CHAPTER 29
Lou studied the numbers in her accountant's monthly report she had just downloaded onto her laptop. She had a habit of starting at the bottom line at the conclusion of the report and then scrolling back to the beginning, 'Not too bad!' she thought as she gave herself a mental pat on the back for deciding to go ahead with the sale on a new line of tack during a usually slow period of the year.
Good sales reports always pumped her up, a personal reward after choosing to reinvent her life away from the promising high stakes investment broker world of Wall Street to a small business owner in flyover dot on the map as proprietor of a feed and tack store, restaurant, and a dude ranch located in the foothills of Alberta. Her gratification grew from not being forced to share credit for all the successes of her small business decisions and most of all, not having someone farther up the corporate ladder to steal her praises from the board members of a large company who barely knew, or cared, that she even existed. 'Next week we need to think about our clothing line, maybe get some new t-shirts made up. Something like, "Maggie's, a Hudson Tradition est. 1952."' A click on her busy sticky note app popped up a blank yellow patch on the laptops screen, "Call Walter's Printing about a quote for 200 t-shirts. Have them send a draft for my approval of the design before they print!"
A satisfied smile still dominated her expression when the phone laying on the table beside her laptop began to vibrate.
"Lisa? How is Amy? Were you able to talk to her yet? Was she happy to see you? How is grandpa holding up? Did he manage have that talk with Ahmed that he promised me about?" imagining the crusty old cowboy showing the arrogant, self-entitled prince what Amy's entire family thought of his tactics to get her embattled sister to go away with him like he did. "I tell you, if I ever see that sonofa…,"
Weary of having to douse the excitement of her eldest step granddaughter so impatiently expecting to hear of a victorious rescue of her little sister, Lisa broke into the stampede of questions, "Lou, I have some news."
All of Lou's enthusiasm collapsed upon noticing the surprisingly somber tone, suddenly aware that the visit must not have gone as well as they all had hoped. "Is she alright? Did something go wrong? Lisa, she OK?"
"Well, let me start at the beginning. My friend, Alberto, the security official that I told you about, sent his niece, Gabriele, who is a detective herself, to work at the villa and keep an eye on Amy to be sure she would be safe during the investigation, as was the plan. But this afternoon Gabby overheard Amy in trouble in the barn. Apparently she and Ahmed were arguing about the way he gave someone else her job as manager of his equestrian team and wanted her to stay in Barcelona to run his new villa instead. Amy was not taking it well, obviously not happy with the change, and they got into a serious argument. Ahmed ended up attacking Amy and was about to really hurt her. When Gabby got to them, he was on top of Amy on the floor and was choking her until she was nearly unconscious. That's when Gabby picked up a shovel and whacked him on the back of the head and knocked him out cold!"
"What? I hope it flattened the back of his head for good!" imagining the satisfaction she would have felt had it been her taking that swing with the shovel.
"More about all of that later..., Anyway, to get to the point, Gabby called her uncle and cousin, backed up by only a couple more of their most trusted detectives, who were family members as well, I think, to come and help them. They had pre-planned a way of getting both of the girls past the guards without having to involve the entire police force and media right away because, to be honest, I'm not sure how politically incorrect all of this is. It's something about international diplomatic immunity and not having any authority to stop a dignitary of a foreign country from doing whatever he wants, with no repercussions from local law."
"Oh-my-God! Lisa! I knew underneath all that fake charm that Ahmed was a sleez! Good to know he finally got some of what he had coming to him! So, is Amy OK? I hope she finally learned that she can't trust just anybody and everybody to be who they say they are!" confirming a bit of older-sister 'I told you so!' inside her head that she would never say out loud.
"Lou, there is more. After they had already gotten the girls safely off the prince's property, Amy suffered some kind of seizure and passed out in one of the detective's arms. She was OK one minute, and the next, she just collapsed. The detectives rushed her to the hospital where they had to do an emergency surgery to repair a blockage near the injury she had last year because of being kicked by Ahmed's horse. She's…, it's…, Amy is in trouble, Lou! The doctors, what little they have been able to tell us so far, say it is a very sensitive procedure and it was critical to her survival."
A cold numbness poured over Lou as the reality of her little sister's condition replaced all momentum behind the mixed bag of questions she had been ready to unleash, dimming her critical analyzation of the still unfolding story. A deafening static inside her head shattered any illusions of this terribly trying time in all of their lives finally being over. "They think she might…, they think she is in danger?"
"Well, yes, Lou," not wanting to understate the obvious risk to someone trying to accept terrifying news of a loved one from half way around the world, "Any time the surgeons have to be inside the skull…." A shudder rocked the older woman at the thought of a stranger's hands performing such a delicate operation on someone her entire family loved, knowing what could be at stake, "There are never any guarantees, you know?"
"You and grandpa are there, at the hospital?" she asked, trying to put the missing pieces in place.
"Yes. We just spoke to the doctor who performed the surgery. We wanted to know all we could find out before we called to tell you.
"Grandpa! How is he, Lisa?" realizing the state her over stressed grandfather must have been in and worrying about the risk for his health as well.
"He is Jack Bartlett, that's how he is!" trying to ease Lou's worrying. "It ain't pretty, but he is hanging in there!"
"Please, keep an eye on him, Lisa! What if he has another heart attack over this?"
"I know, I worry to, Lou, but he is doing better than I would have thought, for now, at least. I will do everything I can to keep him as calm as possible, I promise!"
"I know, Lisa. And I know having you there with him is helping him more than you could know."
"Listen, I probably should see about trying to get Jack to lie down and rest for a bit. We were asleep when we got the call, so I know he is as exhausted as I am because it is…, 4 am here, and they tell us that Amy is stable and resting so it is going to be a while before we can see her anyway."
"Yes! Get some rest, both of you! And, please, let me know as soon as you know anything new, no matter what time it is, OK?"
"Of course, Honey. As soon as we hear anything, I will call you, I promise."
Lou stared at the phone after it went dark at the end of the call. Eerie silence crept around her as she sat alone under the dimmed lights, trying to reassure herself that everything that could be done for Amy was being done, that she was in good hands so far away from home. The irking notion that things would be much different now had she managed to keep her sister here and under the care of the doctors in Calgary that she trusted. "What have I done? How could I have let that sonofabitch take her away like that?" she asked the empty room. "What if she is never the same, because of me? What if she doesn't even make it through this?"
The usual tranquility around the foothills surrounding 8-S ranch was upset by the roar of the red Dodge dually truck as it sped down the driveway much faster than would have ordinarily been deemed safe, but the lethargic woman lying in the seat next to him had Ty committed to break every rule there was to try and get to the hospital as quickly as possible.
Charlie had been sick to her stomach following her first treatment at the Foothills Medical Center in downtown Calgary. After an overnight stay for observation she was released to recover in the more comfortable surroundings of her own home. Complaining the entire next day of discomfort and nausea, too weak to run to the privacy of the bathroom and vomiting several times into a pail Margie had made ready beside her bed, Charlie was exhausted and ill tempered at the disappointment over her first experience of 'the day after'. The thought of this feeling inside her as being the new normal was maddening, if not terrifying, and she was quickly losing hope that there would be any enhancement of life, as had been expected by the doctors.
Ty lay beside Charlie while the others finished with the evening dinner. He stroked her hair, made sure there were fresh ice chips ready when she asked for one to put in her mouth, and tried his best to offer her any comfort he could think of, wishing he could somehow do something to take all of her hurting away. During their first orientation at the clinic, the team of doctors had advised them of possible side effects, and Ty was quick to notice when she began to fade, checked her vitals, and scooped her up in his arms. He held the barely responsive patient tightly to his chest as he made his way down the hallway to the front door and yelled, "Margie! Charlie needs help! Call the hospital and tell them we are on the way!" and ran as fast as he could carry her straight for the truck.
The trip into Calgary usually took forty five minutes, but when Ty checked the clock on the dash he had used only thirty to reach the emergency entrance. The ER staff was already waiting at the door because of Margie calling ahead to alert them her granddaughter was in route and it was only a matter of seconds before they were all hurrying down the polished white corridor toward the ominous doors at the end of the hall.
"Wait here, please!" the nurse held up her hand to Ty as the gurney carrying Charlie shot through the open door into the well-equipped emergency room.
Just as calamitous as the frenzy of people rushing down the hallway, an unnerving silence was startling after the doors closed behind his stricken girlfriend and left him alone wondering what to do next.
"This is all my fault," he said to no one in particular. "All I wanted to do was to help her feel better and look what has happened!"
"Mr. Borden?" a nurse asked as she carefully put her hand on his forearm.
"Uh, yeah, how did you know…?"
"Charlene's grandmother told me to look after you. She and Clint are old friends of the family," she explained. "It is not your fault, Mr. Borden. Sometimes the body doesn't respond like we hope it will, especially in trials, but I assure you that the people in that room are the best you could ever hope to have helping her right now, and they will do everything they can to make sure she is going to be OK. Now, why don't you come with me so we can get the paperwork started? You can help me with enough information to get us going until Charlie's grandparents can make it here to fill in the more personal details, OK?"
"Uhh, yeah, OK, I'll do whatever I can."
An hour had passed without any word from behind the closed doors separating Ty from knowing how well Charlie was responding to the team's efforts to stabilize her. Time took on a different meaning under these conditions. Every second somehow managed to stretch into an agonizingly slow pace and thoughts seemed to have all the more time to ramble about random things in between the coherent worrying over the matters at hand.
Slumped low in one of the supposedly uplifting bright blue waiting room chairs, Ty rode the sporadic journey of his thoughts as he tried to bring himself to accept this latest setback. He nearly catapulted clear of the seat when a firm hand landed on his shoulder and doubled his heart rate until he saw that Clint had made it in to the waiting room to join him.
"Sorry, Ty! Any word yet?" he asked, aware of Ty's surprise.
"It's OK. Uh, no. No word yet," he answered. "The nurse behind the desk said she was an old family friend and she would let me know as soon as she had some news."
"That would be Jenny. She is the granddaughter of one of the bronc riders who used to win a lot of my buckles when I was still promoting rodeos. I should probably go say hello. I'd bet she has some paperwork for me to look at."
"Yeah, I got the paperwork started, as much as I knew how. She said she would have it ready for you when you got here," he remembered.
Clint started to take a step, but paused to turn around so he could look Ty straight on, "Thank you, Ty, for taking care of our girl and getting her here safely. Why don't you go on home and get some rest. I know you have to go to work tomorrow."
"I'm not going anywhere, Clint, at least not until it's time for my shift at the clinic. I'll get us some coffee and have it waiting for you when you are finished with Jenny."
The older man nodded and turned toward the woman waiting behind the desk who smiled when she saw him. 'Damn good young man,' he thought. 'Maybe things would have been different for both of them if Charlene had found him a long time ago. Maybe Sammy would have had somebody besides us old worn out rodeoers left to take care of her. Damn the luck anyway!'
Lou came through the door of Maggie's restaurant at her usual 9 a.m. and went into her office to unload an arm full of paperwork she had done the night before. Still groggy from the restless night worrying about most of what was left of her family still dealing with their own struggles in Barcelona, she came back through the door of her office and headed straight to the coffee pot only pausing long enough to pour a steaming cup, glance over the new batch of feed and inventory orders waiting on the memo board beside the cash register, and spin on her heel toward the office to begin another day of steering Maggie's toward a profitable future.
When she swept around the end of the counter, the diligent business woman noticed a tousled man slouching over the table beside the window, "Oh, my, God! Ty, you look like hell warmed over! What happened to you?"
As she slid into the chair opposite her tattered friend it was apparent that all was not well with the little brother she never had, "Ty, are you OK?"
It took a few minutes to catch his unofficially adopted big sister up with his current situation and finished by saying, "We should be able to take her home in a day or two. The doctor said it is a matter of adjusting her dosage until she can handle it better. This treatment is too new to know how it will affect different people. To be honest, I think they rushed it a little because she is so far advanced. I don't know what I'm going to do, Lou. I was just getting back to being me, and now, this. I feel responsible for the setback and I feel so helpless at doing anything useful for Charlie, but I can't stop thinking about Sammy. What's going to happen to her now? Clint and Margie love her to the end of the world and back but they are in their seventies now and a five year old is just too much for them, or she will be soon. The thought of that little girl being left without her parents is killing me."
Lou wanted very badly to tell Ty about the condition of his former fiancee, but empathizing the burden he was already carrying, decided that maybe it would be best to leave her own worries unsaid, for now.
"Oh, Ty, I am so sorry to hear that Charlie is so ill. I was really happy for you to have found that family. They are good people. It is such a shame that things like this happen to people like them, and to you, Ty." Her heart was heavy for her friend, one she knew had suffered far more than she thought anyone his age should have had to endure. Leaning across the red checkered table cloth, Lou slipped her hands around Ty's as a reminder that she loved him like family, "You know you can still count on all of us at home if you need anything, and I mean anything, right?"
"Thanks, Lou, but my biggest concern, after making sure Charlie has what she needs, of course, is what I am going to do about Sammy?"
"What do you mean, what you are going to do about Sammy?" she asked, unsure of what he was implying.
"OK, Lou, this is between me and you, got it?"
"Of course, Ty, but what…,"
Overcome with the need to share his heart with someone he could trust, the pensive single man let his conscience free, "I have been thinking about what it would take, if I have what it takes, to adopt Sammy! That is why I stopped by. I wanted to see if you might be able to help me think this through, because you have gone through it already with Georgie, and you know me as well as anyone, so…,"
Lou was stunned into a hush, no small feat considering her usual nature, but her longtime friend had just knocked the wind out of her with his confession.
Watching his trusted friend's unsuccessful effort for words, "I know what you are thinking, Lou, that it's a bad idea because you don't think I can handle a five year old girl on my own. I get it. But…,"
"Uh, no….NO! That's not what I was thinking at all," she lied, "but, are you sure you know what you would be taking on with a responsibility like that? Do you think you are ready after what you have been through this past year? And, the authorities might have a problem with you being single…, and the way things went for you after the breakup." Lou gritted her teeth because of having to be so harsh, but thought it best to get straight to the important issues facing an obviously torn young man at a precarious crossroads in his life.
"There is no official account of any of those things. Lisa and Bar saw to that by keeping everything off the record. I have to be ready, Lou. All I know for sure is that someday, way too soon, a little girl that means a lot to me is going to lose her last parent, and her great grandparents simply won't be able to care for her much longer, even as much as I know they want to do it. According to what Charlie has told me, there isn't really anyone left close enough to the family to take Sammy in, so, I don't see that I have a choice, Lou, because I am never going to let her be without someone to watch after her like she needs, no matter what. I think I have to do this, for Sammy, for her mom, and for me. I couldn't live with myself if I didn't know she has somebody to make her feel safe, and maybe someday, to feel loved like she deserves."
Lou had known Ty through most of his growing up years. Nothing ever seemed to come easy for him, and she has seen his worst along with his best, but she also knew the look in his eyes when he had set his mind to something he believed in and how he had an uncanny way of seeing his goals through to the end. She would never be the one to stand in his way if he wanted to do something with his life, if it was this important to him, and gave his hands a reassuring squeeze, "OK, but, the extra time, and the extra work, not to mention the financial side of adoption are things you are really going to have to take a hard look at, you know?" the experienced adoptive mother asked.
"That is the reason I came by here on my way to work, to see if you think you can help me to be ready," he shrugged, "you know, when the time comes."
The burning determination from within his emerald gaze was all she needed to see.
"I'll make a deal with you," she offered. You bring Sammy out to the ranch at least once a week for a while, maybe even stay over every now and then when the camping weather is good, and we can see how it goes. Sammy and Katie will get along fine, two can be easier to watch than one, if you can believe that, so that will end up helping both of us, and spending time alone with her away from the people and places she knows as normal right now will let you have a better idea of what you are getting yourself into. And then, if it looks like you can handle it, we will all get behind you and do whatever it takes to help you adopt Sammy, if that is something she is willing to accept. You have to remember, Ty, she is going to be losing her mom, and that is something no little girl is going to understand, so you will have to be prepared for how she reacts to losing the most important person in her life."
"Thank you, Lou! This is what I need to do, I just know it."
"Another thought," Lou interjected, "Have you talked to Clint and Margie about this yet? That is another big question you are going to need an answer for."
"I know. One step at a time, right? So…, do we have a deal then?"
The still cautious woman held out her hand to offer a shake, "We have a deal, Ty, but I have to warn you that I am going to be completely honest about what I think. I will tell you if I think you are getting in over your head. This is too important for too many people to lie to ourselves if we see that it just won't work, so don't you even think about disowning me if we disagree on things."
"I would expect nothing less from my 'big sister'," the prospective parent smiled and hugged Lou tightly around her neck, "Yeah, we have a deal!"
To be continued
