Nicholas’s dad sent a link to photos of what had happened. There was one showing his wife gently holding their son’s hand, with his fingers curled towards his mother’s, as the rescuers worked on him.
When I was in critical condition at Stanford four years ago, when they were infusing me with a then-experimental med that would either finish me off or save my life, they had every vital sign being monitored, and my blood pressure fell to 64/44 and was headed down. A nurse looked at the monitor and noticed. She reached for me and held me with one hand, saying, “You okay? Hang in there, honey.” She quickly snapped out orders to the other nurse (there may have been two others, it gets a bit blurry at this point) while she held onto me, never letting go. She never knew how much she was keeping me here by that simple touch and those words. She had no idea how strong an effect it had on me, how much I held onto it as my life raft.
I saw that picture of those two people I love and their hands together as that child lay in that snow under that ski lift.
And used my hands to work on a matching hat for the little brother whose big brother fell such an unbelievable fall. *I* needed to hold them gently, too.