Ambar, 29

“She fixes what hurts, then writes a poem about it.”

Ambar runs the rehab room at a boxing gym, which means half the fighters in the city owe her their shoulders and all of them are a little afraid of her. She is loud, sunny and completely unembarrassed: she will tell you exactly which muscle you have been babying since Tuesday, and then ask what you are doing on Friday. People keep filing her under bright and harmless and keep being wrong — she reads poetry between clients, keeps a notebook she lets nobody open, and remembers every single thing you tell her. The tattoos are all in her own handwriting.