The Release
Before getting into the car, she arranged a fresh towel on the seat to sit on for the drive home. Her body, still overheated and sweat still freely flowing from her pores shivered a little as the breeze buffered around her legs.
Hot yoga had always been Bridget’s way of dealing with things – life, death, heartbreak, change. Tonight had been one of the first nights she had actually completed every posture in the class rather than lying in a self imposed savansana for much of the class; the set dialogue of the instructor echoing through her mind as she struggled to maintain her composure, trying to ground herself against the yoga mat. Head, shoulders, hips, hands and heels.
Over the last week, she had just aimed to stay in the room. Fighting the every urge to want to leave, to want to run. Fighting that voice that said she was too hot, that her heart was racing too hard, her breath was too shallow, that suffocating feeling of the stifling heat. She had done hundreds of hot yoga classes over the years, yet sometimes, there were days when her practise was off, when every second was a struggle of mind over matter and it was those types of days she had since Franky had been arrested.
She thought back to her practise last night, where she had laid on her back, feet slightly parted and palms open to the ceiling, willing herself to be ok. She needed something like yoga to bring it all to the surface, to make her surrender, to let herself process and to not be ok. But just as it started happen, she panicked. She lay there, her heart beating in her chest, her body sweating profusely and she tried to slow her breath as she talked to herself, ignoring the instructors words as she lead the other yoga participants into the next posture. Then there were the tears. She knew they were coming. She knew she was getting to a point where they wouldn’t stop. As she lay, staring at the heat pads on the ceiling that radiated beams, she let them fall.
The good thing about yoga, and the hot yoga school that Bridget attended, was that most of the people in the advanced class that she took were so absorbed in their own yoga practise (and if Bridget was honest and slightly unkind, so absorbed in themselves) that they were all oblivious to her silent tears. Bridget lay, eyes closed, trying to suspend herself in a state of release.
Bridget then heard the dialogue of the instructor grow louder, those steady encouraging words and the instructions that she only knew too well. As the words grew louder, she could feel the instructor standing over her and opening her eyes she looked up and met theirs. The instructor cocked her head and her kind face looked into eyes Bridget’s expectantly. Bridget looked back, nodding and pursing her lips as if to say “I’m ok”. Without missing her rhythm, the instructor placed her hand on her heart and nodded her head at Bridget and resumed her walk around and she offered a gentle correction to the girl who always stood in front of Bridget. It made Bridget smile. Most of the instructors who took the classes were lovely and a quite spiritual and had an air of naivety about them that Bridget found quite endearing.
After class, as she had gathered her bag, the instructor has smiled sweetly at her on her way out and said “yoga gives us what we need… not what we want.. tomorrow will be a new class”. The words had stuck with Bridget and she had returned again tonight”.
As she unscrewed the lid of her drink bottle and popped in a hydration tablet, she listened to the effervescent fizz and watched as the tablet dispersed into the water. Hot yoga was one of the few things that kept her migraines at bay - well mostly – along with her ritual of having a hydration tablet. She wasn’t sure if it was the placebo effect or not, but it worked, and it meant it Bridget kept functioning. She hadn’t had a migraine since Franky had been remanded to Wentworth.. surprising. But it was often when she stopped, when she took a breath and took her foot off the pedal that she would be hit by a semi trailer of a migraine. She took a swig and lifting her head back to the seat, ran her hands though her hair that was glistening with sweat.
As she drove home, she thought of her conversation with Vera and reflected how their somewhat stilted relationship that had nearly been decimated by Vera’s perception of Bridget’s mistrust in her - which was nearly the death of their friendship. And as awkward as Vera was at times, Bridget really liked her and not just because she supported her professionally, but she was a good person at heart. Bridget was also cognisant of the fact she was one of Vera’s only friends. It felt good to know that the women were relying on her – that Vera was relying on her and she was glad that Vera had told her so.
Whist she meant everything she had said to Franky, about getting another job, about coming clean to the board, if she was honest with herself; it was probably more of a knee jerk reaction, more of her reactive thinking than she would have liked. Less of "Measured Bridget", more of "In Love Bridget".
She knew it was important to respect what Franky wanted, which, even though she didn’t agree, she could see Franky’s thought process behind it. It would make for an interesting discussion between them when Franky was out – which was going to happen.
Fuck it was hard and fuck it hurt. Walking past her in the corridor, trying to pretend she wasn’t walking past a piece of her, the piece that was inextricable missing from her life, from everything – from making coffee in the morning, to calling down to her as she left for work, from the little messages they used to send to each other and the feeling of arriving home, seeing the lights on, anticipating the smell that would hit her the minute she would walk in the door of Franky’s culinary crafts.
And almost on cue, it hit her as she pulled into her driveway. Dark inside. No one was home. There was no Franky, no dinner cooked. There would be no wine open breathing on the bench, no cheeky smile or flash of those eyes, no strong arms pulling her towards home. She just couldn’t shake the feeling that what had been her home for years, even when she had lived there on her own, no longer felt like home without her.
Bridget let out a sigh. Trying to summon the resolve that had followed her as she walked out of the yoga studio. It would be ok. It had to be.
As she got out of the car, she picked up the towel that she had been sitting on, she threw it in the top of her yoga bag and lugged that, along with her clear handbag inside.
She headed straight for the shower, peeling off her yoga clothes as she walked before dropping them in the laundry and walking naked down the remainder of the hallway.
After her luke warn shower, she reached for her pyjama bottoms and pulled them over her hips. She noticed that they sat a little lower than usual, most likely testament to the fact that she had eaten very little over the last week and a half since Franky had been arrested. Her slender frame couldn’t really afford her not to eat, she knew she needed to take better care of herself, fuck, she was the one who championed self care in the prison as she encouraged the women to take some time for themselves – which was ironic given that being incarcerated, they had all the time in the world but yet often lost themselves.
After her yoga class last night and the release that followed Bridget had made a deal with herself that she would look after herself better. She needed to eat. She needed to try to sleep. It was ok to cry but fuck she had done a lot of that. She felt like she needed to regain some of that control, that composure that was trademark Bridget, which granted, she often wore like armour, hiding what was crumbling beneath, but she had needed to shuffle a little back from that precipice. It was exhausting operating so close to the wire. She needed to just bring things back, step back, sit back and let the dust settle and come to her rather than trying to capture it.
Granted it was hard, it was fucking difficult seeing the one thing that was so important to her be enveloped by the anonymity of a soulless teal tracksuit. But she had been told. Fuck it was loud and clear and she had to respect it. If she didn’t she truly risked losing the one thing she couldn’t bear to lose, her Franky Doyle.
She hadn’t seen her for a few days, but today. Today she saw her. Walked past in her fact, in the hallway. To anyone else, it wouldn’t have meant anything. An inmate and a staff member crossing paths, Bridget on her way, hurriedly as she always was around Wentworth.
To her it meant everything as she recalled the split second she had walked past Franky Doyle’s space. And she knew for Franky it was significant. She glanced back, only for a split second but that was all Bridget needed. Her glare was unfocused, slightly harsh, but it was a glare, it was in Bridget’s direction and she looked back. It sustained Bridget, it wasn’t much but it was enough. Enough to see Bridget through the day. Enough to tell her that she was doing the right thing, that she hadn’t lost Franky, that they were hanging on, even if it was only by a thread.
Fuck she thought as she shook her head and opened the cupboard, searching for Franky’s homemade passata…"when did I become sustained by a just a fleeting half second glance", she thought to herself. She was insatiable when it came to Franky and it was the kind of desire that intoxicated Bridget, that desperate and primal longing to be as close to her as possible, that urge for physical contact. Even with Franky’s fingers inside her, willing her to the most intense orgasm, sometimes she just needed more and she would pull Franky’s body closer to her, press her head into Franky’s neck to immerse herself in Franky’s scent and move harder against Franky’s fingers until she brought to the edge and beyond.
She loved nothing more than to submerse herself in their world where time stood still, yet raced, where they could be surrounded by hundreds, yet oblivious to anyone but each other, or where they could be distanced from each another at a market, yet Bridget immediately knew that Franky was uncomfortable – the way she shifted her weight slightly back to her heels, the way she pursed her lips and lightly blew through them or the way she twisted one of her rings around her finger. They were all signs that Franky had had enough of whatever it was - an open space, a closed space, noise, deafening quiet or she just wanted to be home.
As she located the jar on the top shelf, which she strained to reach on her tip toes, she smiled as she recalled Franky’s playful teasing whenever she asked Franky to reach something for her in the pantry. Placing the jar on the counter, she looked at the artistic label that Franky had made. Bridget remembered the day that Franky had come home from Legal Relief, beaming as she walked through the doors with trays and trays of tomatoes, slightly underestimating the task that was before her. Bridget loved watching Franky at work in the kitchen - there was something about it, the way she moved around, the way she sometimes hummed under her breath and the look of deep focus and contentment that was often evident on Franky’s face.
And then it came from nowhere.
Bridget pursed her lips in an attempt to halt the tears as she shut her eyes softly and breathed. She placed her hands in front of her as she hung her head down, tongue on the roof of her mouth in an effort to halt the flow of emotion. Never in her years of practising as a psychologist had she used so many of her own techniques on herself. A few tears strayed from her eyes as Bridget tried to focus, to bring herself into the present, and she watched the pasta slowly soften in the boiling water.
She stood there.
She was ok.
She tried to think about dinner. She was determined to eat and she would make extra to take to work tomorrow – that way she would make sure she ate lunch.
She let out a staggered breath, lips pursed, as her mind started to skip and race ahead to the coming months. Vera had told her that Franky’s committal hearing had been brought forward, which Bridget knew was never a could thing. It meant the prosecution didn’t need any more time to gather their evidence or they were satisfied as to the evidence they had – even if it didn’t stack up she knew how they all worked, they were lazy as fuck and were often just after a conviction. Near enough was good enough.
Speaking of evidence and the lazy as fuck police, Bridget’s mind then wandered. She needed to arrange a session with Liz. She wanted to find out what the fuck had gone wrong. She didn’t trust that Don guy that the police had sent in and whilst Bridget hated the smell of men’s aftershave at the best of times, the smell that lingered in Bridget’s office seemed to permeate it for the rest of the day, so much so that she had even taken to spraying her perfume around after they had used her office.
Again her mind flicked back to Franky. Why oh fucking why had she sacked Pierce. She knew he was an arrogant prick as many barristers were – fuck Franky, you didn’t have to like him. But then then she knew Franky did. Franky was so genuine in her interactions with everyone, especially with her work, it was important for her that her clients knew she was on their team and if someone wasn't on hers. Fuck them.
She thought back to one of her conversations with Fessler, Franky’s boss. Bridget didn’t know her particularly well, but knew enough to know that she liked her. She couldn’t help but wish Franky had listened to Fessler’s somewhat ironic prediction about her involvement with Shane, as Fessler’s words played in her head “I told her… you just gotta be careful with those kids, it’s the ones that you stick your neck out for, they are the ones that break your heart”. So true Bridget thought. Both Franky’s and hers.
Letting the pasta sit to cool, she reached into the cupboard for a wine glass which she placed on the bench. Just the one glass. She often had arrived home to two wine glasses on the bench, wine poured, already breathing. Now there was just one glass. One solitary stem. As she took a sip and held the bold mouvedre in her mouth before swallowing. It suddenly dawned on her that she hadn’t eaten all day .. and had just done yoga so inhaling her glass as she had often been doing was not the best move.
She padded over to the couch, wine and pasta in hand and settled herself, cross legged with the television on and no sound. She then returned to the kitchen bench to retrieve her phone – which she always kept on her. What if Franky needed her. She knew that Franky couldn’t call her – all of their phone calls were recorded. But she knew that Vera would ring her. A few times this week when Vera had needed to speak to her after hours, her stomach had lurched as soon as she saw Vera’s name come up on the screen. Being apart from Franky was bad enough, but she was in fucking Wentworth. Franky had told her many stories, which after working in corrections for more than twenty years shouldn’t have shocked her but they did.
She had to remember, she thought to herself, she felt like she had lost Franky, even temporarily, but Franky had lost everything – her home, her job, her life and her freedom that she had fought so hard for. But she hadn’t lost her Gidget and Bridget would make sure she knew that.
Pasta. Wine. TV. Bed.
She could do it. She was ok. Even if she wasn't, she would be.