Tim's hands smacked down on the counter of the nurse's station, causing the woman sitting behind the desk to jump a little at the sudden noise and look up at him with the beginnings of an irritated frown. "Can I help you, sir?"

"I need to speak with the doctor in charge of my daughter's case. Her name's Amy Flem-, uh, Borden." Tim demanded, stumbling over Amy's name. After a year of no longer being a Fleming it still hadn't quite caught up to him yet.

The nurse moved over to her computer and typed Amy's name into the system, waiting for her information to appear, drawing out Tim's impatience. "That would be Doctor Mathers. I'll page him for you, have a seat." She threw her eyes over toward the little waiting room right across the hall, directing Tim in that direction so he wouldn't stand there and crowd her.

Tim glanced toward the waiting area but didn't move to go sit there, instead shifted off to the side and leaned against the counter. "It's okay, I'll wait." The nurse sighed and tried not to roll her eyes as she picked up the phone to get the page out over the speaker system when Jack and Lou joined Tim.

"I can't believe this," Tim started, turning his back on the nurse and folding his arms over his chest with a shake of his head. "If she hadn't-"

"Don't you even go there," Jack raised an accusing finger to cut him off. He knew where Tim was going to go with that statement and was in no way going to allow him to place blame on anyone, or anything, for what was nothing but an accident. "It was an accident, Tim. A case of wrong place, wrong time."

"Yeah? What about that driver, huh? Where the hell is he in all of this?" In Tim's mind, there was always someone to blame. He could place blame on any one of them, including himself, but right now he chose to split it between Ty and this driver.

"I don't know, Tim, why don't you go down to that parking garage and see if he's still around," Jack snapped back, so tired of his ex-son-in-law's bull when it did nothing to help situations and usually tended to make them worse than what they started out as.

"Can you two just stop, please? Placing blame isn't going to change the fact that it happened and Amy is laying in there…" Lou placed her hand in front of her mouth when her voice cracked and tears started to well in her eyes before she could finish what she intended to say.

"Anyway, it's my fault," she said after taking a moment to get a hold of herself again. "I was the one on the phone with her when she got hit. I was frustrated because I just wanted to know how the appointment went and to see those ultrasound photos and she and Ty decided to stay a few more hours in the city and I… God, I was so stupid and selfish. If I hadn't gotten upset Amy wouldn't have been on the phone and…" Lou's voice faltered again.

Tim's face fell when he saw Lou's guilt take hold of her, realizing then how his mission to find someone to blame was affecting her when she already felt as if it were her fault. It made his heart sink to see her in tears, upset with herself for having been the reason Amy was distracted and not paying attention to where she was walking. Lou was right in thinking she could be to blame, but that wasn't fair. She didn't deserve to carry that around with her. "Lou…" Tim said quietly, reaching out to wrap his arm around her and pull her into him, rubbing his hand along her back. "It's okay, honey. It's not your fault."

"Yes it is! It is my fault. I called her. I should have just texted her back, but I had to call her…" Lou pressed her eyes shut with her chin resting on her dad's shoulder, reaching her hand up to wipe at the few tears that began seeping from her eyes and was thankful that she'd left Georgie to babysit Katie so they weren't here to see their mother like this. She was supposed to be strong for them but right now she felt everything but.

"If we're going to play the blame game, then each and every one of us is going to lose, including Amy. It's going to do nothing but cause problems we don't need to deal with right now and won't do anything to give us the things we need to hear right now. Like Amy is going to be fine. Did you forget that part? She may be be a little beaten and bruised, but she's alive and will be okay in time." All Jack wanted to do right now was look to the bright side of everything. Amy was alive, that's what mattered. That's all that mattered and that's what everyone should be happy about and rallying around.

"But what about the baby, Grandpa? What if… what if it didn't survive?"

"She can always have another baby, Lou. When the time is right," Tim answered, causing Lou to jerk away from him with a look of contempt.

"How can you say that? That poor innocent life could have just been destroyed, but oh well, it's replaceable. I can't believe you. That baby is a part of our family, Dad. My niece, or nephew, your grandchild. How can you be so heartless?!" Lou was appalled, unable to wrap her mind around Tim's attitude toward this whole pregnancy in general. She didn't understand why he was so against it. So he wanted Amy to rise to the top of the equine world, but that was no excuse to dismiss her pregnancy as an obstacle preventing her from doing it.

But Tim was shaking his head, reaching out for Lou again feeling like he'd just been slapped from the look she gave him. "No, Lou, that's not what I was trying to say. I-" But he was cut off when the doctor approached, asking if they were Amy's family. They nodded, gathering around him as he leaned over the counter to dig through the files next to the nurse for Amy's.

"We were told she's going to be okay." Lou said, looking to the doctor for confirmation.

"Yes, she will fully recover with time and proper care, but as I told her husband she's going to need to remain her for a couple days for further observation just to make sure no further problems arise."

"Further problems… like what?" Tim asked, not liking the sound of it.

"Well, she hit her head pretty hard and while there was no sign of internal bleeding and her motor functions are fine, we won't know if there was any real damage until she wakes up. If there is any damage to her frontal lobe, it'll be more emotional and behavioral based than physical, so we can't assess it until we can speak with her. As for her other physical injuries, uh, she has a couple fractured ribs that collapsed her lung on that side, but we were able to place a tube into her chest to pull out the air and allow the lung to properly expand again. But none of her vital organs were punctured or very severely damaged." Though there was quite a bit to process, the doctor was speaking slowly and studying each of their expressions to determine if they were following and where he might need to elaborate, trying his best not to speak in medical terms but with words they'd be able to comprehend. "However," he started again, not wanting to deliver this news but it was a part of Amy's injuries that needed to be addressed. "the trauma to her abdomen caused the fetus she carried to be aborted."

"Ab-aborted?" Lou repeated, feeling the color drain from her face when the doctor nodded.

"Truth be told, if the accident hadn't terminated the pregnancy, it's probable that she wouldn't have been able to carry to full term from her injuries and would have miscarried anyway. As terrible as it sounds, it's better that it happened this way."

"Better?" Tim blurted out, not understanding how that was "better."

"Easier, I should say. She wasn't very far along, so there was no true bond between her and the fetus yet as there would have been later on when she would start to feel it."

"Easier… why don't you go in there when she wakes up and tell her that? Tell her she just lost her child and then see how much easier it is. I bet you don't have kids, do you?" Tim snapped.

The doctor took a deep breath and studied Tim, watching the man become worked up and almost hostile, but remained calm himself, knowing it wasn't his job to get personal. "No. I don't," he admitted, already having had this argument a number of times over the years, so he already knew what Tim was going to say.

"So, so you really have no idea how this is going to affect my daughter. Don't tell us it's best or easier this way when the fact of the matter is, her baby just died." The words flew out of Tim's mouth with the force of the ache that just took over his chest when reality just came crashing down on top of him. It hit him like a ton of bricks and he was left standing there just staring hard at the doctor and clenching his jaw tight to ward off any real emotion that now threatened to invade the steel that just melted away.

The doctor just continued to watch Tim calmly, waiting for him to finish before looking to Jack and Lou, letting Tim's irritation roll off of him and let it go. He was upset; it was understandable and there wasn't a thing he could say that would change it or make it better. He just told them like it was. "As I told her husband, she's going to be out for another couple of hours, so I suggest going home and getting some rest or getting comfortable there in the waiting area. Cafeteria is just downstairs," he told them, pausing to see if they had any further questions before giving a nod of departure and returning to his rounds.

Lou stood fighting tears, swallowing hard and staring down at the floor. She took a slow breath before lifting a heated gaze to her father. "This is your fault. You wanted this to happen. You've been against that baby from the beginning. Well, guess what, Dad, you won. Are you happy now?" Lou's voice shook with rage and hurt as she stormed off back toward Amy's room.

"Lou-" Tim started to stop her, feeling that knife rip further into his chest, but stood his ground and watched her go. His eyes shifted over to Jack who was looking at him rather indifferently.

"Go ahead, say it."

"Say what?"

"You know what."

"It amazes me that it took them losing that baby for you to realize you were a damn fool. Maybe one day you'll learn a lesson before it's too late." Jack shook his head, then followed Lou back to Amy's room.

Tim remained there in the hall, pulling his hat from his head and running a distressed hand through his hair. Jack was right, he never seemed to come to the right conclusions until the consequences were already staring him in the face. That was how he'd always been, though, diving head first, full speed ahead. It got him in enough trouble in the past, even he would have thought he'd know better by now, but he still lived with the mentality of a rodeo cowboy - all or nothing, every ride.