Ty looked up from watching his thumb rub over Amy's hand when Lou returned to the room looking ashen. It didn't take more than that for Ty to figure out what upset her. "I guess you talked to the doctor," he assumed with his eyes falling away from his sister-in-law.
Lou had been spaced out as she wandered back to Amy's room, heartbroken and scared for her sister. She knew better than most how both excited and nervous Amy was about becoming a mom, Lou probably being excited enough for the both of them. She'd been waiting forever for her and Ty to break that news. Though, admittedly, her anxiety from the matter wasn't nearly at bad as when she'd been waiting for Ty to pop the question. All the back and forth gave her whiplash. This, though. This felt like a huge slap in the face. She stared almost blankly at Ty for a moment when he spoke to her, having to take the time to process what he just said. "Yeah. Yeah, we did." Her gaze wandered to her sister still asleep and blissfully unaware of what was happening outside the confines of her own mind.
Ty said nothing, merely nodding in response because he really had no idea of what to say and feared opening his mouth would weaken the wall he erected to get him through these next few hours until Amy woke up.
At his lack of voice, Lou returned her eyes to him, watching him try to hold himself together, distracting his mind by running his hand back and forth along Amy's forearm. She wanted to say something but the words 'I'm sorry' just seemed so generic and weak. As she studied Ty, though, she realized that probably the best thing to do for him right now was to leave him be. "Call when she wakes up?"
Ty again nodded, lifting his eyes to Amy's face for the umpteenth time as if expecting her to open her eyes as if on cue. He still wasn't sure if he wanted her to or not, not yet ready to break the devastating news that he knew would crush her.
Lou stepped up beside the bed to delicately touch her hand to Amy's head in parting before leaving Ty to be alone with his wife. She caught Jack in the hall on his return. "Ty's going to let us know when she wakes up," Lou informed him, causing Jack to stop and cast a glance toward the room, taking a moment to catch what Lou was getting at. In the end he nodded and extended his arm behind her back to guide her back toward the lobby.
Tim was pacing the line of chairs in the waiting area, running his hand through his hair while the other held tightly to his hat. He paused and looked up when he caught sight of Lou and Jack. "Is she awake," he asked anxiously.
Lou settled her hard gaze on him, hesitating a moment before Jack spoke up to answer instead. "Not yet. We're going to leave them some space for now."
"Space?" Tim wanted to protest, to say Ty didn't need space and that he had no intentions of leaving until Jack once again held a hand up to stop him.
"He's got enough on his mind without us here breathing down his neck. He'll call when Amy wakes up. There's not much else we can do here in the mean time so we might as well go home and get some real work done."
There was a pause where Tim contemplated continuing to argue. He came with Lou and Jack, so if he decided to be hardheaded and stay, he'd be without a ride home, but at least he'd be here for when Amy woke up. Still, after a glance toward Amy's room with Ty keeping his vigil, decided not to create any more tension. "Okay. No, you're right. Won't be much use sitting around." Tim nodded, sounding more like he was trying to convince himself of that as he placed his hat back on his head and walked with Lou and Jack back out to the truck.
The ride back to Hudson was painfully quiet, everyone settled in their own thoughts and worries, no one daring to bring up anything to do with Amy or the accident, and especially not the baby. They dropped Tim off back at his truck before Jack and Lou made the rest of the journey back to Heartland where Georgie was sitting with Katie out on the porch playing with her toy horses. The girls looked up, Georgie walking with her little sister and helping her down the few steps to meet Lou and Jack on the walking path.
"Is Amy okay?" she asked anxiously, her dark eyes filled with concern. One look at her daughters and Lou almost broke into tears again, but she swallowed them down and reached out to take Katie's hand, placing the other on Georgie's shoulder to turn her back toward the house.
"She will be. Come on inside and get a snack." Lou tossed a look over her shoulder to see Jack heading in the opposite direction toward the barn, figuring he was checking on the horses as he figured Amy would be asking him to do.
"What happened?" Georgie was asking as she settled into a kitchen chair beside Katie while Lou opened the fridge to find something to give the girls that would also keep herself busy.
Lou ended up pulling out a couple apples and dug into the cabinet for a jar of peanut butter, closing her eyes as she faced away from the girls and took a deep breath. Sooner or later Georgie was going to learn the fate of her much-anticipated cousin and Lou really wasn't sure how she would take it, or exactly how she was supposed to tell her. "A car hit her," Lou answered carefully, taking a knife and starting to slice the first apple into sections.
"A car? It's daytime. Didn't the driver see her?"
That seemed to be the question of the day today and an answer no one could really understand. "They were in a parking garage. I guess it was too dark. I really don't know, Georgie."
There was a silence after that while Lou finished slicing up apples and scooping peanut butter into a dish then turned to place them on the table for the girls to share. But while Katie was first to reach out and take a slice of apple, Georgie remained staring at the table, biting on her lip.
"Hey." Lou moved around the table to squat beside her. "She's going to be okay. Ty's there with her. She'll be home in a few days but I promise next time we visit we'll bring you along so you can see for yourself, okay?"
Georgie nodded, turning her brown gaze toward her mother. "So, the baby is okay then, too?"
She knew it was coming, eventually, but hoped it wouldn't be now, today, so soon after she just learned herself and was still processing it. But Georgie asked and Lou knew she couldn't lie to her or divert the conversation away because she didn't want to talk about it. She was old enough now to hear things like this and certainly mature enough to handle it. But that didn't make Lou's task of telling her any easier. It seemed her hesitance to answer was all that Georgie needed, though, to put the pieces together.
"It's not, is it? Please don't lie to me, Mom. I'm not a little kid anymore."
That made Lou smile a little as she reached up to run her hand over Georgie's head. "No. You're not."
"Both of my parents died, remember? You don't need to keep protecting me. I can handle it. The baby… it died, didn't it?" she asked hesitantly.
Tears seeped out of Lou's eyes at Georgie's strength. The girl had seen so much tragedy in her life, when she and Peter adopted her all they wanted was to give the girl a real home and a stable, happy life after she spent so much of hers being shuffled around between foster homes and running away. But Georgie was right, she was a teenager now and with all of the challenges of her past came an ability to cope and accept that life just wasn't fair and a lot of the time downright cruel.
"Yeah, sweetie. It did," Lou finally answered quietly, trying to hold her own tears at bay as she studied Georgie's face. For a moment nothing seemed to happen as they both just gazed at each other, Lou letting the news sink in and allowing Georgie to properly register it. But eventually neither one of them could contain their heartache anymore and the moment Lou saw those tears begin to spill from Georgie's brown eyes, hers began to follow. Georgie didn't say a word, but she didn't have to because they all felt the same.
Lou reached out to wrap her arms around her daughter, Georgie doing the same as she rest her head on her mother's shoulder. Their tears remained silent as Lou's hand rubbed her back in a soothing motion holding onto her tightly.