Tooth and Nail by Linda D. Dahl

Author:Linda D. Dahl [Dahl, Linda D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
Published: 2018-05-11T20:02:20+00:00

8

Every breed of doctor has a national organization. My own specialty has the American Academy of Otolaryngology, whose yearly meetings alternate between the East and West Coasts and draw in many of the country’s over 9,000 practicing ENTs. I shouldn’t have been surprised to learn that fight doctors have their own group: the American Association of Professional Ringside Physicians, or AAPRP for short. They also have an annual meeting. When I had first heard about it, I laughed. Not only because I confused it with the similar sounding association for retired persons, the AARP. I also couldn’t see how the unofficial, hands-on New York style of fight doctoring could translate into a lecture format. For all I knew, we would be trapped in an over-air-conditioned conference room for two days, talking about boxing stats and trading Outback Steakhouse coupons.

The conference was held in Las Vegas, the boxing epicenter of the country. I had been there only once, a few years prior, when my conservative older sister had invited me. After perusing indoor shopping malls and sunning by the pool, she had insisted we retire to our prospective beds by 8:00 p.m. The very sins she wanted to avoid were the only reasons anyone visited the city in the first place. More than a small part of me hoped this trip would make up for my last train wreck.

The conference room the AAPRP had reserved at the Luxor Hotel was tiny, with only five or six round tables, a small projection screen and no refreshments. Taking a chair next to Dr. Gonzalez, I berated myself for not stopping at the Starbucks kiosk on the way in. Even with coffee, staying awake would present a challenge. I counted a total of twenty people at the tables. The only other woman was the conference assistant, who was checking everyone in.

“Did you get any rest on the plane?” Dr. Landau asked, joining us at the table. He was in his mid- to late-fifties, with chin-length gray hair that he tucked behind his ears and a drawn-out New York accent.

“I always sleep on planes. It’s a gift, really,” I said. Sleep was one thing that never escaped me, but it wasn’t always a gift. I remembered a middle-of-the-night laparoscopic bowel case in residency when I had fallen asleep. It wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t been standing up, holding the camera. But even the bumpy ride the surgeons endured from my narcoleptic bobs hadn’t been enough to excuse me from the case.

“That schmuck from Ohio’s here. Who the hell boxes in Ohio?” Dr. Landau asked, looking around the room at the empty tables. I had no idea who he was referring to.

“Don’t they box in all the states?” I asked. I assumed that this national organization represented the whole country. It hadn’t occurred to me that some states didn’t have boxing. Places like North Dakota could have used it. There was plenty of time to train, especially when wheat surpluses meant farmers were paid by the government not to farm.

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