It was a cool spring evening in Boston and the family was gathered at the neighborhood park for a picnic dinner. Tommy and Frost were shooting hoops on the basketball court, Korsak, Maura and Angela were chatting together at the picnic tables while Jane and Frankie played soccer with 4 year old Liam.
The ME smiled as she looked over at her wife and son. He was growing up so fast.
"He's going to be in college before you know it!" Angela said as she followed her daughter in laws gaze.
"Don't even say that Angela!" Maura exclaimed, "The thought of that breaks my heart- my little boy growing up and moving away from me!"
"You will have plenty of time with him." Angela smiled and covered the younger woman's hand with her own.
Their moment was broken when they heard screeching tires, a sickening thump and Jane screaming "LIAM!"
All heads shot towards the voice and they saw Jane sprinting towards the street where Liam was splayed across the asphalt. The young girl that had been behind the wheel of the car was sobbing, "I'm so sorry! He came out of nowhere! I didn't see him!"
By the time Maura reached her wife and son, Frankie was already on the phone with the 911 operator, "The ambulance should be here any minute." He tried to assure them.
The doctor knelt down at her son's side and tried to assess his injuries, he was breathing, and his pulse was weak but steady.
"Maura I am so sorry. I looked away for a second!" Jane was beating herself up as she watched her son's blood seep onto the street. She wanted to touch him, to hold him, but she knew not to in case he had a spinal injury. The fact that her wife wasn't responding to her only added to her fear. 'She must be so mad at me for letting this happen.' The brunette thought. Letting her wife tend to their son as she heard the sirens approaching, Jane turned to the driver of the car, "YOU!"
She rushed towards the frightened girl when Frankie intercepted her, "Jane, don't worry about her. Frost has it under control ok. We are going to take care of it. Focus on your son."
"But…I…what do…" Jane's voice broke. She didn't know what to do to help her son right now. What she knew was to be a cop and to protect people. She had failed at that; at protecting her son. She felt lost.
"It's going to be ok." Frankie promised. "Liam's strong."
Jane took a deep breath to get herself under control. By the time she turned back to where her son lay injured, the paramedic team was already loading him into their ambulance. Maura held her hand out to her from where she was standing in the door of the vehicle. "Jane!"
The detective ran towards the vehicle. She took Maura's hand and her wife helped pull her into the ambulance. Her ex-partner's face as the last she saw before the doors were shut tightly behind her, "We'll meet you at the hospital."
Maura gripped Jane's hand tightly as they rode in the back with their son. Jane couldn't read the expression on her face. She seemed to be concentrating on what procedures they paramedics were doing, what meds they were giving him but her green eyes never came into contact with her own. All Jane could do was hold her wife's hand and pray that their son would be ok – that they would be ok.
Arriving at the hospital, both parents hopped out of the back as quickly as possible and stood to the side as the paramedics unloaded the gurney. They jogged along side of their son as the paramedics and doctors swirled around them; the medics spouting off his vitals as he was raced into a trauma room. A young med student stopped them at the door, "You ladies will have to wait out here!"
"I'm his mother and a medical doctor!" Maura exclaimed.
One of the senior residents recognized her, "Come on in Dr. Isles but you are strictly observing."
The ME agreed and stepped into the room without a second thought or word to her wife. Jane watched as Maura donned a gown and gloves and watched the medical team assess her son.
Jane was left to pace the hallway. She took Frankie's call and told him what she knew – which wasn't much at all. She told him to have everyone stay in the waiting room until they heard from her. What felt like hours later, the trauma room doors burst open and Liam was wheeled towards a bank of elevators. Tears formed in her brown eyes when she caught sight of her son; he had a tube coming out of his mouth, his clothes had been cut away to reveal so many cuts and bruises that she didn't realize were there before.
"We will see you upstairs." The same resident said to Maura before joining the medical team in the elevator.
"Maura? How is he? Please tell me what's going on?"
Her wife began to speak but she was rambling on in medical terms that she didn't understand, "Babe…I don't…" She tried to stop her wife but the doctor kept on talking, "Maur…" It didn't help. Jane gripped her upper arms and practically shouted her name, "Maura!" The blonde finally looked her in the eye as though she realized she was talking to Jane for the first time. "Maura, please, tell me what is going on with our son – in non-Google speak!"
"Oh God, Jane, I am so sorry! I was so in the zone I didn't realize. His right leg is fractured and he also has a severe sprain to his left wrist. The ultrasound showed some internal bleeding from his spleen and surround areas. They are taking him up to surgery right now. They won't know until the get him in there about whether or not his spleen will have to be removed."
"But he…he can live without that right?" Jane asked as tears dripped from her eyes.
"Yes, Sweetie. The doctors are very hopeful." She took her wife's hand in her own, "Everything that they are going to do is actually relatively routine. The injuries could be far worse then they are and while they are in there they will do a thorough check of everything to make sure there wasn't something missed on the scan."
Jane finally had to ask, "How can you be so calm about all of this?"
"I am compartmentalizing and holding it together on the outside Jane. My medical background allows me to think of the statistics of these types of injuries vs. the success rates of the medical procedures and assure myself that our son will most likely be able to walk away from this without any long term problems."
"But Maura.."
The honey blonde placed a finger to her wife's lips, "But the mother in me is scared that something will happen to our little boy. The mother in me is scared of that everyday and now that this is happening I am falling to my background to allow me to get through it. I know you are scared too Jane. Please don't feel like you have to be the strong one here but please trust me when I say that my intestines have a strong feeling that our little boy is going to be alright."
"It's your gut, Maur." Jane said with a smirk.
"Either way." Maura smiled, "It's going to be ok." She kissed her wife, hoping that she would find reassurance in the action. "Now come on, let's find our family and bring them up to the waiting room with us. I want to get one more update from his surgeon before they take him in."
The family sat vigil in the waiting room for hours while Liam was on the operating table. Frost and Korsak went out for food and coffee for everyone. Angela went to the chapel to pray. She assured her children that she would be fine on her own. Frankie and Tommy dozed in the corner of the waiting room while Jane and Maura sat together; their fingers intertwined.
Maura could see pain in her wife's eyes, "It's going to be ok, Jane." She told her again.
"I'm so sorry I let this happen, Maura. I only turned away for a second. I didn't realize that he had kicked the ball towards the road." She couldn't hold her tears back any longer. They slowly began to leak from her brown eyes as she apologized over and over.
"This isn't your fault Jane. We were all there within yards of him and none of us saw it coming. It's no ones fault but the girl who was driving that car." She pulled her wife's head to her chest and held her as she cried. It was often that Jane allowed her to do that – at home let alone in public – but she was thankful for it. She knew that her wife needed to get her emotions out.
"I am going to do everything to make sure she gets the maximum sentence we can slap on her." Jane's voice was muffled by Maura's body.
"Frost and Korsak took care of her," Maura told her, "And they are on strict orders not to give you her information. You're not on this case, Jane. You're not a detective right now. You're a mother."
"So you can be a mother and a doctor but I'm not allowed to be a mother and a detective?" Jane sniffled.
Maura could tell by her tone that she was poking fun at her which made her smile, "Yes that sounds about right."
"That doesn't seem very fair to me." Jane whined.
"I thought you were used to not getting your way after all these years of being married to me." The honey blonde teased. Her comment earned her a pinch in the side which made her jump but then smile. "You can sleep if you want to Jane," Maura whispered in her ear. "I've got you. They have the best team of pediatric surgeons in Boston working on him and I will wake you the second someone comes out."
The ME was true to her word; she shook her wife awake when she saw the doctor appear down the hall. Jane was usually slow to wake but at that moment she was up as though she hadn't been dozing on her wife's chest. The rest of the family stood as well as the man in scrubs approached.
"Liam did great!" The doctor said with a smile. "We were able to patch up everything we needed to. We didn't find any other damage other then what he had endured to his spleen."
"Did you have to remove it?" Jane asked with trepidation.
"No, your little guy is fully intact." He told them. "They are moving him to a recovery room now and the nurse will come to get you as soon as you can see him. He probably won't be awake for quite some time. We want to keep him sedated to let him rest but you can all see him for a few minutes before we move him to his private room. They will get to work putting a cast on his leg once he gets settled. The surgery was a higher priority then getting that in place but we've kept his leg stationary with splints for the time being. We will keep him here at the hospital for a few days to be monitored but I have a feeling that he will bounce back pretty quickly."
There was a round of thank yous to the doctor before he left to tend to other patients. Sighs of relief filled the room at the good news. Jane pulled her wife against her and kissed her soundly. Tears of happiness slipped from her eyes.
"He's going to be ok." Maura said firmly as she cupped the taller woman's face.
Jane just nodded with a sniffle and a smile.
They were all able to see him in groups of two while he was in the recovery room – though Angela managed to talk the nurses into letting Tommy and Frankie come in with her. Jane smiled; her mother always seemed to be able to talk her way into anything.
The family members hugged the two mothers with promises to return to visit in the morning with breakfast and fresh coffee before parting ways. Jane laced her fingers with her wife's as they made their way back their son's private room.
The detective couldn't get used to seeing her son hooked up to so many monitors and tubes but she knew that it wouldn't be for much longer. She agreed with the doctor; her son was going to bounce back from this in no time. He was a fighter. It was in his blood.
She sat in the recliner that was next to his bed and pulled Maura into her lap. The honey blonde placed one of her palms to the other woman's cheek as she kissed her. "How are you doing?" Jane asked as their lips parted.
"I'm ok." Maura answer honestly. "I think we are through the worst of it."
"Yeah," Jane agreed, "Though I am sure he won't be happy about that cast when he wakes up. He won't be able to run around for a while."
"At least it's red." Maura smiled.
Red was Liam's favorite color – anything to match the Boston Red Sox.
Jane hummed in agreement and looked her in wife in the eye. "I love you." She said simply.
"I love you back." Maura answered.
The brunette held the smaller woman tightly as the snuggled together. "Thank you for keeping me together today."
The ME smiled, "Always."
I have been kicking this one around in my brain for a while. Hope you enjoyed it.