She hears Jane's scream and its abrupt ending as the thug behind her jabs his knife into the detective's back. Maura's unsure as to why her body feels like it's been buried in sand, or why the scene in front of her is warped, as if she's seeing it through a witch ball. Her head throbs something wicked, and she sees Jane struggling forward to get to her. Maura pushes up onto her elbows and blinks, trying frantically to clear her head. When she looks again, Jane is slumped over and terrifyingly still.
"Jane?" Her tongue feels thick, so she works it around in her mouth, practicing, before she tries again.
"Jane..." The detective doesn't move, just groans. Fear clenches around Maura's heart and she fights to focus her eyes enough to see that the small black puddle forming under Jane's crumpled form is coming from Jane.
"Jane, you're bleeding." Maura pleads with her body to please move so she can find the wound and staunch the flow of blood. Head spinning she manages to sit up and swallow down the consequential wave of nausea. "Can you reach back and …and- ?" The rest of her thought floats just out of reach.
"Dammit," she swallows again and closes her eyes before scooting herself forward, "Answer me, Jane Clement-."
"Reddish-brown stains…" The whisper is weak, but it cuts through the ringing in Maura's ears. "You don't know that it's blood." The doctor smiles despite her worry, some relief coming from the fact that she'll have her hands on Jane in a moment.
"Keep talking to me, sweetheart. I need you to stay conscious." Maura wonders where the rescue workers are; she could have sworn that there were lights that frightened off their attackers. "Janie?" The diminutive comes out before she can censor herself, but the detective doesn't respond. Maura's head throbs harder as she pushes herself across the three feet that separate her from the shallow-breathing silence. When she finally musters the strength and stomach to pull Jane up into her lap she gasps and her stomach turns.
"Oh no oh no oh nonono. Please not the renal artery." Maura pleads with an entity that, up until now, she was sure didn't exist. Her head is still spinning, and she struggles out of her sweater and presses it against the profusely bleeding wound. The doctor turns her head and tries to focus down the street. Still no sign of help and her phone is in her purse back where she had fallen. Panic is starting to set in.
"Help!" Maura shouts as loud as she can, her voice echoing off of buildings and the inside of her skull. She just manages not to vomit.
"Jane…Janie. Come back to me please." The ME pulls one hand from her saturated sweater and digs her knuckle into Jane's sternum. The detective groans and slowly opens her eyes. They are huge, and unfocused, and so hauntingly dark in her pale face. Jane's lips move, but Maura can't make out what her friend is trying to say. The doctor is struggling to stay in control; panic and despair cloud her already fuzzy mind and she realizes she's slowly losing consciousness herself. She hears it then, a low voice in the distance.
"Maura?"
"Help…please help. Over here!" It's little more than a whisper, a last ditch effort before her eyes close of their own accord. "Don't you leave me, Janie. I love you…don't leave me alone."
"Maura….wake up."
The M.E. sucks in a gasping breath and sits up in confusion. Barry Frost stands in the doorway to her office, a concerned frown marring his handsome features. He hesitates, then shakes his head and crosses the threshold to come and squat down by her elbow and take her hand in his. Maura stiffens, still in the throes of the dream, and pulls her hand away. Barry sighs.
"You haven't been sleeping." His tone isn't accusatory and his eyes are soft. Maura doesn't even need to make eye contact to see that she's not the only one who has been awake for the past three days. Korsak and Frost haven't left the station, working frantically to find the assailants who put Maura in the hospital for two days and who killed Jane.
Jane's dead.
Maura draws a shuddering breath through the tears choking her throat and shoves the thought away. She still can't believe it; still refuses to believe it. Jane said she would never leave her almost exactly a year ago today. She promised with Korsak as witness. There have been moments over the past three days where Maura wants to demand that Vince do something, a promise is a promise, and Jane should be made to hold up her end of the deal. The doctor can hear Frost talking to her softly, but it's as if he's speaking a language that Maura doesn't understand. The words wash over her but nothing registers.
"You need to go home, Maura, get some sleep."
"I can't. I can't leave her here alone."The 'like she left me' is left unsaid.
Frost shakes his head again, desperation staining his normally calm demeanor. The M.E. hasn't slept more than an hour or two since she left the hospital AMA after calling Frost to pick her up. Her concussion was severe enough that the neurologist had told her to avoid reading, her computer, the television, and light. He had heard the man almost beg Maura to stay, going so far as to follow her in the wheelchair to the doors, but she'd been adamant. It took two days for Maura to become cognizant enough to ask to sign the AMA paperwork, and those two days were two days too long. She needed to get back to Jane.
"I'll stay here with her." When the doctor shoots him a sorrowful glance, he clenches his jaw refusing to back down. "Maura. I'll stay right in the morgue if you want, or I can run reports from your desk. You need to go home and sleep." Frost chokes over his words and tears immediately fill Maura's eyes. "The viewing and wake is tomorrow and Angela needs you there."
Maura just nods, not trusting herself to respond without breaking down. Jane would have trusted Frost, so Maura should too. She turns and pulls her purse from the bottom drawer and realizes her car isn't here. She looks up, distressed at not being able to fulfill even this simplest of requests, and sees Barry holding his keys out to her.
"Take mine and leave the keys in your mailbox. I'll have Vince come down here in a couple of hours and Frankie can bring me to your house."
"I'll come back and relieve Vince. What time is Frankie coming to get you?" Her voice is shot through with exhausted determination. Barry wants to shut her down, to insist she stays home until morning, but he knows it would be futile. He and Korsak are crushed by the loss. Angela, Frankie, and Tommy have all lost a part of themselves, but Maura, all that Maura had was Jane.
"He'll be here in about five hours. He's with Tommy and Angela trying to locate Frank Sr."
Maura hears what Frost can't say: that they're also making all the funeral arrangements and calling relatives, that Angela is popping Ativan and Tommy has turned back to the bottle, and most of all, that Frankie has big shoes to fill without Jane to turn to for guidance.
"I'll be back before then."
Maura is gone for all of 3 hours. Her head throbbed too much to sleep and Bass was so put off by her mood that he wouldn't come out from under the table. She left him lotus leaves and fresh water, then called a pet-sitter to care for him for the next two days. He doesn't deserve to suffer just because she is.
She's gotten braver over the last hour, actually making it out of her office to hover by the swinging morgue doors. Vince left without further argument after his initial feeble protest about her early return. He'd looked even worse than Frost, but Maura is sure she will find him at his desk in the bullpen, mainlining coffee and shuffling through CIs. They all are trying to numb the pain with exhaustion, and by the looks of them, it's not been successful. Maura takes a deep breath and pushes through the physical manifestation of her trepidation.
The pain is so sharp in her head that Maura cannot stop the moan that escapes. Jane should be sitting on one of the dead-people tables with her arms braced on the edge and her long legs swinging, not laying in the dead-people coolers, still and silent. Maura presses the back of her hand against her lips as the moan devolves into a sob. Her feet (in plain ballet flats, she's lucky to have even remembered shoes) are glued to the floor, but she just has to see, has to check that Jane was taken care of in Maura's absence. JR7613 in stark black Sharpie on a white unlined index card, but she doesn't need the tag to know exactly where Jane is. They are opposite poles inevitably drawn together; Maura finds herself holding her breath and standing in front of the square metal door. If she doesn't open it now, she'll lose her nerve, so she bites her lip, closes her eyes and pulls the handle.
It's through muscle memory that she reaches out blindly and tugs the drawer. Another deep breath, 1, 2, 3…but still she stands locked into the longest blink of her life.
"Maura, open your eyes." That voice, Maura almost falls to her knees. Her imagination has never been this vivid. "Can you hear me? Open your eyes and look at me."
"This is not real. You're dead." She's losing her mind. Head trauma, sleep deprivation, and grief are causing hallucinations. Maura counts quickly in her head. Four days is generally what it took before the hallucinations set in, she's not noticed any slurred speech. Unfortunately, these symptoms could also be attributed to her head injury.
"Please, sweetie, I'm right here. Open those beautiful eyes." And Maura cannot resist any longer. The heartbreak can't be any greater than when she woke up, alone, in the hospital room. Then she raises her eyelids and Jane is there, eyes open and a tender smile on her pale, pale face.
"H-how…" Maura is at a loss.
"Honey, there is so much I want to tell you. So much I should have said a long time ago, but I just didn't want to rock the boat, you know?" Jane's eyes are earnest, and she turns her head a bit to look at Maura, but makes no move to sit up. The doctor is relieved. It's hard enough to reconcile that warm, smoky voice with cool, pale skin so she's sure she would suffer a mental break if she were to see Jane's chest rise and fall with a Y incision.
"I d-don't understand." Maura stammers out, her usual eloquence lost to shock.
"Listen, Maur. I don't have a lot of time, but I want you to know that I love you. I love you so much, and I'm not going to leave you, ok? I promised and I always keep my promises." Jane's voice is choked with emotion, and Maura feels her eyes well up. "I'm sure you're blaming yourself, but nothing that happened is your fault."
The doctor can only nod.
"I'm going to go talk to the powers that be and tell them I can't leave you; that I have to stay here and make sure you are taken care of." Jane's eyes track down across Maura's wrinkled clothes and flats, "Since it's obvious you aren't able to do it yourself."
Maura feels the slight tug of a smile, despite herself. It is just too much like Jane to be anything but. She still can't speak, hoping that their uncanny mental connection will communicate to Jane just how much she is feeling.
"First though, I need one thing from you, Maur. Just one tiny thing. I need you to wake up."
"What?" Ice blooms around the doctors heart. This is too real to be a dream. "No, no. Nooo!"
She comes to in her office on the couch with her head shaking to emphasize her denial. Too real, too real, too real. Maura crosses the room, unsteady even in her flat shoes, and dials Frost with trembling hands. He doesn't even manage to greet her before the words tumble from her lips.
"Janie's not dead. You need to come down here. She was talking to me and she told me she couldn't leave me and that nothing that happened was my fault."
"Maura? Hang on. We'll be down in a minute." She doesn't bother to end the call, instead she drops the phone on her desk and starts pacing the length of her office, eyes glued to the wall of coolers through her window. The bell on the elevator rings, and she can hear their shoes as the men come down the hall. At the knock on her open office door, Maura whirls around and sees that Frost has brought the cavalry. Barry is at the head of the group, but Korsak, Cavanaugh, and Frankie follow close behind. Maura can't look away from Frankie's gaze, his sad brown eyes so much like his sister's.
They think she has finally cracked, she can see it written all over their faces. She looks from Vince to Barry to Sean and finally to Frankie and she feels her heart fall and shoulders sag. She knows she does sound ridiculous, but it was just so real.
"Dr. Isles, we need you to go home and get well. You have suffered a serious injury, but we need you back with us when you're doing better." Cavanaugh is being as gentle as he can while still sounding firm. Maura nods her head, resigned.
"Maura, I'm going to go check on her for you, alright?" Vince's voice is gruff but soft. "Do you want to come?"
Maura shakes her head and moves closer to Frankie, subconsciously seeking comfort from the closest thing to Jane that she still has. The Rizzolis must all be divining rods for emotion, because he slips his arm around her shoulders and pulls her against his side. They watch Korsak cross over to the notecarded door, but when his hand grasps the handle Maura closes her eyes and buries her face into Frankie's chest. She hears the door pop open, and the drawer slide out, then a sob that she recognizes as her own. Both of Frankie's arms wrap around her, crushing her against his shaking frame, making her pulse thunder in her head. Maura is grateful for the distraction that the physical pain brings. Frankie is crying now too, she can feel his tears soaking through the hair at the crown of her head. She wraps her arms around his waist and says the only thing that expresses all of the emotions swirling inside her.
"I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry."