the finals, so the higher he was in the standings, the more likely he was to win the title. As long as he was in good enough shape to climb aboard a bull the first week of November, he still had a shot.
But if the worst happened and he couldn’t compete even then…
He didn’t want to think about that. He didn’t want to think about starting all over again in January. About following a grueling schedule that put him in a different town every week so he could pile up the prize money and inch up in the standings. About all those younger cowboys coming onto the scene, ones who hadn’t spent the past ten years getting knocked around the way he had. He was hot this year, hotter than he’d ever been, but he couldn’t count on his good fortune lasting forever. If he missed this window of opportunity to win the championship, it might never open up again.
Forty-five minutes later, Luke and Shannon arrived at the hospital emergency room. But it was another hour before a nurse took Luke back to be seen by a doctor, a bearded guy who was probably in his early forties, who stroked his chin a lot as he talked. After a brief exam, after which a different nurse treated the scrapes on Luke’s leg and removed at least a dozen splinters, the doctor ordered an MRI to diagnose the knee injury. Luke had to endure another long wait for that, and yet another before an orthopedist showed up to evaluate the results. Whenever Luke came back to the waiting room, Shannon questioned him about what was going on. But he quickly grew frustrated by the whole experience and clammed up. Eventually she did, too.
They finally called Luke’s name. He left Shannon reading a copy of Business Week and followed the nurse to the back, where she escorted him into an exam room. A few minutes later, the orthopedist came in.
“Looks like you messed your knee up pretty good,” he said. “You have a tear to the anterior cruciate ligament, along with some damage to the meniscus and articular cartilage.”
The doctor showed Luke a drawing of a knee, pointing out the various parts of his anatomy as he explained the extent of the injury. But Luke was interested in only one thing.
“What’s the prognosis?” he asked.
“Excellent. We’ll get you scheduled for arthroscopy. Clean up that tear. And then—”
“Wait a minute. Surgery?”
“Outpatient surgery. No big deal.”
Luke closed his eyes, frustration eating away at him. “What’s that going to cost me?”
“It’s hard to say, exactly.”
“Ballpark.”
The doctor tossed out a figure, and Luke’s stomach practically fell through the floor.
“We’ll schedule you for next week so the swelling will have a chance to go down,” the doctor went on. “After that, with rest and rehab, you’ll be good as new.”
“How long will the recovery take?”
“I’d give it six months.”
Luke felt a rush of disappointment. “Can I do it in three?”
“That’s pushing it.”
“I need to be able to ride again.”
“Horses?”
Luke paused. “Bulls.”
The doctor raised his eyebrows. “You want to get back on a bull? Three months after an injury like this?”
“That’s right.”
“I wouldn’t recommend that. If you sustain a total ACL tear, it could blow that knee for good.”
“I just need to know if it’s doable.”
The doctor thought about it for a long time, finally shrugging weakly. “If you do physical therapy at home, and then come up here a couple of times a week for more intense therapy…maybe. But again, I am not recommending that.”
“I’ll wear a brace while I’m riding.”
“That won’t totally prevent injury.”
Luke leaned in, wearing a no-nonsense look. “Listen to me, doctor. I’m this close to a world bull riding championship. I just need to know that in three months I can walk back into that arena and climb up on a bull. That’s all.”
“What about the odds of you walking out of that arena?”
“I’m willing to risk it.”
“I’m not recommending—”
“You’ve made that clear. Just tell me what I need to do.”
A few minutes later, Luke had his discharge instructions, and he sat down at the ER clerk’s desk to settle the bill. The clerk was an older woman with bifocals resting on her sharp, pointed nose, wearing the kind of sour expression that said she’d worked there for years and hated her job. She slid a piece of paper in front of him, and when he saw the charges, he felt light-headed, as if blood wasn’t getting to his brain. Given his huge