Amber was one of the drug reps. From what I understood, her job was to do whatever it took to get doctors to write prescriptions for the drugs she peddled. Most of the reps were female and stunningly beautiful. Sure, there were men in the sales force, but they were few and far between, selling serious drugs to seriously older doctors. Still, every rep had their own style. Some spouted off facts from research studies. Others disputed styles of medical treatment. Mostly, they just dressed provocatively and got us drunk at expensive dinners.
Dr. Larson and I were meeting another doctor for dinner, courtesy of Amber’s employer. I knew little about him except that he practiced primary care a few blocks away, and Amber had said he was a good referral source. As specialists, we relied on referrals to grow our practices. Unlike doctors who worked for hospitals, in private practice we had to earn every single patient. Doctors rarely socialized without someone else footing the bill, so drug-rep dinners were how most relationships were made.
When we arrived at the restaurant, Amber and the other doctor were already seated at the table.
“I thought I was meeting two doctors tonight. Who is this young lady, Amber? Did your company hire a new rep?” the doctor asked, standing to shake my hand. He was in his early fifties, with a face so pudgy, he looked like he was having an allergic reaction to his nose.
“Oh, aren’t you funny, Dr. Sheldon. This is Dr. Dahl. She works with Dr. Larson in Dr. Marsh’s office.” Amber flipped her hair back and rested her hand on her sternum, drawing his attention to where she wanted it. She wore a tight black suit, lacy camisole and pointy, patent leather heels. I had no idea how she walked around Manhattan all day like that. Even chunky heels hurt my feet.
Dr. Sheldon leaned in to Dr. Larson and said something under his breath. They both laughed, obviously sharing a private joke. “So you two have already met?” I asked, surprised at their familiarity. Amber had told me this was the first meeting for all three of us.
“Uh, yes, at, um, Robert’s Steakhouse. There was a dinner last week,” Dr. Sheldon said, giggling at his own words. He was already a dirty martini past tipsy and, by the look on Dr. Larson’s face, sharing something that was supposed to have been a secret.
“I like steak,” I said, surprised I hadn’t been invited.
“Well, we weren’t exactly eating steak,” he said, winking and nudging Dr. Larson, whose face turned red. He was caught between sharing a moment with a new referral source and trying to hide the truth from me. We usually went to these dinners together, as a team, to represent our practice. I couldn’t believe he was cheating on me.
Dr. Sheldon wouldn’t stop talking. “Robert’s Steakhouse is code for Scores.” He was laughing now, sticking his face into his martini glass to take another sip.
“You went to a strip club?” I asked, more upset at being excluded than by their choice of venue.
“Well, next time we’ll bring you,” Dr. Sheldon said, winking. His invitation made me feel even worse. I wanted to be part of the group, but the thought of watching my colleagues slobber over semiclad girls turned my stomach.
Appetizers and dinner came. The doctors talked about things I couldn’t relate to, like golf clubs and expensive vacations. Dr. Larson cooed over his parents’ favorite French Riviera resort, while Dr. Sheldon insisted his wife would only stay in Tuscany in the fall. I smiled politely and nodded, pretending I had visited such lavish locations. The town I grew up in was so small, my parents used to drive to Canada to show us what big cities looked like. Amber avoided the conversation altogether. She barely touched her dinner.
“You can just send me the check next week,” Dr. Sheldon said, as we were leaving. “Hey, guys, make sure you write some prescriptions for Nasonase!” Nasonase was the drug Amber represented.
She took out a sheet of paper and laid it on the table. “Dr. Dahl and Dr. Larson, can I get your signatures please?” she asked. It was a sign-in sheet listing Dr. Sheldon as a speaker for a professional development lecture. Apparently, this dinner wasn’t just about networking. I was beginning to see how doctors made it in this town.
“Dr. Dahl, I think we’re going the same way. Can I walk you home?” Dr. Sheldon asked, his breath a humid cloud of tiramisu and alcohol. He swayed, trying to stand upright, leaning into me as he spoke.
I froze. I didn’t want to go. Then, recalling my recent offense against Jimmy’s mother, I realized I could no longer trust my instincts in this part of town. I rethought the situation. Dr. Sheldon was married, so obviously he wouldn’t try anything. Even if he did, he was so drunk he posed little risk of following through. Alcohol is as unkind to blood flow below the belt as it is to the vestibular system. At the very least, helping the poor man home with dignity could get me a few more patients. Anything was better than seeing Dr. Marsh’s overflow.
On the walk home, the night air was cool but dry. We strolled past meticulous townhouses with perfect shrubbery and apartment buildings with uniformed doormen. French restaurants glowed through curtained windows. Couples in Burberry and perfect hair strolled by arm-in-arm or pushed baby carriages of fraternal twins. From the outside, the Upper East Side looked like the perfect place to live.
Dr. Sheldon staggered a bit, leaning into me as we walked so he wouldn’t fall. The conversation was surprisingly disarming, discussing our mutual training programs and hometowns. He was impressed I’d made it so far from my humble beginnings, confessing he had never met anyone from the frozen north. It was nice talking to an older colleague about real things. I felt my guard drop a bit, exhausted from the night’s pretenses.
“Do you mind if we stop by my office? I need to pick something up,” he said, coming to a halt in front of a huge Park Avenue apartment building. A small sign affixed to a door just left of the main entrance displayed his name and credentials. I could see no reason why we shouldn’t go in.
It was a typical New York doctor’s office. The waiting area was small, the walls lined with eight padded wooden chairs and a plastic floor plant. A glass partition allowed access to the front desk, where a sign reminded patients that Co-pays must be collected before the visit. We walked past a magazine rack to his private office. Framed pictures of his wife and two teenage sons decorated the walls. Charts were arranged in a neat pile on a couch adjacent to his desk, which was empty except for a computer. He excused himself to go to the bathroom, so I sat in a chair across from his desk and waited.
“Do you want another drink?” he asked when he returned, sitting on the couch. He loosened his tie and leaned back into the large cushions.
“No, I’ve had enough. I have to operate tomorrow,” I said, pitying his poor liver. I didn’t start drinking until after my divorce, so my tolerance was pitiful. I could still feel the effect of my glass of Sancerre before dinner.
“That’s nonsense. Why don’t you come over here and sit next to me?” he asked, spreading his legs and patting the space next to him.
Suddenly realizing what was happening, I panicked. I had to get out of there, but there was no graceful way to do it. So I started talking. My mouth flooded with words, lots of words, nonsensical words, anything that would fill the time it took to make my way through his office and out the front door.
“Oh my God, is that the time? I’m so late, I’m such a lightweight, your office is so nice, I have to call my mom, thank you so much, you are so sweet, is that a real plant? I have to go...”
I ran home, swimming through the evening’s events in my mind, desperate to see where I had gone wrong. I couldn’t make any sense of it. He was married and old, and we worked in the same hospital. If he’d got his wish, it wasn’t like we could avoid each other. Or maybe that was how it worked on the Upper East Side. Had Amber known he was planning to seduce me? Maybe this was how the referral system really worked, and she was trying to help me out. It was probably my fault, but how had I misled him? I thought I was supposed to be nice. My head was spin
ning. I suddenly missed the Bronx, my husband, Rene and even Jerome. At least they were familiar. Not like this place. The Upper East Side made the Bronx seem like an inconvenient road stop on the way to actual hell. But unlike the Bronx, my current location had no end date.
* * *
At work the following week, it was back to the grind. Overflow patients and the occasional referral dotted my schedule—none from Dr. Sheldon. One afternoon, starving for lunch, I had one more patient to see before my break. Little did I know, my burger would be cold and dry by the time I got to it.
“Uh, you’re the doctor? Nice!” the patient said as I walked in. “My name’s Ned.” His toupee was thick and chocolate brown and obviously not his own hair. It crowned his deeply furrowed brow and extended in outstretched arms, reaching for his sideburns. His beard and moustache were peppered white. Relaxing in folds against his neck, his chin disappeared beneath a black high-collared turtleneck.
“What can I do for you?” I asked, still with the fast-food routine.
“Well, let me see,” he thought, a little too hard, and scrolled through his mental Rolodex of ailments. “I have this drip. It’s nothing, really, just gets annoying. I mean, otherwise I’m really healthy. I’m a young guy, I work out, love dancing...”
“So, how long have you had this postnasal drip?” I interrupted, remembering a technique we learned in medical school called directing the patient. It was the technical term for cutting off the ones that were obviously going to drone on about their symptoms and therefore waste precious face time.
“The drip? I’ve had it forever. I mean, it doesn’t really bother me. Mostly happens after I eat. Well, and sometimes when I wake up in the morning. But I usually go for a workout right away, so it doesn’t bother me much after that...” He moved his hands in small karate chops with each statement.
I tried again. “Do you have any allergies? Any inhalants or dust at work?” He was testing my patience. My stomach let out a high-pitched whine of hunger that we both ignored.
“No allergies. I’m really healthy. I’m not working now, so I spend a lot of time in Florida. I have an apartment there. But I used to be a producer for HBO sports, like Boxing after Dark and stuff like that.”
The mention of boxing jolted me out of my inertia like a clapper against the inside of a bell. “Wait, you worked at the fights?” Boxing was a distant memory, conjuring flashes of Saturday night fights in the Bronx. Pizza and black-and-white cookies. Mosley and De La Hoya. Screaming crowds and tuxedoed announcers. Rene, the orderly, and his greasy meat sandwich.
“Sure, that was one of my regulars. You a boxing fan?” He raised his brow in surprise, his toupee lifting at the center, inadvertently exposing adhesive.
“Yes, I am. I mean, I was. When I was in residency.” I thought back. Compared to the island of isolation that was my current existence, that time seemed like a vibrant community. Lost in thought, I remembered something, a tiny memory I had forgotten until that very moment.
During my fourth year, I was on call one night with the neurosurgery resident, Sam. We were in the ICU, checking on a patient who was intubated and unconscious. Amid the din of beeping and clicking wires and tubes, I heard the faint but familiar sounds of a crowd cheering. I looked up from the patient’s tracheotomy and noticed a tiny television suspended from the wall behind the bed. The arm attached to it had been swiveled so the television faced his closed, comatose eyes. Curious, I rotated the screen to see two boxers hanging on to each other, sweat pouring down their faces. Moments later, the bell clanged, and they took to their corners. At the edge of the screen, a man in a suit squatted next to one of the boxers, leaning in to check a cut.
“Who’s that guy?” Sam asked. He had moved from the head of the bed and was standing behind me, holding a syringe of bloodied fluid in his gloved hands.
“I have no idea,” I said, confused by the suited man’s formality. His movements were robotic and awkward. He didn’t seem to belong there.
“He’s wearing latex gloves. Is that the cut man?” Sam asked.
Before I could speak, the announcer answered for me. “And here we have the doctor...checking Torres...to see if that cut is nasty enough to stop the fight.”
“They have doctors in boxing? Wow. I bet that would be a cool job. Hell, with the kind of training we get here, we could do that with our eyes closed,” Sam said, shrugging and turning back to the patient. He squirted the liquid into a kidney basin and re-inserted the needle into a soft spot on the patient’s head, where his team had removed a piece of cranium.
I watched as the doctor nodded to the referee. As he climbed out of the ring, I considered what had just happened. With the thousands of screaming fans, fighters, promoters and judges, this mousy guy got to decide if the fight could go on. That was power, the likes of which I had never known.
I was reveling in that notion, feeling it swell and expand in my chest, when my mouth formed the words that would forever change my life. “I want to be a fight doctor.”
Ned tilted his head to the side, considering my statement, then brightened. “I can make some phone calls for you. My friend knows Teddy Atlas.” He pursed his lips and nodded his head slowly. “The boxing commission would love you. They don’t have any lady fight doctors, especially not from this part of town.” I didn’t know who Teddy Atlas was or why my being a woman mattered, but he seemed to be taking me seriously.
“Yeah, that sounds good,” I said, unsure of the implications. He probably wouldn’t even follow through.
“Do you want me to come back for a follow up? I don’t want any medicine or anything. I just wanted you to check to make sure everything’s okay.” He could tell I was no longer paying attention to him. It was his turn to direct the doctor.
“Uh, sure. Come back in a month,” I said, embarrassed of my momentary lapse into the past.
“Perfect. I’ll have some news on that boxing gig by then, too,” he said, shaking my hand.
Watching him walk toward checkout, toupee firmly in place, I pondered the significance of his visit. Whether it was just a reminder of what I had left behind or an omen for the future, I wasn’t sure. But I couldn’t wait to find out.
5
If life is a painting in progress, then hope is that unfinished space in the background. My hope was still beige, the color of faded muslin—full of potential, but dulled from anticipation. Nine months after I had filled out the application, there was still no word from the commission. Tired of waiting, I surrendered to the monotony of my immediate circumstances: thirty-five patients a day, more drug-rep dinners and the occasional hospital function. I was digging out a thick ball of earwax when I finally got the phone call—freeing the sticky substance at the very moment boxing came to free me.
“Hi, this is Sally from the Athletic Commission,” a woman with a perky voice said over the phone. “I’ve got your first fight assignment.”
“An assignment? Already?” I was confused. How could they give me an assignment when they hadn’t even interviewed me? There had to be a mistake.
“Yeah, it’s says here Dr. Williams, the Chief Medical Examiner, approved you. You’re listed as one of the doctors for the next fight.”
I was shocked. How could this Dr. Williams approve my appointment without meeting me? Medicine didn’t work that way. There were interviews and more interviews, exams and waitlists. The surprise made me more suspicious than happy, but I wanted to let it play out. “That’s great! I can’t wait to get started,” I said, suffocating my instincts.
“Great! You just gotta show up at the venue—”
“Wait. Just like that? Isn’t there anything I can read beforehand?” I asked, my pulse rising. I knew nothing about being a fight doctor. I didn’t even know the rules of boxing. And I hadn’t seen a fight since Tyson had ripped Holyfield’s ear off with his teeth.
“Read? Ha ha, no. You ju
st kind of learn as you go. Don’t worry, the other guys won’t let you get into any trouble.” She laughed, as if my question was the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard.
She had to be wrong. Everything in medicine involved a textbook or training manual. Wasn’t there a guy who wrote a book about being a fight doctor? Freddie something? I would obviously have to figure that part out myself. “Uh, okay. Ha ha ha,” I said, feigning laughter. “Where’s the fight?”
“You will be—” she paused, fumbling through some papers “—working the Gerry Cooney Charity fight at the New York Hilton. It’s next Thursday, October fourteenth.”
When I had turned in my application, I’d pictured my first fight in a dark, sweaty ring somewhere in the Bronx. I didn’t know a fight could even be held in a hotel. Didn’t they need a ring? And who was this Gerry Cooney guy? If it was a charity event, did that mean I had to dress fancy? How would I get in and out of the ring in a ball gown? I had questions, but I feared exposing my ignorance.
“This may sound silly, but what should I wear?” I asked, nonchalantly.
“Well, I wouldn’t wear anything light-colored,” she said gruffly. “It’ll just get covered in blood.”
I was relieved. Blood I could handle. And my closet was full of dark suits that could easily tolerate the dark stain of hemoglobin.
“The fight is Thursday night,” she continued, “so come to the commission at 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday to do the weigh ins and prefight physicals.”
Would the madness never cease? The limits of my specialty ended at the clavicles, which meant I hadn’t done a full physical since internship. I thought back to my gross anatomy class in medical school, hopeful that cutting apart a pickled human, sinew by sinew and nerve by nerve, had burnt some of those landmarks into my brain.
“You’re sure there isn’t a manual?” I asked once more, hoping there was some beat-up rule book to at least get me started.
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