CHAPTER 12
The young lovers watched the warm summer breeze flow gentle patterns of random swaying motion through the tall grass surrounding them. They were in a special place where they enjoyed spending much of their alone time dreaming about what lay ahead in their future. Amy was sitting with him on the old upside down boat that lay on the bank of the pond behind Heartland Ranch's horse barn. She held him with her arms wrapped around his waist while he tightly pulled her in to slowly place a soft kiss to her forehead. There was no need for conversation between them during these quiet trysts because all of the answers to every question they could ever ask were right there in the loving eyes they were gazing into. They each understood that their bond of love would follow them forever with no more doubts or fears or mistrust. It was the most comforting feeling either of them had ever known and nothing else mattered to them at that moment.
A whinny from one of the horses jolted Ty back from the place he had been drifting in his sleep. Waking up in the cool loft of Jack's old barn at the dawn of a summer morning was Ty's idea of perfect start to any day. Being in Southwestern Alberta this time of year was a privilege, in his opinion. The landscape was covered with textures of green and gold mixed in patches of blazing yellow canola fields which rolled over and through the foothills until they disappeared at the base of the blue-grey peaks of the Canadian Rockies. His first order of business was to swing the big oak slatted loft door open to see the old upside down boat resting in its spot and to take in the view of Heartland's fields spotted with horses and cattle leisurely grazing in the tall grass. Habit caused him to look toward Amy's room at the ranch house to see if he could catch her peeking out the window trying to find out if he was awake. Just then was when he remembered today was the day he was going to bring Amy home!
"Ty? Are you up yet?" Georgie called up the stairs from the barn down below him. She was bursting with excitement over her aunt's return to the ranch and would pester everyone on the property until she found a ride to the hospital to see her.
"I'll be down in a minute, Georgie, just hold your horses!" Ty pacified the eager teenager.
"The stalls are mucked out and the horses are fed and watered. We need to get going pretty soon, don't we?" she impatiently asked. "Just making sure you didn't forget about me!"
"Like there is a chance of that happening," he mumbled to himself.
After finishing all of her chores the young girl led Ty through the door into the kitchen where the two of them found Lou and Jack setting the table for breakfast. "OK, let's eat!" she said while grabbing the bowl filled with scrambled eggs.
"Slow down, Georgie! My gosh, you will choke if you keep going like that!" Lou cautioned.
"Just making sure I'm ready when we leave to go pick up Amy," she informed them.
"Yeah, I guess that would be a shame if sitting here and actually chewing your food before you swallow it caused you to be left behind," Jack teased his young sidekick.
Georgie gave the old cowboy a sideways look, to make sure he was kidding, and then scrunched her face at him when he laughed at her reaction.
Ty drove into Okotoks past the new clinic just to the west of the city limits which would be opening to the public soon. He was supposed to report for his first official day at work on Monday and he felt a few butterflies in his stomach at the thought of starting over again.
"So, that is where you are going to be working with the 'high dollar' horses?" Georgie asked as she noticed him looking at the gleaming new facility.
"Yup, I will be in there somewhere," he answered.
"Cool! It is good to know that if anything ever happened to Spartan or Phoenix or Harley, or, if it ever happens to any other horse, you guys can fix them!"
"We will be able to fix them, alright, but before you get your hopes up, those operations are very expensive, so, not just everybody will be able to pay for getting their horses an operation like they can do in that clinic," he tried to explain.
"That sucks, a little, but I guess it is nice that an expensive horse could be saved instead of being put down, but if something happened to Phoenix, I would still want to get him a new bone if his was broken," she reasoned.
"The best thing for you to do, Georgie, is to take care of him and not let him break his leg in the first place! Then you won't have to worry about it. You would be mucking out stalls for the rest of your life to pay for something like that."
The young cowgirl studied Ty's face to see if he was messing with her, but discovered he was looking at her in a serious manner and it gave her pause and think about some of the risky maneuvers she had put her horse through just for the thrill of it.
"Maybe I need to be a little more careful," she conceded.
"Good idea!" he said as he nodded his approval at the daredevil teenagers understanding of the suggestion. Her taking his hint to be more careful while riding in Heartland's six hundred acres of paradise for a horse crazy little girl was at least a small comfort to him and the others who worried about her lack of fear toward such things.
Georgie reached Amy's room several steps in front of Ty who was hurrying to keep up with his young companion. When she walked inside she discovered her aunt already dressed and sitting in the chair beside her bed impatiently waiting for her ride to the ranch to arrive. She was wearing the hijab scarf she once used while working in the UAE to conceal the bandage which covered the missing patch of her long golden strands of hair, and a helmet like device laid on the bed beside her. The doctor had insisted she wear it for protection of the still tender repair of her skull when she did anything that risked unwelcome contact with her head.
"Wow, I guess you are ready to go!" Ty smiled when he saw her sitting there looking so much like her eager young niece he had been trying to restrain for the last couple of hours.
"Yes, I am very ready," she confessed, "but I have to wait for the doctor to release me, so it is going to be a few more minutes."
"Great! Do you have everything packed?" he asked.
"Yes….Oh! I still need to get my things out of the safe….over there," the patient pointed to the wall on the other side of her bed. Amy called out the combination to Ty for the tumblers, "It's 10-14-07," and he opened the door to reach inside. He pulled out her purse, a wristwatch, and the necklace holding the engagement ring he had given her.
"Ten, fourteen, oh seven….isn't that…." Ty paused to remember the date.
"Yes, it is the day you came to Heartland," she finished his thought and flashed a broad grin at him for catching the reference.
"Cool!" Georgie barked. "So, what was it like, the first day you got to the ranch? Do you remember?" she asked Ty. "I remember my first day wasn't so great," she recalled.
"I do, like it was yesterday, Georgie," he said as his mind spun back nearly eight years to the beginning of his new lease on life. "In fact, Amy was the very first person I met. She came charging up to me on horseback and nearly ran me over! That was right before she proceeded to give me a royal chewing out," he chuckled at the memory.
"Well, if he hadn't been driving like some jerk city kid I wouldn't have had to chase him down to explain what I thought about his manners around people riding beside the road," she explained to her niece who had stowed away in Jack's pickup to randomly find her own way to the ranch.
"What did he do, Amy?" the curious girl asked as she broke out in a mischievous grin.
Ty interrupted in explanation, "Amy and one of her friends were riding beside the road a ways down from the ranch as I first drove to Heartland, and I kind of swerved a little bit too close to the horses as I passed them by and honked my horn at them," Ty admitted. "I thought it was funny, at the time."
"And I was soooo mad at him!" Amy smiled at the recollection.
"I'll tell you what, Georgie, it didn't take her long to square me away with regard to how I would drive from then on," he shook his head and chuckled.
Amy sat in the passenger seat of Ty's brand new GMC for the first time and enjoyed all of the comforts of the much more modern vehicle. "I love your old truck, but this is really nice," she said.
"Yeah, and there is plenty of room for me too!" Georgie spoke up.
"I needed something a bit more reliable for when I have to go out on calls, but I intend to keep the old truck and fix it up someday," he said.
Forty minutes was all it took to ease his fragile passenger down the driveway under the welcoming Heartland Ranch sign and to the front of the ranch house. Lou was the first one out the door with Jack and Lisa close behind. Ty grimaced when he saw Tim following behind them, hoping he would for once act like a grown up and not look for a way to cause a needless disagreement of some sort. Ty killed the engine and rushed around to help Amy out of her seat.
"I'm not helpless, you know," she reminded him.
"No, you're not! Just consider this as my being the proper gentleman that I am, by helping the lovely damsel exit her chariot," he said, trying to make her laugh.
"I don't feel very lovely right now…in fact…I…," Amy hesitated as she realized how she must look to everyone who was there to greet her.
"Don't you worry about that," Lou chimed in. "As soon as you feel like getting out of the house, we will have a spa day and we will both get a complete makeover fit for any diva!"
"Thanks, Lou, but most divas don't have an extra hole in their head! How am I supposed to hide that!" she said with a slight panic in her voice.
"I have already talked to my hairdresser. We have a plan to help you with that, so don't worry, OK?" Lou tried to comfort her self-conscious sister.
"Let's get in the house, everybody. We have a spread on the table and I, for one, am hungry," Jack eagerly announced.
Amy followed Ty into her room as he placed her duffle bag and purse on the bed. When he turned to her to see what else he could do before he went to the kitchen he caught a glimpse of the tears forming in her eyes when she tried to look away to hide them. "Amy, what's wrong?" he asked with concern.
"I must look hideous to everybody!" she whimpered and began to cry. He took a step and reached around to pull her gently into a hug. He had learned long ago that when she felt like he knew she did at that moment to just hold her and let her cry it out.
"It's going be Ok, Amy. It won't be long before you are feeling better and Lou can take you to get all gussied up," he teased. "Nobody cares about the bandage, and..., you are still beautiful….too beautiful to let something like a little patch of hair upset you."
"Thank you for saying that. I am going to need a lot of help with my confidence for a while."
"Well, it must be your lucky day, because I am just the man for the job!" he chuckled. "Let's get you settled and go get something to eat. I am starved!"
