"Thank God you're back. Never leave me to cover for you again. I've been here for so long I can't get the smell of antiseptic out of my hair." Ty's eyes widened as he took a cautious step back when Cassandra popped up from behind the computer.
"It's only been a few days, Cass. Relax." Really? His first day back and he was already going to be attacked about the schedule that he didn't even make.
"It's been five days, actually, and I work over the weekend so I won't have had a day off in over a week!"
Ty rolled his eyes when his back was to the girl as he checked out who their new patients were, taking a clipboard off of the cage of a Corgi to examine. "The whole reason I had to take off was because my wife was in a car accident and lost our baby. So don't pretend like you're the victim in all of this because you were stuck working a few extra hours. Grow up, Cassandra." He turned to glare at her, seeing her expression soften before flipping a page on the clipboard and turning away from her again.
"Ty, I… I'm sorry. Scott didn't tell me why, so I just assumed-"
"You just assumed I was playing hooky? That I was shooting pool and drinking beers at K.O. and thinking 'oh, well, Cassandra can just cover for me'? Seriously?" She should know him better than that after working together for over four years. Frankly, he was insulted that she thought that lowly of him.
Cassandra looked ashamed and seemed to deeply regret whatever she'd been thinking of him the last few days. "Something like that. Ty, I am sorry. I just didn't know what was going on. Is Amy okay?"
It took a pause and a deep breath for Ty's irritation to ease away, but when it did all he felt was the exhaustion. Dropping the clipboard on the exam table, Ty stared down at it, running his hands over his face. "I don't know. I don't think so, but she's trying to pretend like she is. I just think she's afraid to acknowledge it."
"Well, have you asked her? Don't take this the wrong way, but I've gotten the feeling that communication isn't the strongest part of your relationship," she said with a raise of her brow, leaning back in the computer chair and wiggling a pen between her fingers.
Communication had been a bit of an issue with them in the past, but they learned from those mistakes and Ty liked to believe they were beyond keeping secrets. This wasn't exactly the same thing as what caused them turmoil in former years and Ty realized that whatever Amy wasn't telling him it was because she either wasn't sure how to convey those feelings because she wasn't able to cope with them herself yet, or just didn't want to face them at all. Ty ignored that part of Cassandra's comment, though, as he picked up the clipboard again and hooked it back to the cage. "I don't want to force it out of her if she's not ready. She only just got out of the hospital yesterday and I think I should give her some time to… just come to terms with it on her own first. She knows we have to talk about it – that I want to - and I told her that I'll be ready whenever she is."
Cassandra looked skeptical, but just shrugged and let it go. "Okay. By the way, you're staying here today while I go out to get lunch. I can't stand to eat another soggy sandwich."
Amy lay in bed long after Ty left for the clinic. She was awake, aware of the settling creaks of the trailer and the irregular drip of the faucet, her ears tuning into the birds happily chirping outside around the feeder she erected at the end of last summer to help the birds get a jump through the winter. But her eyes were closed and she remained unmoving with her hand pushed up beneath her pillow, finger running along the edge of the book she kept hidden beneath it.
Even with those sounds all around her the trailer felt eerily quiet and still. So quiet, her thoughts were screaming at her through flashes of memories from the day of the accident. She'd replayed it over and over again all night long, not getting so much as an hour of sleep before waking up again. Amy was afraid of the nightmares. Afraid of what she would see when they came. Mostly they consisted of dark hallways and crying infants, occasionally flashes of light that would make her head throb and wake her up in tears. It had only been a few days, yet every time she closed her eyes it was like suffering through a whole night of relentless torment.
Her heart had never hurt this badly before. Not even when she and Ty were broken up or apart and his whereabouts was unknown and the possibility of him being dead was very real. She'd had hope then. Hope that she desperately clung to that he was still alive and that he'd come back to her. She had no hope now. Their baby was gone and it wasn't coming back.
It hadn't been very big. Not big enough to be noticed or felt though her belly, but it had been there and it had been theirs. They saw it on the monitor, listened to its tiny fluttering heart, and basked in the excitement of becoming parents for too brief a time. Maybe it was too soon to have a true connection with it, too soon to determine if it was a boy or a girl, and too soon to become parents, but it was their baby. Ty's baby. And it was gone.
Tears squeezed from Amy's closed eyes, sliding down over the bridge of her nose and onto her pillow as they did every night. Her finger continued gliding along the pages until she opened her eyes to the day and started to push herself up while wiping her face. She pulled the baby book from beneath the pillow and stared down at it in her lap, tracing the letters of the title then opening it again to the tabbed page. She never looked further than that, not wanting to see what she would be missing as her pregnancy progressed with a child that no longer existed.
It hurt to think that seven months from now they would have had a baby. They'd have learned if it would be a son or daughter, picked a name, welcomed the child to the Bartlett-Fleming-Morris-Borden family by christening a stone of the Heartland fireplace, and began their new lives as parents. Now that seven months would be swallowed by time and the only reminder they would have of that lost child would be a crumbled computer print-out.
Closing the book, Amy's gaze lifted toward her bag that still sat on the table from the day before. Getting up, she went to dig through it for the photo, finding it slipped neatly into a side pocket. She pulled it out and slid into the recliner beside the table, staring at the grainy misshapen image and wondering if Ty still had his folded up in his wallet as it had been the day it was taken. He'd been so excited, so eager for that appointment to see his child for the first time. Amy hated that she'd bestowed any doubt in him beforehand that she didn't want their child just because she cared a little bit too much about what her family thought. The relief she felt was swallowed by the guilt for realizing she felt it. She wasn't relieved. She was heartbroken and devastated. Amy wasn't new to experiencing the lesson behind the saying that you never truly appreciated something until it was gone and it was exactly what she was feeling now as the air seized in her lungs before a sob escaped through her lips.
Turning the photo over, Amy placed it face down on the table and took a long, slow breath, cleared her throat then forced herself to get up. She didn't know what she was thinking would happen if she stayed alone in the trailer all day. That she would reach some sort of calming peace with what happened or find strength in her loss to move on? No, what it felt like was going to happen was she would be sitting there in an empty trailer trying not to bawl her eyes out as she berated herself for being so stupid for not paying attention to where she was walking, and tormenting herself with the what ifs and what could have beens while staring at the photo of a child that would never grow up.
Pulling herself together, Amy pushed her mind to focus on something else while she got dressed around the ache in her ribcage. After brushing her teeth she grabbed the pain medication the doctor prescribed her and swallowed the recommended dosage, pushing the bottle into the pocket of her jeans before heading out the door to Heartland.