Always with the smell – bitter, artificial, sickening. Jane knew, had recently come to terms with the fact, that the smell permeated her life now and forever. It tasted like what she imagined a flickering fluorescent light would taste like. Hazy and heavy, with the bzz-bzz crackle of something hovering between forever-sleep and jerky half-awakeness. The last time she smelled it was in Maura's lab. She needed an update on forensics for the murder-kidnapping, and of course she got the worst kind of update: nothing. It peppered her tongue like a peroxide lollipop, the smell, and yet, with Maura so intertwined with her life as to practically be one with her, she accepted it as a necessary nuisance.

At least that time, however, and every time in the morgue before that, the burn in her nostrils was tempered by the vision of Maura – impeccably warm and inviting, a hint, a prologue to the best hugs Jane would ever get. Now, there was only black. No sign of Tamsin, no sign of that murky netherworld shit she had dreamed up, no boat, no angel wings. Though she reasoned that this total blackness suited her idea of death more than a snarky Valkyrie detective, it evoked in her the yearning to open her eyes more than anything. At first she thought that she couldn't. She pushed, she pulled, she shook with the effort. What seemed like hours, days, passed. Why had she awoken? She remembered agony, buckling in front of the woman her brain had conjured up, but at least it was something. Now she had nothing. Except for the smell.

And the squeeze of a hand.

Dear sweet fucking god, the hand that had been in hers, a hand she had grasped in her own countless times. It was small, sweet, soft. Its thumb caressed her thumb. Could she squeeze back? Another try, another no. But she needed to at least see it. So, with one final effort, she forced her eyelids to part. It was a colossus of an undertaking. Her body chastised her for it, sent exhaustion to punish her, to try and take her away again.

Little did her body know that it waged war against the only enemy it could never conquer. Maura.

Maura was there. Holding her hand, seated across from her. There was linoleum, and there was a worn chair that Maura seemed to inhabit, quite literally. Had she moved from it in days? Rumpled clothes, blood under her fingernails, shoes off in a public place. Man, Maura looked fucking rough. Jane wondered where she herself was seated that the medical examiner was across from her looking shitty, and then she heard it. Beep, beep... beep, the most torturing sound in her short existence: Alive? Yes. Well? Not by a long shot if they gotta hear your heart through one of those things. Fuck, I fucked up again.

The fucking hospital. Home away from home, where the smell always lingered. No shortage of it here, and as long as Jane was in a bed, there was also no shortage of Isles tears. They had dried for now, but wait til Maura got a look at her. Better to get it over with, she surmised. "Guess... guess I dodged a bullet... again.. huh?" Her throat blazed with the exertion of thrusting such a simple question out of her mouth. It sounded little more than a whisper, hoarse, as though she had taken to chasing gravel with whiskey. Felt like she chased broken glass with rubbing alcohol.

Maura, as usual, did not laugh. Her head snapped to Jane's face and her lower lip quivered (tears again), but her eyes narrowed farther than Jane had ever seen before. She pinched the detective's thenar eminence. "That is not funny. You literally did quite the opposite."

Jane winced. Maybe the joke wasn't such a good idea. Maura, she was sure, had probably been through a lot since she got herself holed up in here. "Maura."

"What?" the doctor, wisps of hair in her face on account of her haphazard ponytail, glanced anywhere but at Jane, lips still pursed.

"Maura, look at me," Jane pleaded, despite the pain it caused her windpipe.

After several epic seconds, Maura obliged, looking more vulnerable than the Italian had seen in a long while.

"I'm awake."

"You're awake," Maura, sobbed, chuckled, and sighed at once. Indeed. She stood and wrapped Jane's head in her arms, kissing slowly the side of her head, her ear, her eyebrow, anything in reach. "You're alive... even though you died. You died, Jane. You had died when I got to you."

This gave the cop pause. She no longer reveled in the softwetness of her best friend's affection, of the welcome smell of her three-day old perfume. "Wait a minute. I died?"

Maura pulled back, nodding solemnly. "In addition to the two times you died the last time you suffered such a traumatic gunshot wound, you did it again three days ago, Jane Rizzoli. You have died thrice in the years that I have known you. Sometimes I wonder if you're a ghost."

"So I really did die? Where? Was it dark? Like near a river?"

This concerned the pathologist somewhat, even if only because blackouts prove that the mind is a fallible thing. Jane clearly had no recollection of the moments right up until the incident. "No, of course not. It was at the suspect's home, in his backyard. You were in pursuit, and he fired a bullet meant for two children that went through you instead."

"That bastard Hayes. Him? He killed me?" Jane asked, struggling with the last question. She really needed to shut her trap, but damn if everything was starting to get real weird. If she had really died, did she also really meet Tamsin on the other side?

Maura on the other hand, was heartened by Jane's quickly returning memory. "Yes. Him. Backup arrived on scene, and helped to bring Hayes into custody. He is receiving treatment for gunshot wounds sustained in his fleeing of the scene, but then he will be at the mercy of Sergeant Korsak and the other detectives," knowing this, that justice would be acted out, put Maura more at ease, but she could see the agitation on her friend's face. "But that's a conversation for later. Are you in pain, sweetheart?"

Jane felt herself slipping quickly. Her stomach hurt like a motherfucker and she wanted sleep. She could no longer speak because of the pain, and she heard Maura's voice in slow whisps all about her. When the question reached her, she knew she was in for some morphine – not really her favorite pastime, but if it helped her rest, she was desperate enough to receive it. The last thing she remembered was a blonde, tall, dressed in white scrubs, adjusting a tube connected to her arm. "Tamsin?"

"Jane, honey?! A little birdie told me that you were awake!" none other than Angela peeked her head through the doorway of Jane's most recent hospital room, one seemingly all her own – no neighbors in sight. Maybe Mass Gen was finally giving her VIP treatment; God knew she'd been there enough. Maura saw her, smiled, waved her in, but didn't speak. She pointed to Jane, asleep due to the drugs ebbing and flowing through her veins.

"I just had the nurse put her back down for a bit, I'm sorry, Angela. But she was in a lot of pain. I think it had her a bit out of sorts," the medical examiner whispered. She sipped on a coffee she had retrieved between Jane's odd last word and Angela's arrival. It tasted bitter and stale and it stank even worse, but she supposed beggars couldn't be choosers, especially when it came to caffeine. Her tea would have to wait until the woman in the bed recuperated.

"Oh, that's too bad..." Angela said, looking crestfallen only for a moment, "but I'd rather her get all the rest she needs if that means she can come home faster." Still lingering in the doorway, she smiled in gratitude to Maura. "I'm just so glad she's out of the danger zone."

"Well, while she is stable, there is still some risk of infection. But come, sit awhile. I could use the company," Maura said, smiling back.

Angela finally entered after motioning behind her as though beckoning another to enter. Did she bring Frankie? Not possible; he was pulling double overtime since Jane had gone down. Maybe Tommy? He had been pretty busy with TJ and plumbing jobs in the past few weeks, but perhaps. It might even have been one of Jane's childhood friends, as Angela sometimes brought them around to see her. She was convinced seeing them lifted Jane's spirits and helped her to recover. Oh, Angela.

The entering person, however, turned out to be none of these. At the sight of her, for she was most definitely a woman, a surge of petty jealousy and self-consciousness hit Maura, both rare in her, yet simultaneous at the sight of black leather boots contouring against the bottoms of black leather pants. She swore she could count the strokes it took to paint it all on. A black tank top cut right below the smoothest cream she'd ever seen in a skin tone, cleavage aside. That too of course, was perfect – what of it that was visible made the doctor wonder if she had committed a sin in trying to date exclusively men in the past year. It all came together with a blue leather jacket, zipped just below her breasts by what must have been the darkest of arts to get it all to stay so perfectly, and the long, straight black hair pulled away from arabica eyes and razor brows all but confirmed it. The pathologist did not know whether to cry out of frustration or arousal, but damn, she did want to cry. The woman only smiled back in warmth, in bridled confidence, as if she knew exactly the effect she were having, even apologizing for it.

"Maura, I hope you don't mind, but we were having a meeting at my house when you called, and she was so kind as to come along when I heard that Jane was awake! This is Bo: I called her to do a bit of... research for me."