Consumed: A MMA Sports Romance (27 page)

“It’s difficult to do an
exam if you won’t look at or touch the patient, don’t you think?” she asks.

The doctor finally looks
up.

“Miss, I’m sorry, but for
now I’m going to have to ask you to climb down from the bed—at least until we
know what we’re looking at here,” the doctor says.

I tell Ash she’s fine,
but she gets up anyway.

The doctor gives me a
quick once over, shining his light into my eyes and asking me who’s president
and he leaves the room without voicing what he’d found.

“What do you think that
means?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” she says.
“It could be a sign that something serious is going on, or he might just be
acting like he’s so much better than everyone else that he doesn’t have to do
his job and tell a patient what’s going on.”

That altercation in the
ER waiting room really seems to have sparked some fury for Ash. I try to
lighten the mood, asking, “Is it true that doctors and nurses really don’t get
along or do they just play that up for television?”

“Screw it,” Ash says and
gets back in bed with me, giving my ribcage a good squeeze when she gets
comfortable.

“Easy there,” I tell her.
“I’m going to be pretty tender for a few days.”

“Right,” she says,
pulling away. “I’m sorry. I forgot he got you there.”

I smile and tell her,
“It’s all right. I don’t think he broke anything,” though since Ash put
pressure on those ribs, I’m not entirely sure I’m right about that last bit.

“You know when I knew?”
she asks.

“When you knew what?” I
respond.

She looks up at me and
then away, not answering my question. “It was that day at the lake,” she says.
“You saved me that day.”

“I’m sure you would’ve
let go of the boat when it started to pull you under,” I tell her.

“It already was,” she
says. “You’re right, though. I’m sure I would have let it go. I’m not going to
let myself drown just to save some stupid boat, but that’s not what I’m talking
about. That was just incidental.”

“What do you mean, then?”
I ask.

She shakes her head a
little. “I don’t know. It’s hard to describe. It’s just,” she hesitates, “when
we were out there, chasing after the boat, I knew there wasn’t going to be
anything we could do about it. I mean, we were in the water: It’s not like we
had something solid under us for leverage. Still, though, once my hands touched
the rim of that boat, I didn’t want to let go. Everything but that boat felt so
utterly hostile,” she says. “That sinking rowboat felt like the only solid
thing I had to cling to, but it wasn’t.”

“What made you decide to take
me seriously?” I ask.

She sighs. “Are you ever
going to get tired of that question?”

“I’m glad you did,” I
tell her. “I guess it still doesn’t make sense to me, given the way I looked when
we met.”

“There was something in
the way you carried yourself, something in the way you spoke,” she says. “You
were confident, but it wasn’t just a show. I mean, it
was
a show, but it wasn’t
just
a show. I have never felt that.”

“You’re kidding,” I tell
her. “You’re probably the most impressive person I know. You know,” I jest,
“myself excluded.”

She gives my ribcage
another quick squeeze as punishment for the joke, but I’m wheezing laughter as
I say, “Ow, ow, ow.”

“In the world I grew up
in, real confidence is one of those things you just never find,” she tells me.
“In my parents’ circle, you’re either acting confident because you’re trying to
cover how incredibly insecure you are or you’re more than a little deluded. You
didn’t start getting delusional until I told you I liked you, and by then it
was too late.”

I snicker a little and
kiss her forehead.

“Can I go back to what I
was saying now, or are you going to further undermine the very confidence that
tricked me into liking you in the first place?” she asks.

“Fine,” I laugh. “Go
ahead.”

She rests her head on my
shoulder again. “The heavier that boat felt in my hands,” she says, “the
tighter I held onto it and the harder I tried to lift it to the surface, even
after you first told me to let it go. I can’t tell you how much I hated you for
saying that.”

“You hated me?” I ask.

“…for saying that,” she
says, finishing the thought. “I hated you because you were telling me what I
knew very well to be the logical thing, but I had no intention of letting that
thing go. Like I said, I’m sure that would have changed if I held onto it even
five or ten seconds longer on my own, but it was what you said after that.
That’s when I knew,” she says.

I want to see if she’ll
finally explain what it is that she knew, as that’s not the sort of thing I
guess about anymore, but a new person in scrubs comes into the room.

“Miss, I’m sorry, but—”
he starts.

“Yeah, yeah,” Ash says,
getting up from the bed a second time.

“Thank you,” the man
says. At least he’s more polite this time around. “I’m Jack, your radiology
technologist,” he says. “We’re going to get you in for a quick MRI to make sure
everything looks good and then we should be able to get you out of here.”

He and a couple of nurses
release the brakes on the wheels of my bed and they cart me out of the room,
with Ash in tow, and down the hall.

Despite the flood of
people in the ER, I get right in for the MRI and I’m back in my room before too
long. The technician says the doctor will be in shortly and so we wait.

“I didn’t hate you in the
objective sense,” Ash says. “It was more a situational thing.”

“What?” I ask.

“We got interrupted
before,” she says. “I’m just telling you that I didn’t hate you for anything
apart from the fact that you were telling me to let go of something I didn’t
feel like I could. It was weird. It almost felt like some kind of accusation.”

“Accusation?” I ask.

“Are you sure you’re
feeling all right?” she asks, putting the back of her hand against my forehead.

“You don’t have to take
my temperature every time you’re speaking above me,” I tell her, snickering as
I pat her on the back, my arm around her. “I just don’t know what you meant by
accusation there.”

“Oh,” she says. “I don’t
know. I guess it was more like the feeling of being caught doing something you
know you shouldn’t be doing. What I was doing was silly and I was mad at you
because you called me on it.”

There’s a knock on the
doorjamb and my doctor comes in a moment later.

He sighs. “Miss—” he
starts.

Ash dutifully gets up
from my bed and sits in one of the chairs next to it.

“Your scans look good,”
the doctor says. “There’s a little swelling on the side of your head, but it
looks like your brain’s all right. Let me get your discharge papers and you can
get out of here, but I’d take it easy for at least a couple of days. When’s
your next fight?” he asks.

“Two weeks,” I answer.

“Two weeks?” he asks,
laughing through his nose. “No, really, how long until you’re supposed to back
in the ring?”

“Two weeks,” I answer
again.

“No,” the doctor says.
“Two weeks is ludicrous. I think it’d be best if you cancel your next fight.
Just give yourself a month to let your body fully recover before you try to put
it through that kind of strain again.”

“Thank you for your
opinion,” I tell the doctor. Judging by the way he’s shaking his head, it looks
like he gets what I’m trying to tell him.

“I
strongly
advise against it,” the doctor says, “but hey, if you want
to go out there and get your head knocked off, that’s your business.”

With that, he unceremoniously
exits the room, closing, for the first time, the sliding door on his way out.

As soon as he’s out of
the room, I’m turned toward Ash, who’s already climbing back into the hospital
bed with me telling her, “I’m going to do it—the fight. I’m too close to give
it up now.”

This can’t be what she
wants to hear, but I’m not going to lie to her. If this is something she’s not
going to be able to handle, she deserves the opportunity to walk away.

“I know,” she says,
smiling. “I couldn’t stop you if I tried.”

Okay, I wasn’t expecting
that.

“Really?” I ask. “You’re
okay with it?”

“It’s part of who you
are,” she says. “The last few months have been both the worst and the best of
my life. I’m not going to lie and tell you that I’m thrilled you’re going to do
the fight, but I think I can finally understand why you are. I don’t know if
you’ve figured it out yet or not, but what I realized that day at the lake is
that, for better or for worse, I love you. If you need to do the fight, I’ll be
there. I will go where you go.”

She cuddles up next to me
and she doesn’t get up when the doctor comes back into the room with my
discharge papers.

Chapter Twenty-Two

 
Two Weeks

Ash

“Don’t get up!” I command
before Mason’s actually awake.

He opens his eyes to find
my smiling face a few inches from his.

“Good morning,” I say.
“How’d you sleep?”

“I thought I
was
sleeping,” he tells me, rolling over
and closing his eyes again.

“Nope,” I tell him. “You
said you wanted to get up at ten.”

He forces one eye open to
look at the radio alarm clock next to his bed. The clock reads eight-thirty.

“You’re early,” he says.

“I was excited,” I answer.
“Stay in bed.”

Without another word, I get
up and leave the room. Today’s the day, and I want to make sure he has a good
start to his day.

After his last fight,
I’ve started going to the gym with Mason. I told him that I wanted to work on
cardio, but he didn’t buy it. I was there to keep an eye on him and make sure I
wasn’t making a huge mistake giving him my blessing to fight.

I meant what I told him
in the hospital, but if there were any signs he wasn’t in the condition to go
through with it, I would have said something. Fortunately for both of us,
though, he’s strong.

When I woke up this
morning, I wanted to let him sleep, but I couldn’t contain my enthusiasm. I
tried to channel it into something useful by cooking up a nice breakfast for
two, but it’s already done and I don’t want it to get cold.

I plate Mason’s breakfast
consisting of three eggs, one scrambled, one hardboiled and one fried just the
way he likes them, a stack of pancakes, and six strips of bacon. I take it in
to him, carrying a glass of orange juice in the other hand.

His groan in response to
the sound of me coming back into the room turns into a grin when he turns over
and sees what I have for him.

“You are the best, you
know that?” he asks.

“I do, actually,” I tell
him. “Thank you.”

He sits up and takes the
plate, and I set his orange juice on a coaster on his nightstand before going
back to the kitchen to retrieve my own food.

After this, there’s
nothing between him and the fight except a very long drive.

*
                   
*
    
               
*

I never realized how many
abandoned buildings there are in a given city until I met Mason.

Right now, we’re walking
into an old high school gymnasium, surrounded by a slew of other forgotten,
empty buildings.

Logan spots us and comes
over to offer his advice and encouragement, although his words are heavy on the
former and light on the latter. After that, person after person comes over,
each one of them with some kind of inside scoop into Mason’s opponent, though
nobody seems to know who he is.

This time, there’s not
going to be any waiting. Everyone who’s here is here for this fight, Mason’s
fight.

The way it was explained
to me, all of the championship bouts in the tournament are going to happen more
or less at the same time, each in a different location to cut down on the risk
of discovery. Personally, I couldn’t possibly care less about the other fights
going on around the state of Wisconsin tonight, but Mason seemed pretty happy
about being able to find out who takes what.

I squeeze Mason’s hand
and he turns to me, saying, “Yeah?”

“How are you feeling?” I
ask.

“I’m good,” he says.

“Good,” I tell him. “Do
you need anything before—”

“Ladies—okay, there
aren’t too many ladies here tonight—Gentlemen!” a man’s voice calls from toward
the middle of the gym. “Tonight, we have the Wisconsin State Underground
Make-up-a-Name-for-It-Because-Nobody-Else-Did tournament!”

Not the most inspiring
introduction to the evening.

“Do you need anything?” I
ask Mason, having been so rudely interrupted so the guy in the center could
hear himself talk.

“Kiss for good luck?” he
asks.

I give him a peck on the
cheek and one on the lips just to make sure I’ve got the bases of superstition
and girlfriend duties fully covered.

“Tonight, we have the
best of the best: two lightweight monsters of MMA. Let me hear it!” the man in
the center shouts and the crowd of what I’m estimating to be about three
hundred people erupts into ear-splitting applause.

“That’s my cue,” Mason
says directly into my ear, but he doesn’t let go of my hand as he starts toward
the front.

“Can we have the fighters
to the ring, please?” the loudmouthed announcer calls.

When we get to the
innermost edge of the circle, Mason stops, turns and kisses me deeply on the
lips. When he pulls away, I try to think of something profound to say, but only
manage, “Have fun,” before he’s releasing my hand and walking into the ring.

From where I’m standing,
I can just hear the announcer asking Mason who he is. Mason answers and the
announcer yells, “Mason Ellis! Do we have Ben Jones? Ben Jones get to the ring
if you haven’t already pissed yourself looking at this guy!”

Okay, the announcer’s got
one of the more annoying voices I’ve heard in my life, but damn it, now I kind
of like him. I’m feeling really great about Mason’s chances right up until the
moment I spot his competitor.

The man’s standing at the
edge of the mob, and though he’s not making a move toward the ring, it’s easy
enough to know he’s the guy for the fact that he’s the only one staring Mason
down from the crowd.

He’s not moving. From
where I’m standing, I can’t even tell if the guy’s breathing, but I know he
hasn’t blinked since I caught sight of him.

The man, the announcer
called him Ben Jones, takes two steps forward and the throng erupts again. The
announcer turns to the man. This time I can’t hear the announcer’s question,
but I do see the man nod.

“Ben Jones!” the
announcer declares. “Mostly gentleman and a few girlfriends who are going to be
looking for revenge later tonight: We! Have! A! Match!”

I have to plug my ears.

Mason is shifting his
weight from one leg to the other, working his neck side to side, and I can’t
see the front of him, but I can just feel that he’s ready.

A hand falls on my
shoulder and I turn to see Logan standing behind me. He looks at me, nods with
such seriousness I’m having a little trouble not snorting laughter about it, and
he turns toward the ring, removing his hand from my shoulder.

To this day, I don’t
think Logan and I have had a real conversation, though I’ve bumped into him
enough times over the last couple of months.

“If both fighters can
stay in it, we’ve got five rounds at three minutes per round for the
featherweight championship! Let’s do it!” the announcer says and then
disappears into the crowd.

A bald man with a
Footlocker uniform on steps forward and speaks to both Mason and his competitor,
though I don’t hear any of it.

After that, the two touch
gloves and the fight begins.

At first, they’re just
sizing each other up. Mason’s cut, but the other guy doesn’t seem to have a
single ounce of fat on him. What’s more, I still haven’t seen the man blink.

Mason starts circling and
his opponent throws a lazy punch. I’m not sure if he’s gauging his distance or
just trying to get things started, but Mason doesn’t flinch when the punch
comes within half an inch of his head.

The one thing I have
found to be interesting about these fights is the primitive psychology
involved. I’ll have to ask Mason, but it looks like the battle is just as much
mental, through feints and false openings, as it is physical.

Out of nowhere, Mason
lunges forward, his knee out, catching Jones in the abdomen. Mason’s right hand
comes down hard, but glances off Jones’s chin as the latter ducks back out of
the way.

Jones counters with a
sweeping kick that lands just above Mason’s knee with a loud smack. Mason turns
a little in the opposite direction, but recovers quickly, only he’s not quite
quick enough as Jones connects with a left and then a right into Mason’s face,
each blow landing with a sickening thwack.

Mason jumps back and even
deflects a third punch from Jones, but his eyes are whiter than normal as he
circles back around, throwing his own combination of punches. The two trade
fists for a few seconds, but an air horn blows.

Everyone stops and turns
toward the source of the sound, and while a surprising number of people are
calling the guy an idiot, that was, apparently, the “bell” to end the first
round.

Mason finds me in the
front of the crowd and comes over. The fight paramedic from Mason’s “pit”—such
a stupid name—Tom, pushes his way to the front.

He shines his flashlight
in Mason’s eyes, looking for signs of a concussion, but a few seconds later,
he’s patting Mason on the shoulder, saying, “Get ‘im.”

“How are you doing?” I
ask.

“He’s fast,” Mason says
through a thick rush of air. “I’ll start dodging one blow and the other one’s
already there waiting for me.”

“Control the pace,” Logan
tells Mason. “Don’t let this guy make you run when you’d rather walk. See if
you can sneak in a good casting punch or eight when he’s coming off and see if
you can Fedor his ass out in round two.”

I consider myself an
intelligent woman, but when Logan speaks, I have no idea what he’s saying.

The referee calls to
Mason and then to his opponent and the air horn blows to signal the start of
the second round. The man standing next to the announcer has already had enough
of the device, and he takes it from the announcer’s hand, tossing it with a
big, arcing throw over the crowd.

If there was going to be
laughter, it’s short-circuited as Jones crosses the distance between himself
and Mason in what seems like no time at all and begins to unleash punch after
punch after kick after elbow.

Mason’s doing a fair job
defending himself, but Jones just keeps coming.

“Fedor!” Logan shouts
behind me. “Cast his ass into a cast!”

Again: no clue.

Mason throws a right,
seemingly with his entire body going into the blow, and the back of his fist
curls around to hit straight into Jones’s face, knocking the latter’s head back
so fast he’s got to have whiplash. As soon as his head comes back into
position, though, Jones counters before Mason’s second full-body punch can
land.

My heart is pounding and
for the first time in my life, I know what bloodlust feels like as I’m
shouting, “Knock him out!” I’m shouting, “Take him down!”

Although the people
around me are shouting much more explicit things, a few of them turn toward me,
mouthing what looks like “holy shin” before forgetting there was ever anything
but the fight.

I can feel the hot blood
in my face, and I’m cheering Mason onward, only he’s not doing so well.

Mason is so quick to my
eye that it barely computes how Jones is able to counter so quickly, landing
three punches for every two of Mason’s. It looks like Mason’s punches move
Jones further than the inverse, but Jones is getting more of his through.

At one point, Mason pulls
Jones into a grapple, trying unsuccessfully to wrench his deceptively small
opponent off his feet.

“End of round!” the
announcer calls out, having not found his air horn in the space of the round.

It’s not clear whether
Mason and Jones don’t hear the announcer or they don’t care, because both of
them continue throwing blows until the ref separates them.

Mason comes back over,
looking a lot like he did the night we met. “You know,” I tell him, “the whole
bloodied look was a lot more attractive before I knew anything about MMA.”

He covers his mouth and
nose with his hands as he laughs, and I try to pretend like I don’t know why.

“He’s out-striking you,
man!” Logan shouts so close to my ear I nearly slap him on instinct. “What are
you doing out there?”

“I’m tired,” Mason says.
“Two weeks ain’t enough for a match like this, man.”

“Suck it up!” Logan says.
“He’s had exactly as much time as you, now get out there and start controlling
the pace or we’re going to be hauling you out of here in three separate bags!”

“Could you maybe be a little
less graphic with the visuals?” I ask, but I’m glad enough when Logan doesn’t
respond or even acknowledge the words.

“Everyone’s got a
weakness, but you’re giving up too much time letting him exploit yours, man.
Pick a spot and start wearing him down!” Logan says.

The gloved ref calls
Mason’s name and a few seconds later, we’re into round three.

Mason’s hanging back a
little more than before, but he’s still quick to strike when there’s an
opening. Jones is just dodging and guarding. He’s watching for something,
though I don’t know what it is until it happens.