Post by Eden Morgan on Aug 12, 2016 16:47:24 GMT -5
"She has little
innocent demons
inside her eyes,
and they recklessly
play with matches.
-- I've never seen sparks so pretty."
-n.
innocent demons
inside her eyes,
and they recklessly
play with matches.
-- I've never seen sparks so pretty."
-n.
I have a confession: yesterday morning I was running late. I said it was because of traffic, but really there was no way in hell I was walking into that building without caffeine, sugar, and carbs. Fuck that. There was no emergency, my phone was quiet, and we all have our vices. I happen to have a lot of them. In addition to the daily requirement of false energy suppliers, I'm also a smoker. Can I tell you how much confidence that inspires in a doctor when the patient finds out they smoke? Or how much of a hypocrite you feel like when you hand the patient materials on quitting smoking and why cigarettes are bad for you, knowing you have a pack of smokes sitting in your locker and calling to you? The whole time you do the patient education, you're trying to find ways to speed it up so you can run out after this and snag a few minutes for a smoke break. I know it isn't just me.
As if that isn't confession enough, I have another one. I watch wrestling. Yes, THAT wrestling. The one with the high drama, the interpersonal conflicts, the gimmicky matches. My preferred avenue for that particular addiction is a local company that has grown exponentially over the years. Unified Global Wrestling Coalition, or UGWC to those of us who don't have a stick shoved up our ass and don't care how it sounds. UGWC and their coming event was the reason I pulled four 16's in as many days. Thankfully, I'm off today, unless you count being on call for most of the day even after getting off at 10 last night. Come to think of it, I should probably be sleeping right now instead of typing this. Meh. I can look at the back of my eyelids when I'm on a plane bound for South Dakota.
I had to trade days and hours just to get less than half of Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday off. Some of my co-workers laughed at me when I told them why. Some of them didn't even buy it, they thought I was running off with some new fling for a few days. Not like it would be a first, to be fair. They should have bought it, it wasn't like it was the first time I had gone to a show or shown interest, though usually the shows I went to were the local ones, with a few exceptions.
I wasn't always a wrestling fan. In fact, I was one of the ones who scoffed at it, didn't think it was a legitimate sport, more like a put-on entertainment industry. I rolled my eyes when patients came in through the doors of my ER wearing merchandise with the brand logo on it, some saying or stylized picture of someone from their roster splashed across. it. I felt like anyone who truly bought into that should qualify automatically for a psych exam.
But that was years ago, before Eden Morgan first appeared in my ER. Over the years since that first visit, she's come into my ER numerous times. I say 'my ER' because I always seem to be the attending physician or the one on call when she gets here. I'm not sure yet if she's my bad luck charm or I'm hers. The last time was the worst.
The first time though, the first time she came in, it was in 2013. Two days before, she had won the World Title from Jet Somers at No Holds Barred in a Valhalla Burial Match. Yeah I know that was a mouthful, just bear with me. Two days before, she had become the first woman to win that title, and she had won it after only being in the business for three months time. I didn't know all of that then. All I knew when my beeper went off was that I had a patient I needed to see. She was the same as anyone else coming through the doors, and I would have treated her the same had the nurse not pulled me to the side to let me know this was a special case. A sort of celebrity.
Ooh-la-la.
The nurse gave me what information she had on Eden Morgan. Yes, that was her real name. No, she didn't use a stage name. Yes, she had recently taken part in a particularly violent match and was suspected of having a concussion. She had some abrasions and small lacerations to her back, but those had been sutured already. She was here to confirm the concussion and because of increased lightheadedness. I remember looking at her file, staring at her age, her height and weight, all the numbers and history standing out as if they were in bold font.
She was 21 years old. She was tiny. What the fuck was she doing? She have a death wish? And then I caught myself, and I have to admit, when I pulled opened the door to her room it was snappier than it should have been. For a moment, I had bought into it. For a moment, she had made me believe what I derided so many others for falling for, and I hadn't even met her yet. I can only assume my expression was less than friendly because of that, maybe a touch disapproving, and that was just from reading her file. What I saw when I entered that room nearly floored me.
I've been a doctor for years. Top of my class, immersed in this career with no time for friends, family, relationships, hence the sporadic flings, and those just for physiological needs. We all have them, don't act like you don't. At that point, I'd been working emergency for a year and a half. That doesn't sound like a long time, but you see a lot in a level one trauma unit located in Chicago in those months. Hell, you see a lot in just a week. All I'd seen had not prepared me for what I walked in to in that room.
I saw a young woman who I wouldn't have said was over the age of 18 sitting on the end of the exam table, her legs swinging, feet tapping against the counter below her to a rhythm known only to her. She jumped when I came in and immediately stopped moving, like I'd caught her doing something she shouldn't have been. The smile she gave me in greeting lit up the room, but it wasn't because she was a very pretty woman. It was because that smile was so open and friendly. There was no guile there and she held nothing back, she smiled with every ounce of her being, and I had to stop to just look at her. She made you want to smile back at her, she made you feel bubbly and giddy almost against your will like it was some goddamned super power.
And then she started talking. It was like being in the middle of a busy highway where everyone was on a 20 minute lunch break, where you stood on the narrow, safe median as cars flew past you, and for a moment you felt like if you could just get a handhold on one of them and hang on for the ride, it would be the ride of your life. This girl, no matter her age I couldn't call her a woman, this girl was life and exuberance and that shining spark that some people have that has the power to inspire even the darkest of us.
She didn't seem to notice how flustered I was, she just continued to talk and talk. She told me some of the craziest things, and even with the preconception I had for her field, I couldn't help but believe it. I ended up sitting in a chair as she talked, just staring at her in awe. She told me about her match, and it was then that the medical professional in me finally clicked in. I did a thorough examination, silently wondering over the purple and black bruises that littered her pale skin, only visible when she lifted her shirt for me. Areas of her back were raw from abrasions, two or three sutures here and there, the dark knots daring me to rationalize what she had been through. It was fake, it had to be. She should have been broken in two from the match she described.
She was so excited about winning, about how she had been the underdog and she had surprised everyone, about how she felt the weight of the responsibility of being what and who she was, all the fans who looked up to her, it was a lot, but she was so happy to do it. I tried to find some artifice to her, but it was genuine.
I ordered an MRI scan and once she was wheeled out of the room, I had to sit down again. In this profession, you meet so many people each and every day. You meet people on what may well be the worst days of their lives, and some leave a mark on your soul. I'm not talking about the Christian concept of a soul, I'm talking about the inner part of you that everyone has no matter whether you're religious or not. You may not call it a soul, but you know exactly what I'm talking about. That innermost part of you where you can't hide anything, it's the truest you there is. When someone touches that part, it's something you carry with you for the rest of your life. It's like it's imprinted there, you can remember the meeting with an exactness that sometimes makes you wonder if it was something you dreamt up. You know it wasn't, but sometimes you let yourself believe it was just to give yourself some breathing room. And sometimes you revel in it, you try to understand it and wrap your mind around it. That's what Eden Morgan did to me on that first visit, and I couldn't tell you why to save my life.
Months came and went, and Eden Morgan slipped away from my conscious mind, but every now and then I would think about her and wonder. I stubbornly refused to look up anything, to watch anything of the world she was in, no matter how much my curiosity burned. Until she came back into my ER August 19, 2013. I was just about to get off when she was brought in on a stretcher. She was still just as delicate and feminine, lovely in an almost ethereal sort of way. It's hard to look lovely and ethereal with half your face swollen tight with bruises, but she managed it. She was barely conscious, and I wasn't sure from first glance if it was from sedation or another concussion. She clung to my arm with both of her small hands. Truthfully, her hands weren't any smaller than my own, but somehow, even knowing what she did and how successful she was, she just seemed fragile. It wasn't her size, it was just something about her. This time, she didn't just leave. This time, I had her sent up to the floor. She had been lucky none of the bones in her face were broken. Another concussion, which worried me being so close to the previous one and just as severe. This time though, there was something more serious. Her spleen was enlarged, trauma can do that to you. I talked with her and she seemed so happy to see me. She remembered me, and while her smile wasn't quite as bright as it had been before, I chalked it up to the pain she must be in, the pain I could see in her eyes. It wasn't until later that I learned not all of her pain was physical.
I had no intention of releasing Eden Morgan, but she was still released and approved to return to work. I never would have done it, but Dr. Griffin is not as scrupulous as I was, and it seemed Eden was learning to manipulate people. Promise of a backstage meet and greet for his daughter got Eden whatever she wanted. I knew the dangers, I had explained them to her in explicit detail, and still she had gone back. She had to still be in pain, she had to know what could happen to her body. I couldn't understand what made her go back.
I watched a wrestling match for the first time after Eden Morgan left the hospital against all logical medical advice, and what I saw terrified and amazed me. I didn't finish, I had to turn it off, because I knew what each blow was doing to her body. The same man who was responsible for the condition she had been in when she found herself in the emergency room in the first place was the same man who was her partner. None of it made sense to me and I had no idea how she could retain any of herself being around that.
Less than a month later, I heard that Eden Morgan had lost the title she had been so proud to carry. I learned she lost a lot more than that in a match that she shouldn't have been able to survive. She didn't end up in my emergency room that time, she was in someone else's. Someone in Ohio had to put that amazing girl back together, and I had to wonder if they were just as entranced with her as I had been.
I saw Eden Morgan again in November of 2013, after their show that ended the year. She wasn't there for herself this time. This time, she was there for her boyfriend. I don't remember paying much attention to him, it was her lively story of everything that had happened that kept me engrossed. Much of it was far too fantastical to give it much credence, but I had learned that things somehow happened around her. I recall that her boyfriend had been through one hell of a beating, and she had insisted he be checked out. He reminded her that he had been checked out right after it happened, but she told him in a tone I'll never forget.
“But you haven't been checked out by my doctor.”
My doctor, she had said. I was hers, and I was perfectly fine with that. Even at that visit, her smile wasn't quite right and there was something I could read on her face that hadn't been there before. But she still tried to glow for me, for him, for anyone who recognized her and stopped and asked for her autograph. She tried, and I know to most it had to be an amazing experience, but that was only because they hadn't seen her before, they hadn't felt what I had. I felt the beginnings of a loss and I didn't like it.
Months passed, and after a while I started to get anxious. Her patient file never showed up in my pile. I had to watch again, and I knew that was the beginning of the end of my mocking the fans. It didn't matter that my concern was from a medical standpoint, what mattered was that I was now a believer, and all because of one girl. I watched at home, a bottle of wine beside me as I sat in a darkened room with only the glow from the computer monitor as a light. It was April 2014. I watched Eden Morgan come out to music that wasn't hers, none of that life and vitality that had so enthralled me evident in her. It was a startling contrast, the beaten and almost lifeless woman was not the girl I remembered so vividly. I couldn't imagine what had brought about the change. I watched her match, and for me it didn't matter who the competitor was, it was just her. Everything she did, every movement she made was a story telling her grief to the world and saying nothing at the same time. I watched her inflict what had to be a painful maneuver, something the announcers referred to as a 'submission move' on her competitor, contorting his spine into an angle it wasn't meant to be in. I now know the maneuver was her 'Ouroboros' and her opponent was 'Vain' Alan Wallace. By the reaction of the crowd and the announcers, she also wasn't meant to hold it as long as she did. I remember moving forward in my chair and almost feeling the pain I saw in her face as she gripped him, her head thrown back, her own back bent in an almost unnatural angle. She wanted someone else to feel what she felt.
What had happened?
I learned through other sources of the pain Eden Morgan was in. I learned things I didn't think could possibly happen, that couldn't possibly be real, yet I had a nagging suspicion that they were. It was like the world she had found herself in had recoiled at the light she had within her and sought to snuff it out. I mourned that loss as I would a human death, a life I couldn't save.
When Eden returned after months away, there was a buzz around Chicago this time. She was becoming far more famous and rumor had it, she was back to her old self. Her old self, really? I had to know, it was a long shift before I made it home and could view anything online, but I was almost feverishly excited.
"Girls like her were born in a storm. They have lightning in their souls, thunder in their hearts, and chaos in their bones." Nikita Gill
She wasn't the same. It was a good effort, but it wasn't quite right. Oh the smile was bright enough, movements energetic, none of that creeping, gnawing pain that I had almost felt through the screen before. But nothing reached her eyes. It was like there was something else there, someone else, hiding and waiting. I didn't like it at all, and it scared me, what it meant for this woman. But this was an addiction now and I couldn't turn away.
I was there in Las Vegas at that fateful Sin City in September of 2014. I cheered with the fans when our power couple, Eden and Travis Pierce, came out and I ignored the feeling of dread. Adrenaline will do that to you, and anyone who says there isn't any adrenaline coursing through the air when you're watching a live event is lying. It's there and it's like a drug all its own. When Eden went on to win the High Rollers match, my screams for her and shouts of support and encouragement mingled with everyone else's. We wanted to see her win, wanted her on top again. She deserved it.
And then it happened. I felt it coming, I knew something was wrong when she cashed in on Donovan Hastings. It felt like we were all teetering on the edge of a precipice with her and she was going to dive headlong over the edge, taking us along for the ride. I saw her stand in that ring holding the title once again, standing with the man who had caused so much physical damage to her and deriding those who had been her partners. Her family. It felt personal, like she had turned away from me, destroyed herself in order to spite me. I knew it wasn't that personal, but the way it felt... looking back and looking at it objectively, I should have seen her as a doctor. I should have seen what was really there, but it felt like such a betrayal.
I turned my back on everything after that, starved the addiction. Eden Morgan came into my ER a few times after that, banged up from matches, but I managed to pass her file off to someone else. Once it was to a new doctor who got the worst ass-chewing of his life. I wasn't sorry. I mourned the girl she had been, the woman I knew she would have become. I hated the industry and the people in it who had molded her into what she was now. For a full year, I stayed away. I tried to ignore any and everything I heard, pouring myself into my job.
And then Sin City came around again and I had to see, I had to know.
The girl was still gone, but the woman wasn't the same either. There was a madness there that was shocking, and I wondered if those who had watched her progression over the last year saw it or if they were numb. I had questioned before if Eden Morgan had a deathwish, but I knew the answer to that when I watched on this night. The answer was an emphatic yes. She had cashed in on a man who had been the dominant presence at the top of the company for the better part of the year, and she had chosen to do this in a match where the same man had almost crippled and ended the career of someone else. I couldn't understand why this was being allowed to happen, why no one had stopped this, why no one had seen this woman got the help she needed. It was there, why could no one see it?! I ended up getting so angry, I turned it off. I didn't watch to see her win against all odds, a theme of hers, and then lose shortly after.
I determined I would never watch again. The viewers and the people who turned in week after week and fed off of all of this were enabling everything to happen. It wasn't right and I wouldn't be a part of it.
I held out on my promise to myself until I learned Horizons would be held in Chicago. I fought it as long as I could before I gave up and bought a ticket. Fighting my curiosity and addictions has never been my strong suit.
The match at Horizons was important. I could sense it in the air, I knew a lot rode on the outcome. I knew her opponent, knew what the match was for, and couldn't make sense of why they would place such a serious thing on something so nebulous as the outcome of a match. She needed help, she didn't need a stipulation placed on it.
For the first time ever, I wanted Eden Morgan to lose. I hoped with every ounce of my being that she would lose. The contrast of what she was when I first met her to what I saw in the ring before me now was so sharp you could slice yourself on it. It was night and day and it was depressing.
When she won, I felt lost. That was it, there would be no help coming. I knew looking at Eden Morgan that she wouldn't live much longer, she wouldn't allow herself to. It was written there for everyone to see on her face. She would drive herself into the grave. I had seen the look so many times in my emergency room, but seeing it on her face, seeing the last light in her completely die away made me blink to hold back tears.
And then it happened. She was going to get help. She had no choice. I have never wanted to hug Jet Somers so much in my life, but if I could have, I would have leapt out of those stands and run to him and thanked him. I would have thanked everyone who stood with him. It wasn't just entertainment, they weren't going to let her burn herself to the ground, they were going to do something.
Realization dawned on me as Eden was lead out. They would be taking her to the closest emergency room to finalize everything. Documents needed to be signed, assessments made, consultations called in...
I was running through the crowd, not caring who I shoved or moved past, I was just running, running out of the arena and through the parking lot to my car. What felt like hours passed before I made it to the hospital, parked in reserved space and rushed inside. I clocked in and made it to my locker in record time, pulling a white coat on over street clothes and straightening my hair. I was breathing raggedly when I made it into the elevator that took me down to the emergency room. Several of the nurses and other doctors stared at me, and I realized it was because I was sweating. But I had to be here, I had to see it.
She was already there, I could hear her screams and curses, banging as a table was knocked on its side. I saw Dr. Herman pick up her chart and I moved forward quickly, snatching it from his hands. He made some noise about not knowing I was even supposed to be here tonight, and had he known he wouldn't have come in. I ignored him, trying to calm the heavy beating of my heart and my shaking hands.
It was happening, they were going to help her, and I was going to be a part of it.
I saw Jet Somers and Cypress Morgan there talking to some other doctors in hushed tones, expressions serious. I saw a nurse leave the room Eden was in and close the door. No sound came out of the room again, and I assumed Eden had accepted her fate. I stood to the side and watched, waiting to speak to someone about her. I vaguely heard the nurse who had left her room tell the security guard that she was “done with that arm if you need to cuff her again.”
Alarm bells rang in my head and everything came into hyperfocus. She was uncuffed? The silence coming from the room seemed ominous now and I moved quickly in, swinging the door hard enough to hit the wall, remembering distantly how I had done something similar with far less emotion when we had first met. She lay there, still in her ring attire, but there was a growing stain of blood on the white sheets and it was starting to drip to the floor. Her wrists bore jagged deep cuts, the left much worse than the right. Something silver glinted amid the gore, held loosely in the fingers of her left hand. I don't remember if I screamed or what happened next. I just remember working furiously to stop the bleeding, fighting to get oxygen on her, to get an IV into her and to get her up to surgery. I remember leaving as she was operated on, leaving to talk to her family, unable to give them anything they could really hold on to.
It wasn't until I scrubbed that I realized I still had the ring she had had clasped in her fingers. I pulled it out, coating my fingers with blood and jagged bits of flesh. As I looked at that ring, I thought about every meeting I'd had with Eden Morgan over the years, every injury, everything that lead up to this moment. I scrubbed again, and I did what I could to clean the ring before I brought it out to her family. I gave them a brief explanation, but I knew they understood. I recognized the anger and the fear. And the guilt.
By some miracle, Eden Morgan made it out of surgery. She lost a lot of blood, but she made it out. She was never again without restraints while she was with us, and I saw flashes of dull anger in her beautiful eyes every time I entered her room.
After a while, she left us, sent to a facility in New Orleans her family had approved and to be nearer to them. After seeing those cold, dead eyes everyday, I wasn't sure anything could be done. All she seemed to know anymore was pain and death, and that little part of my soul she had captured began to wither away.
When she returned a few months ago, I was surprised to say the least. I was afraid to see what she was, but I knew she wouldn't have been released if she weren't okay. I knew she would be watched closely. She seemed far more herself, that light she had before back, though not quite as bright. I was surprised she would choose to come back to this, to what made her into the monster she had become. It struck me how strong a woman she actually was, and while she didn't have the success she had before, it was apparent to anyone watching that she was still a force to be reckoned with. It was amazing to see her back, knowing where she had been only months before.
If you get nothing else from this, just understand that if Eden Morgan is anything, she is a survivor.
I can't have been the only person who watched with baited breath when Gabriel Baal started toying with her. She seemed to handle it well, but there was an undercurrent of tension with her that hadn't quite been there before. It felt controlled, to a point, and I had to wonder if maybe Dr. Baal were right, if she had only become a much better actress. When the match was struck for In Your Hands, I knew I had to be there. I had never been to Sturgis, much less South Dakota, but I would go this time. I changed my mind when I saw it was my weekend for call, resigning myself to watch over the computer once again.
I didn't buy the tickets until the news broke about Eden trying to blackmail Baal's girlfriend. I was dumbstruck. Had she been playing us, playing all of us this whole time? It seemed that way, except it didn't seem right. Before, when Eden had blackmailed people, she had played to the media, even when it didn't go exactly as it should have. She had mocked her victims. This time, no one has heard a word from her. She's been extremely quiet and private, closed up.
But Gabriel Baal hasn't. He's left a stream of tweets taunting her, some of them truly disgusting. But beneath it all, he feels angry. I can understand how the man could be angry at someone who tried to destroy him, I certainly would. But looking back through some of their interactions, it's almost like he wanted her to do what she did, like he knew she would. There is absolutely no evidence to contradict what Baal says other than a feeling in my gut.
It bothers me that she hasn't tried to defend herself. It bothers me that she hasn't made a statement, that she's just let the media play havoc with her. It bothers me that she'll walk into this match as the aggressor to his victim. If I'm sure of anything, Gabriel Baal doesn't feel like a victim in my head and he sure as hell doesn't act like one.
As I type all of this and organize my thoughts for this blog, I don't know exactly what I'll see when it comes to their match at In Your Hands. I don't know what she'll be like. But then I realize, no one, none of us ever really knows what we're getting when Eden Morgan is involved. In many ways, that's where her strength lies, in her ability to adapt and become what she needs to in order to survive. She's survived things that, by themselves, would have felled most. She is a woman who has been under siege physically, mentally, and emotionally almost nonstop since she chose to follow in her brother's footsteps in 2013. Every one wants to be the one responsible for 'breaking Eden Morgan'. But the truth is, no one could do it, she had to do it herself. Gabriel Baal is just the newest to add himself to the list.
I feel as though I'm looking at her with a new light, a new understanding. I tried to fit her into a mold of my creation, and I realize that's what everyone around her has done in one way or another. But Eden Morgan is herself first and foremost. She doesn't fit into any mold perfectly, but she can adapt to the point you think it was made for her. She's believable, she's real, and she's made me a fan and believe in something I had always mocked before. I wonder how many other people feel the same way?
When we watch these programs on TV or on the computer, everyone is a character and everyone has a part to play. After a few words from their mouths, we know exactly what those parts are. Good guy, bad guy, crazy guy, obnoxious doctor who is trying just a little bit too hard. They wear their molds and they're comfortable where they are. Even Travis Roberts who spent years as a heel and then turned face after he had an epiphany that he was a complete and utter twat, which is something everyone had known for years. Guess what? He's still a twat, he just smiles more and hides it better.
That can't be said about Eden. She's the ultimate decoy, this beautiful, fragile-looking ethereal creature who will steal your heart one minute and then scare you half to death in a match where she almost breaks a man much bigger than her in half. She's an inspiration to those of us in a male-dominated field.
I guess what I'm trying to say is- don't take everything with Eden Morgan at face value, because she'll knock you on your ass literally and physically. Don't believe everything the media tells you about her, do your own research. Dr. Gabriel Baal is a complete and utter douche and I can't believe anyone who would even consider using him as their psychiatrist after the things he's done and said to her. Many may argue that his two career paths are separate, but he made the same oath I did, an oath to do no harm. There is 'trash talk' and there is the area that Baal plays in. It disgusts me and reeks of a power play. I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels that way.
What I'm trying to say through all of this is Eden Morgan, if you happen to be reading this- kick his ass.
"She lit a cigarette
with bundles of tears
racing down her cheeks,
and after her lips somehow
found the strength to stretch
into a smile, I thought to
myself; 'Sometimes, when
chaos burns like wildfires
around us: we have no other
choice but to fall in love
with the warmth."
- Christopher Poindexter
with bundles of tears
racing down her cheeks,
and after her lips somehow
found the strength to stretch
into a smile, I thought to
myself; 'Sometimes, when
chaos burns like wildfires
around us: we have no other
choice but to fall in love
with the warmth."
- Christopher Poindexter
- Jaime Mattock, M.D.
Addendum: Because Eden is somewhat known for using quotes and song to get deeper things across, I've included three as a sort of nod to the woman who has become an inspiration to so many. If you enjoyed, hit 'Subscribe'!