I had no intention of returning. None. I had no intention of pulling on the pads and walking down the steel ramp ever again. I had no plans to fight for my livelihood against men too dumb or too sadistic to care that I had a family to support, and that paralyzing me with a sloppy pile driver would assure that I could not do that. I'd had too close calls. Too many panicking moments when I felt my head bounce off the mat hard enough to make my blood run cold, and that moment of shock when my limbs were disobedient for an eternal moment. After almost fifteen years of stepping between those ropes and not knowing if I'd ever step out of them, I was happy to leave that sense of uncertainty behind.

When I told my wife, Sylvia, she smiled and hugged me, but it wasn't until she woke up the next morning to find me snoring next to her in our bed did the realization sink in. She kissed me awake, and we celebrated the way newlyweds do. For the rest of that day, and the week that followed, I often caught her staring at me, almost in disbelief that I was not rushing to catch a flight, or running down to the gym to get ready for another seemingly pointless match. Instead, I was sitting at our kitchen table, or casting my line into the bay behind our house. I was fixing things that had been broken from the basement to the attic; patching leaky pipes, securing loose railings, replacing burnt fuses. We spent our evenings on the couch watching old movies. We spent our afternoons in town buying new furniture to replace the stuff that we either grew tired of, or that no longer matched the other stuff we were buying. We spent our mornings lazing in bed watching the early morning turn into afternoon as we talked about the infinite nothings that we never had a chance to talk about before.

I was not 'The Latin Assassin' Damien Cruz, wrestler; I was Mr. Damien Cruz, husband. And she no longer had to wonder if a 300 pound man in a clown suit with a barbed wire-wrapped table was going to take me away from her. I liked giving her that. I liked not having to say good bye. I genuinely liked not having to call her from the road to tell her that my flight was cancelled or that I was called to pull a double-nighter and that the special dinner she had planned was going to have to get postponed. Or worse, eaten alone. In the past I had often given her handfuls of money to buy whatever she wanted, but this time I was giving her the gift of a real, honest, normal marriage, and it was bar-none the best I could offer her.

No, there was not an amount of money, fame, or exposure that anyone could come up with that would make me go back. And I believed that. I truly believed that I had walked away without regret. That is, until Sylvia and I came to a crossroads and Smitty T. Duluth must have smelled the second thought in the air. And in that moment, with the world spinning around me, and old promises turning to dust, I heard what I needed to hear to bring me back.

The Part of the Story I Never Saw Coming
It was a fairly typical day for me. I had woken up early enough to have coffee with my wife before she left for school, and was happy to give her a lift on my way to the hardware store. After giving her a kiss and finalizing our decision on what color we were going to paint the spare bedroom, she went her way and I went mine. I came home, put up the first coat of Cotton Candy Blue, and went downstairs to grab a sandwich and see the Yankees clinch a playoff spot. After the game and the meal, I decided to head down to the record store and dig through their discount bin for promos, demos, and indie music. With a bag full of bands that all sounded the same, I headed to Mama Delfino’s Italian grocery and bought whatever it is that goes into a Linguine Pescatore. Homing home, I had hoped to put up a second coat in the room, but was exhausted. When I woke up, Sylvia was in the kitchen, staring out of the window as the water boiled over in the pot.
“Baby, are you okay?” I asked, turning off the flame and kissing her on the cheek. She turned and smiled awkwardly, grabbing a hand towel and wiping up the water on the stovetop.
“I’m sorry. I’m okay. I guess my head got away from me for a second.”
I motioned for her to sit, and pulled out a chair for her. I then turned to the pot of water, readjusted the water, and poured in the pasta.
“Is everything alright with school?”
She nodded, and then looked away.
“You’re knee-deep in it now, I guess. But it’ll be worth it, you know.”
Sylvia had been a well-respected nurse for almost 7 years, and when the opportunity to go further, and enter medical school was offered, she took it. She and I agreed that even if it meant waiting another 10 years to start a family, her career would come first. I offered her that because I knew that I had been living my dream, and she deserved the same. My retirement was just an unexpected perk.
She lit up at the words, but sadness also entered her face.
“There’s something I want to tell you. It’s great news.”
I had an irrational desire to run away at that moment, but since I couldn’t explain it, I didn’t. So I sat across from her.
She took a deep breath and began. Her smiled as she spoke, but I was not comforted.
“I don’t know if I mentioned the guest instructor I had this semester. But Dr. Riis is a brilliant doctor and I was excited to work alongside such an incredible scientist.”

I must have gotten a very transparent look on my face because Sylvia made it a point to tell me that her full name was Dr. Sophie Riis. I’ll admit, I was relieved.
“The point is; as the semester went on, I became very close to Dr. Riis, and she often told me that she was grateful to have a student like myself. Honestly, I assumed that I could count on a great letter of recommendation from her, and maybe a few extra points on my transcript.”
Sylvia paused, and chose her next words carefully.
“It turns out, that Dr. Riis is returning to her position as Dean of Medicine in Copenhagen this winter. And by some strange twist of fortune, she wants me to join her as her assistant.”
I smiled, not sure why. Part of me was immensely proud the other part of me realized that Copenhagen was in Denmark. Denmark was in Europe. And there was a room with sticky Cotton Candy Blue paint waiting for a second coat in the house I had spent my entire life savings on. That house was not in Denmark, coincidently.
I remained silent, and waited for the punch line, or the big pay-off, or something that didn’t mean that Sylvia wanted us to uproot and move to Denmark on a whim. In a way, it came.
“Now, obviously this is not the type of opportunity that just lands on a person’s lap everyday. I doubt it comes once in a lifetime. But I am now faced with the excruciating fortune of having a world-renowned Neurophysiologist asking me to become her personal assistant and student. And, with that position, I not only get a free education, I also get paid a lot of money as her assistant. I get to meet and work with doctors that I’ve spent years writing research papers on. I am being offered a golden ticket to my every wildest dream and I can barely form the words. So what are you thinking as I tell you this?”
I said the one thing that was racing in my mind- barely out loud.
“What about me?”
Sylvia nodded her head, and tried to smile, “You can come, Baby.”
I looked down at my hands, and shook my head.
“Just like that? Just get up and go?”
Sylvia cocked her head to the side and stared at me, “Haven’t you heard anything I’ve been telling you? This is such a perfect opportunity and you’re upset about traveling. What about Tokyo? Or Korea? What about when you woke up at 4 in the morning to catch a plane to Belfast based on a ticket that might have been waiting for you if you showed up before the other six guys that were called? What’s the difference?”
I swear, she had a point. And the difference was…well, I couldn’t say it without sounding like a complete ass. The difference was that it was my dream I was chasing. She was not supposed to have these wild tendencies. It just wasn’t right. So, in the sake of fairness, I remained silent. Sylvia Cruz, my wife of nearly a year, slid over to sit on my lap. She kissed my forehead gently, and began to beg me to come with her. When I whispered that I couldn’t, for reasons I wasn’t truly sure of, she resigned herself to it without further question, and continued to prepare dinner. Although she had not said it, and I didn’t need to ask, I knew that she had already accepted the offer. It was simply a matter of getting me to come with her.
We ate the meal in silence, and at times I thought her saw tears in her eyes, but never asked. I simply looked down at the plate in front of me and ate. The food feeling like sand in my stomach. She cleared the table, went upstairs, came down a little bit later, and kissed me goodnight. And I knew that I was welcome to join her in the bed. And despite my decision, I might have even been welcome to be intimate with her. However, I remained on the living room couch, and I feel asleep watching a documentary about sea turtles.
And Now, Our Tragic Hero Digs the Hole Deeper
The next two weeks were spent in a strange pantomime of married life. There was no discussion of what was inevitably the end of what we had. And even though she began to put her things in boxes, began listening to Danish Made Fun CDs, began calling friends and family to share the news, and began making other arrangements of that kind, it was treated like her leg-shaving ritual. We both knew it was happening, but it was left unspoken. And when she was asked how I felt about moving to Denmark, she laughed it off and gave a vague answer, or told the truth with enough levity that it was assumed a joke. I, doing my part, pretended not to hear her talking, and went about fixing up the house that we were supposedly spending the rest of our lives in. It was a passive-aggressive denial that I unrealistically hoped would change her mind. Obviously, I knew better.
In this extended fucking temper tantrum, time passed very quickly, and the night came in which her bags were sitting next to the door; where mine were usually, and she was sitting at the dining room table, lighting candles.
I had come in from the garage where I had begun to strip and varnish the same chair over and over to avoid sitting in that awkward silence with her. My hands were raw from the work, and if I had paid more attention to Dr. Phil, I might have figured out that it was my immature attempt at symbolic martyrdom. Whatever the case, I wanted to wash them but Sylvia called to me. I listened to her for the first time in weeks.
“I know, Damien. I know what you must be going through. But I swear, I don’t want it to be like this.”
I was going to speak, but she silenced me with a tender glance that made me hate myself very much.
“I want you there with me. I want you to be by my side through all of this. I am scared to death. I am scared that once I set foot onto that hospital floor that Dr. Riis is going to come to her senses and realize that she has invested her name and her reputation on a barely average triage nurse from Brooklyn. But deep down, I know that if I let myself think that way, then I’m going to be exactly that. I know better. I know that I’ve busted my ass to earn her respect and earn this opportunity. The only thing missing is you to be there for me like I had promised I’d be there for you.”
I wanted to find a reason. I wanted to give her a noble explanation for why my roots were growing so deep in that run-down Cape Cod home that I hadn’t known existed a year ago. But, I didn’t. And she didn’t demand me to.
We ate and spoke about what happened next with a loose understanding that nothing said with gravity would change a thing. It would only serve to weigh us both down.
I woke up to an empty bed the next morning. The irony was almost unbearable. And like I had done to her so many times, she left me a short letter that said she’d be back for me. And when she did, we would have what we always wanted.
And I rose to an empty home. Empty and very cold. And in the emptiness, the phone was ringing.