What you need to know:
Finally going to see a physical therapist to get some relief, Jennifer continues with her “tough- girl-I-don’t-need-anyone-routine.” But afterwards, she reaches out to Fran with a “sweet” olive branch and asks for help in her quest for the right attorney. Will Fran bite?
Chapter Nineteen
The German
Inga Schleuniger’s physical therapy office is situated in a building directly across from Fran’s favorite bakery, the one with the morning buns topped with chunks of rock sugar.
From where I sit on Inga’s exam table, facing the window, I study that bakery while the woman pokes at my shoulder. My spine. My shoulder again.
“No good. No good at all,” Inga says, “Das. Das,” which I don’t understand but feel sure means, “bad.”
On the phone, she told me not to take any pain medication for twenty-four hours before our appointment. It hurts as much as the day I was hit.
Inga drops her hands, looks down at me with a hard-set expression on an otherwise cherubic face.
“And this has been this way for all of these weeks. No change?” she asks.
“It comes and goes,” I say.
Inga is perhaps in her late fifties with snow-white hair cut in a bob. Gray-blue eyes. A sharp nose.
“Tsk, tsk,” she says, strides across the room to her desk, sits. She motions for me to come over, too.
Pushing off the exam table, I follow and lower into a hard plastic chair.
Inga, pen in hand now, writes my name on the tab of a file folder, then pages through the accident report, post-accident medical assessment, my X-rays. Finally, she looks over at me again. “You have to do this propping of the elbow on the wall to brush your hair or take off a shirt?” she asks.
It’s called adaptation, lady, I think but only nod because something about her accent freaks me out. She’s so Germanic. I don’t know why this is problem. I’m part German, too.
Inga goes back to the file, turns through auto insurance forms, reads the fine print.
“You don’t need to worry about those forms. I will pay you now,” I say. “They will pay me back.”
“Good. Fine,” she says, closing the file. “Now, what do you think is this problem? What is it saying?”
Trying to untangle what she just said, I stare at her for a long moment,
She shoves the file closer to her phone. “Your arm. You’re back,” Inga says, gesturing toward me in a chop-chop gesture. “Francis talks about it as a terrible crash with many bad feelings after. Do you have many bad feelings? Like your friend?”
I want to laugh. “No,” I finally say. “I’m not like Fran. I’m fine.”
She stares at me.
I stare back.
“But frightening? Yes?” she asks.
“I suppose.”
“What is ‘suppose’?”
“It just happened. It was…one of those things.”
“Hmmm,” she says, taps a finger on the desk. “So, this hurting now? It is from more than a car wreck?”
“More?”
“Something in the past? Something…emotional.” She says emotional like she’s swallowing a whole egg. Eee-moooo-tional.
Once more we look at each other. I have decided not to like her. Or trust her. Sure, I’ll see her for the insurance claim, for Burt, but I’m giving this woman nothing. As if everything that’s happened is her fault.
“Okay. Back to the table. Lie down,” Inga finally says as if getting my negative vibe. “Face down this time.”
Out of the chair, I cross back to the hinged table. Under, she stores foam cylinders and wedges in various sizes.
“Does this hurt?” Inga asks, once more pressing two fingers into the back of my neck.
“Yes,” I say, voice muffled. Flat on the table, I stare down at the low pile gray carpeting, her black tennis shoes with black laces.
“This?”
“Yes.”
“This?”
“Yes.”
Inga shoves a pillow, a pad, then one of the cylinders under my hips, my right shoulder, my right elbow.
“How is this? More pain or less?”
“About the same.”
A few more adjustments with the wedges under my hips, my right thigh.
“Okay,” I say. “That’s better, I guess.”
“You guess?”
“Yeah, it’s better,” I say. “What did you do?”
“You are knotted up like a pretzel, I think,” she says. “You need these supports so the muscles can stop trying.” Inga works another wedge into place. “How’s that?”
“I’m tired,” I say, close my eyes.
She pats at my back with the whole of her hand. “This is right,” Inga says. “We let you lay there for a moment like that. We let you rest.”
“Okay, she’s super weird,” I say to Fran on the phone. I’m driving down Burnside. Outside, it’s raining. The windshield wipers shuttle back and forth. “Her accent is impossible.”
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“I like her,” Fran says. “She’s different.”
“You can say that again. She wants me to see her three times a week,” I say. “She recommended I see this other guy from Texas who does…get this…acupuncture.”
“No way. You’re making that up,” Fran says on the line, that old tone of camaraderie in her voice.
“Why would I make that up?” I ask.
“Are you going to do it?”
“I’d rather drive off a bridge.”
She laughs over the phone, a dry chuckle.
I am so relieved. “Go to your front door,” I say to her then.
“What?” she says.
“Just do it,” I say like old times because she is my friend. My best friend in this world right now. We’ve been to the coast together. We’ve taken long walks. We’ve talked for hours. We’ve discussed her book, my book, our lives, our hopes, our dreams, our kids.
Through the phone, I can hear that slap echo sound of footsteps on her hardwood floors. Then comes the hinge-squeak of her front door.
“Oh,” she says on the line. The crinkle of a paper bag. She laughs as I hoped she would. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“Whatever,” I say, playing it cool. “Inga’s place was right there. How could I not?”
“I love that place,” she says, voice muffled from how she most certainly took a bite of the morning bun I left on her stoop—a peace offering.
I continue my drive over the vast expanse of the Burnside Bridge. Below the river is a steel gray color. “He’s filed for divorce,” I say.
A choking sound on the line. A cough. “What?” Fran asks. “When?”
“Last week. After we saw Burt.”
“Shit,” she says.
“And there’s more….” I say, tell her about the conversation with Cal.
In the lanes beside me, cars streak past while I plod along like an octogenarian, eyes on the mirrors.
I have a new car now, well, not new. It’s a used Lexus SUV with about fifty thousand miles. I could do worse, I suppose.
“Cal gave me a few names,” I say. “I wondered if you might come with to meet one of them. She’s supposed to be a total Dragon-Lady...”
“Wait. Are you talking about Callie Salesbrook?”
“How did you know?”
“That woman is a legend. Terrifying. You’re hiring her?”
“No but Cal said to ‘get her off the table’ so Rick can’t hire her in the future.”
“That’s weird. Does he think Rick is going to dump him for another attorney?”
“Cal knows Rick is erratic.”
“Hmmm. That’s an understatement.”
We both chuckle.
We’re back. We’re okay.
“What do you think? Can you come with?”
“Are you kidding?” Fran says. “I wouldn’t miss this for anything.”
Coming Next:
Finally, a victory. Fran will come with Jennifer to interview a powerhouse attorney, but coming home she finds Spencer waiting with more bad news thanks to Rick…