AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He did, and then Doc twisted my elbow slightly. I nearly shot up off the bed. Pain. It was so intense I didn't even have time to yell. All I could do was twist, trying to flinch away from the agony, but it was over too fast.
Then Doc kept going. He extended and flexed my elbow, moved my shoulder, and pressed all over. The rest of it hurt, but it was nothing compared to that minor little twist he'd started with. And now my entire arm was throbbing again, making me aware it was not happy at all.
"Ok, and I want you to grab my hand," Doc ordered, clasping my palm with his.
So I squeezed.
"Now pull," he demanded.
I tried. I made his hand move toward me a bit, but the harder I flexed, the more it hurt. When Doc pulled back, I yelped, releasing him as fast as I could. Doc just sighed and turned away, heading for something else in the room.
"How bad is it?" I asked.
Pushing a cart over, he flipped some switches, making a screen light up in a way most women recognized. "I'm concerned you may have a torn tendon," he admitted.
"So I get an ultrasound?" I asked.
Which made Doc flash me a smile. "Soft tissue, Cody. It's good for more than looking at babies. I want to see if the muscles and connective tissue are damaged."
"Oh." Ok, I liked that more than the other option.
"No throwing my legs up in this doctor's office," I said, my words slurring only a bit. "Never liked those exams anyways."
"And you're probably not going to like this one," he warned before adding a cold gel to my arm.
I sucked in a breath, but that was nice. It faded the heat of the pain. Yet when Doc pressed the probe thing to my skin, that was not. The pressure of it lit the pain right back up.
I jerked. Doc held me still, moving his device across me. On the screen, the speckles meant nothing at all to me, but he was watching it carefully. So when he stopped in one spot, I was pretty sure he'd just found the thing he needed.
"Partial tear," he said, releasing me so he could push the cart back to the side. "That's good news. Means you'll only be out a few weeks."
"No."
"Cody..." Doc came back to stand over me, his face filled with professional patience. "There is no way you can hold onto a bull. You couldn't even pull back against me. You need to give that arm some time to heal, because if you try to ride on it, you'll come off hard and get hurt worse."
"But if I don't ride, will they let me back?"
"So long as you're still qualified for the Tough Enough series..." he tried.
I shook my head, cutting him off. "This is me, Doc. I'm the elephant in the room, right?"
"She kinda is," Anthony agreed.
"And you're still injured," Doc chided. "That armwill nothold you on a bull. The first buck will probably snap the tendon the rest of the way, putting you out for the entire end of the season."
"What?"
"Your left arm will not hold you," he said, emphasizing every word.
Ok, the morphine he'd given me was nice, but it made it hard to convince my thoughts to work. I needed to find a way to fix this. I had to ride! I couldn't afford to miss a few shows like J.D. could. I knew better.
Somehow, the PBR would find a reason to not let me back. It wouldn't matter if that was changing the rules, suddenly giving everyone else more points so I was too low to be qualified, or something else. For the last two weekends, I'd come to realize that if I wanted this, I was going to have to fight for it, and fighting meant riding.
Wait. "Can I wave that arm?" I asked.
"What?" Doc asked.
"Does it have to be strapped to me, or can it heal if I'm waving it in the air?"
