by Josh Samman
Armed only with a list of symptoms that I had, we narrowed it down to what we thought was a kidney infection. Isabel managed to find a bottle of antibiotics that she had left over from last winter, and we hoped it would work. In the meantime, she was on nurse duties, making every combination of lemon and honey green tea that she could find. She changed the sheets every few hours after I’d soaked through them with sweat.
Isabel was trying to cure me, and came in the bedroom to shower me with what always made me feel better, affectionate hugs and kisses. I asked her to stop. I wasn’t in the mood. It upset her, and she lashed back.
“Stop being mean because you don’t feel good. You may miss these kisses one day.” She’d said the same thing once when I was trying to shoo Juice away from licking my face.
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” It was reminiscent of her response to my morbid jokes of texting and driving being the death of me.
“It means you never know what’s going to happen. I’m lucky to still be here now, you know.” I sometimes forgot.
“I get it, but you can’t say stuff like that.” We argued until she didn’t want to talk anymore, and left the room mid-conversation.
“I’m going to get you some more medicine.” When she came back, it was with a thermometer. She opened the package and motioned for me to open my mouth, like I was a child.
“104.3. You’re being fucking stupid, and we’re going to the emergency room.” There wasn’t any arguing after that.
For the second time in a month I was in a hospital bed, Isabel by my side. I laid there, miserable and delirious, as she explained to the doctor everything I’d been feeling, all the medications I’d taken in the last 30 days, answering questions about food and drug allergies. She told the doctors things about me I didn’t even know she knew.
He said I wouldn’t be getting out that night, or the next, or any foreseeable night in the future. I indeed had a kidney infection, a severe one, that could’ve been prevented had we got it treated days ago. He scolded us for trying to diagnose and medicate ourselves, to which Isabel gave me a very stern look.
I’d have to stay at the hospital to be monitored, and undergo intravenous antibiotics as my stepfather Jeff was still doing. I’d been trying to kick the thing all week because we were supposed to go to Boston, to watch the event I was originally scheduled to fight Uriah Hall in. We’d already bought our flights. We wouldn’t be making it to Boston, and I went from being a participant in the event, to being a live spectator, to laying in a fucking hospital bed with no cable TV.
My mom sent me a text, similar to the one last time that we were surrounded by doctors and nurses. “Isabel’s been calling me. You need to be thankful for her. I worry about you less when she’s there.”
For almost a week Isabel slept on the recliner next to my bed. The hospital we were at was right down the road from my house. Every night I told her she could go sleep in our bed and come back in the morning, and every evening she told me to stop saying that.
“Wild Horses, baby,” she said, quoting the Stones’ song. I knew just what she meant.
82.
Winter, 2011
Mom, Jeff, Grandma, and I were all at an awards banquet, where mom was winning “Leader of the Year” in Tallahassee. It was a proud moment for us, recognition for her life of social work in the community. It was sometimes a thankless job, and it was nice to see others acknowledge her diligence.
It also served as a goodbye from her to the field of work. She and Jeff had gotten engaged. I never thought I’d live to see my mother married again, but she did, and planned on leaving for the west coast in months. They put their house on the market and left their jobs. Neither of them were in great health, but I was comforted knowing that they had each other for the road.
Her plans to move made it easier for me to do the same. I wasn’t quite ready yet though, and had agreed to run another gym in the meantime. Coaching had become a part of my identity and was hard to let go of. The Burtofts had to let go of the business for various reasons. Joey got married, and Jim went through a divorce. While Joey I still trained together, he left the coaching to me.
I added another feather to my cap, picking up where the Burtofts had left off. My new gym was called Capital City Combat Club, C4 for short, and was owned by myself and a Tallahassee landowner who thought he wanted to be in the fight game.
As C4 was to TCS, Combat Night was to Ubersmash. The new promotion was the brainchild of Mitchell and I. We’d gotten the idea while driving home from an event in Port St. Lucie, near the end of 2011. I’d made promoters plenty of money, both as a fan and a fighter, and it was time to earn from the other side. I knew the industry and had established connections all over the state. Our first show would be in January of the new year.
We built everything from the ground up. It was a grassroots campaign, that was made possible by the local supporters I’d collected from Ubersmash. It was something that continued to serve as a way to showcase guys that I was training. Our new facility was larger and provided space for more members and classes. Teammates from TCS followed me, and more from Orkin’s.
The investor who I’d partnered with didn’t realize how challenging the industry was, and lost interest quickly, leaving me with the brunt of the work. It was a lot of fun, being the sole leader, but I missed having Joey around. It taught me that there are no perfect situations, only best case scenarios.
We asked for a release from my Bellator contract after the loss. If I wasn’t in the big money tournament, it was not worth sticking around. They obliged, and I was again a free agent on the market.
I got approached by an organization called the XFC. They were based out of Florida, and I had frequented their shows. They traveled around the country occasionally, and offered me a fight in my one time home of Knoxville, Tennessee, against Mikey Gomez.
Gomez was an instructor at an affiliate of Roberto’s gym, who I was still training with. Roberto was forced to choose his loyalties, between coaching me for the fight, or conceding to his higher-ups. There was a lot of politics involved, and he made the business decision to stay in good graces with Gracie Barra, the BJJ lineage he’d committed to. I understood, but it spelled the end of relying on him for training.
Besides one coach leaving me high and dry, and the other focusing on his own projects, I’d torn my meniscus preparing for the Gomez fight. Even worse, it happened it doing yoga. It’s a silly story in retrospect; a big goon injuring himself in a Toe Stand Pose, trying to keep up with the instructor. A Padangustasana is not meant for people over 200 lbs. It was not funny at the time.
I flew to Tennessee, more nervous than usual. I’d gone into fights with injuries before, and it hadn’t turned out well. I was coming off the Bellator loss, and if I wanted to be taken seriously in the eyes of the UFC, I couldn’t afford two losses in a row. I was feeling the pressure.
83.
“He loved her, of course, but better than that, he chose her, day after day. Choice: that was the thing.”
-Sherman Alexie
I’d finally made it out of the hospital, already wondering what disaster was going to happen next. Isabel was a few months into treatment, and the effects were worsening each week. Her shots were on Fridays, and I’d learned to let her be until Saturday evening when she’d start to feel better.
Her body’s reactions were wearing her down. There were so many ways that this thing had seeped into our lives. We brought her medicine around with us wherever we went, three pills at 10 AM, and four at 4:30 PM, every day. Because she was worried about taking them late, or missing one altogether, we kept doses everywhere. We had a bottle in my car, several in her car, some in her purse, and the rest at home. We'd both gotten used to the daily alarms sounding on our phones to remind her to medicate. Sometimes they’d go off and she wouldn’t have anything to drink, having to choke them down dryly.
The interferon shots had to be kept below 40 degrees or they’d go bad. We had
to pack that poison, all those needles, into a lunch box with ice packs in it every time that we went out of town. She was so embarrassed, and tried to avoid having anyone ask questions about it. No one knew of her illness except those that had a right to know. Stephanie, Brian, and Matt, because we’d all lived with Isabel. Her family knew, but not all of them. Mitchell and Brandi didn’t know, my mom didn’t know, no one else had a clue. It was our secret that we hid from the world, and she was beginning to feel dirty about it
Besides the secrets, ice packs, and random pills everywhere, there were always so damn many band-aids, around for when either of us would get a cut or scrape. It happens more than one would think once you start keeping track of them. She was terrified of getting me sick. I was too, more than I’d anticipated or let her know. Every month I’d go to the lab and get a blood test. I never told her about it. I didn’t want her knowing I was worried, or for her to feel more burdened than she already did.
Isabel had all but quit drinking entirely. We had occasional nights where we’d try a new beer or two, but when we were out, especially at Combat Nights, she would drink just soda, no whiskey. She’d put it in a rocks glass with lime so no one would ask questions. She carried a large water bottle around with her, per doctor’s orders, and complained about having to pee non-stop.
She worked out daily, except for on Fridays, when she took her shots. Those days we laid in bed and read books. I headed out one Friday to go grocery shopping for us. She asked me to wait as she crawled out from under the sheets and put clothes on.
“You feeling alright?” I asked her.
“No, I’m not, but I’m tired of laying around.” It’d been a miserable couple of weeks.
Outside the supermarket was a Red Cross blood drive, collecting donations. I saw the disaster coming from a mile away, and tried to walk past the truck without making eye contact with the lady collecting donations.
“Hey guys, would you like to help some folks in need today?”
“You don’t want my blood,” Isabel said venomously. She tried to play it off as if it didn’t bother her. She dragged her feet as she walked down the aisles of the store without her usual pep. She stopped in the beauty section and looked for a new hair brush. An episode was looming.
The treatment weakened hair follicles at the root, and while it was almost always partial loss, it sometimes never regained full thickness. I’d seen the frustration on her face as she tried to curl her hair as she had before, with less bounce and body every time. She tried to reassure me that she didn’t mind, that it was easier to manage, but she was washing her hair less, and would stop me from running my fingers through it when we laid in bed.
Finally, her worst fears became a visual embodiment, in the form of a large hair clump at the bottom of the shower drain. She wept and cried as she tried to unclog it. It was the most heartbreaking thing I’d ever seen. I pleaded with her to stop, to dry off and go lay down.
“I don’t want to do this anymore,” she wailed, more upset than I’d ever seen her. “I don’t like the way it makes me feel. I hate it. We don’t even know if it’s working.” I questioned if she was even doing it for herself anymore.
The truth was she was right, we didn’t know if it was working. She had an appointment in two weeks, the most critical one, where her doctor would decide whether or not to continue her medication. Blood tests revealed her viral loads were not dropping at the rate that they should’ve been.
As time went on, the possibility of unsuccessful treatment increased. If that happened, everything would be for naught, leaving us desperate for another medical breakthrough in Hep C treatment. What terrified her most was another option not ever emerging. She correlated the disease with an inability to give birth, and the thought of never reaching motherhood crushed her.
Some studies suggested transmission rates from mother to child as high as 40%. It was something we discussed often. It was her one true calling, she felt, to be a mother; her most primal need, the one thing she was destined to do.
“I know you,” she continued in the shower. “I know what you do to people. You just up and leave them when it’s not working. I’ve seen you do it so many times. Is that what you’re going to do to me?”
“Of course not. Please stop. Please calm down.” We were both in tears. She was near hysteria.
She was right, in that a choice had to be made if she remained sick. My career as I knew it was contingent upon not having Hepatitis, and not having a partner that put me at risk. It was a threat, becoming ill, but what weighed on me most was the risk that it bore on those I trained with. When getting ready for fights we sweat, and too literally, bled with those around us. It would have been unethical for a gym to have a competitor that was Hep positive, and it wouldn’t just be the end of my career, but the end of martial arts as I knew it. I would’ve never been able to forgive myself, had I unknowingly gotten sick and infected someone else in the process.
The nature of the two things made them mutually exclusive. It was painfully sobering, having to choose between the goals I’d dedicated my life to, or the person from whom I drew inspiration for those goals. It was a choice between the thing I always wanted to do most, or the person I wanted most to do it with. My struggle was always internal because nobody knew what we were going through, I had no one to talk about it with.
I’d already made my decision, of course; that of Isabel vs. career, if it came down to it. When God sleeps in your bed, you don’t kick Her out. I hadn’t done a good job of addressing it, otherwise it wouldn’t have been a concern for her. The choice was easier than many would’ve thought. I don’t think she realized how many times I’d been at this juncture before, to go the same way every time. I was upset with myself for not having instilled the confidence in her that I should’ve.
“We’re here for a reason,” she cried. “The two of us are together for a reason. We are supposed to be.” If ever there was a convincing argument for cosmic destiny, it was standing right in front of me. Everything we’d been through stiffened the belief that it was meant to be, that after wandering all this time through life, I’d finally found one concise path.
Isabel gave me something no one else ever did, added a depth and color to life I’d never known. She brought out the best in me, my own magnifying glass with which I could set the world on fire if just held correctly. Isabel was my own delectable dose of sugar and spice, making everything sweeter and more savory than it really was. She was the most powerful soul I’d ever encountered, the most cognitively fruitful and physically satisfying thing I’d ever experienced. She pierced my soul, and spun me on my head.
Deep down, at the end of the day, we are what we contribute; a lens for others to look through, painting pictures for the viewer. Isabel was my “La Vie En Rose,” my life through rose-colored glasses, and that was never going to change.
84.
Summer, 2012
“One year,” I told Lance, pointing to the octagon below. “You’ll see me there in a year.” We were in Las Vegas for Fourth of July weekend, watching two of the greats; Anderson Silva and Chael Sonnen, in one of the biggest middleweight title fights in history.
It was my first live UFC event, and I was awestruck. I hadn’t yet heard about TUF 17 tryouts. I didn’t know how I would get to the UFC. I just knew I was close.
I’d double fisted my way through Mikey Gomez, with my yoga knee injury, and would soon be getting surgery on the torn meniscus. It was common practice to wait until after fights to repair limbs so that the promotion could cover it under insurance. We were on one last vacation before I’d have to spend a couple months recovering.
The first Combat Night delivered with a bang, and we were already planning more events. We’d conceived a vision, and began laying the groundwork to take our promotion across the state.
In the meantime, I got my meniscus repaired, in yet another surgery that would leave me bedridden for weeks. By now I knew the routine. The recovery was worse than I t
hought it’d be, but I was hopeful that it’d all be worth it.
Once I could finally move around again, I got back to training people. I couldn’t work out yet, but it was a nice reprieve from being pent in the house all day.
I was eventually able to walk without crutches and began to get back out on the town. We weren’t planning on doing much that particular night, but Matt wanted to go out for a beer.
“Pockets?” he suggested. “Just one or two.”
“I guess. I could slum it for a bit.” I Iet myself get dragged out.
We got there, and I remembered why I didn’t frequent places like this much anymore. The more I’d gotten out of Tallahassee, the less interested I became in sticking around.
We talked about our Vegas trip, and how we’d one day get out of town for good. Mid-conversation Matt saw someone he knew and went to say hi. I was left at the bar, daydreaming about the escape.
“Crack!”
I was woken by the sound of a cue ball breaking a rack on the table behind me. My mind was elsewhere. I wanted to go home. “Corona with lime please,” I called to my buddy behind the bar. “We’re heading out after this one. What do I owe you?”
“You know you don’t owe anything. Why out so soon? It’s only midnight!” In Tallahassee, there is always time for one more.
“I have a client in the morning.”
He handed me my cervesa, and I squeezed the lime in it before taking my first sip.
Right as I placed my bottle back on the bar I felt a pair of cold, small hands, wet with the froth of a beer, cover my eyes from behind.
A familiar voice whispered in my ear…
“Guess who?”