[ 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

Three years of medical education had taken its toll: formerly brown hair was now streaked with grey, furrows of concentration had replaced laugh lines, and uncallused hands had become as hard as granite. As I eyed my whip-lean opponent, her anger manifested by injected conjunctiva and flaring of both nares, I was concerned I'd committed a huge logical error. 
 
 Strapped for cash midway into my first year, I'd been approached by a professor at school who offered a way out of debt. `` It'll be easy,'' my physiology professor drawled. `` You already have the knowledge. You're just usin' it for a different reason...'' 
 Now, I was at the top of my game. Anatomy which I'd memorized in order to become a panacea was subverted to evaluate my opponents for weaknesses. As my wits grew keener, so did my eye for limping limbs, lazy eyes, and arthritic hands... all advantages which I leveraged effectively. 
 Professor S, who had become my promoter after that initial encounter my first year, had promised this fight would bring enough to carry me through fourth year and into residency... where I would finally be free of all of this. He'd warned that the battle would be momentous, the culmination of my medical knowledge and fighting prowess to that point. However, there was a catch... 
 `` She's undefeated, just like you. But there is something deeper to this fight.'' His otherwise smooth southern drawl halted, his thyroid cartilage bobbing as he swallowed, a clear indicator of the dry mouth that comes with activation of the fear-or-fight response in the amygdala. `` Her fight comes with a requirement; it must be a death-match.'' The angular face cocked sideways as he finished his last, sour word. `` You're good, kid. The best I've seen since the school opened, and I would n't bet my right kidney against you in any other fight.'' 
 `` But...'' I broke in flatly, not liking either his tone or the insinuation that followed it. 
 `` But she's a genius.'' He finished, his voice carrying not condescension but respect. `` So?'' I replied nonplussed. `` Med school has plenty of'geniuses,' but they lose just like the others.'' 
 `` Let me show you something,'' he said in a voice that carried a hint of consternation. As he brought out an aged newspaper, I recognized the headline: `` Famed physicist lost on the operating room table.'' As he spread the yellowed pages across the lectern between us, I glanced at the article. Apparently this guy had been a big deal, and his research had been cut short by a thoracic aortic aneurysm which ruptured as he was undergoing surgical repair at our hospital. 
 `` This girl is his daughter,'' Professor S declared solemnly, `` and she wants... no, she needs to exact some sort of recompense for her father.'' 
 
 The gong snapped me out of my reverie as I realized she'd already closed half the distance between us. Barely ducking under a sensibly-shoed foot roundhoused at my head, I shone my penlight into her right eye to dim her vision and temporarily deprive her of depth perception. Bilateral pupils constricting, she blinked furiously and closed her guard for a few precious moments. Standard physiology... when the sympathetic nervous system activates for a fight, pupils dilate in order to improve light capture. Too bad it makes you vulnerable to even small LEDs like the one my pen light boasted. 
 
 I analyzed her stance. Valgus knees, an opportunity to rupture her ACL there. No Heberden's or Bouchard's nodes to indicate any arthritis... damn, she's quick! With astounding agility, she leapt almost three feet forward and had aimed her knee directly at my abdomen. I caught a glancing blow to my right flank as I spun to avoid the full force of her assault. She smirked, `` Too bad you med students do n't bother to remember your Newtonian physics. Given that my body mass is fixed, I increased my acceleration by training plyometrics and giving me...'' 
 `` Yeah, yeah, more force with your blows.'' I grimaced. It was enough that I was being beaten by a student of physics; it was worse that she was mocking me with it.'' 
 We circled round. After noticing a swollen anterior cervical lymph node, I landed a stiff jab to her left upper abdominal quadrant. Ca n't forget about that splenomegaly when you're fighting even the smallest sore throat. Her riposte was a fierce backhand jab that extended into a backhand fist and into my ribs, moment of inertia be damned! She wielded a protractor like brass knuckles and threw the compass as I was ducking the protractor's razor sharp arc. The pencil affixed to the compass bit deeply into my left gastrocnemius... so much for quick movements. I finally connected with her right knee with a sweep of my leg and heard that sickening pop as her anterior cruciate ligament ruptured and her medial collateral ligament was likewise strained past its breaking point. 
 
 `` Stay down,'' I gasped, my ribs likely broken and my breath coming in short bursts. `` Like hell!'' she screamed as she flung dust into a breeze at her back, a breeze which brought the jagged particles of silicon dioxide into my unprotected cornea. I blinked instinctively, cranial nerve five sensing the foreign body and cranial nerve seven obediently firing the orbicularis occuli and shutting my eyes. As the dust abraded my sensitive corneal epithelium, I knew the fight was over. Even if I were to clear this dust, my lacrimal glands were already hyperexcited and producing more tears than I could reasonably blink away. She flipped me over onto my back, my thoracic vertebrae singing the song of their fragile people as they impacted the hard earth. She was leveraging my left arm out of its socket, the anterior inferior glenohumeral ligament rupturing with practiced ease. 
 Suddenly, I remembered that this was n't just a fight, this was my life! Epinephrine again flooded by battered and bloody corpus, igniting new life in my acid-ridden musculature. Picturing in my mind's eye her hands on my shoulder and wrist, I gathered the best proprioceptive information I had and swung with my remaining strength into where I pictured her to be. A dull thud greeted my punch... followed by a sudden cough and gasp. The iron hands released my now-useless left shoulder, and I scrabbled backward on the ground peering through bleary eyes at the figure before me. She stared at me in shock, hands clutching her sternum as to life, mouth agape in a look I'd come to know in terminal ICU patients. Commotio cordis, a blow struck just so on the chest wall has the possibility of literally shocking the heart into a fatal arrhythmia... She had fallen backward now, her gaze a mixture of shock, disgust, and fear. The background cheering which had been so loud before now fell as silent as death, the death being played out before them. Gone were the snickers and jeers of students, stopped suddenly by the death of one of their own. 
 
 As I trudged away from the scene, Professor S gingerly placed an arm across my shoulders. Searing pain from my dislocated left humerus bolted through my body, but I was numb. The money he tried to thrust into my slackened hand fell to the hard, cracked ground below. As I shambled from the scene, the sounds of second year medical students reciting the Hippocratic Oath echoed across the university grounds as they eagerly accepted their white coats: 
 
 `` Into whatsoever houses I enter, I will enter to help the sick. I will abstain from all intentional wrong-doing and harm, especially from abusing the bodies of man or woman...''
