Author's Note: As much as I loved season 2, I despised season 4. There was too much Casey nonsense and too much of a Jane on screen that didn't seem true to her character. And Lydia, god, what a terrible storyline! So, don't expect to see much of it as we make our way to sweat lodge revelations. Anyway… On to one of the most smile-inducing characters on the show: Senior Criminalist Susie Chang. Though she may be smile inducing, this piece won't be. It takes place sometime near the end of season 4, you'll see shades of various season 3 episodes, too. -dkc
Chapter Seven: Susie
Susie Chang couldn't help but care about her boss. Maura Isles was one of the most genuine, kind and brilliant people she had ever met. The criminalist considered it a privilege to have been hired by the M.E. and couldn't imagine doing anything else.
For all her trying, there was one thing that Susie couldn't do. While she acknowledged her care and concern for her supervisor sat on the border between professional and personal, she allowed herself this. If there was one thing she knew was unprofessional, it was her fascination with the doctor's friendship with the beautiful Detective Rizzoli.
Having a front row seat to the most horrendous cases of the last several years meant also having a view to the internal drama that played out within the Boston Police Department as they solved those cases. Additionally, Susie had seen cases that directly involved members of the BPD team. From the fear-fueled encounters with Charles Hoyt, one of her first cases in her current position, to her own boss being held at knifepoint by a man she believed to be worthy of her attention and affection, the cases had opened her eyes to things she shouldn't have known as a lab employee. She saw the catfight that ensued after the officer shot Dr. Isles' mobster father. She worked under immense pressure when Rizzoli's brother was charged with a crime he didn't commit. And those were just the cases.
Susie had a front seat to the personal struggles and triumphs of the team she worked with as well. She had seen the rarely emotional Detective Rizzoli walk through the halls of the precinct; catatonic and as if she were a ghost of her former self, after she had shot Paddy Doyle and the doctor had stopped speaking to her. She had heard the quiet tears the medical examiner shed in her office when she didn't know anyone was still in the lab, tears over the complicated and unexpected relationship that developed with her birth mother and half sister. She'd watched as all of the Rizzoli clan, Maura included, barely kept their eyes open in the days after Tommy's baby boy came into the world.
The fascination remained for whatever was going on between her boss and the cop. And there was no doubt that something was going on. At first she could believe that they were merely best friends. Two women who spent as much time together as they did were bound to be close, but things had slowly changed. She sensed a scenario between the two of them where one stepped forward, offering herself in some way that was ancillary to what they already had and then stepping back to await the other's decision on whether or not they might go forward together. They took turns doing this as far as she could tell. It drove her crazy to not know where it stood between them. Were they or weren't they?
There were moments when what they were in terms of their relationship was completely clear. After the shooting? Definitely not together in any way, much less as something more than friends. When Detective Cooper joined the homicide department only to be pulled away to a lengthy undercover assignment for a drug task force? Not together, but damn did they want to be. How did she know this? The way Detective Rizzoli watched the interaction between Cooper and Isles was like a predator ready to protect her prey from any other wild animal. After the parking garage came crashing down with Tommy Rizzoli and Detective Frost inside? She was certain they'd made the leap then. Her certainty was aided by knowing that Rizzoli had called it off with the military boyfriend of hers, a boyfriend that didn't seem at all committed to the detective as far as Susie was concerned. Sure, he came back and she got back together with him, but it was obvious that the question the two best friends continued to ask one another lingered in the air always. It was as if at any moment one of them would say yes and put an end to the charade.
She wasn't sure when the moment came, but prior to the death of Detective Frost, something drastic happened. It was as if the world stopped teetering the way it had when they were engaged in this will they or won't they drama. It seemed as if the decision had been made that they wouldn't move forward.
It was inevitable that she would overhear something. She was constantly walking in on private conversations without meaning to interrupt. She had seen plenty of things that could be misread as intimacy. Maybe they were intimate. But the conversation she heard that day explained a lot.
"Jane, I don't understand why this is necessary," she heard through the partially open office door.
"Please don't ask me this, Maur," the detective's voice seemed smaller than Susie had ever heard it.
The silence felt tense even to the woman on the outside of the conversation. She knew she should walk away, give them privacy, but she couldn't help her own curiosity.
"Do you love him?" the M.E.'s words were barely audible through the door.
Susie put a hand over her mouth. She didn't need context to know whom Dr. Isles was asking about. Casey. The detective had been seen in the precinct with the soldier. It was off and it was on. And rumor had it, the man had proposed, but the cop hadn't given him an answer.
"I love the idea of him," came the weighty reply. "And this—whatever this is—can't be."
This?! she wondered.
"Why not? Why can't it be?" Susie knew this tone; it was the tone of the frustrated woman she knew so well.
"Maur…" there came a rustling sound behind the door and Susie was forced to back up a step in fear someone was coming toward where she was standing.
"I love you."
The criminalist felt tears welling in her eyes as she listened to the expression out of Maura's mouth. God, these two women, she thought.
"I know," the detective's voice broke with emotion as she said it.
The M.E.'s office door flew open and out walked a clearly distraught Detective Rizzoli who saw Susie immediately.
"Chang," she nodded and then made her way out of the morgue.
What broke Susie's heart was the soft crying she heard coming from the doctor's office. She knew nothing she could say would make it better so she did the only thing she could think to do, reaching for the doorknob and closing it to give her boss her privacy.
To be continued…
