The Best American Sports Writing 2011

by Jane Leavy

  He turned to her and said: "Do you think the priest will bless me?"

  Sonia tossed in her sleep. It had been an anxious night, full of confusion. The bout had not gone well: Paco had been stopped by Kennedy in the 10th round. But when Sonia did not hear from him and he had not picked up his cell phone when she called, she began to grow worried. To keep her calm, her brother-in-law Alex, who had remained in Chicago, told her that Paco was at a hospital having some cuts treated. The explanation gnawed at her: he still would have called. Sonia settled down Ginette and went to bed, only to be stirred awake at 3:00 A.M. that Saturday morning by the sound of the door bell ringing. Excitedly, she thought: Francisco! He took an early plane back! But when she looked through her doorway into the living room she saw Alex standing with her sister Celia. Both of them wore grave expressions.

  Sonia got up.

  Joining her was her mother-in-law, Maria.

  "You know Paco is in the hospital," Alex began. "He has been badly injured. He hurt his head. We are not sure what is going on, but he is not doing very well."

  All Sonia would remember is that she and Maria fell to the floor sobbing. In the fog that enveloped her, she thought back to the conversation she had with Paco the previous evening, before the bout. It was the last time they would speak. She was driving home from the job she then had at a bank. It was just small talk—how the baby was doing and so on—but they never got around to their prayer. They always said one before he stepped into the ring. But Paco knew she was behind the wheel and told her he would call her back if time permitted. When she did not hear from him, she looked at the clock—9:30 in Philadelphia, an hour earlier in Chicago—and began counting down the minutes. Quietly, she told herself as the evening progressed: Round 1 has to be over ... Round 2 has to be over ... To occupy herself, she played with Ginette and with her nephew. And she looked again at the clock.

  For the 799 fans who showed up at the Blue Horizon that evening, it was a bout that proved to be just what Peltz had envisioned: "a terrific fight" not just on paper but in the ring. Paco was twice wobbled by Kennedy in the first round, but came back in the second throwing some big bombs of his own. The exchanges were fierce. Correctly, Peltz would say that by the end of Round 8, "the fight was up for grabs." But Kennedy won the ninth round decisively and the hard head and body shots he had connected with seemed to wear down Paco. Between the 9th and 10th rounds, the ring physician spoke with him and cleared him to continue. Twice in the 10th round Paco slipped to the canvas from exhaustion. When Francisco reeled into the ropes from a combination, referee Benjy Estevez waded in and stopped the bout at 1:52 of the round. And Paco labored back to his corner.

  Scrambling up through the ropes to join him were Evaristo Sr., Tito, and cut man George Hernandez. Someone placed a stool under him and Paco sat down. As the ring physician, Jonathan Levyn, asked him some questions and peered into his eyes, Tito began cutting off the gloves. Evaristo Sr. looked on with apprehension. Paco had told him that his head hurt and that he was feeling sleepy. Evaristo said they would get him some aspirin later. When the ring physician stepped away, Tito asked someone to hand him an ice bag. Paco inhaled deep breaths as Tito sponged cold water on his back. Tito says that Paco became incoherent and he called for Levyn to come back. But Paco slipped into unconsciousness. EMS personnel strapped him to a stretcher and lowered him from the ring. As they passed through the crowd, Jason Barrett, a heavyweight who had appeared on the card, looked over at Paco and told local matchmaker Zac Pomilio: "Man, that guy looks dead."

  Crazy with worry, Sonia boarded a 6:00 A.M. flight to Philadelphia. With her were Maria, Alex, her sister Lorena Ramirez, and her brother-in-law Noe Ramirez. Tito picked them up at the airport and drove them to Hahnemann, where Sonia would be stunned by what she saw. Paco had a breathing tube attached to him, and bandages encased his head. A craniotomy had been performed on him to alleviate the swelling inside his skull, but he was in "extremely critical" condition. Sonia would say later that she still held out hope, even as the doctors who spoke to her on Saturday evening attempted to prepare her for the inevitable. On Sunday morning, he began to show signs that he was beginning to become herniated. As the brain continued to swell, it pressed up against the hard shell of the skull. With nowhere to go, it collapsed and shut off blood to itself, which produced brain death. Examinations by two physicians six hours apart would officially confirm that: the first occurred at 1:45 P.M., the second at 7:42 P.M. It was at the latter that Paco was pronounced dead.

  Sonia held the hand of the boy she always dreamed of that Sunday and wondered how she could ever let go of it. Vaguely, she became aware of visitors who stopped by the hospital, which included Kennedy and his father, Ernest. Tentatively, Kennedy stepped forward and offered his condolences. At the Third Annual Briscoe Awards in October, where his bout with Paco was honored as the "2009 Philly Fight of the Year," he would say impassively: "It could have been me." Ernest, a former boxer himself, knew only too well that it could have been. As he stood in the hospital and looked over at Sonia, he found himself reversing the characters in the tragedy before him. It was his son who was lying there. It was his family who stood at the bedside. He wondered: What would I do? What could I say? Gently, he told Sonia how sorry he was, but she was somewhere far away, thinking: Boxing is not even a sport. I hate it.

  But there was still something to do that day, even if in her grief it seemed to Sonia to be so unreal. Given that Paco had been on a ventilator and had suffered a devastating neurological event, he was a candidate to become an organ donor. By 1998 law, hospitals in the United States are required to inform their area organ procurement organization of any person who is at or near death. According to president and CEO Howard Nathan, the Gift of Life Donor Program (GOL) receives 48,000 such calls each year. Of the 3,000 patients who are on a ventilator—which allows the organs to continue working until they can be recovered for transplant—only 439 last year ended up being donors. In the case of Paco, Hahnemann placed a referral call to GOL at 1:42 A.M. Saturday and updated them at 9:00 A.M. Sunday when his neurological status deteriorated. GOL transplant coordinator Janet Andrews came to the hospital and followed events as they unfolded. When Paco was pronounced dead, she introduced herself to the Rodriguez family, arranged at their request for a priest to come by, and at 10:30 P.M. invited Sonia and Alex to sit down with her in a conference room.

  Someone had handed Sonia a program from the Blue Horizon card with Paco pictured on the cover. When she sat down, Sonia had flipped it across the table in disgust. Having collected preliminary information that Paco was a viable potential donor, Andrews asked Sonia and Alex if they had considered the possibility of organ or tissue donation. Sonia told her yes, but asked to have Evaristo Sr., Maria, and Tito step into the room. When Tito appeared uncertain, Sonia told him that it was something that she and Paco had talked over at one point and he had told her it was something he wanted to do. Maria said she had a cousin who was on the waiting list for a kidney and asked if he could be accommodated. Told by Andrews that he could, the family agreed.

  Sonia signed the consent form at 11:30 P.M. And with the stroke of a pen, five lives were forever changed.

  ***

  It was hard to know where to begin. Sonia remembered when they had first met. Tito was dating her sister and Paco had told him, "There has to be a Rosales girl for me." But when they dropped by to pick up Sonia from the job she then held at Target, Paco sat in the backseat of the car and would not say a word; they had just gotten back from an evening out bowling. Sonia would remember how shy Paco was, and how embarrassed he was when Tito looked over his shoulder and teased him. But when her sister later asked her if she would like to go dancing with him, she said yes and they would never again be apart.

  Somehow it had become vital to Sonia in the year that has passed that the organ recipients know who Paco was, and how precious he had been to her. Increasingly, she began to wonder how they were faring, if the organs they had received had
helped them regain their health. In her inconsolable grief, Sonia found it was healing to her to imagine that they had, that the piece of Paco that lived on in them would allow them to find some happiness. Given that anonymity is guarded and some recipients can be uneasy with contact with the donor family, Sonia was instructed to send a letter through GOL and told that it would be forwarded to any of the recipients who would welcome hearing from her. Sonia hoped that one day they would even be able to meet.

  So one day she sat down and began writing, in part: "Dear Recipient: My name is Sonia Rodriguez, the proud wife of Francisco Rodriguez ... Francisco was a very loving husband, father and friend and most importantly, of a truly humble and kind heart, which to me, made him extremely special ... We shared five years together, the best five years of my life, as he made me the happiest woman in the world ... We want you to know that you are always in our thoughts and prayers and sincerely hope that you are doing well. Hope to hear from you soon."

  She then slipped a picture inside the envelope of Paco. And added: "By the way, he was very handsome."

  Second of two parts: Blessed by Paco

  Death was near. They told her that. Chances were it could be weeks—perhaps longer but not significantly unless she had a lung transplant. For years, Ashley Owens had known that she would not live to be 30 or even 25, that cystic fibrosis would sweep her away one day before she would have a chance to have a career or a wedding or children. It was a given she had come to accept. But now that she was coughing up blood and was in what her doctors called "the end stages," the sudden finality of her circumstances terrified her. All of it seemed to be happening too soon.

  They told her that they would be moving her to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. It was not something she wanted to do, if only because she had become accustomed to St. Christopher's Hospital for Children. She had been going there three or four times a year since she had been an eight-year-old and had befriended the nursing staff. But her doctors told her that there was a surgery that she would have to have, and that it was perhaps a good idea to become acquainted with the transplant team at Penn. Oddly, a feeling of calm settled over her at that point—what she would later describe as "a trance-like state." So she found a pen and some paper and began writing goodbye letters: to her parents, Bob and Charlotte; her young brother, Robert; and her boyfriend, Jesse, the young man who stood by her through her worst days.

  With a shaggy beard and gentle bearing, Jesse Quinter swept her off her feet, both figuratively and literally. When she had been too weak to walk somewhere, Jesse lifted her then five-foot, 69-pound body up and carried her on his back. They had met each other in study hall at Owen J. Roberts High School in Pottstown. Ashley told him before their first date how sick she was, but he just shrugged and told her: "I like you for you." However worrisome her ordeal would become, Ashley would come to depend on Jesse to cheer her up. When she tearfully told him on the phone that day that she would be leaving for Penn, he left early from his job at the Warwick Child Care Center in Lionville and hurried to her side.

  They talked. But she was upset and no words could seem to soothe her. Even when Jesse reassured her that she would be fine, she was in a forlorn place that seemed beyond even his reach. It was then that an idea popped into his head. He excused himself and said he had to get something from his car. When he came back, he sat down in a chair by her bed and resumed their conversation, which he always tried to keep light. Instead of dwelling on the sobering prognosis that faced her, Jesse would ask what she wanted to do when she got out of the hospital, where she would go to dinner and what trips she would like to take. It went on like that until he paused.

  "I have to talk to you about something," he said.

  Casually, Ashley replied: "About what?"

  Jesse got down on one knee and displayed a diamond ring.

  And with eyes wide, Ashley cried, "Oh, my God!"

  On the very evening this scene was unfolding last year—Friday, November 20—Francisco "Paco" Rodriguez was preparing to step into a boxing ring at the Blue Horizon, where he had a scheduled 12-round bout with Teon Kennedy for the vacant United States Boxing Association super bantamweight title. Paco was stopped by Kennedy in the 10 th round, passed out in his corner, and died of a head injury two days later at Hahnemann University Hospital. But it was there that one story ended and another began, the tale of how with a stroke of a pen on a consent form, a grieving widow bestowed life upon five people by offering seven organs from the body of her beloved husband for transplant donation. What began in a place of unutterable grief ended up in a realm of hope reborn.

  Eighteen people die each day in the United States waiting for a transplant. In the case of the five people who received organs from Paco, each of their histories is tied together by a common thread: they had endured untold suffering in the grip of their various illnesses. Only days away from death in some cases, they looked upon themselves as fighters in the same very real sense that Paco had been. With the exception of his uncle, Ramon Tejeda, who received a kidney in a "directed donation," none of them had ever heard of the young boxer from Chicago. Given what they have received from him—a heart, a liver, two lungs, two kidneys, and a pancreas—none of them will ever forget him. While the recipients have not yet met, they share a bond that now unites them with someone they have come to cherish: Paco.

  The five are:

  • Ashley Owens, 23, of Spring City, Chester County: Both Lungs

  As a 10-month-old baby, she weighed less than seven pounds. Initially, doctors suspected she had a tumor. But tests revealed that she had cystic fibrosis, which compromised her breathing and to some extent her digestion. Simple childhood pleasures such as running and swimming were beyond her ability. In and out of the hospital during her school years, she became an excellent student with the help of a tutor. Physically, she began "going downhill" at age 20 or so, a period during which her lung capacity dropped to as low as 20 percent. Without the help of oxygen her lips would turn blue. Concerned by the statistics that foretold an uncertain outcome for lung-transplant recipients, she held off going onto the waiting list until just hours before she suffered a collapsed lung on November 13, 2009. Of the pain her daughter endured, Charlotte Owens says, "Some days she would push through it. Other days it would be more than she could bear."

  Ashley says: "Until the last two or three years, I had an okay handle on it. But when I was 20, I had stopped responding to the medication I was taking. My body had become so full of it that I had become immune. They told me I had two years to live. When I was 21, they told me I had one year to live. I was scared."

  • Meghan Kingsley, 26, of Gaithersburg Maryland: Liver

  At 16, she was diagnosed with neurofibromatosis type 2, characterized by the growth of noncancerous tumors along the nerve that transmits information from the inner ear to the brain. An exceptional competitive swimmer who had dreamed one day of going to the Olympic Games, she underwent surgery in June 2001 for the removal of a tumor and was left deaf in one ear. In October 2007, she had decompression surgery on another tumor that doctors chose not to remove. In an effort to preserve what remained of her hearing, they instead carved away some bone that would allow the tumor room to grow. However, she began experiencing significant hearing loss and in September 2009 enrolled in a study for the experimental drug PCT299. By November, she was in the throes of liver failure.

  Meghan says: "I became very, very ill and ended up in Johns Hopkins. I remember I was constantly burping; I had so much fluid in my stomach. I became jaundiced. [The whites of] my eyes were green and yellow. Mom said I looked like 'The Grinch.' I no longer had any bodily function. They later told me I was within 48 hours of dying."

  • Alexis Sloan, 27, of Norristown: Heart

  At 22, she was diagnosed with congestive heart failure, prior to which she had experienced symptoms that included a dry cough, fatigue, and shortness of breath. "A lot of big words were thrown at me," she says. "Scary." Within a year of he
r diagnosis, she received a biventricular pacemaker and defibrillator implant. Efforts to manage her condition with medication failed and in March 2007 she says she "coded," which is hospital slang for going into cardiopulmonary arrest. Doctors then equipped her with a left ventricular assist device (LVAD), which she found to be an unwieldy contraption. Battery-operated, it had internal and external components that left her feeling on some days as if she was a robot. To get on the waiting list for a heart, she had to fulfill a standard set of requirements that proved that she would submit to postoperative care. In May 2008, she had done that and was given a pager, with which she would be contacted when a heart was available.

  Alexis says: "When they gave me the initial diagnosis, it was devastating. It seemed like a death sentence. There was a lot of confusion. When I got the LVAD, I was not happy with it. No young person should have to live that way. With the protocols I had to go through, it seemed like it was taking forever to get on the list. I became depressed and at one point even suicidal. I just thought: 'I am going to die anyway...'"

  • Vicky Davis, 58, of Clifford Township, Susquehanna County: Pancreas, Kidney

  At 37, she was diagnosed with diabetes, which through the years became progressively worse. In December 2005, she was told that her kidneys were failing. She went on dialysis in April 2006 and within a year was placed on the waiting list for a new kidney and pancreas. Initially, she says, she was told the wait would be just a few months. But whenever she received a call that there was a potential donor for her—and she says she received nine of them—the kidney and pancreas would end up going to someone else or there would be some other issue that would come up. For three and a half years, she spent three days a week on dialysis, a process by which the blood is cleansed of toxins.