Hesitation
Disclaimer: I do not own Rizzoli & Isles.
Chaos, pounding hearts, and muted panic. Only the concrete was silent. They all watched Paddy Doyle raise his gun and before Jane could scream her objection, his bullet had taken Agent Dean's leg from under him. She heard her best friend yell something, for the moment ignoring the agent's injury as she aimed her gun at Maura's dangerous fugitive mob boss father. The Medical Examiner yelled out this time, begging the detective for her father's life. She didn't know where this desperate feeling came from. Her anger at that man had turned to one of familial terror. Jane's heart clenched, her anger dissipating into a sick cacophony of contradiction. On the one hand, this man was a murderer who had just shot a federal agent..but on the other, he was Maura's biological father. She would be entirely justified in the shot, but she couldn't help but picture her best friend's face if she killed Maura's father. As Jane gritted her teeth, a civil war of indecision raging through her mind, a shot rang out. The detective felt it before she heard it, her body thrown back to the concrete with such force that her lungs failed to pull in oxygen. Jane squeezed her eyes shut, pain radiating from her chest throughout her body. Time stopped and everything disappeared. Her head was pounding, the blood rushing out of the gaping wound and she tried, but it seemed as if her body had forgotten how to breathe. Suddenly she felt two hands on her, pressing down, causing her to recoil from the added pain.
Then a voice.
It was muted, muffled, morphing from panic to familiar in her ears.
"Jane! Open your eyes!" The voice was crying. More than anything, though, Jane wanted to go to sleep. The sudden exhaustion that washed over her was encompassing every cell in her being. She found herself imagining the warmth and nothingness that waited for her in unconsciousness.
But that voice.
It pulled her back to the waves of suffocating agony.
"JANE! Please open your eyes. Breathe!" Jane heard it again, this time clearer. It was Maura. She was almost sobbing, the panic boiling over into her words. Finally, the dark-haired detective gasped, her eyes shooting open. Coughing, wheezing, tasting blood, Jane met her best friend's distressed expression. She found little relief there, mostly guilt and sorrow and fear.
"Jane, you're going to be okay. Just breathe. The ambulance is almost here." Maura didn't wipe the tears from her cheeks as she kept increasing pressure on Jane's gun shot wound. The doctor's eyes darted frantically from her friend to somewhere outside and back again. Jane tried to push herself up to a seated position but found her energy completely sapped and her strength now so limited she could not counter Maura's arms restricting her. This was when she felt the seriousness of the situation. The tension in Maura's eyes sparked fear in Jane's already excruciating chest. "Hey, easy. Just relax."
Like she could relax. Jane could feel the sarcasm almost spill from her mouth but then she saw a growing bloodstain on Maura's sleeve. She narrowed her moisture-filled eyes. It couldn't be her blood..and bloodstains didn't expand like the one Jane was seeing. She'd been shot. Jane racked her mind for anything to explain what she was witnessing.
"Maur…you're shot." Jane's face was scrunched in pain and worry and confusion. There was only blackness when she attempted to remember the shooting. She tried to sit up again.
"Jane, stop. Be still, please." Maura firmly pleaded with her, tears streaming as she adjusted her station at Jane's side to gain leverage. She looked nearly unhinged with worry and extremely unconcerned with her own injury. "I'm fine. It's just a graze." Maura added this as an afterthought but it was all Jane could think about. Adrenaline shot through her, enough to fuel her into an upright position. "Jane!" The doctor pursed her lips and supported her friend's back, shocked at the amount of blood now spilling from the exit wound. Her best friend's shirt was soaked through and there was a nightmarish dark-red pool forming where Jane had just been. "Oh." Maura exclaimed, stomach dropping, her mind racing trying to calculate how much blood Jane had lost and all of the horrific implications. "Please lay back down, Jane. Please." The desperation in her breaking voice settled Jane into submission as she let Maura gently guide her back to the ground, which was far more comfortable than concrete should've been. "I'm fine, Jane. I promise. Where the hell are the paramedics?!" As if on cue, two men with medical bags and a stretcher ran to Jane's side. Then, everything moved very quickly. Jane likened it to being at the dentist's office. Being in that chair, silent and that feeling of not being in control. Voices faded into murmurs as she watched the paramedics and Maura work above her…on her… They hooked her up to things, but she was feeling increasingly numb. She closed her eyes briefly and found herself on a moving stretcher when she opened them again, having no memory of being picked up at all. Maura was holding her hand as they raised her carefully into the ambulance. She thought she saw Korsak and Frost before they slammed the doors shut but Maura grabbed her hand again, pulling her from her head.
Jane felt so out of it. It was almost like a dream—or a nightmare. Only the pain was very real. The numbness wore off as the seconds passed and burning filled the space left behind. Maura continued to hold her hand but had to let go as the paramedic began hooking Jane up to machines and tubes. He mumbled something that made Maura take a rattling breath and then he pulled an oxygen mask over Jane's face. The sharp constricting of her lungs felt a little less like being stabbed but it was still there.
"Jane, stay with me." Maura's voice sounded far away but Jane pried her eyes open and turned toward her best friend. She looked devastated and agonized and distressed. There was something else in her eyes but the detective didn't have the energy to press for an explanation. She was now aware of the woman's hand grasping her own and she tried to squeeze encouragingly.
"Your arm." Jane coughed and decided only to whisper to avoid the excruciating fire in her chest exacerbated for some reason by her vocal chords. Maura now had a slightly pink-stained bandage wrapped snugly around her injured arm. Her words were muffled but the doctor nodded with a tight, sad smile.
"My arm is fine, Jane. Just a graze. I promise." Maura paused to look at some monitor. It didn't seem to give her any good news because she looked back down at her best friend with a heavyhearted gaze.
"Dean." Jane said after she pulled the mask off slowly with minor disapproval from Maura who grabbed it to hold it steady over her friend's mouth and nose.
"He's okay, Jane. He was waiting for the next ambulance. He should be right behind us..but the bullet didn't hit anything major. He's okay." Maura caught herself before she could continue rambling. The ambulance hit a pothole and Jane exclaimed, trying to curl up into a ball at the wave of impossibly heavy, scalding agony falling on her chest. The detective grabbed the metal railing of the gurney, her knuckles white as she held her breath. "Jane! Jane, you're okay." Away from her, angrily, "Hey! Watch the road!" A few seconds that felt way too long passed and Maura tried to coax her friend into a prone position, pulling lightly on Jane's stony grip on the gurney. "Jane, let go. Relax. We're almost there, sweetie. Breathe. Please, Jane. Just breathe." Jane tried to follow Maura's directives but everything hurt and her breath wasn't coming no matter how hard she fought for it. She started to panic. Loud beeping alarmed through the ambulance but Jane didn't care. No matter how hard she tried, oxygen was not filling her lungs. She opened her eyes to see Maura above her yelling something at the paramedic. But she couldn't hear anything anymore. It was like someone pressed mute on the world around her.
Slowly, a blackness seeped into her vision.
It was warm.
It was relief.
And she let go.
...
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