Love You More (Tessa Leoni, #1)(21)

But those injuries were nothing personal. Just the kind of collateral damage that happens when you and your opponent both want the ball. After the game, you shook hands, slapped each other on the butt, and meant it.

First time I really had to fight was at the Academy. I knew I would receive rigorous training in hand-to-hand combat and I was looking forward to it. A lone female living in Boston? Hand-to-hand combat was an excellent idea, whether I made it as a trooper or not.

For two weeks, we practiced drills. Basic defensive stances for protecting our face, our kidneys, and, of course, our sidearms. Never forget your weapon, we were lectured again and again. Most cops who lose their gun are then shot and killed with that gun. First line of defense, subdue the offending party before ever getting within arm’s length. But in the event things go sour and you find yourself in a personal combat situation, protect your weapon, and strike hard first chance you get.

Turned out, I didn’t know how to deliver a punch. Sounded easy enough. But I fisted my hand wrong, had a tendency to overuse my arm, versus throwing my whole body behind the blow by rotating at the waist. So there were a couple more weeks, teaching all of us, even the big guys, how to pack a punch.

Six weeks into it, the instructors decided we’d had enough drills. Time to practice what they’d preached.

They divvied us up into two teams. We all donned protective padding and, to start, were armed with padded bars the instructors affectionately referred to as pogo sticks. Then, they turned us loose.

Don’t believe for a second I got to fight another woman of my approximate size and weight. That would be too easy. As a female officer, I was expected to handle anything and anyone. So the trainers made their picks deliberately random. I ended up across from another recruit, named Chuck, who was six one, two hundred and forty pounds, and a former football player.

He didn’t even try to hit me. He just ran straight at me and knocked me flat on my ass. I went down like a ton of bricks, remembering once more that line drive to my chest as I struggled to regain my breath.

The instructor blew his whistle. Chuck offered me a hand up, and we tried again.

This time, I was aware of my fellow recruits watching. I registered my instructor’s scowl at my disappointing performance. I fixated on the fact this was supposed to be my new life. If I couldn’t defend myself, if I couldn’t do this, I couldn’t become a trooper. Then what would I do? How would I earn enough money for Sophie and me to live? How would I provide for my daughter? What would happen to us?

Chuck rushed. This time, I stepped to the side and slammed my pogo stick into his gut. I had approximately half a second to feel good about myself. Then two hundred and forty pounds of Chuck straightened, laughed, and came back at me.

It got ugly after that. To this day, I don’t recall it all. I remember starting to feel genuinely panicked. That I was blocking and moving, and putting my shoulder behind the blow, and still Chuck kept coming and Chuck kept coming. Two hundred and forty pounds of linebacker against my one hundred and twenty pounds of desperate new motherhood.

The padded end of his pogo stick connecting with my face. My head snapped back as my nose absorbed the blow. I staggered, eyes flooding with instant tears, off balance, half-blinded, wanting to fall, but realizing frantically that I couldn’t go down. He’d kill me. That’s how it felt. Couldn’t go down or I’d be dead.

Then, at the last second, I did fall, into a tight little ball that I then sprang out of, straight into the towering giant’s legs. I caught him at the knees, jerked sideways, and toppled him like a redwood.

The instructor blew the whistle. My classmates cheered.

I staggered to standing, touching gingerly at my nose.

“That’s gonna leave a mark,” my instructor informed me cheerfully.

I crossed to Chuck, offered him a hand up.

He accepted gratefully enough. “Sorry ’bout the face,” he said, looking sheepish. Poor big guy, having to take on the girl.

I assured him it was all right. We were all doing what we had to do. Then we got to square off against new partners and do it all over again.

Later that night, curled up alone in my dorm room, I finally cradled my nose with my hand and cried. Because I didn’t know if I could go through that again. Because I wasn’t sure if I was really prepared for a new life where I had to hit and be hit. Where I might honestly have to fight for my life.

At that moment, I didn’t want to be a trooper anymore. I just wanted to go home to my baby girl. I wanted to hold Sophie and inhale the scent of her shampoo. I wanted to feel her chubby little hands pressed against my neck. I wanted to feel my ten-month-old daughter’s unconditional love.

Instead, I got pummeled the next day, and the day after that. I endured bruised ribs, whacked shins, and aching wrists. I learned to take a blow. I learned to deliver in kind. Until by the end of the twenty-five-week course, I came out of the gate swinging with the best of them, covered in purple welts but ready to rumble.

Tiny, fast, and tough.

Giant Killer, my fellow recruits called me, and I was proud of the nickname.

I remembered those days now, as the doctor examined the results from the CT scan, then gently probed the mass of swollen purple flesh around my eye.

“Fracture of the zygomatic bone,” he murmured, adding for my benefit: “Your cheek is broken.”

More perusing of film images, more inspection of my skull. “No sign of hematoma or contusion of the brain. Nausea? Headache?”