Page 73 of Tempting the Heart

“May I come in?” she asked softly.

My mom frowned. “Who are you?”

“I’m Bethany, your husband’s physical therapist.”

“Well, maybe if you’d done a better job, he wouldn’t be unconscious in a hospital room.”

“Mom, enough. Bethany has done a tremendous job. Dad wouldn’t do the exercises at home, and had the pile of crap not been there, things wouldn’t have happened. Apologize.”

“I will do no such thing.” My mom looked like a petulant child, but I wasn’t going to lower myself to my parents’ level. I wouldn’t do it.

“Thanks for coming, Bethany,” I said softly as the social worker traded a look with Bethany.

“You want to talk in the hallway?” Bethany asked.

I nodded, reaching for my coffee cup. “Sure.”

The social worker stayed in the room with my mom as Bethany and I stepped into the bustling hallway. A nurse’s station was a few doors down, centered in a square of joining hallways.

We stopped when we were far enough away, and I leaned against the wall, letting out a huge breath.

“You didn’t have to come.”

She reached for my hand. “I wanted to.” Bethany glanced around. “I thought Mae would have been here.”

“I told her to stay home. I didn’t know what I was dealing with.”

“She’s a good one to have around in a crisis.” Bethany smiled.

“Really? You know this firsthand?”

She laughed. “Yeah. I lost my cat a few months ago, and she was all hands on deck. Not only did we find Charger, but she was also treated like a queen while Mae took care of her until I got there.”

“I’ll file that away.”

Bethany reached for my hand and squeezed it. “Listen, I…”

“You what?”

I didn’t expect Bethany to show up, and I felt awful for liking her presence and guilty that it wasn’t Mae.

“I didn’t realize things would transpire quite like this.”

“No one could have predicted my dad would trip over a pile of crap. I mean I had my hunch, but he’d spent years navigating the place.”

She brought her hand back to herself and grimaced. “That wasn’t exactly what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean?”

“I did something I shouldn’t have.”

I cocked my head in confusion. “What?”

Bethany let out a heavy sigh. “I called APS on your parents. Your dad, specifically. It was on Friday. I just… Youwere so kind to him, caring for him, even after all the vitriol that spilled from his tongue. I grew up close to that kind of thing, and I just couldn’t take it. He’d mentioned tripping over something that morning, and I knew you had mentioned trying to clear out the place.”

I stared at Bethany in shock. “You called Adult Protective Services on my parents?”

She shook her head. “It wasn’t my place, and I’m so sorry. When you texted that he’d fallen and was in surgery here, I reached out to Nancy. We went to undergrad together, and I explained the situation, hoping I could halt it because she had contacts at the agency. Turns out, the medics filed some paperwork too. APS had already reached out to Nancy to get the ball rolling. It just all kind of snowballed, and instead of helping you, I probably screwed things up. It’s just that he said something so awful on Friday that I couldn’t help myself.”

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