chapters 13-17

Chapter 13 – they say it´s bad luck

The following day, Tim was driving on the Highway on his way to Heartland. He was with Janice, her girlfriend who had just returned from California. Janice was talking to him about the course of one of the races in which she competed. Janice in her brown hair and light eyes was explaining every single detail about her trip to California, and when she had nothing else to say she looked at Tim and asked him “ What about you?”

“Well, I had been helping Jack with the burned parts of the ranch, it´s not much work but we have to take out the ashes from the fields, it would be a disaster if the horses eat it.”

She smiled and asked again “What about Amy, how did she handle all this?

“In fact  was her dumb boyfriend who burned everything up, they were in a date”

“Ty?” “Really ? ’’

“Well, that´s just the beigining…” said Tim. He told Janice all the story of the ring and how he felt about it. Janice took a minute to think and then smiled to him. “I understand” she said.

“When it happened with Lou was different because she was twenty something when she married Peter, but with Amy is different” He added.

“She is your little girl, but even if she married Ty - something that it´s not certain now – you are not gonna lose her, things will stay the same.” “You need to let her grow Tim”

Janice didn´t expect an answer, shut up and left the conversation in a long silence.

Tim heard every single word but didn´t say a word until they got off the car to walk into the house where Lou was preparing pasta for lunch. Ty and Tim crossed looks when they sat on the dining room.

“That looks good” Said Jack when he saw the large plate with  spaghetti in the middle of the table. He took a portion and so did the rest.

“So Amy how have you been doing with Wonder?” Jack said starting the conversation.

“I think I´m making process, I decided to start slow not to make him run for now. Maybe tomorrow we´ll take him for a ride so he can get used at least to gallop. He´s kind of scared of speed”

“But you´re gonna fix him, you always do ” Lou smiled.

Mallory entered to the kitchen and said “Sorry, I´m late…”

“You are in time we have just started” Jack answered trying to calm down Mallory who´s words scaped from their mouth as she explained every single thing about Maggie´s and all the meals she had to serve.

Mallory is a fifteen year old girl who had grown up in Heartland since she was twelve, she used to work in the ranch with the horses just as a part of her deal with Jack to stay and go to school there. They are part of her family too, and she is part of their family.

“I have to go to see Cooper, it´s been a week since I saw him last time… I miss him so much. “ Mallory added.

Amy heard what Mallory said and automatically imagined being one week away from Spartan her horse and soul mate. Then last week´s fire came to her mind, a tragedy she didn´t want to think about but sadly the memories revived constantly.

They heard a noise outside and looked through the window, except for Amy who was lost in her thoughts. Suddenly something crushed… Amy felt pain in her nape. She wanted to scream, to shout, but she couldn´t do anything. Amy fainted and fell to the floor.

Chapter 14 - Lost

It was a moment of panic. Actions and reactions, blood, heavy silence and horrid scenes. Pain, struggle, drops and tears. Those were the words to explain the situation they were in. One second lasted hours. Just three seconds needed to break the atmosphere. Blood, lost of blood split in the wooden floor.

 It went darker and darker in Amy´s mind, until the moment she couldn´t see at all.  Her head crushed the floor in an angelical and weightless sound. Another heavy silence went through the room until the rest of her body fell to the floor answering to the sound of her head hitting the ground. Amy´s hair covering her head in the floor next to her body was covered with her left hand. The blondish color of her hair turned up to be red, dark red. Except for the lock of hair that covered her forehead and mouth that was still untouched by the blood which now was also spread in the floor.

Thoughts came into Amy´s mind like nightmares, but she didn´t remember when she had gone to bed. This thoughts were flashes of the past. This moment of falling to the floor unconscious produced by the pain she felt in her neck was time to stop and turn around and let her see all that she has done in life. It was just her brain working and reminding her things, it was from that unconscious part of your brain that works only sometimes when you need it. Like those dreams you dream many times and then that same thing happens to you in real life.

The first image that came to her mind was her mother talking to her when she was six years old, she was teaching her how to ride her pony. “I can do it mom!” “Watch me!” “I´m doing it on my own!” “Look!” little Amy laughed proud of herself.

The following memories were about her and Lou cleaning one horse from the ranch. They were throwing water to each other and playing with the bubbles of soap that were flying in the air. “You won´t get me!” Lou said as she ran to the barn with that voice of a ten year old girl.

Then, something more recent came to her mind, but unfortunately she didn´t remember every single detail. It was when Ty came to Heartland and she received him, some weeks after her mother died. At first, he was just the rude guy who worked there, but then he changed almost completely and left his past far away from what he became.

After that, she had other flashbacks that made her remember about horses she had been working with, including Spartan, when she fixed his problem and realized that she had a lot of similarities with her mother.

Those were some of the hundred images that came to her mind. Then, other strange moments passed though her mind which she didn´t remember if she had lived them or not.

Amy saw colors first. She saw violet, red, green and white. The first one was a dark red, then a light violet, an intense green and finally just white. The white stayed much time than the others. Then, three blue horses appeared over the white. These ran in circles trying to tell her something she couldn´t decipher. One of the horses neighed and moved his head trying to run faster than the others. It was bizarre, strange, uncommon and much more, but was her dream, her thoughts, these were works of art that her brain produced.

Suddenly, she heard kind of a whistle near her ear. After listening the sound for almost a hundred times, she started calculating when the noise was going to whistle again, this was annoying. She heard some voices too. Amy tried to listen what they were saying but it was like if the voices came from somewhere else. She reacted and opened her eyes. First, she couldn´t see well, she saw some shapes of people standing next to her. Some red lights flashed in her eyes and made difficult to see.

She couldn´t even move. Then someone spoke: “Amy?” “Can you hear me?”

That sounded like Lou. “Yes, Lou!” she thought.

“Lou?” Amy asked.

Chapter 15 - Brand new eyes

“Hey! How are you?”

Everyone in the room started smiling and looking at her. They asked almost the same questions.

“What happened?” “What am I doing here?” Amy asked.

“We were having lunch when suddenly a bullet came through the window and hit your head” Lou answered while she got closer to her.

Amy took time to think. She saw her family´s faces looking at her in sadness. Lou, Jack, Tim, Mallory, Peter, Lisa and Janice were standing around her. She didn´t know what to say after listening to Lou´s answer. She forgot about that instantly. Ty wasn´t there.

“Where´s Ty?” She looked at Lou.

“He is outside. We told him that he should get a break; he stood all the week here taking care of you.

“A week?” She asked before thinking. She had been a whole week in a hospital when she believed that was only minutes ago that she had fainted.

“I´m gonna call him” Mallory said as she ran out of the room.

While Mallory went to call Ty, Amy started answering many of the questions that they had asked her. Then, a doctor opened the door of the hospital´s room.

“She has woken up?!?” The doctor looked surprised what annoyed Amy from the first time. He had black hair and dark eyes. Amy strangely didn´t like him from her first look. “Did he expected me not to be alive?” Crossed through Amy´s mind, but fastly disappeared in her thoughts when he said the following. “That´s great! Awesome!”

“You were very weak this past few days, fortunately your body has answered to all our treatments.” “For now,” He said. They shouldn´t forget that this hadn´t ended yet. “Good for now” “We have to see how it goes.” “You will stay here from some weeks, this is serious” He added. All the family looked at the doctor while he spoke seriously to Amy. “I´ll ask the nurses to bring you dinner” He shook his head, smiled and went for some medicines.

When the doctor was leaving the room, he met Ty who was just returning from his time off. Ty walked straight to the door but looking to the floor with his hands on his pockets, he didn´t saw Amy´s doctor. He was in a sky blue polo shirt and his typical dark jeans. He didn´t saw Jack, Tim or Lou who were always waiting outside. “That´s strange” He thought.

Ty slowly opened the door. He couldn´t believe his eyes.

 “Heeey!” he smiled happily. It was the first time Ty smiled in the week. He sat in the bad and took Amy´s hand. “How are you feeling?” he looked into her eyes in belief that she would get better.

“I´m Ok.” She said as she tryied to sit down. Amy decided to stay in the position she was, because every single move made her feel weaker and hurt. Ty instantly realized about it.

“We should go to… have lunch..” Jack said. “Ty, are you staying with her?” “We will come as soon as we finish” Jack knew that Amy and Ty needed time.

“Please take your time” Ty moved his head trying to thank Jack.

“Come on, let´s go” Jack called to the rest of the family.

When they had finally left the room, Amy looked at Ty´s face. They stayed in silence a few minutes. Those times in which they didn´t talk and just stayed in silence, weren´t uncomfortable.

Amy turned her head down and started playing with the silver ring Ty had gave her a year ago when they couldn´t go to the high school dance.

“Ty…when I was in comma, I had some strange thoughts and I remembered some things…” She kept on talking. Amy told Ty all the flashbacks she had and described him that horses that appeared in her dreams.

“Well that´s weird” He answered to the bunch of descriptions of Amy´s dreams.

“Can I ask you something?” “Do you know where the bullet that hit my head came from?” Amy asked.

That question cut Ty´s breath. “No” “Nobody knows I guess” He didn´t know who it was, but the one thing he knew for sure was that if he gets to know who the person was, he was going to make him or her suffer a lot, and by a lot he meant a lot. His jaw was marked in his face like a scar from a fight. This mostly happened when he was angry or tensed. He started breathing like a depredator about to catch his victim. His heart-beat accelerated to double speed.

“It´s OK.” Amy tryied to calm him.

When Amy touched Ty´s arm, all his fellings of anger disappeared in the air like butterflies. When the connection between them had just established automatically Ty slowed down. Like when a dehydrated plant receives water.

Chapter 16 – all good

Some weeks had past. Finally, it was time to let Amy go home and to return to her normal life. She had gotten better these few days.

It was seven o´clock. Amy was a little hungry and tired. She decided to sleep a little before returning home. Amy laid in the white bed and fell asleep.

One of the nurses walked to the hospital room where Amy was. It was time for breakfast.

“Miss Fleming” The nurse called.

Amy slowly opened her eyes and exchanged sights with the nurse in charge of her. The women left the room. Her cell phone rang; it was Ty, who had sent her a text message telling her to look through the window of her room. Amy stood up and looked through the windowpane. It was raining outside. She looked down and saw cars parked in the parking lot of the hospital, she explored the environment with her eyes, it was really cold and the sky was dark since the clouds covered the sun and decorated the sky with lightning stripes.   And there was her grandfather standing next to Ty´s truck. Ty blinked at her and Jack smiled.  They walked fast to the entrance of the hospital and after visiting the reception of the clinic. After climbing the long and old stairs they knocked on Amy´s room.

“You ready?” Ty asked while he helped Amy pack her stuff in her bag.

“Ready” “I´m so done of medicines, doctors and surgeries! The only thing I want to do is get home and see Spartan!”

Ty smiled and laughed. “He has missed you a lot, believe me” “That guy woke me up three times last night, he didn´t wanted to sleep, he needed his miracle girl”

“I miss him so much”

“Did you miss me?’’Ty asked.

‘’Of course I did’’ she hugged him and kissed his cold cheek.

‘’Okay we should get going’’ he held her hand.

”Let’s go” she added.

When they were almost leaving the room Jack came in. They headed to the truck.

Chapter 17 – reflections in the dark

Back in the ranch, Lou and Peter were standing by the fire place talking. “I can´t wait to tell Amy” Lou said. Peter smiled and passed the baby to Lou. That was their daughter Charlotte, the four day-old baby. She wore a pink blanket all around her. “Look at her, she looks just like her mother!” Peter added.

“but those are your eyes” she smiled gently.

Amy had been in the hospital for some weeks, but she didn´t know her sister was too. Charlotte was a surprise for Amy that Lou and Peter had been hiding for a while because it was just too much for the miracle girl to handle at the moment. Since she could return home today, she would be able to see her.

Tim pulled out of the drive way to take the way to Heartland. He got out of the truck and stared at the house for a moment. Tim knew he had to enter to the house and congratulate her daughter as he should have done days before. It was hard for him watching his daughters grow up that fast. He took a deep breath and then got to the house.

As soon as he walked inside, he saw Lou and his husband sitting with their daughter. He sat on the couch with them and then all the words came out of his mouth. The first thing he said was “ I´m so proud of you”

By the time, Jack, Ty and Amy were half way to Heartland. Jack shot some questions to Amy while Ty started thinking.

Ty remembered Amy´s accident like if it had been yesterday. He remembered every single detail. This was really serious. He realized that no one in the family had talked about the fact that some shot her. The boy hadn´t been sleeping last night thinking about it. Ty wanted to know who was the one who shot her and why. After that of course he would return all the pain to the guy who did it.

Other thought that crossed in his mind was the engagement ring that was hidden in his bedroom. Ty knew that he should wait since Amy had this accident. Again, wait one more time. “Give her time” He thought.

Suddenly, it started to rain violently.