[ WP ] You are a brilliant Med School student who uses extensive knowledge on the human body to win street fights for money to pay for tuition . One night you face your most difficult opponent : a Physics major

The improvised fighting pit was already slick, at least seven other fights wrapped up before Johan arrived. It was n't exactly a cheering crowd either, something happened here tonight that unnerved everyone, upset the gamblers, turned the bloodthirsty spectators introspective. 
 
 The concrete'ring' was being hosed off again. Hygienic. Johan worked his way through the crowd to his sponsor, who'd be putting up his bankroll for the evening. This would be his fifth fight in two weeks, even with his winning record, most of the players in this scene would n't touch a fighter with a deathwish. Johan was solid though, running a tight prefight cocktail of buprenorphine, tramadol, dextro, and levorphanol. His pupils must have been pretty dilated, because his sponsor took one look at him and whistled. 
 
 `` Tell you what, kid, you could probably be making a hell of a lot more money if you just sold that shit you take instead of getting your face pounded in twice a week. ``, Jedi, ostensibly short for Jedidiah, had said this before. He was n't just busting balls, Johan was pretty sure that Jedi was a pure opportunist, if he did n't want to resell the pharms himself, then he wanted the secret to Johan's cocktail for his other fighters. Of course it was n't just the one cocktail, the cycles of deca, winstrol, and HCG in the preceding months had primed him for this mad run at the fight circuit. 
 
 `` Two more and I'm done, Jedi'', Johan stripped off his hoodie and jeans and began his stretches. 
 
 `` You win this one, and I'll back your next one. Careful Jo, they got a real madman in there tonight. Took out three guys so far and no sign of slowing down. Crowd is fucked.'' 
 
 `` I'll win.'' Johan was in as good condition as could be expected considering the beatings he'd been taking for two weeks; his prefight meal was intravenus, his blood pressure was perfect, and just to be sure he'd been sleeping with a higher than normal oxygen balance. 
 
 `` I'm serious Jo, dude's the real deal, no one does two in one night, let alone three, and he's still going.'' 
 
 A couple of meatbag security types finished pushing the excess water into the drains and now used the bloody brooms to encourage the crowd to respect the circle. It was time. 
 
 `` Good, he'll be tired. ``, Johan dismissed the rest of whatever Jedi was saying, had to get his thoughts in order, push out the darkness. 
 
 Jedi helped him get his hand wraps on, but there would n't be any gloves tonight; not here. Jedi was right, the purse from this fight would be pretty small, compared to the street value of the drugs he'd been burning through, along with the opportunity cost of all the time he'd spent training; but Johan was n't a doctor anymore, he did n't have a reliable source of income or even an idea of what he was going to do with the rest of his life. The severance from the hospital was enough to fund this little adventure, and the guilt he was carrying made it pretty hard to think about anything except the next fight. 
 
 Johan pushed all the intrusive thoughts out of his head, clearing his mind like how he would if he were about to operate. What was once a tool to help him save lives would now facilitate inflicting harm, and the irony was n't lost on him. He chuckled just before going blank. The drugs made it easy, the dextro made him hyper aware. He could hear the water trickling down the drains, make out the details of drunken conversations in the crowd, he could see the movement of every shadow beneath the gently swinging industrial lights overhead. He stepped into the circle. 
 
 There were scattered jeers and some laughter from the crowd; at 5'9 and 160 lbs, the short shorn hair just emphasized his premature male pattern baldness, he was probably the least intimidating fighter to step into the ring. And his hands, wrapped in tape looked even more delicate than they were, the hands of a pianist, a surgeon. Bright purple and dark brown bruises covered his otherwise unblemished skin, under the harsh white light it looked even worse, here was clearly a man unaccustomed to beatings. 
 
 The pit boss was making his introductions, talking up the fighters to stir the action, money changed hands in the crowd. Johan could n't pay attention to any of that, he had to stay focused on the visceral reality, the sounds, the movements. Two more fights and he'd be invited to the real matches, the money matches, the ones where only one fighter left the ring. 
 
 When the boss stopped talking, Johan looked up at his opponent, and shock hit him like a bucket of cold water. At the hearing, during the malpractice suit, this man was in the gallery. During the settlement, the pure hatred on this mans face was the image that haunted his nightmares. At his second fight, this man was in the crowd. Now he was standing in the ring, the same look on his face. In the months of self-inflicted torture before he'd discovered the fights, he obsessed about every detail. He knew exactly who was standing in front of him. 
 
 This was the man who's wife Johan had killed in the operating room. By all accounts this man, Alex Winton, was a genius, a polymath, an accomplished physicist, musician, and olympic athlete. Nearly every accomplishment, as Johan discovered while he obsessed over his own disastrous failure, dwarfed his own considerable professional and academic success. In that moment, the locked gaze, Johan realized what it was that made Alex so much more successful, it was obsession, for a man who'd been in the grip of it for months, he could recognize it in someone else instantly. No need to win anymore matches, this one would be to the death. 
 

