Page 1 of Saving Love
1
BETTE
Bette Bridge had a talent for making people feel better. She was the type of physical therapist who could turn a torn rotator cuff into nothing more than a distant ache. Her hands always knew where to press to make the pain disappear and her face, those warm brown eyes, never gave much away.
Even when it came to how she felt about her place of work. The physical therapy department hadn’t seen a renovation in years—unlike many other departments in Oakridge Hospital, one of the many hospitals in L.A. The stationary bikes lined up in front of the mirrors were faded and squeaky, the weight machines tucked against one wall looked like they belonged in a museum, and the treatment tables creaked like old floorboards every time someone sat down. Not to mention the parallel bars stationed in the center of the room; they were wobbly enough for Bette’s heart to jerk whenever she took an amputation patient through thepaces, fearing the bars might give out before her patient did.
She gave the room a sweep, mentally tallying the things that still worked, and the things that needed replacing—though the facilities manager never listened to her suggestions—and welcomed her next patient, Greg Randall, to one of the treatment tables.
“How are you doing today?” she asked, waiting for Mr. Randall, who walked with a slight limp to settle onto the bed. “Because frankly, Greg, you look like you’ve seen better days.”
He laughed, his voice rough and gravelly. “Just another day in paradise, Doc.” he joked, his smile a little tired but warm. He was a retired Navy officer whose body seemed to have fought in every war. His shoulders had lost their full range, his knees creaked like rusty hinges, and his neck was a bundle of muscle spasms. Still, the man never had a bad thing to say.
“I can’t say the same for you,” Greg replied, shifting onto the bed with a grunt. “Did you do something new to your hair?”
Instinctively, Bette ran her fingers through her short salt and pepper hair and laughed. “Apart from giving it a snip at the ears, absolutely nothing.”
The last time she’d done anything new with her hair was ten years ago, on her thirty-fifth birthday, when she’d decided to chop her long locks off into a buzz cut. Her wife, ex-wife now, hadn’t been impressed. On the contrary, Reba had stared at her with a look of intense disappointment, as if Bette somehow offended her. Just one of the many on the list of reasons their fifteen-year marriage hadn’t worked out.
“Well, you look good, Doc,” Greg added, plumping up the pillow behind his back. “Always do.”
She sent him a wry smile, pushing the thought of her newly divorced status out of her mind, and dove right into their session.
“Let’s see the damage.” Bette gently placed her hands on his knee, her fingers lightly pressing on the sides of the joint. There was a bit of swelling, but less so than their first session together almost two weeks ago.
“Are you sure this knee is going to be as good as new after the replacement?” he asked, wincing when Bette lifted his knee and moved it gingerly through its available range of motion. “I want to run out of this hospital.”
Greg was scheduled for a knee replacement in a few weeks and was coming to see Bette for prehab, an integral part of ensuring a smoother recovery. Prehab helped strengthen the muscles around the knee, which meant he’d be walking circles around his fellow retirees sooner rather than later.
That was the plan anyway.
“You won’t be doing anyrunning,” Bette said, not beating around the bush. “Not even to Martha Aster down the block from you.” She gave him a look that said she knew all about it and had heard some gossip from the nurses who’d looked after Martha just the other day during a routine colonoscopy.
Greg laughed from his belly. “You know about that?”
“Everyone knows about that,” Bette replied, holding back her amused smile. She’d already overstepped a little by mentioning something so personal as a patient’s love life.
Usually, her relationships with patients and colleagues at Oakridge were professional, always kept at arm’s length. It was a rule she had made when she’d taken on the role of senior therapist at the hospital just two months ago.
Before that, Bette lived and worked quite happily in Clairemont until her wife of fifteen years had asked for a divorce, claiming that the spark between them was gone, that it could never be lit again.
But the spark hadn’t just died; Reba had killed it when she’d fingered their neighbor, Lucy, in the backseat of Bette’s Mercedes Benz sedan. And she’d killed it over and over again.
Apparently, it didn’t matter that they’d been married for fifteen years, that they had built a life together, and renovated their house from the ground up.
Lucy was young and attractive andlistenedto Reba when she complained about her lack of inspiration as an artist. She offered advice, which according to Reba, Bette never did.
But what advice did an artist actually need? Wasn’t that supposed to come from within? Especially coming from someone who used to say, “Art is an expression of the soul, Bette. You can’t simply force it. It’s not like building a birdhouse with leftover plywood and a hot glue gun.” Or had it just been easier to find validation in the arms of someone else?
It had never been part of Bette’s plan to switch hospitals or even her home. But her cousin, Jamie, had offered her the cottage at the back of his house and when Bette had tried to turn him down, he wouldn’t take no for an answer. “You need to get away from that toxic cloud, Bets,” he’d said. “You simply can’t heal with all those bad memories hanging around. Grab your stuff and get the heck out Clairemont.”
Since then, Bette had invited no one past the wall she’d carefully constructed around her personal life. No one needed to see the cracks she was still patching up, the raw edges of a marriage that had unraveled without her ever noticing it.
But often, patients like Mr. Randall brought a welcome distraction to her day, a spark of light in the dark tunnel she’d found herself in ever since the divorce three months ago.
“You alright there, Doc?” Greg asked, glancing at her with a deep frown on his face.
“Yes,” she said quickly, giving a small shake of her head to clear the sudden fog in her mind that always settled whenever her thoughts drifted off to Reba.
