, claim a little piece of this glory and recast my own memories with each stroke under the big shoulders of the Rockies. That was the plan. I would persuade my brother to take my photo. This would document my little conquest.
Instead, his camera documented something else. I fell -- very hard. I don't know how, except that as my skates went out from under me and my head jerked back, I thought, "So this is what people are afraid of."
Later, I was told my head made a sound as loud as a gunshot when it hit the ice. Even before my brother could lower his camera, a passerby leapt the railing, slid to my side on his knees and directed someone to call 911.
When I regained consciousness there was a team swarming over me. God bless one of them, he read my lips when I mouthed the words, "I can't breathe."
But my stunned chest muscles finally responded, and my lungs began to fill with air. The skiers who had rushed to my aid were firefighters and emergency medics -- vacationing from Hawaii!
I MIGHT HAVE been afraid but I was more amazed. Through my haze they seemed to be extremely busy and to know everything I was feeling, bringing me back with questions, cover, warm hands and support for my bleeding head. "Do you know where you are? Can you feel a tingling sensation? Can you squeeze my hand?"
PHOTO COURTESY OF JIM CROFT
Hawaii firefighters and emergency medics help Sue Bernstein after she took a bad fall ice skating.
When the local ambulance arrived from the Park City Fire Station No. 31, I got more of the same: palpations from stem to stern, a neck brace and then a centipede of hands lifting me to the ambulance.
All of this was probably bad publicity for the rink. I understand the Zamboni came out quickly to clean my blood from the ice once I was packed off.
Anyone who goes through such an experience must surely be overwhelmed, as I was, by another emotion. It was a sense of wonder at the enormous good will, speed and determination of my firefighters, my rescuers. They were "young," younger than me. I am beholden to each of them, though I can't tell you exactly how many they were or their names -- or how they picked Utah for that day over Hawaii. I wish I knew.
They exchanged information and bowed out quietly after the local team arrived. Although I am mending from a concussion, I suffer no loss of memory. I will remember them for a long, long time. It's not so bad to be a has-been when you can pass your baton to younger people like that.
Sue Bernstein (formerly Croft) was one of the first Utah figure skaters to win a Gold Test medal for ice dancing. She works for the U.S. General Accounting Office in Washington, D.C., as an analyst and works out most of her skating fantasies on the piano.
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