Tooth and Nail

by Linda D. Dahl

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that these three guy—Mosley, Hopkins and De La Hoya—are their own promoters. In other words, they’ve taken the bull by its balls,” he said, cupping a proverbial pair in his right hand.

  That was genius. Instead of languishing at the mercy of promoters, these guys took control of their own careers by becoming promoters themselves. They negotiated their salaries for each fight and made money off ticket sales.

  “It’s a win–win situation. Win or lose, Mosley’s making two million tonight. And that’s just for fighting,” he continued.

  I was impressed. No one could take advantage of them. And, when they were done fighting, unlike Cooney’s charity cases, they still had a career. “I have to meet Oscar,” I said.

  “Then we better head over there now, before the fight starts.”

  Tom led me past an enormous security guard to where Bernard was seated. I leaned over the barriers that separated the commission seating from the crowd. “Hi, Bernard. Do you remember me?”

  “Dr. Dahl, right? Nice to see you.” He stood to shake my hand. He was dressed in a dark tailored suit, his tie tucked neatly inside the jacket. I couldn’t believe he remembered my name but, because he did, Oscar looked up to see who I was.

  “Hi, great to see you, too. It should be a good fight,” I said, using empty words to fill the space. I paused, glancing over at Oscar, trying to think of something to say.

  “Nice to meet you,” De La Hoya said, shaking my hand and saving me from an awkward self-introduction. His hand was warm and strong. Up close, his skin was luminous and, like his aquiline nose, untarnished despite countless beatings. Even without his original music playing in the background, I could see why throngs of women would want to throw themselves at him. He had a magnetism that transcended the television screen. He was a champion.

  “We have to go, Linda,” Tom said, pulling me away before I could muster up anything meaningful. “The fight’s about to start.”

  * * *

  “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to big-time boxing. This is Madison Square Garden, New York City, USA, where tonight, Oscar De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions and Bob Aram’s Top Rank Boxing are proud to present the Main Event of the evening. Twelve rounds of boxing for the WBA Welterweight Championship of the World... And now, for the thousands in attendance, and the millions watching around the world, ladies and gentlemen...”

  The bells clanged, and the fight started, with both fighters going at one another. They pounded gloves into chests, bobbing and weaving, ducking and jabbing. The crowd cheered in approval, cupping their mouths to amplify their screams. Cameras flashed. The chaos and noise blurred into the background. Suddenly it was just me. A moment of stillness. The Dom’s voice.

  You think you became a fight doctor to get away from your job, but you’re wrong, the voice said. You have it all backward.

  I didn’t know how to make sense of that.

  You think your life has been hard, and that I came in to save you, but you’re wrong about that, too. Why do you think every step of your journey was met with more challenges? The Bronx, the Upper East Side, boxing—even the loss of your job. Just when you get comfortable in one place, you move to another with a whole new set of challenges. Why do you think you made those choices?

  I had made those choices because my career had demanded it. I was just doing what I needed to do. It wasn’t my fault things weren’t always what I expected.

  I glanced over at De La Hoya, who was cheering, and I remembered a story I’d once read about him. Despite his successes, he had never really been accepted by his community. Born to immigrant parents, he had been raised in East LA and had grown up between two worlds. His parents pushed him to fight back against taunting when he was a kid. By age fifteen, he was already winning titles. When he was seventeen, his mother had died, but he had kept fighting, winning the gold medal at the Olympics in her honor two years later, and earning his nickname, the Golden Boy. This man had believed in himself. He had created opportunity.

  Life is hard, but you always take the harder path, the voice said. I came to you in the only way you would understand—through pain and suffering, beating and blood. You wouldn’t have listened any other way because that was the only language you knew how to speak. But now, you are me. And I am you.

  And there we were. The we that had become me. Hers was a tough love, but it was more real than anything I had ever known.

  There is no need to panic. I’m here to help you.

  She was right. For the first time in my life, I was free. If the job hadn’t ended, who knows how much longer I would have stayed? And if I had tried to leave, they would never have let me out of my contract without a lawsuit. I had spent so much time trying to twist myself into what I wasn’t that I had lost track of who I was. I had probably never even known. When had I stopped trusting in the unknown?

  I had heard a story once, about a man who went to God and asked him to make him strong. “I want to be strong,” he said. “I want to be the strongest I can be.”

  God said, “Okay, fine. You see that rock over there? Go push it.”

  The man said, “Okay.” So he pushed and pushed. He pushed for days, weeks, months. But the rock wouldn’t move. He was patient at first, waking up every morning to try different angles, different positions, different strategies. But it didn’t matter. For all his efforts, that rock stayed where it was. Eventually, his frustration got the better of him, and he got angry.

  He returned to God. “I’m doing what you said. I’m pushing that rock. I’m trying everything, every day, but it’s not moving!”

  “Just keep pushing,” God said. That was all he said.

  So the man went back. Some days, he pushed with hope, others with fury. The worst days he pushed with apathy, feeling like he was alone and nothing he did mattered. After years and years of this, he returned to God. If this rock wasn’t moving, he wanted to stop trying. He wanted out of this hell he had created for himself.

  “Remember what you asked me,” God said. “You asked me to make you strong. Look at yourself. Look at your body and your mind. Your muscles are bulging like that guy Atlas I created back in the day. He carried the sky around. Your determination is so unyielding you have the courage to keep coming back to me, whining about wanting to give up. But you haven’t. Not yet. You said you want to be strong. I am making you strong. I will move the rock when you are ready.”

  * * *

  When it was announced that Cotto was the winner by decision, all the important people rushed the stage. There were inspectors, cut men, managers, trainers, promoters. Oscar was even up there. There they were, Mosley and De La Hoya, hand-in-hand, arms raised to the sky, together right in front of me. Two men I didn’t even know, yet had made such an impact on my life. The Golden Boy team had lost the fight but, in my mind, they were still victorious.

  I was standing next to the ring as everyone exited. As Oscar passed by, we locked eyes. He smiled broadly and winked. In that moment of mutual recognition, Oscar gave me something more powerful than words of wisdom. He gave me faith. Faith that no matter what, I was a fighter, too.

  * * *

  A week later, I sat in my office at the end of a long workday. Patient charts were strewn across my desk next to my half-finished coffee. I looked out the window at the clothing store across the street and the people rushing home, jackets zipped up against the cold. I only had a handful of weeks left here. It had been my home, even if it had been only a temporary one.

  After considering my options for a new job, I had narrowed them down to two, but I was leery. My concern wasn’t over success or failure. I was worried I would end up in another situation that would make me unhappy. What was the point of all the hard work if I landed in another place I didn’t want to be?

  I had moved through my life by making goals. But getting to t
hem had been like driving down a mountain road at night. Looking up, I saw the universe in the night sky and its endless possibilities. Looking straight ahead I saw the twinkling lights of my destination. But what I didn’t know—what I couldn’t see—was the twisting, winding road it would take to get there.

  Near my phone, I noticed a sticky note pressed onto a folder. Medical accountant, it read, with a phone number underneath. A friend had given me the name a couple of weeks before. She explained that the first step in setting up my own practice was incorporating and getting a tax ID. “It’s simple paperwork,” she had said. “You don’t even need a lawyer.” At the time, the idea had filled me with as much excitement as dread. What had seemed so untenable then, now held a shred of possibility. But all I needed was a shred. If I never tried, I would never know.

  For three and a half years, boxing had been my escape from what I didn’t want. But I didn’t need to escape anymore. And I didn’t have to run away to find my power. I had taken this very long journey only to find that my destination had been in me all along. Now, it was time to begin.

  I picked up the receiver and dialed.

  Epilogue

  “There is a patient in room three, Dr. Dahl. He says he knows you from boxing. Did you used to be a boxer?” My medical assistant looked at me quizzically.

  “Ha ha, no. I’ve been many things, but a boxer is not one of them.” It had been so long since I had heard from anyone in the boxing world, I had to count the years backwards to be certain.

  “Dr. Dahl! Long time! How’ve you been?” Sitting in my exam chair, cleanly shaven and dressed, as usual, in the same lightweight sweater and button-up shirt, was Frank. He looked almost the same as he had five years ago.

  “Give me a hug!” I said, beckoning him to stand, my face landing in his chest. Out of context and years later, it still felt good to see him.

  “You’re shorter than I remember,” he said, pointing at my shoes, which were a little flatter than the stilettos I used to wear in my fight days. My look these days varied according to my mood. Today, I felt more bohemian than dominatrix.

  “This place is amazing. Is it just you here?”

  “Yes, it’s just me. Do you like it?”

  I relayed the story of how my office came to be. When I had first started the practice, a nearby hospital took over Dr. Marsh’s lease. They had been kind enough to let me rent part of the space, which had made it easier for my patients to find me when the phone number changed. After years of searching, I moved to my current location, in Midtown. Tired of the hospital aesthetic of sterile pastels and institutional prints, I had made my office warm and inviting—more living room than operating room.

  Reality had been more erratic, with fits and starts and the occasional roadblock. What I didn’t tell him was that I had borrowed hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay for start-up costs. And because it took so long to enroll in insurance plans, I had worked for the first six months without pay. My former bosses had told my patients I was no longer practicing because I didn’t follow them to the hospital, but the patients eventually found me. I had hired a manager to set up the business side of the practice but had let him go a year later when I saw how he was taking advantage of me. My new practice was the result of years of planning, saving and building. It was, as are most valuable things, wrought with drama. But the end result was worth it.

  “It’s really nice. I’m proud of you,” he said. “When you left the fights, it was so fast no one knew what had happened to you. We thought, with the Chairman leaving and all, it was something bad.” I had heard that the Chairman had been replaced shortly after I left. I didn’t know the details, but it seemed more political than anything.

  “No, nothing bad happened. I just got caught up in all of this,” I said, lifting my palms to the ceiling. “I do miss you guys. That was quite the experience.”

  “Would you ever come back? A lot of the guys left. Gonzalez and Williams are gone. Dr. Roy works a fight here and there, but there’re still no women. It’s not the same without you,” he lamented. He was still the same man he had always been—loyal, kind and loving. I was lucky to have had him in my corner.

  “Thanks, Frank, but that part of my life is over. I have a practice to run. I can’t be hanging out all night at the fights,” I joked. We continued talking, reminiscing about the old days. There was finally beauty in the past.

  As he was leaving, I suddenly remembered that Primera–Stevens fight. Frank had said if things got bad, I should go under the ring. But hiding under that makeshift platform, four feet off the ground, had never really been an option. Maybe that was what differentiated the fighters from everyone else. They didn’t avoid the pain. They didn’t hide or play it safe. To succeed, they had to be where it all happened—inside the ring, not below it. The beating they took, the beating they gave—that was everything. Because only by facing the pain could they move through it. And for some, for the very lucky ones, on the other side of that pain was life. A life they could define any way they chose.

  * * * * *

  Author’s Note

  As seen through my eyes, the past has the only perspective it can, and that is mine. I tried to be as close to my truth as possible without causing harm to others. As such, I changed the names of nearly everyone involved, except for the known boxers. I also rearranged the order and timing of some of the fights to fit the narrative of the story. The play, as quoted by the Chairman, was entirely made up by me, but carried the sentiments of his work. The patients I described share traits of several people and do not represent actual people. My parents are a product of their upbringing and environment. Although they were far from perfect, they did the best they could with what life handed them. And, at her request, I left out the existence of my daughter, who was born near the end of my residency.

  Also, keep in mind that I started my internship nearly twenty years ago. The Jacobi Hospital I described has long since been demolished and rebuilt. The last fight I worked as a ringside doctor was in 2008, and the commission now functions entirely differently. Most of the people I described in the book have since retired or gone on to other jobs. So this story could only exist when it did, which is in the past.

  Acknowledgments

  The story of how this book was born is a story unto itself.

  Had my daughter not left to visit Yellowstone on a cross-country trip with her father for the summer, I wouldn’t have sat at local bars in my vacuum of loneliness and made believe I was a writer. Were it not for Wendy Dale’s weekly writing lessons over Skype and endless cheerleading, I would have kept what I wrote between me and the barstool. And when I sent a few chapters to Jane Dystel, instead of encouraging me to find another hobby, she miraculously signed on as my agent. The impossible dream of publishing this book became real when an offer came from editor extraordinaire John Glynn at Hanover Square Press/HarperCollins, who took a huge risk on an unknown neophyte. The entire process happened in less than a year—a year I would have otherwise spent doing what I always did, which was/is doctoring. I wouldn’t have known the difference, but now that I do, I couldn’t be more grateful.

  There are so many more people to thank: Marie Carter for teaching me Intro to Memoir Writing in the Village a hundred years ago. My staff, Giovanna, Kalyn and Yvonne, for holding the office together while I worked through rewrites. Angela Johnson for her endless encouragement and direction. Diane Moore, for being an all-around awesome younger sister and listening with rapt attention to parts of my life she never knew. David Hess for reading through my entire second draft as I wrote it, offering poignant, sage advice. My daughter, Lucy, for listening to page after agonizing page of my learning process until my writing “no longer sucked.” Nansi Friedman, for connecting me with Jane and providing me with endless conversation. Liz Caplan for being a beacon of friendship and light. Charlie Alterman for single-handedly giving the world more joy than it of
ten deserves. My amazing patients who entrust me with their well-being day after day. And the entire theater community for the beauty they put into the world and for giving me a place to finally belong.

  ISBN-13: 9781488095337

  Tooth and Nail

  Copyright © 2018 by Linda Dahl

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