Writing Sample
The following manuscript is taken from an upcoming book.
In the process of "writing" the book together my client was asked to fill in a timeline spanning the years pertaining to her story and to review pictures, emails and other correspondence to help us fill it in. She sat for several hours of interviews that we recorded so that I could reference them while writing the story. From there we created a story arc and agreed on an opening that would be eye-catching and create interest. I use the word co-author because that is very much how my process works. We "write" the book together.
Chapter 1: January 18th, 2023
I really had to get going. But, just at that moment I happened to be dangling upside down from the passenger side of my dune buggy with my head and shoulders laying on the dusty street. This was day one of my quest to get back to the competition stage after a pandemic-induced three-year pause. I needed to get to the gym. But hang on. What was going on here?
Looking up I could see my right leg had taken a sharp right turn below the knee.
“That’s not right,” I thought. “This is going to fuck up my day.”
Something or someone was buzzing around above me in the predawn light. As my eyes began to focus the cab driver that had blown a stop sign two minutes earlier and t-boned me as I tried to make a left turn through the intersection hovered over me as if he was standing on his head, screaming at me in Spanish.
Also there, also standing on their heads, were a half dozen locals, all pointing and cringing and muttering at each other in Spanish. Everything was a blur of confusion.
As usual I had got up early intent on heading to the gym for my first day of prep for what would be my first show in four years. Moving from my usual training program to actually prepping for competition was exciting, but there was still a lot of shit to get done. I watched the coffee drip through the filter into the cup as I planned my day: the gym for a fasted cardio workout, some shopping for my upcoming trip, home to do some check-ins with my online coaching clients (a.k.a. my tribe), and planning my pack and move with my driver, Chispita.
The home in Tulum Mexico where I had lived for most of the past five months was in a gated community surrounded by jungle, where the locals who now stood around the accident lived. I usually walked to the gym, but the Sun was coming up later this time of year and, although it never felt unsafe, I was a little hesitant to walk there in the darkness. Anyway, I had errands to run that day.
Against my better judgement I had bought the dune buggy just after I arrived in September of 2022. Since then, I had seen two guys hit by taxicabs. One was riding his scooter and the other an ATV. The guy on the scooter rolled up the hood and slammed into the windshield right before my eyes. I had told my friend Gabriella there was no way I would ever own a scooter there.
“If I’m walking, I can see the goddamn taxi coming at me and jump into a ditch faster if my feet have contact with the earth!”
“I agree, it’s crazy here,” she laughed.
But the dune buggy had a roof over it, so I considered it safer. Not safe, but saf-ER. I knew better. I had seen a jeep and thought maybe I should just spring for one of those instead. I have always had good luck with jeeps and anyway it was still pretty cheap. I could just sell it when I eventually left for wherever I was headed next.
The dune buggy was cute and fun, though. And I was on an adventure in Mexico. The jeep was definitely more reliable and safer. On the other hand, it was bigger, and it would be harder to park. My masculine mind was overruling my feminine instincts. Like a kid deciding between a piece of chalk and a chocolate bar, I had talked myself right out of the jeep and right into the dune buggy.
I hopped in and fired it up. It didn’t have a speedometer or gauges, but it was equipped with seatbelts, and I considered myself to be a safe driver. The gym was just down the road, though, and the buggy didn’t go very fast, so I didn’t bother with the seatbelt.
It was a perfect morning and I bombed down the little road through my subdivision with the wind whipping through my hair. At the end of the lane the road came to a T at a three-way stop sign. The road I was on was divided by a median at the intersection which made it a little hard to see to my left. I knew oncoming traffic also had a stop sign, but I had seen taxis blow through those signs before. It was pretty common practice especially late at night or early in the morning.
Sure enough, looking down the road I saw the headlights of a car that looked as though it was driving down the middle of the road. That was also typical of cab drivers there. Knowing the odds this guy would actually stop, I calculated that I could still safely turn left through the intersection, over the topes (speed bumps) at the center, and out of the way before he passed by me. So, I went for it.
Being very small and light, the dune buggy jerked wildly when it went over speed bumps, so I was ready for it to throw me over to one side. Once over them I would steer right and avert disaster. What I wasn’t ready for was what appeared next. There in the headlights before me was a coconut lying in the road just past the topes and I was headed straight for it.
I couldn’t remember even seeing a coconut in the six months I had been living there, and here was one in the roadway on this morning at this moment. There was no time to react. The cab was nearly on me, the coconut was in front of me and there was nothing I could do about it.
“Oh, shit!”
The entire event unfolded in a matter of seconds. My front tire hit the coconut and the dune buggy lurched to the left steering my left fender right into the left fender of the oncoming cab.
CRASH!
The car slammed into me breaking my left wrist and shooting my body across the seat toward the passenger side. It was a snug fit in there for a driver and I often had to work my right leg in and out of the tight space between the console and the pedal to drive. At this moment I had no such time and the only way for my leg to follow me across the seat was for the bones in my lower leg to snap below the knee.
Nobody appeared to speak any English and I didn’t speak Spanish. I was on my own. Shit. I had to take matters into my own hands. I rolled myself down to the street and instinctively reached down and straightened out my leg, which was bleeding heavily now and laying in the dirt. That move triggered me to look at my left wrist which was ballooning and didn’t look good either. I had to get off the ground.
Reaching up I grabbed the frame beside the seat and pulled myself up into the dune buggy. I slid over behind the wheel with my leg outstretched across the seat and started to think about how I was going to drive to my next location. Which was where, exactly?
Then a man’s voice rose above the confusion.
“Are you alright?” The universe had sent me an angel.
“I can’t find my wallet or my phone,” I said looking around. He yelled something at the small group and suddenly everyone was searching about for my things. The cab driver was still screaming at me.
“Shut up!” the angel yelled. “You hit her!” Then he appeared to say the same thing in Spanish with a couple of curses I had learned during my stay.
“What are you doing,” he said watching me fumble with the ignition. “You need to get to a hospital.”
“What?” I was not in my right mind.
“You need emergency care right away. Look at you. Your leg is severely broken, and the wound is dirty. You need to have it cleaned.”
“Oh, okay.” It seemed reasonable.
“What hospital do you want to go to?” The look on my face must’ve told him that I had no idea, so he raised his cell phone to place a call. “Costamed is the best one around here.”
As he placed a call in Spanish, one of the locals reached across the seat and handed me my phone and wallet. I thanked them and set the wallet down on my lap. At that moment I realized this was my local phone and it only had my local contacts in it.
My first thought was to call Chispita, my driver. She spoke English and could help me translate at the hospital so I would know what the doctors and nurses were saying to me. I knew that she had spent the night driving people to and from the airport, so I wasn’t surprised when she didn’t pick up. I left a message telling her what had happened and moved on.
Coach David was my next best shot. I had recently hired him for a year of coaching, and he was on the East Coast. He didn’t pick up either. So, I left a message.
As if by magic, an ambulance rolled up after what seemed like a minute. My English-speaking angel had called them in to take me to the hospital. After a quick check of my vitals, they loaded me onto a spinal board and then onto a stretcher, and then into the back of the ambulance. As the doors closed, I saw the angel outside. I was on my way to get help but now my link to understanding my circumstances was gone.
I had one hope: Antonio, my BFF, past coach, and truth be told, boy toy (Don’t judge! If you saw him, you’d understand.). Anyway, he was on the West Coast so the chances he was awake were slim. To my surprise he had picked up.
“What’s up, coach?” We coaches often call each other coach.
“I just got hit by a taxicab.”
“What the fuck?”
“I know. It’s a long story. I’m in an ambulance heading to the Costamed hospital. I don’t know anyone; I don’t speak Spanish and I’m scared. I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
He tried to console me and told me he would do whatever he could to help out. So, I asked him to message Chispita and see if he could get her to respond. He said he was on it, and I hung up as we approached the hospital.
The rear doors opened and out I went into the dawn, wheeled in short order into the emergency room. I may not have understood their language, but I knew how to fill out a medical form, which conveniently was in both Spanish and English. Antonio kept checking in on me while trying to reach Chispita for help.
The emergency ward was really not much different than any you would find in the States. I lay on the gurney behind a sliding curtain surrounded by various kinds of machines one of which was monitoring my heart rate and oxygen levels.
I still hadn’t made any progress on getting a translator when the surgeon who would prove to be my worst nightmare stepped inside the curtain: Doctor Mora. At first, we didn’t get very far. He did his best to speak to me in a way I could understand but the language barrier only made my stress level rise. I was a stranger in a strange land with a massive leg injury and I was scared shitless. Not only was I not sure what was wrong exactly, I wasn’t sure anyone there could fix it. And worst of all, I had no way of finding out if there was a way out of this that would allow me to get back on stage. I was watching helplessly as my career as a bodybuilder went up in smoke.
My cell phone rang. It was Coach David. Finally, someone who spoke a little Spanish. He jumped on the phone with Dr. Mora, and they talked for a bit before the doctor handed the phone back to me.
“The doctor says you need to go into surgery to clean the wound in your leg. You fell in the dirt, and you need immediate attention to prevent infection.”
“Okay, what about my wrist? It’s hurt pretty bad, too.”
“He’ll fix that as well. I know it sucks, but you need to listen to them. I’m working on finding you someone who can help out while you’re there.”
“Okay, and coach. I’m going to need a meal plan for while I’m in here and for my recovery, so I don’t get too far out of shape.” I was already starting to think about my return.
Dr. Mora consulted with the nurse on hand and left the area.
“Okay, so I’m going into surgery in Tulum,” I thought. “Great.”
As if things couldn’t get any worse, I was visited a few minutes later by a guy from the taxi company demanding I pay him five thousand dollars on the spot for hitting their driver, as he put it. It’s a cartel in Mexico and they prey on people like me. He ranted at me in broken English for what seemed like an eternity. I had no idea what to do. I was freaking out. I was just about to pay the guy when out of nowhere Chispita walked in. When she saw this guy, she lit into him in Spanish with a fury I didn’t know she was capable. She was just a little thing, but she ripped into him like she was six feet tall. I was as impressed as I was grateful to her for coming.
“Do not pay them, Jules,” she counseled me after the guy had gone. “If they come back again, tell them to go to hell.”
“Okay,” I said happy to see a familiar face. “How did you know I was here.”
“I was sleeping this morning because I was up all-night driving. When I woke up I had about forty missed calls and messages from Antonio. Anyway, when I got the message, I came right over.”
Antonio. Coach. Friend. I was so grateful for him in that moment. Chispita stayed with me while I was prepped for surgery.
“I’ll be here when you come out of surgery, ok? Don’t worry, Jules.”
I appreciated her kindness and generosity, but I was worried. I was worried. I was laid flat on a stretcher in a foreign country being wheeled into an uncertain future, and I was worried I had lost the life I had fought so hard to achieve.