Tooth and Nail

by Linda D. Dahl

  “I knew it was you!” he said, brightening. “I’m a huge fight fan! I watch the fights every Friday! How long have you been doing this? Why don’t you ever talk about it? This is the coolest—” He recited lists of titles, spouting off winners and weight classes. I half expected him to pull out trading cards.

  “I didn’t think anyone here—” I gestured with my hands “—would approve. I didn’t think boxing was an Upper East Side thing.”

  “Are you kidding? Everyone watches boxing. I can’t always get to the live shows, but I watch the Friday night fights with the guys every week. I can’t believe you get to sit ringside and meet all those boxers!”

  Softening but still cautious, I shared a little more. “I’ve been doing it for a couple of years. I get to meet a lot of interesting characters, that’s for sure.”

  “I can’t wait to tell my buddies. My doctor—my family’s ENT—she’s the Fight Doctor! They are gonna be so jealous!” He shook his head in disbelief. “Who have you met? Anyone famous?” he asked.

  I listed names and fights, their significance affirmed through his responses of “Oh my God!” or “No way!” Through all the conversations we had had about snotty noses and school schedules, I had never seen this side of him. I had always taken him for the Midtown moneyman in the expensive suit. But underneath, he was someone entirely different: someone sweet and funny and rugged. Who would have guessed my dirty little secret would reveal that side of him to me? We all needed shields to live in New York City. We just chose different ones.

  As he was leaving, he handed me his card. It listed his company’s name, motto—Excellence in Financial Services—and his title, Vice-President. At the top of the card, the words boxing fan were scrawled in his own handwriting.

  * * *

  It wasn’t long afterward that the office staff found out about my other life. Before I knew it, boxers were scheduling appointments like regular patients. There was nothing I could do to stop it, and even less I could do to hide them. Compared to my regular demographic, they stood out like sore thumbs.

  “Dr. Dahl, you got a cute patient in the next room. He says he already knows you. Some kind of fighter?” The medical assistant smiled. “Is he a boyfriend, maybe?”

  I scanned the chart. Indeed, it was a fighter I had met before, but I had no idea why he needed to see me in my office. I did all my suturing in dressing rooms. “He’s not a boyfriend,” I said, choosing not to elaborate. The less she knew the better.

  “Hey, Doc! Great to see you again!” the boxer said when he saw me, jumping up from the exam chair. A full foot taller, he nearly caught my face in his armpit when he tried to embrace me.

  “Well, this is a surprise,” I said. It was hard to adjust to him out of context, his presence dismantling the walls of my compartmentalized life. “What can I do for you?” I asked.

  “I got cut at my last fight, and they sewed me up, see?” He tilted his chin down, pointing to two irregular scars on his brow. “That’s why I’m here. My manager doesn’t like how they healed. He said you do such a good job, he wanted you to fix ’em.” He was more emotive than I remembered, smiling like we were good friends.

  I felt both flattered and invaded. I knew my reputation in boxing had grown, but I had assumed it had more to do with my outfits than my work. I had not expected that I’d developed a following among these young men. The prospect left me uncomfortable. The Upper East Side and I had settled into a distant relationship with defined boundaries. The boxers infused my already precarious professional life with an added element of uncertainty.

  I donned my headlight and examined his brow and the rest of his face. The frontal projection of his nasal bones were skewed to the right, pulling his dorsum to one side as it made its way diagonally across his face. “You realize your nose was broken, right?” I asked.

  “No way!” For someone who had spent the last five years getting punched in the face, his surprise was ironic.

  “And it’s so blocked, I don’t know how you can breathe through it,” I continued. His septum, the cartilage and bone that separated his nose into two sides, was internally bent in so many different directions it looked like crumpled tinfoil. It was a wonder any air got through his nose at all.

  “It feels normal to me,” he said, proving himself wrong by trying to draw air through narrow nasal cavities. After a second or two, he relented, opening his mouth to catch his breath.

  Ideally, the nose is supposed to act as a filter, warming and humidifying the air to ease its transition into the lungs. Without the benefit of a functioning nose, our lungs work four times harder to pull oxygen out of the air that comes through our mouths. As good shape as he was already in, his quality of life could be so much better if I fixed the problem. But that wasn’t why he was there. “When you’re done boxing, we can fix it. Not now. It will just get ruined if you get hit in the nose again,” I said, answering his question before he asked it.

  “It’s a deal. You fix my eye and nose, and I owe you dinner!” he said. I smiled, knowing I would never take him up on the offer.

  After explaining the procedure, I went to work on his scars. They were thick, with tiny white circles around the entrance points of the stitches. Hypertrophy was common when silk thread was used, as was often the case when cuts were closed by inexperienced doctors. The same inflammatory reaction that created a thicker bond between the broken pieces of skin also made them ugly. Boxing produced a lot of ugly scars.

  Excising the evidence into elliptical shapes, I used a long piece of nylon suture to close the new ones in a continuous running stitch. It was the same stitch I had used for hems in the costume department.

  When I finished, I passed him a hand mirror, so he could evaluate his new and improved lines. “I loooook fiiine,” he said, drawing out his vowels. “Does that string gotta stay in there?”

  “I need to see you back in a week to take it out. For now just put some Neosporin on the cuts. When is your next fight?” I asked, watching as he continued making faces in the mirror, pursing his lips together and sucking in his cheeks.

  “Not for another couple of months.”

  “Good. You’ll be all healed up by then,” I said, feeling something new and maternal. While I felt obligated to care for everyone who walked through my door, it often felt like just that—an obligation. Taking care of him was different, more personal and meaningful. I had seen him in pain and watched him be brave. And he came in already grateful, already respecting who I was and understanding what I could do for him. Until that moment, I hadn’t realized how little joy I got from being a doctor and how much more validating it could be. But I didn’t have long to grapple with that realization. The confrontation I had been avoiding most of all was about to confront me.

  * * *

  “What’s this I hear about boxers?” Dr. Marsh asked, seated at his desk with his back to me, typing something into his computer. His white coat was neatly pressed and unbuttoned, covering khakis and a plain button-up shirt. Without the benefit of his facial expression, I couldn’t tell by his tone whether or not he was angry.

  I considered feigning ignorance or making up a story, but I was tired of hiding. Maybe he wouldn’t fire me right away. So far, I had been earning my keep in the practice, and he had to give me credit for keeping the boxing thing a secret for so long. He might even give me a second chance or just ask me to quit the fights.

  “I’ve been working with boxers...at fights. It’s okay with the malpractice company. I checked, so you don’t have to worry...”

  He turned to face me. “Slow down, Linda. What do you mean ‘working with boxers at fights’? What are you doing to them? Fixing their cuts or something? Like that scene in Rocky, where his eye’s all swollen?” Switching to another, more rugged voice, he added, “‘Cut me, Mick.’”

  “No, that was the cut man. I don’t do that. I’m a fight doctor,” I said,
quietly.

  “Like that guy, Freddie Pacheco? Didn’t he call himself the Fight Doctor?” He was referring to Muhammad Ali’s personal doctor, who also worked as a cut man during Ali’s fights. His name became synonymous with the sport, although his role bore little resemblance to mine.

  “His name is Ferdie, not Freddie. And no, not like him either. I work for the New York State Athletic Commission. Fight doctors are responsible for the medical safety of the boxers. We have to check them before and after the fights to make sure they’re okay to continue. We can even stop the fight if we’re concerned for their lives,” I said, as authoritatively as I could. I wanted him to see that I had a title, and that my role was official.

  “That sounds grim. Does it pay well at least?” he asked, which brought up a point I hadn’t considered: that working outside my contract with this practice would somehow be a breach.

  “Uh, not much. We usually get to the arena around 5:00 p.m. and work until midnight. They pay us $250 for the night.”

  “So, you make $250 for 7 hours of work? You’re a kind soul. I would never do that, especially not for so little. It’s hard enough to make it in private practice. How long have you been at it? And why didn’t you tell me?”

  It was finally my moment of truth. I had to confess everything. “I’ve been doing it for a little over two years. I didn’t think you would approve, so I just kept it a secret.” Although I hated how exposed I felt, I was also relieved, like a sinner confessing a hearty sin. At that moment, I felt kind of jealous of Catholics. They could unburden their wrongdoings onto a priest anytime they felt like it. The rest of us had to wait for confrontation.

  “Wow! That’s really cool! I knew you were doing something outside the office, but I wouldn’t have guessed it was something this edgy. Most people wouldn’t have been so low-key about it. Actually, it’s so gross and violent, I can’t think of any other doctor who would want to do it at all. I’m impressed.” I couldn’t believe it. Not only was he not upset, his words dripped with admiration.

  “So, you’re not mad?” I asked, still guarded. I was waiting for the other shoe to drop, anticipating a but. But that but never came.

  “Why would I be mad?” he asked. “Did you do anything wrong?”

  “No, not that I know of. I just didn’t want to embarrass you. I know you’ve worked hard for these patients, and I didn’t want to make you look bad.” I needed to air out my assumptions to see if they had any basis in reality—his reality anyway.

  “Make me look bad? Linda, I’ve been watching you for the last couple of years. I’ve seen how hard you work, and how out of place you are. It’s obvious. You came from Minot, North Dakota, for God’s sake. I mean, who even lives there?” He chuckled. My residency site director used to say the same thing every time the weatherman announced it as the coldest place in the country. Was I so noticeably awkward? His comment reminded me of what my mother used to say every time I complained that I didn’t have any real friends in high school.

  “You dress in crazy outfits and act different,” she would say. “That’s why no one likes you. You stand out, and you’re weird. Why can’t you just fit in?” The irony was that then, as now, I was expending most of my efforts trying to do just that. But despite my desperate attempts, I seemed destined to be forever out of place.

  Dr. Marsh continued. “I watch how you handle yourself. You treat doormen the same as hedge-fund managers. You joke around with the girls in the office like friends. Do you want to know why you are so well liked?” His Buddhism was kicking in, weaving positive affirmations into the conversation. “You don’t put yourself above anyone. I was just speaking to the department chair and he agreed. He said we’re lucky to have you. You’d have no problem getting a job anywhere you liked. Let me tell you something you probably don’t realize: you’re a superhero.”

  I couldn’t believe what he was saying. I had no idea he had such a high opinion of me. If he was telling the truth, he saw things in me I would have never seen in myself. I felt embarrassed and self-conscious, but he kept talking.

  “You’re like Spidey when he first got his Spidey senses. You have superpowers, but you don’t know how to use them yet. Remember in the movie, when Spidey couldn’t control how he shot out the web? He kept missing buildings when he was learning to fly.” He held out his palm and touched his middle finger to its center, simulating Spiderman’s hand position. Flicking his wrist forward, he spewed invisible liquid silk around the room to demonstrate. “You’re like that—still learning how to use your superpowers. But it will come. Slowly. Just keep practicing.”

  I let his words sink in, fighting back the urge to cry.

  “You need to know this about yourself because I may not always be around to tell you,” he said. It was almost too much to take, his understanding and encouragement. I had spent so long feeling like an outsider, I didn’t know how to be any other way. But Dr. Marsh, in his endless affirmation, had opened a door for me. All I had to do was walk through.

  * * *

  As a reward for my quick thinking at the Cotto fight, the Chairman assigned me to work the corner for one of my biggest heroes. Wladimir Klitschko was the epitome of brains and brawn. He won gold at the Olympics in 1996, going on to win the WBO Heavyweight Championship from Chris Byrd in 2000. His nickname was Dr. Steelhammer, in reference to his PhD in sports science and his ability to converse in four languages. At six-foot-six, he towered over nearly everyone, save his older brother, Vitali.

  Nicknamed Dr. Ironfist, Vitali also had a PhD in sports science. And although he was the only heavyweight champion to have never been knocked down in a fight, he had retired from boxing in 2005, days before his fight with Hasan Rahman because of a training injury. But he wasn’t sitting around idle. He had been active in local politics, serving as an adviser to Ukrainian President Yushchenko and running for mayor of Kiev. Although he lost his first election, he was planning a comeback. In the meantime, he was supporting his brother inside the ring and out.

  Waiting to do the intake physical for my fighter, I realized in more ways than one that this fight was bigger than any of the others I had worked. Standing at a cordoned-off section of Madison Square Garden, I watched as the cameramen set up around reporters and folding chairs, readying themselves for the weigh in and staredown. Klitschko’s opponent was Sultan Ibragimov, a fighter I had met before when I had interrupted his family’s private dinner for a photograph. I didn’t realize it at the time, but he was the WBO Heavyweight Champion. Since Klitschko was the current IBF Heavyweight Champion, the winner of the fight would hold both titles simultaneously. This so-called unification of heavyweight titles hadn’t happened since 1999, when Lennox Lewis had beaten a double-eared Evander Holyfield.

  But shortly afterward, Lewis had retired, relinquishing himself to the sidelines as an announcer.

  “I can’t believe I get to finally meet Wladimir. I literally can’t believe it!” I said to Tom, while we were waiting for the boxers to arrive. The Dom and I had come to an understanding. She was always on call but, if I thought I could handle things myself, she left me to it. She even adjusted to my choice of different outfits, like the dark green button-up shirt and long ponytail I had chosen for the weigh in. The boots were non-negotiable.

  “Well, looks like your time has finally come. There he is,” Tom said. Right on cue, in walked an army of giants. Wladimir led the pack, clad in a black T-shirt and warm-up pants. I nearly swooned.

  “Wladimir, this is Dr. Dahl,” Tom said, when Wladimir and his soldiers were seated. “She will be doing your physical.”

  I held out my hand to meet his disappointment.

  “A woman? I will be checked by a woman?” he said, visibly offended. Not since Marcos Primera had I been rejected by a fighter. Whereas before I would’ve cowered, now I buckled down.

  “What, you’re afraid of a female doctor? Don’t worry, I don’t bite. Le
t’s start with some basic questions. Do you have any medical problems? Have you had any injuries or surgeries?”

  He leaned back in his chair and rolled his eyes in disgust. Behind him, his brother Vitali paced around, talking to some of the army in Ukrainian.

  “Okay, let’s try some more specific questions. Have you ever had a sexually transmitted disease?” I paused, wanting to be sure the whole room had heard. But he wasn’t budging. “Do you need me to ask the question again?”

  “No,” he said, quietly.

  “No, you don’t need me to repeat it, or no, you’ve never had a sexually transmitted disease?” I glared at him, growing more resolute with each passing second.

  “No to both,” he said.

  “Good. Do you have any trouble when you pee? Pain with urination? Weak stream? Does it take a long time to get it all out?” I was completely off book. I had no idea where I was coming up with these questions. Not part of the regular intake physical, they sounded more like the warm-up we were taught to ask before the embarrassing parts of the male physical exam in med school. For lack of willing patients, we were shipped off to the Veterans Affairs hospital to learn how to perform genital and prostate exams on war vets.

  Wladimir finally gave me the reaction I was looking for, relenting his pride and answering in one word sentences. When I got to the actual physical exam, there was no more mockery. Even when he nearly knocked me over during the upper-extremity pushback, no one laughed. I remembered a quote, something Vitali had once said: that chess “is similar to boxing. You need to develop a strategy, and you need to think two or three steps ahead about what your opponent is doing. You have to be smart. But what’s the difference between chess and boxing? In chess, nobody is an expert, but everybody plays. In boxing, everybody is an expert, but nobody fights.” He was right about that. Except he hadn’t yet met me when he’d said it.

  What happened in the ring was more of a disappointment. Ibragimov was a full four and a half inches shorter and nineteen pounds lighter than Klitschko. His arms were also shorter. He was later blamed for fighting too defensively but, from my vantage, his arm span wasn’t long enough to reach any meaningful parts of his opponent anyway.