He was taken to an area hospital in critical condition, and we are now hearing reports that shortly following the April fight where Tag Taggert defeated Bruno Santos, he had a run-in at his Salt Lake City bar with a former employee. Taggert was struck across the forehead in the altercation and sustained a fairly serious head wound. Word is that he was treated and released that night, but has kept a very low profile in the weeks following the altercation. Speculation is now running rampant. We will keep you posted about his condition and any developments that may shed more light on this stunning series of events.
Tag went into surgery about an hour after arriving in the emergency room. He actually regained consciousness briefly in the ambulance, or so we were told. He asked about the fight, was told he had a seizure, and he went under again. He had the gall to make sure he really won before losing consciousness again. It almost made me laugh. I would have laughed if I wasn’t so angry.
According to the doctor who came and talked to us about three hours after we arrived in the hospital waiting room, Tag’s brain had started to bleed and swell, most likely during the fight. I thought of the blow he took to the forehead at the end of the first round, when his legs had wobbled and we all thought he was going down. He’d fought for three more rounds before he took another blow to the same spot right before the fight ended. The swelling created pressure which had then caused the seizure, which in turn helped them discover the bleed. Apparently, people who undergo a craniotomy and have tumors removed from their brains shouldn’t enter the octagon less than three weeks post-surgery.
I wasn’t able to ride in the ambulance with Tag. I’d had to stay with Millie and Henry. We’d fought our way through the crowd as quickly as we could, which hadn’t been easy, and then sped to the hospital, arriving a good twenty minutes after Tag had been rushed through the emergency room doors. I’d told the nurse at the desk everything I knew, everything Tag had confessed in his tapes, and asked her to please relay it to those caring for my friend. She’d given me a look like she thought I was high and dangerous, peering at me over the tops of her little glasses and pressing her fat chin into her chest in bafflement. She listened and then stood, exiting through swishing doors where Millie and Henry and I weren’t allowed to follow.
I could just imagine the stunned reactions of the nurses and doctors when they got Tag in there and started pulling up his medical history and running him through the MRI. He’d pulled his shaggy hair into a tail at the back of his head for the fight, completely covering up the shaved lines crisscrossing his skull, evidence of the craniotomy, but those things don’t stay hidden. His hair was coming loose from the band and falling around his face when I held him in my arms in the octagon. I’d seen the evidence, and so would they.
When the fat desk clerk had finally come back to her post, she was shaking her head, and she kept looking at us like we’d escaped from a freak show. I’d been looked at that way a time or two, so I just stared back with all the insolence I felt, and Millie was obviously unaware that she was the focus of such suspicious attention. Henry was a jittery, trivia-spouting mess, but Millie just held his hand, stroked his hair, and commented on his inane trivia as if he was the smartest kid in the universe. Before long, he was eating peanut M&Ms and guzzling Sprite from the vending machines with relative calm, whispering a stat to himself every once in a while.
“He’s out of surgery. We were able to stop the bleed,” the doctor said solemnly. He looked from me to Millie. His eyes widened and he looked back at me again, obviously realizing that he could only make eye contact with one of us. To his credit, he went right on talking, hardly pausing.
“He’s unconscious, and we’d like to keep him that way at this point, but we think when the swelling eases in the next twelve hours or so, he’ll come around. We need to watch him over the next few days, but he should be fine. Brain activity looks good, vitals are good. I have consulted with Dr. Stein and Dr. Shumway at LDS hospital. Dr. Shumway performed the craniotomy on your friend, and I can’t tell you much more, but Mr. Taggert’s got some big decisions to make. I think having you here, having people call him on what he did, and on what he needs to do, is important. What he did tonight was incredibly foolish. He’s lucky to be alive.”
Moses
TAG WOKE UP just as the doctor predicted, but they didn’t let us see him until they moved him out of the ICU, which didn’t happen for a full twenty-four hours after he regained consciousness. We’d gone back and forth from the hospital to a nearby hotel, running on terror and little sleep, until, two days after we’d begun our vigil, we went back to the hotel to shower and change, and Henry climbed into bed and refused to get out again. Millie didn’t dare leave Henry alone at the hotel for hours on end, so she stayed behind and I went back to the hospital.
I was surprised to find Tag sitting up in his bed, his eyes heavily circled, his jaw rough with several days’ worth of beard, his shaggy hair hanging lank around his face. The bald patches and staple marks were extremely visible now, and he scratched at his skull as if the bare skin were driving him crazy.
“It’s been almost three weeks. It’s mostly healed, and it itches,” he complained with a smile, as if it were just road rash—nothing serious.
“I think I’ve convinced one of the nurses to help me shave it all off. We’ll be twins, Mo,” he said, referring to the fact that my hair had never been much longer than stubble.
I couldn’t respond. I didn’t do small talk and bullshit as well as Tag did. In fact, I didn’t really do it at all. I just stared at my friend and shoved my hands in my pockets to repress my urge to paint . . . or kill him.