Page 4 of Ride or Die

I shake my head, a sharp motion that sends a spike of pain through my skull that I ignore. “So what?” I shrug. “It’s part of the gig.”

The doctor’s expression tightens just a little. He ain’t backing off like others might. “No, Cole. It’s a serious risk. And at a certain point, it stops being a risk and turns into a probability.”

I huff a laugh, tinged with bitterness. “You ever been on the back of a bull, doc?”

“No.”

“Then you don’t get it.” The words come out faster now, hotter, panicked. Pissed. “You don’t spend your whole life working toward something—bleedin’ for it, breakin’ bones for it—just to walk away because of whatmighthappensomeday.” I shrug again. “Hell, I might walk on out of this dang hospital and get cleaned up by an ambulance. Life’s a risk. Don’t mean it ain’t worth livin’.”

He studies me, and I hate that look. Not judgment. Not exactly. Concern. Maybe even a little pity. Like I’m already halfway gone.

“You need to seriously consider retiring,” he says.

And there it is.

The R word.

Just like that. Like it’s a simple decision. Like he’s telling me to switch cell phone plans or some shit, not give up the only thing that’s ever made me feel like I’m something.

“No,” I say immediately. The word comes out hard. Final. “I’m twenty-six years old, dammit. I ain’t doin’ that.”

“Cole—”

“I’m close.” I cut him off, sitting forward despite the way my head swims. “You don’t understand, doc—I’m right there. A couple more good runs, finish out the season strong—I’ll make the team. I know I will. That’s everything, dammit.”

My hands are shaking now, but not from fear. From anger and frustration. Because all I see is dust and arena lights. I hear the gate slam open. Feel the surge of nothing but eighteen hundred pounds of pure muscle move beneath me. Eight seconds stretched into a lifetime. That’s where I exist. That’s where I matter. Out there, I’m not just Cole Dawson, the kid from the trailer park whose drunk daddy killed his mama. I’m somebody, goddammit.

But in here—in this room, with this nagging headache and those fuckin’ scans—I’m just a man being told to give up the only thing he’s ever been good at, the only thing that’s ever made any sense.

“You’re asking me to throw it all away. For what? So I can, what—spend the rest of my sorry ass life fixin’ fences on a ranch that ain’t even mine?” I scoff. “That’s not a life. That’s… nothin’.”

“It’s a life you’ll remember,” the doc says firmly. “A life where you’ll recognize the people who care most about you.”

“I ain’t got no one that gives a shit about me,” I mutter under my breath. My hands ball into fists and I heave a sigh, my jaw clenched tight. “No offense, doc, but you don’t know me.”

“I know what repeated head injuries do to people,” he replies, just as exasperated. “I’ve seen it. Fighters. Football players. Riders just like you. Men who thought they had one more go left in them—and paid for it for the rest of their lives.”

I look away, breathing deep. The room feels smaller now, like it’s closing in on me. Panic swirls low in my chest.

The doctor softens a touch, but it only pisses me off more. Sympathy and pity, laced with condescension. The fucking worst. “CTE isn’t something you feel right away. But it builds. And when it catches up to you… there’s no hiding from it.”

I glance at the scans again. At my brain. My future, apparently, sitting there illuminated in grayscale. Everything I am—my memories, my instincts, every ride, every fall—all of it sitting right there, almost as if it’s mocking me.

On the back of a bull, everything makes sense. You hold on, or you don’t. You win, or you lose. Black and white. Simple. But this? This is a man I’ve never even met before, a man who knows better than I do, telling me that the thing I’ve built my entire life around might destroy me from the inside out, and that’s a fear that buries itself deep and settles in your bones.

“If I quit,” I say, my voice lower now but still burning the back of my throat, “then what the hell was all of it for?”

He doesn’t answer right away, and that only makes me angrier. Because I know there ain’t no answer. Not one that replaces the roar of a crowd, the snap of a gate, the eight seconds that mean absolutely everything.

Finally, the doctor speaks. “Whatever it’s for, Cole, it shouldn’t have to cost you everything.”

I shake my head, jaw set, eyes stinging but refusing to give anything away.

Out there, I know exactly who I am. In here… he’s asking me to become the one thing I’ve been terrified of turning into. Nota has-been, or a washed-up, he’s asking me to become a never-was. A fuckin’ nobody. Just like they always said I would…

I close my eyes, and for a second, I can almost hear the crowd. Feel the rope in my hand. Feel the rhythm of the bull bucking beneath me. But then it fades. And when all that’s left is the quiet beeping of the machine next to me, I’m not sure which scares me more—losing my mind someday… or giving up everything I’ve spent the last ten years of life working toward.

I try to avoid the Stop and Shop like my life depends on it. The place is a goddamn cesspool of consumerism and rude motherfuckers with nothing better to do. But I was out of gum, and after the day I’ve had full of tests and scans and white-washed waiting rooms, the drive back from Lubbock almost killed me. My hands were starting to shake like an addict. It’s gotta be irony or some shit; I ain’t ever smoked a cigarette a day in my life, yet somehow, I found myself addicted to nicotine gum. Go fuckin’ figure.