Dream Wheels Read Online Free Page A

eternity. It must have seemed that way to the young cowboy too. All of the muscles had been ripped savagely. The deltoids, sub-scapularis, subspinatus and infraspinatus muscles were shredded.
Shredded
. The rotator cuff was gone. Just gone. Disappeared. Vanished, vamoosed, as the cowboys would say. Right now the shoulder sat completely out of joint, and Foley suspected that the whiplash effect of the bull’s thrashing coupled with the twisting of the cowboy’s body had done the same to the ligaments as well. But that wasn’t all that worried him.
    The young man’s leg was fractured. Not merely broken but stomped, pulverized. Foley suspected the break had happened when the legs had been slammed to the ground and then the bull had galloped over him. The femur was a mess. When they’d rolled the gurney in through the doors the cowboy was conscious. That surprised Foley. Normally people in that much pain went into shock and lost consciousness, but the cowboy gripped his hand when he stooped to look at him and Foley had felt the coiled strength of his grip.
    “Bad, Doc? Huh?” he’d asked.
    “We’ll see,” Foley had told him.
    What he saw he didn’t like. All the normal attachments that connected the arm to the shoulder were gone. The joint could be pinned perhaps, but the pinning could easily render the arm immobile, incapable of the normal round operation that allowed the arm to be lifted, turned inward and outward, swung. The leg would never be the same. He’d walk, but with a severe limp, and Foley knew he’d never ride again. At least, not as a competitive rider, not as rodeo bull rider. From the initial X-rays Foley determined that the only solution appeared to be a rod down the middle of the bone itself and then a series of screws to attach the bone fragments. Six months down the road, after the cast was off, the cowboy could start strength exercises to build back muscle in the thigh, but the leg would never, ever bear the pounding of bull riding, perhaps not even riding a horse easily.
    The young man slept. The morphine had defeated his gritty hold on consciousness, and Foley’s next move was to call in the bone specialist and prepare him for surgery on the leg. The arm would take some consultation, and Foley suspected the young cowboy was due for a lot of surgery over the next twenty-four hours. It was going to be tough, but from the tensile grip he’d felt earlier he believed the young man possessed an inordinate amount of strength. He’d need it.
    A half dozen cowboys milled about in the emergency area. Foley had treated a number of them over the years and was always impressed with the way they shrugged it all off and began healing in their minds even before the necessary surgery. For them, it seemed, a broken bone was a way of life, and even the concussions, the fractured ribs, punctured lungs and assortment of other results of allowing yourself to be thrownabout at will by a wild horse or bull were the price of admission to a lifestyle he couldn’t, with his Ivy League background, comprehend. This was different, however. This was being taken right out of the life. This was the end of the trail.
    “Are there family members here?” Foley asked when he approached the group.
    “I’m Birch Wolfchild, Joe Willie’s dad,” a tall, lean, dark-haired man said, standing and reaching over to shake Foley’s hand.
    “Mr. Wolfchild, your son’s in pretty bad shape.”
    “Well, he’s been in pretty bad shape before, Doc.”
    “Not like this.”
    Birch Wolfchild looked over his shoulder once at the other cowboys and then stepped closer to Foley. He put a hand on his shoulder and began walking slowly down the hallway, and Foley was surprised at how easily the man had gotten him to move along beside him. “Now, Doc, I’m gonna have to tell his mother something and it’s gonna have to be something she can take in. So give it to me straight. No gobbledygook.”
    Foley grinned despite himself.