Fresh out of medical school, Linda Dahl began her surgical residency in the Bronx as a total fish out of water. Growing up in a Middle Eastern family in the American Midwest, she was a born outsider, and in her new community in New York, she felt even more isolated. Even at work she struggled to fit in: among her fellow specialists, she was one of the only women.
One night, at her husband’s urging, Dahl watched a boxing match between Shane Mosley and Oscar De La Hoya. Seeing Mosley survive against the odds gave Dahl hope that she, too, could find her footing. As her fandom grew, boxing became a way to connect with her patients and community. Later, when she was in practice on the Upper East Side, Dahl received a phone call from the New York State Athletic Commission. They were looking for a fight doctor. Dahl accepted.
Tooth and Nail chronicles the years Dahl spent as an ear, nose and throat surgeon by day and a ringside physician by night. Intrepid, adrenaline-fueled and loaded with behind-the-scenes takes on famous boxers, including Mike Tyson, Wladimir Klitschko and Miguel Cotto, Dahl’s story offers a modern examination of sexism, dislocation, the theater of boxing and a road map for how to excel in two very different male-dominated worlds.
TOOTH AND NAIL
The Making of a Female Fight Doctor
Linda D. Dahl
for Lucy
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
1
“If things get bad, go under the ring.” Frank Costanza, the director of boxing, leaned down and whispered into my ear. He was a large man—over six feet, I guessed, because even with four-inch heels I only made it to his shoulders. He was at that ambiguous age when intra-abdominal fat filled the space above his love handles and hair disappeared from his scalp, only to be reincarnated on previously barren landscapes like ears and nostrils.
“What do you mean, under the ring?” I asked, but before he could answer an inspector beckoned him over to the other corner.
I was still relatively new to the world of boxing, compared to everyone else in the commission. The others had been around for years, lurking in audiences and following ringside doctors around to earn the right to work a fight. This was one of the first I had ever worked on my own. In truth, it was one of the few I had ever attended. But for some reason, after doing a few intake physicals and training fights, David John Jacobs, the chairman of the boxing commission, thought I was ready to work the corner.
I didn’t feel ready, but I was used to that unready feeling. My whole surgical training was a lesson in faking it. But I wanted to prove myself at this fight. As the commission’s only female fight doctor, I wanted everyone to see that I was just as good as the men. No, I wanted them to see I was better.
The Grand Ballroom of the Manhattan Center was brightly lit. Banners advertising Dibella Entertainment and XXX Sports Drink hung from the balcony. The ring was elevated by four-foot risers, and foldable chairs circled it like the petals of a flower. Four rows of ropes stretched around the edges, cat’s cradle–style, creating the boundaries of the fight space. Like a bedskirt, a black drape hung in a ruffle from the edge of the platform. That must have been what Frank was talking about. I hadn’t considered it a functional space before, but I noted it in my list of random details about boxing.
“Yo, Dahl! You’re late!” It was Tom Marino. I could never remember his job title, but he was the one I went to with all my questions. As always, he dressed his lanky frame in a billowy, oversize suit.
“What? I thought I was early,” I said, trying to hide my nerves.
“Nah, just busting your chops. Relax. You are early.”
Tom alternated between my closest ally and the most irritating of kid brothers. He hated that he was the youngest of the herd of full-time commission employees almost as much as he hated that he couldn’t grow a full beard. But that didn’t stop him from trying.
I cupped his cheeks, fully aware of how much it bothered him. “You are such a baby face, Tom.”
“Nah, I’m not, Dahl. I may look young, but I’m old. I’m wrinkled on the inside.” He lifted his chin, stretching his neck over the collar. “I’ll see you later. You’re working the blue corner.”
I didn’t know whether to be flattered or offended. The blue corner was where they put the fighters who were expected to lose. For me, this meant climbing in and out of the ring all night, checking cuts and bloody noses between rounds. Or worse, watching helplessly from behind the ropes while my guy went down. The irony was that I wasn’t actually helpless. New York is a rare state where the ringside doctor can stop the fight, but I’d never seen or heard of anyone actually doing it. In boxing, there was a lot more at stake than the boxer’s life.
Giggles came from the opposite corner, where Frank was now surrounded by a huddle of ring girls in short satin robes. A brassy blonde was flirting with him. I could tell, by the way she leaned near his shoulder. Frank smiled and said something inaudible into her undoubtedly candy-scented neck. She looked barely over the legal drinking age. In Canada.
Feeling somewhat jealous and less than feminine, I was making tiny imitations of the blonde when Dr. Roy approached me.
“Dr. Dahl, I see you’re moving up in the ranks.”
I liked Dr. Roy. He was the most sincere of all the doctors so far. Practicing family medicine somewhere in Brooklyn (I couldn’t ever remember exactly where), he had been working the fights since residency. Dark hair graying around his temples and moustache, his voice was broad and resonant with flecks of baritone in open consonants—the way actors playing doctors on television sounded. He telegraphed compassion.
“Where do you need me?” I asked, fumbling for my stethoscope. I realized I hadn’t yet set down my coat or bag. Even though it was only 5:30 p.m., I had been working since 7:30 a.m., dissecting out an enlarged thyroid in the operating room. My feet were killing me. After residency, I insisted on wearing heels everywhere, even when scrubbed in for surgery. It was silly, a tiny nod to fashion after years of wearing surgical clogs. The unfortunate consequence of comfortable shoes was that my feet spread wide. Two years in, I was still working on fitting my toes into pointy, supposedly sexy shoes.
“Meet me in the back,” Dr. Roy said. “We can finish up the prefight checks. Curtis is fighting, so it’s gonna be quite the crowd.” He wore the same tweed suit I’d seen him wear at every fight. And he always looked at me the same way, studying me the way he studied the boxers.
* * *
Even though he wasn’t the main event, Curtis Stevens was the real reason everyone was there. A Brooklyn-born street fighter, he’d overcome a difficult childhood and was now a local favorite. Most fighters had one on-screen persona and another for offscreen, but with Curtis it was always the same. He was angry—an anger that was buried deep in his dark brown eyes. He was competing in the super middleweight class, so he had to keep his weight around 164 pounds. On his five-foot-seven-inch frame, that meant he was allowed some marbling to his muscles and excess water weight, so he didn’t have to fight so lean.
When I walked into his room, he wasn’t alone, which wasn’t unusual. Even at the prefight physical the night before, he was surrounded by six men of varying ages, all shades of brown. On
e man, much older and dressed in a white suit and sunglasses, was praying loudly to the holy spirit. Curtis, with his light brown skin, short Afro, and stubbled, prominent jaw, was standing in one corner, rocking from one foot to the other.
“Can I take your blood pressure?” I asked.
Expressionless, he held out his arm and stopped rocking. I pumped up the cuff and listened for his pulse.
“Ninety over fifty. You have the pressure of a child.” A few of the men turned and laughed. “I mean, you’re in really good shape. Your pressure is really low,” I said, but it didn’t matter. I had made him look bad in front of his people, and I couldn’t take it back.
Curtis glared at me but didn’t speak.
“Okay, well, see you in the ring,” I said, trying to escape as quickly as possible. The men were still laughing when I left the room.
* * *
By 9:00 p.m., the arena was filling with everyone from men in yarmulkes to Italian teamsters. I saw a sea of pink-faced Irishmen, too, which meant there was at least one Irish boxer—the Irish only watched their own. The rest of the crowd was a mix of all shades. One thing they had in common was that they were male. And already quite drunk.
I was seated at my corner on a folding chair in front of a table that abutted the ring. To my right were the stairs that led up to the ring. To my left was Frank. My eyes were level with the stage so I could have the most accurate view. I kept the necessary paperwork in front of me: a list of the fighters in order of their bouts, claims sheets for injuries in case one of them had to go to the hospital and consent forms for stitching them up if they got cut.
Three clangs of the bell sounded.
“Welcome, fight fans. This is the Friday Night Fights in Newwww Yorrrrk Citeeeeee!” The announcer ended the last word in a high-pitched crescendo. No matter how hard I searched I hadn’t yet been able to spot him. He wasn’t at the center of the ring—that only happened at the big fights, like in the main arena of Madison Square Garden. At these smaller fights, he sat somewhere inconspicuous, probably near the DJ.
“Tonight’s fight is for the WBC Youth World Super Middleweight Title,” he continued, as staccato horns and intricate drumbeats poured from a loudspeaker. A small section of the audience in the balcony stood and cheered vigorously, waving the yellow, blue and red flag of their country.
“In the blue corner, from Puerto Cabello, Venezuela, weighing in at 164 ½ pounds, with a record of 19-15-2, it’s the Terminator, Marcos Primera!”
From my seat at the blue corner, I saw Marcos emerge and realized to my horror that I had checked in the wrong boxer. Because I hadn’t introduced myself to him before the fight, he would have no idea who I was if something went down. Although I draped my stethoscope around my neck and wore horrible gray suits with my commission badge, no one ever assumed I was the doctor. The sparse population of women was limited to a few categories and, since I wasn’t a girlfriend, official or stripper, no one really knew what to make of me.
Marcos wore white baggy shorts and a Venezuelan flag, slightly larger than the one his countrymen held up, draped over his shoulders like a cape. He was tall, around six feet, and lanky. His face was blank, but it was a different kind of blank than Curtis’s. He was stone-faced and detached, hardened by years of pain. To him, this fight wasn’t an event. It was just another page in that book of suffering he called Life.
He arrived at his corner and sat on the stool, allowing other members of his team to primp him. One removed his flag-cape, another dripped water into his mouth, while a third squatted and gave instructions to him in Spanish. Marcus sat there, his back to me, and waited.
“In the red corner, weighing in at 164 ½ pounds, from Brownsville, New York, with an impressive record of 13-0-0, it’s the Cerebral Assassin, Curtis Stevens!”
The DJ turned up the bass on a rap song, and the crowd went crazy, cheering and hooting. Curtis walked in with his posse, which had grown since the dressing room. He wore light blue sequined shorts and a matching short-sleeved jacket emblazoned with the word Showtime. When he arrived at the red corner, his manager removed the jacket, revealing a huge tattoo of a winged creature spread out across his chest. I was concentrating so hard on his blood pressure, I hadn’t noticed it under the dim light of the dressing room. In the ring, it seemed ready to take flight.
The announcer continued. “The fight will be judged by Luis Rivera, Robert Gilson and Steve Epstein. The doctors attending the boxers are Jared Landau, Michael Stein and Linda Dahl. The referee...”
I felt simultaneously exhilarated and exposed when the announcer said my name. Frank smiled and nudged my shoulder, like a proud father. I self-consciously looked around, but no one in the crowd seemed to notice.
The bell clanged, and the fight began.
The two opponents slowly moved toward each other. They looked like marionettes, their bodies moving disparately but both from a central axis, as if guided by invisible strings. They attempted a few halfhearted jabs, not really connecting, mostly looking into each other’s eyes. Marcos was a good five inches taller than Curtis, so he had to hunch down to even make eye contact.
Although nothing violent was happening, I felt my heart pounding. I remembered what Dr. Roy had said: always watch the legs because they tell you how the boxer is holding up. If their legs are shaky, no matter how good they look up top, they could go down at any minute. But it was too early in the fight for that. Their legs were doing very little except moving two steps forward, two steps back. It reminded me of a country dance I had learned in high school, except they weren’t holding each other.
I jumped when the bell clanged. “That’s it?” I asked Frank.
“That was round one! Relax. Marcos is here for the paycheck—he’s not here to win.”
“What do you mean, ‘here for the paycheck’? How much do they get paid?” Marcos’s corner men were pouring water over his head, some of which splattered on my left hand. I froze, trying to decide if it was disgusting enough to wipe away. I left it. I wanted to seem tougher than I really was.
“Oh, it varies. Some fights they get a lot, like the big fights. $10,000. $15,000. The pay-per-view fights are a lot more. But usually it’s around $500. $500 for six weeks of training, only to have your head pounded in for the other guy’s record. Crazy, huh?”
Crazy? It sounded more like desperate to me. I wanted to think of these men as warriors. The ring was one of the last places in the civilized world where men could channel this form of masculinity. They were lean and strong and powerful and fought in hand-to-hand combat. I had spent the last ten years surrounded by men with a different connection to their bodies: doctors who were so detached they could discuss bowel movements and open wounds while eating dinner. In my mind, fighters were supposed to want to win. I couldn’t reconcile the notion of paid losers.
“What d’you think of that one?” Frank asked, turning my attention to the ring girl who was ascending the stairs. She held a card with a large number 2 on it.
From where I was sitting, I had a perfect view of her shoes: six-inch clear acrylic platforms. I tilted my head back just in time to meet her dimpled, thonged ass—fully exposed and freshly burned by a tanning bed. She spun around, revealing a bikini top that barely covered her oversize implants. I wondered how her tiny frame was managing to hold them up.
“She’s your type,” I said to Frank.
“Nah,” he said, then, reconsidering, “I mean, yeah, but I only wanna borrow it. I wouldn’t wanna own it.”
The next four rounds were the same as the first. Curtis was more animated and lower to the ground, able to connect more jabs. Marcos just took it, barely fighting back. He seemed bored, like he was just biding his time until he could kick back and enjoy his $500 or whatever he was earning for the night’s charade.
I was staring at a random fight fan with an eye patch, finally settling into boredom, when the crowd becam
e excited. To everyone’s surprise, Marcos suddenly came alive. He started pounding into Curtis, who looked just as shocked as everyone else. Barely mustering a defense, Curtis moved into a corner. It was all he could do to deflect the punches. It was as if Marcos, ten years his senior, had had enough of being a literal punching bag. My pulse raced in recognition. I knew that feeling.
Curtis cowered, but Marcos kept connecting the blows. The crowd went crazy, booing and hissing, screaming for Curtis to lay into him, hit back, defend himself.
And then it happened. Already much lower and from a crouched position, Curtis jabbed directly into what was right in front of him: Marcos’s groin. Marcos screamed—a most horrifying scream—and fell to the ground.
The crowd went completely silent. Even the referee was stunned. We all just stared at Marcos as he wailed in agony.
“Why isn’t anyone helping him?” I asked Frank, my eyes filling with tears.
“No one’s allowed to. Even though it was a low blow, he has to get up on his own or the fight’ll be called.” He leaned forward with his elbows on the table and rested his furrowed forehead on his palms.
The referee announced, “Low blow. One point deducted for Curtis Stevens. Marcos Primera will have a five-minute recovery.”
Marcos had the clear, singular pain of a direct hit to his inguinal canal. I imagined blood filling his abdomen, bowels leaking into a space underneath his skin but outside his belly. Pushing up with his forearms, he wailed again and slowly crawled across the ring, all bent fingers and flaccid legs. Everyone watched in silence. His pain was so visceral it reminded me of the pancreatic cancer patients on the general surgery ward at Montefiore Hospital. Their screaming usually peaked around 2:00 a.m., when the nurses went on break and forgot to hang the morphine.
When he got to my corner, he pulled himself up by the ropes to a standing position. The crowd started to bristle, and a low hum of discussion and confusion ensued.
Dr. Roy walked over to evaluate the situation.
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