LEN BIAS: CROSSOVER
A novel
By: Michael D. McClellan | September 19, 2010
I think about Sugar Ray Leonard. He's my father's favorite boxer, handsome, charismatic, the heart of a champion. D.C.'s glamour boy. We watched him win Olympic gold together, glued to the TV, fists flying in the air against imaginary opponents while Leonard outclassed everyone he faced on his way to the podium. We sat on the same couch and watched him win his first world title, knocking out Wilfred Benitez in the fifteenth round at Caesar's Palace. My father jumped into the air the instant Benitez went down, and then ran into the street celebrating and throwing punches when the referee stopped the match a few seconds later. We were there in person when Leonard made his first title defense, knocking out Davy "Boy" Green in the fourth round in Landover. The tickets had been an early birthday gift from his brother Tim, who had gone to the match with us and insisted that Leonard would never measure up to the original Sugar Ray. The argument raged all the way there, and at one point I thought my father would pull the car over and brawl with Tim on the freeway.
Still, I'd never seen my father more angry than during Leonard's first match against Roberto Duran. The Brawl in Montreal. Duran had come out seething, taking away Sugar's speed advantage by mocking him and goading him into slugging it out on the ropes. Duran won by split-decision. My father cursed the TV, threw a stool across the room, headed for the car and drove around town for hours. Five months later it was a different story - Duran came into the rematch fat and slow, and it was Leonard's turn to do the mocking. He danced. He pranced. He dropped his hands. He exaggerated winding up his right hand and snapped off a left jab that caught Duran flush on the face. By the eighth round Duran had had enough, turning his back on Leonard and muttering "no mas" to the referee. My father wrapped both arms around me, squeezing until I felt ready to pop. Ray's our boy, Frosty! Sugar Ray Leonard, welterweight champion of the world!
"Dilantin's in."
"Can you have the ventric set up and a cut-down set?"
"The ventric is already set up, doctor."
I hear the beeping again, somewhere close by. My thoughts of the incomparable Sugar Ray Leonard begin to break apart, becoming jumbled to the point of not making sense at all. White noise. The haze reaches out and pulls me back, pulling me farther away from the pain but also farther away from everything else. Everything I've been working so hard to reach.
~ ~ ~
"Hi, it's me, Emily."
The words drift over me, and I can immediately sense the warmth in the stranger's voice. I can also feel her hand in mine. She squeezes gently, relaxes, squeezes again. She's sitting beside me, smiling. She's holding a sheet of copy paper up for me to see. The date - June 19 - has been written neatly on it with a black magic marker. It takes up the whole page. She holds it there, in front of me, for what seems like days.
"It's me," she repeats. "Emily. Emily Schuler. Today is June 19th."
Emily who? The name doesn't register. She's an attractive woman, older than me, maybe mid-thirties. Brunette. Pretty in a plain, country sort of way. What is she doing her with me? Where is here? I look around - there's an IV pole beside the bed opposite of her, and the pole is surrounded by a cluster of medical machines. Tubes and lines run everywhere. There's a TV mounted on the wall, and beside it a large round clock. It reads 2:43.
"It's me, Emily Schuler. Today is June 19th."
Why is she repeating herself? I start to ask her this, but I can't make a sound no matter how hard I try. The words won't move from my brain to my mouth.
"Today is June 19th."
She stands up, walks over to the wall with the TV and tapes the copy paper beside it. June 19th. I read it and she repeats it yet again. I'm in a hospital room, in a hospital bed, hooked up to who knows what, and then it hits me and all comes flooding back. The cocaine. My heart. The seizures. I'd overdosed on all that cocaine and collapsed on my dorm room bed, and Trib had dialed 911. That's the last thing I remember. The ambulance ride to Leland Memorial Hospital is a complete blank, as is everything that has happened to me until now. Wait, that's not exactly right - I remember dreaming about a floating hunk of earth, and on it the woman with the red hair and magic powers. The dream seemed so real. It had been vivid and intense, and it had scared me to the core of my being.
"The doctors say that you're really making progress. Your pressures are way down - and that's a good thing. That's all they've talked about since you've been here."
A nurse walks in, making small talk with Emily while working on me and writing things onto a legal-sized tablet. She introduces herself to me as Jennifer. She points to the wall and tells me that today is June 19th. June 19th! She inspects the IV pole, punching buttons on the small box to stop it from beeping. Time for another bag of nutrients. She points something into my ear and pulls the trigger. It beeps, and she writes down my temperature. She checks my blood pressure. She checks the tubes taped to my arms. She writes some more. I'm unable to speak, unable to move, a helpless participant who can only move his eyes and nothing more.
"Have you been keeping up with your journal?" the nurse asks.
"Yes," Emily replies. "Every day."
"Good. That's going to be helpful for you both."
The door opens, and a tall, slender man strolls in. White coat over his suit jacket. Stethoscope around his neck. He's wearing wire-rimmed glasses and looks as if he doesn't have a care in the world.
"Hi, how's he doing?"
"Okay," the nurse replies. "Vitals are all in acceptable ranges. He's at eight on the Glasgow, up two from Dr. Ghajar's previous assessment."
"So, has he moved spontaneously at all?"
"He pulls away from painful stimulus, but there's still no localizing response to pain."
