Author/Uploaded by Oksana Masters
Contents Cover Title Page Dedication Prologue Part One Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Part Two Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Part Three Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Ch...
Contents Cover Title Page Dedication Prologue Part One Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Part Two Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Part Three Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One Epilogue Photographs Acknowledgments About the Author Copyright Guide Cover Start of Content Title Page Dedication Prologue Epilogue Acknowledgments About the Author Copyright I II III V VI VII VIII IX X 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 “A riveting journey of survival, perseverance, and triumph… from the darkness and despair of life in a Ukrainian orphanage to the top of the Paralympic medal podium.” —Christine Brennan, columnist, USA Today Oksana Masters A Memoir of Courage and Triumph The Hard Parts For my mom, whose love saved me. Thank you for sacrificing it all to give me the world and for opening every door for me. You are my world and the beat of my heart. I love you, Your resilient rascal. prologue This would be a four-to-eight-month recovery. For a normal person.” The doctor’s proclamation hangs in the air for a silent moment in the harshly lit emergency room. But as I hunch on the hospital bed cradling my newly shattered elbow in my hand, with my two prosthetic legs dangling limp—devices that require two functioning arms to remove and attach to what remains of my real legs (How am I going to do that with a broken elbow?)—it’s obvious that I’m not a normal person. To my coach, who brought me here from the Bozeman blacktop where I slipped on black ice outside my favorite café, the doctor says: “She can’t race.” The pain in my elbow that’s been searing every second with hurt blazes in a white-hot flash—and at the same time my entire body deflates. Something essential and fundamental exits my chest. I can’t race in the Games. They’re only three weeks away. How did this happen? I’m twenty-eight, and my entire life—past and future—hinges on this insane moment. Everything is on the line. In Pyeongchang in three weeks, I will, for the first time since I discovered what my body could do athletically at thirteen years old, show up as the true athlete I’ve finally come to believe I am. This time, I won’t have to live out of my car like I did before the Games in Sochi, trying to make my mom’s finances—borrowed from her retirement fund—last just a little longer. This time, for the first time ever, I have real sponsors, big ones—Nike, Toyota, Visa, Procter & Gamble—who believe in me, too. I can begin to pay back my mother, pay all my debt. Ten years of Paralympic Games, and I’ve always come in second or third. Never first. But this time. This time I’m favored to sweep gold in every one of my events—to be the first ever to bring home a gold medal in cross-country skiing for USA. Oh, God, I think. I’ll let everyone down. I’m going to lose it all. I’m eating salt from the tears pouring down my face. Grief already claims my body in waves, filling up the space of what flew from my chest, which I now realize was hope. Anyone else would have quit by now. This is probably a sign that I should have, too. Every part of my life before this has also been decided for me—why not this? My mind and my body were both already determined by others from the time I was born: what I was capable of doing or what was possible for me in the future. I was told I didn’t deserve a mother, didn’t deserve a family, didn’t belong in this world. I’m just too different. I’ve been told I’ll never make it as an athlete—that it’s an unrealistic, impossible goal, and that I’ll only
Author: Murdoch, Vivian; Davis, Jacey; Knight, Zelda; Bryan, Lucy Scott; Marian, M.L.; Kerry, Juniper; Mitchell, K.B.; Christenson, Sierra; Lynn, Kitt
Year: 2023
Views: 51023
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