Maura remained with Jane through the rest of the weekend as they worked out a plan for Jane to find the help she needed. The appointment for the psychiatrist Maura had mentioned was made, and, a week after Jane nearly hit a minivan with a family of three, she was sitting in a waiting room waiting to talk about it.
The deep mahogany wood paneling with hunter green accents gave the waiting room an enclosed feeling to Jane, like she felt when she went with Maura to the country club for dinner. She fidgeted, flipping quickly through a Better Homes magazine, setting it down, crossing her legs, uncrossing them, and generally acting like a squirmy 3 year old.
When her name was finally called, she glanced around the quiet room as if expecting someone there to recognize it, but no one looked up or even acknowledged her. Maura had dropped her off and gone to a call. Jane had taken a half day, citing a doctor's appointment. No one questioned her. Between the shooting, the scalpels, and the other various injuries to her body, everyone assumed she was going to see a doctor for her body, not her mind.
She took in a deep, shuddering breath as she stepped into the room behind the large, wooden door. Her left hand landed on the butt of her service piece, subconsciously pushing her blazer aside to flash both gun and badge. Her right hand opened and closed, fingers dragging across the scar on her palm as she stood just inside the closed door looking around the room, taking in everything to see and processing it.
The doctor's appearance was unusual, but comforting, even before she spoke. Short of stature, round of figure, she looked like a mother goddess figure. Murky green eyes bore tiny epicanthic folds, suggesting partial East Asian heritage, but her creamy cinnamon skin spoke of Africa, and the freckles, eye color, and reddish-brown hair hinted at Scots or Norse ancestry despite a wide, flat, Mayan nose. She was the entire world. Little knickknacks and photographs gave the office the homelike feel of a living room owned by someone who had been places, without seeming pretentious. Other than the obligatory diploma and license to practice, which were displayed but not with prominence, there was nothing in the way of personal glorification.
Her rich, warm voice underscored the visual mixed signals, with its cosmopolitan accent, or rather, accents. Northern Canada, southern US, a hint of upper East Coast – what couldn't this woman claim as her home? "Good afternoon," she offered, and it sounded as though she sincerely hoped it would be. "I'm Dr. Georgia Dearborn. What would you like me to call you, and do you shake hands?"
It was all on reflex. Jane swaggered in toward the middle of the room where the doctor stood, offered her right hand, and responded in a clear, confident voice, "Detective Jane Rizzoli." She paused for a heartbeat and then gave a huff of air. "Jane's fine." She shook hands quickly and then pulled the offered hand back. The fingers of her left hand began to run along the scars of right. "So… how do we do this?"
The doctor's eyes flicked towards the gun, but offered no opinion, no judgmental eyebrow lift or scowl, no acceptance either. "Take a seat anywhere that looks comfortable," she offered, gesturing a welcome. There was a couch, but there were also comfortable chairs, exactly like a sitting room; and too, there was a desk with two office chairs facing it. There was even a corner with a papa-san bowl chair and some scattered floor cushions. Every different type of physical or emotional comfort was available. "Now, you were kind enough to let your police department therapist provide me with your files, and I'm grateful for that. It means there's information we don't have to go over again. Have there been additional events or issues that you didn't have just three months ago when you were initially cleared for duty, or have you come out of a desire to give yourself a little more good care than what the city was willing to pay for?"
"Yeah," Jane pulled the word out, stalling, as she winced and headed for the two chairs in the corner of the room. She took the one facing the door, her back to the wall. "There's more, and, if the PD knew, they'd kick me off the force. What happens here stays here, right? I mean, it's like Vegas? The city won't know what's going on unless I fu… mess up on the job, right?" She slumped down in the chair, hands running over each other, another nervous twitch.
"I don't work for the city, the state, or your parents. I work for no one but you," replied the psychiatrist with a smile as she sat down across from her newest patient. "If you tell me you're going to hurt yourself or someone else on purpose, I have to follow legal procedure. Other than that, nothing you say here will ever be shared with anyone. The only reason I take notes or record sessions, in fact, is just so that I can remember important details of things you might want to address in future sessions, and those notes are locked away very securely. Speaking of that, would you rather be recorded, or would you prefer that I take notes in shorthand?"
Once those little housekeeping matters were handled, the doctor said, "Well, now, Miz Jane. Suppose you tell me where you're comfortable starting, hm?"
"Jane. Just Jane." The detective shifted in her seat. "Jane's fine," she mumbled as she looked down at her hands. "I… I've got," she sighed, closing her eyes and talking to herself she mumbled, "I promised her." Opening her eyes, she looked up to meet the gaze of the doctor. "After they cleared me, I did okay for a week or so, but, then, I started having these really fucked up nightmares." She frowned. "Messed up. Messed up nightmares. Sorry, Maura doesn't like it when I curse." She gave a little shrug of apology. "I mean, I always have bad dreams, you know?"
She held up her hands. "Hoyt, he pretty much messed me up for life." Her hands dropped back down to her lap. "But, these dreams were really bad. I kept reliving the shooting or the time Maura was being held as a hostage, but instead of me getting shot or Maura slamming a scalpel into the guy's thigh, something goes wrong, and I can't stop it. I just can't stop it. I'm just this helpless person standing there watching as she's killed. And," she rolled her eyes, "I'm homicide, so my screwed up mind knows exactly what every little detail of that kind of death would look like. If I'm not dreaming about Maura getting killed in some Godawful way, then I'm dreaming about all the times I messed up and put my family in a bad spot or where I could have stopped my two brothers from doing something that wound up hurting them, but I didn't. If it's not that, then I'm dreaming about Ma's disappointment because I'm never going to marry and have kids, or I'm dreaming about my parents' upcoming divorce."
She ran a hand through her hair, shaking it slightly to get the part to fall the other way. "My brain, it wouldn't give me any breaks, and I stopped being able to sleep at all unless… well, anyway," she shook her head, waving a hand to dismiss the thought she hadn't spoken aloud. "So, one weeknight after a really bad case where I was really tired and hadn't had a good night's sleep in over two weeks, I… bought a bottle of cheap whiskey." She swallowed, rolling her eyes skyward for a moment as she leaned back in the chair. "And I kept buying them. You don't dream when you're passed out."
Doctor Dearborn's pen flowed in swift whispers over the page, though not nearly enough to be taking Jane's every word, and there were silences in between. "Could you tell me more about the first traumatic event? I have your case files, I'd rather hear about your feelings as it was happening than the details of precisely what happened. And how did your feelings differ," Dearborn asked after a long moment to process what her patient had said, "from the way you felt when Maura was held hostage by your copycat Boston Strangler?"
Jane grunted in frustration. "I get tired of talking about Hoyt," she growled, but clearly mentally chastised herself. "Okay, yeah," she nodded, took in a deep breath, and gave the story again, mentally steeling herself to the better handle reliving the trauma once again.
"Thank you, Jane," said the doctor as her patient wound down. "I know it's not only difficult, but also tedious, to keep revisiting that. Let's go somewhere else. Could you tell me a little bit more about when Maura was kidnapped? What did you think about during that time?"
"I was pissed. I couldn't believe I'd left her alone like that. I'm supposed to protect her. I'm the cop. But no, I listened to Korsak and let her go alone when I knew she was in trouble. I was pissed off and terrified that something horrific was going to happen to her. I don't know what I'd do if she was gone. She's my best friend." The detective gave a heavy hearted sigh, shaking her head and averting her eyes.
"Let's move towards your brother for a moment," the doctor suggested when Jane showed fidgety signs of needing to switch gears. "I understand that he's also been endangered twice, once by a girlfriend and once later on. Can you tell me how you responded mentally and emotionally to that first time?"
"The first time? God," Jane rolled her eyes. "That was my fault. If Hoyt hadn't been trying to get to me, Frankie would never have been in danger. I'm fu… sorry. I mean I'm a walking disaster area. Frankie just got caught up in it. He'd never killed anyone before Lola. I made my younger brother a killer. I hate myself for that." She swallowed, shaking her head. "Ma does, too," she whispered, frowning deeply. "I can't talk about that anymore right now, okay?"
"All right," Dearborn agreed, making a quick note to go back there in another session. "I apologize for skipping around, but I want to touch all the bases that we can today, so that I can tell what the headlines are. When we continue in other sessions, we'll get the full stories. My promise. Now, if I may ask and if you're able, would you like to talk yet about the day that your brother and yourself were shot?"
Jane's lips formed a tight line for a moment as she thought about what she wanted to say. "Marino was supposed to be one of us, a good guy. I trusted him. Hell, I even turned him down when he tried to hand the gun back to me while we were in the morgue. There was no way for me to know he was dirty. But I should have known something was off. He wasn't acting right. I don't have to give you the details. I figure you've probably read all the papers, so you probably know all about the dirty crap he was doing."
She stood, pacing beside the chair she had been occupying. "Frankie was shot and hurt badly. Maura was scared and trying her best to help, but I could see it in her eyes. She sees death every day. Queen of the Dead. That's what they call her. Did you know that?" She glanced to the seated woman. "No, probably not. That's just what the jackasses in the precinct who don't appreciate her call her. But she's good at what she does. She's the best, and she knows it when she sees it. Death, I mean. My brother was going to die, and there wasn't a damned thing I could do about it. Frankie was dying and Maura was in trouble. I just… I had to do something. I couldn't be responsible for that. I mean, Ma already hates me for getting Frankie involved with the force, and, if something happened to Maura," she stopped pacing and sat back down in the chair, elbows resting on her knees, head down. Silently, Dearborn added another note to the bottom of her legal pad.
"Marino pulled me outside, and I remember thinking that no one was going to shoot because it was me. I was screaming at them. I was saying, 'Shoot him! Shoot him!' But they wouldn't do it. I knew Frankie was going to die. I knew Maura was in serious trouble. I did the only thing I could think to do because I knew Marino could take me in a fist fight. If I was going to die, I was taking him with me. So," she leaned back in the chair, eyes closing as her hand ran over the scar on her abdomen. "I grabbed his hand with the gun in it, and I shot us both. The last thing I remember before blacking out was seeing Maura kneeling beside me putting pressure on my wound and telling me," she stopped, opening her eyes. "You know, I never thought about it before, what she was saying. She was saying, 'Don't leave me." Jane let out a long stream of air as she processed that thought. "The last thing I remember feeling was guilty for the fear and panic I saw on her face."
Again, Dearborn made a note. Her impassivity had gradually melted into involvement, Jane's recitation of facts and feelings having drawn her in as an active listener. She waited for a long moment for the patient to say more. When it became clear that she wouldn't, Dearborn replied, "Normally I grant twice to three times as much time for a first session as for any other. Right now, we haven't quite reached that time, but you already look like you've been through the wringer. And you also are speaking in feelings rather than events, which means that you really are ready for this therapy, and you're ready to start facing your life again without self-anaesthetizing your way past the things that hurt." She set down the legal pad and rose from her seat with far less difficulty than one might expect for her girth. "Why don't we stop here? Anything else I could ask you would keep you here for another few hours, and I'm guessing you'd really like to go home and process what we've done so far. Or maybe just forget about it for the night, and come back to it fresh next time, hm?"
"I'd like," Dearborn continued, "to see you two to three times a week for the first month or two, just to be sure you're getting through the worst part of it with constant help. You deserve my best work, Miss Detective," her innate informality won out, along with a little wink, "and I'd like to make sure you get it."
"I want to thank you, Jane," said the psychiatrist as she tucked her notes away, "for being so ready and willing to begin this process. I know it's going to be difficult for you, but you have a much better attitude than many of my patients, particularly those who work as police officers, military service people, and all these other macho professions. That's going to help you a lot. But I've learned from considerable experience that stress after traumatic events is very common, has many different levels and symptoms, and may be considerably delayed in its reaction – and you've had even more stress than most in your field. On the job, you're an expert in physical and mental tactics. Here, what I hope to do is provide you with some emotional tactics so you won't be derailed if you happen to have a delayed reaction to stress somewhere down the line."
Dearborn continued, "Some reactions might be physical, and anything you experience physically is a normal reaction to these things that have happened in your life. Nausea, diarrhea, sleep disturbance, fatigue, getting the shakes, all of it. You might feel a need to eat or drink more, or less. All of those things, they're normal." She paused significantly, maybe expectantly.
Jane simply nodded her understanding.
As Dearborn picked up her pen and pad to make one more note, she went on speaking. "Other reactions can be cognitive: absent-mindedness, trouble concentrating, preoccupation or flashbacks to these various traumatic events, emotional vulnerability, acute awareness and suspicion of your surroundings, the bad dreams you've described to me. Intellectually you've probably accepted all the events, but you can still experience a range of difficult emotions, behavioral reactions such as hyperactivity or lethargy, making light of what happened, outbursts of anger… But any reaction, any of these, and more, are normal reactions to abnormal events, do you feel me?"
"Well, everything on that list sucks," Jane remarked, standing to follow the doctor to the door.
"You're so right. That's why I'm going to give you a journal to write these things down in, or you can email me your thoughts throughout the week instead if you prefer, so we can track your emotional and physical symptoms of stress. Now that you understand what you might be facing," Dearborn concluded, "I hope you'll feel a little more hope about facing it. Everything you're feeling and doing is normal. You aren't sick, you're just hurt and scared. But we're going to solve this case, Detective," she smiled, "just like one of yours at work. You may or may not need me on a long-term basis. What I hope and believe is that you'll eventually be able to give yourself your own therapy, because I'll be showing you how to look honestly at events and your responses to them and how to be constructive and gentle with yourself as you cope with them."
"A journal? I can handle that, and thank you." Just as when she entered the room, Jane's left hand settled on the butt of her gun and her right reached out to shake the doctor's hand. "I appreciate this," she said with a twinkle in her eye as she stepped outside to the receptionist desk, "Dr. George."
Dr. Dearborn heard the nickname and mimed a swatting motion, though it came nowhere near actually hitting Jane, as if she were a fond but feisty auntie. "Oh, git on outta here, girl," she said, her Deep Southern accent suddenly and temporarily unadulterated, other than by her throaty, earthy laugh.
Smirking, Jane turned to the receptionist to set another appointment.