Page 70 of Lost Trust

Royce

I know something is wrong before Jovie even looks up.

She’s sitting behind the desk in the academy clinic, one hand resting on the mouse, the other tapping lightly against the edge of the keyboard.

“That’s not the face you make when you’re about to tell me everything is fine.”

Her mouth twitches. “No, it isn’t.”

I drop into the chair across from her. I walked in here confident. I’ve been resting all week, and the acute pain has largely subsided. Yesterday, Jovie was even able to run me through several sets of pendulum swings and wall presses.

“Go ahead. Lay it on me.”

She turns the monitor toward me. “This is your MRI.”

I study the gray-and-white mess on the screen. “Looks like a bone-in rib eye to me.”

Jovie gives me a look. “That’s because you’re a bull rider, not a radiologist.” She points toward one section of the image. “This is your rotator cuff,” she says. “And this here is the tendon that’s torn.”

I squint. All I see is a bone and a band. No tear.

“How bad?”

Jovie takes a breath. “You have an acute full-thickness tear.”

Shit.

“Full-thickness?”

“Yes. It means the tear goes all the way through the tendon. It’s not a partial tear or a small strain. The tendon has been completely disrupted.”

I lean back. “So, what are we looking at?”

She studies the report. “It’s a significant tear. The exact measurement isn’t the only factor we consider, but this is the kind of injury an orthopedic specialist needs to evaluate.”

I rub a hand over my jaw. “So, surgery.”

“Possibly,” she says as she clicks through more images. “Doctors usually recommend surgery for complete tears or acute traumatic tears, especially those over three centimeters, to prevent the tendon from retracting further and the shoulder muscle from permanently degenerating.”

I rest my elbows on my knees and stare at the floor beneath my boots. “Fuck.”

She swivels back toward me.

“I was hoping for good news. It’s been feeling much better.”

“I know.” She sits back in her chair. “And I like that it’s been a little over a week and you’ve gotten some range of motion back, but that doesn’t mean the tendon has healed,” she says.

“What does it mean?”

“That surgery isn’t necessarily needed tomorrow.”

I look at her.

“With partial tears, conservative treatment can be successful for a lot of people—around eighty percent in some studies. But even then, physical therapy is usually strengthening the muscles around the injury to compensate. The torn tendon itself doesn’t technically grow back onto the bone by itself.”

“So, I can feel better without actually being fixed?”

“Exactly.”