Every good story ends with a trip to the hospital

by Julie Albert (United States of America)

A leap into the unknown USA

Like many days after work, Mark and I were helping Sean check his nets set under the river ice. We wound down the slough on our snowmobiles (snowmachine in Alaskan), away from the constant orange glow from town. I was perched behind Sean, watching the stars and not the ground. We found the stiff willow poles in the ice that marked the net, and dismounted to begin the arduous task of chopping through the solid foot of ice that had frozen in the past two days since we’d last come out. We took turns chopping; I was the slowest of the three, and became relegated to ice scooper, my least favorite job of all. It comprised waiting until the chopper had to rest for a moment, then scooting in with an old bent cooking pot drilled with holes. I’d then throw the ice chips onto the river, and scoop again. Not a difficult task, but one that froze your fingers at once. Once the ice hole had been cleared, we were able to drudge the net out from under the ice and examine our catch- a few sheefish, maybe some lushfish. Sean glanced up at the sky. “There’s supposed to be great aurora tonight,” he pronounced, indicating a milky band that was becoming more distinct above the horizon. I glanced to Mark. “Want to go?” He nodded, and started his snowmachine up again. I thought nothing of climbing onto Mark’s snowmachine, or the fact that he’d been in Alaska less time than I had. Besides, I thought, strapping on my goggles, I had enough padding to keep me safe in a crash. Mark had no qualms about opening the throttle as soon as we were crossing open tundra. I glanced up and gasped, loud enough for him to hear me over the engine. “There!” The Aurora was a delicate seagreen through which stars were still visible. It spanned most of the horizon, and threw an evanescent sheen over the snow before us. Eagerly we raced on, farther and farther across the tundra. We paused on a bluff, and I flung myself back into the snow, staring upwards, face mask pulled off. I fixated silently on the living, pulsing sky until my eyelashes began to bloom into ice crystals, and I painfully became aware of my extremities tingling and shuddering . It was time to get indoors. The first problem happened within minutes of starting back. Mark stopped abruptly, rubbing at his snowgoggles with gloved hands. “They keeping freezing up,” he admitted. “Can’t see anything.” The only alternative to wearing frost-covered goggles would be hoping your unprotected eyes did not freeze shut in the -70 windchill. He scraped them, but now the snowmachine wouldn’t start back up right away. I was beginning to get a heavy feeling in my stomach. We were only a few miles out from town, but farther than I wanted to walk in this cold. After several false starts it roared to life, and we clambered back, speeding away. We hit something hard in front of us, and I flew, first straight into the handlebars, and then over them, rolling away from the snowmachine. I stood, wondering why my vision blacked, but remained on my feet. Mark was sitting dazedly in the snow a few yards away. “Where’d you hit?” he asked, voice tight with nerves. I indicated my chin, and he pulled the face mask down over my jaw and drew his breath in. I imagined a scrape that would look tough for a few days. “The good news is, it’s too cold to bleed, but we need to get to the hospital.” I must have gone pale, because he pushed me towards the snowmachine. I remember skidding into town, stopping at the radio station to get his truck keys. I peeked in his side mirror at myself. I first noticed, incongruously, how enormous my pupils were. Then my eyes found my chin. It still wasn’t bleeding, and I could see layers of muscle, fat, even a bluish glint of bone. Thirty three stitches later, and still with an impressive chin scar, I still can’t say it wasn’t all worth it for a glimpse of the Aurora.