"Mass Gen, this is medic 8. I have a woman in her 30s, in active cardiac arrest. We have done 7 rounds of CPR and defibrillated her twice. She has significant blood loss and it is unknown how long she has been unconscious. No heart rhythm detected but we will continue to do CPR and evaluate. Alert police that she may be a victim in an active investigation. 5 minutes out."
The woman on the other side of the radio responds. "Medic 8, this is Nurse Kelly at Mass Gen. We copy. Police have been alerted and we will have a private room ready for you. See you in 5."
The paramedic continues pushing on the woman's chest, doing CPR until her wrists feel numb. She places the defibrillator on the patient's chest and her upper body jerks upwards a few centimeters as the force of the shock is delivered. She watches as the woman's heart begins to circulate blood again and a pulse appears. As they pull into the ambulance bay for the emergency department, she hops off and delivers a concise report to the emergency department staff. Transferring the tall woman from the stretcher to the hospital bed, the staff efficiently push the woman to the elevators that led to the operating room.
"Hello?" Maura says as she picks up the phone.
"Good morning, this is Kelly. Is Maura Isles available?"
"This is she."
"Maura, I am a nurse at the Massachusetts General Hospital. We would like to notify you that your loved one is currently in surgery. Please confirm whether you would like to remain as the emergency contact."
Maura drops to her knees. "Who is regarding?"
The woman replies, "Jane Rizzoli, ma'am. She is currently in surgery with Doctor Luna, our chief of surgery. I'm afraid I have no further updates but you are welcome to come to the waiting room if you so wish."
Maura drops her phone as she falls to the floor, sobbing. She isn't sure how long she lies there with her head face first into the carpet, but the woman on the other line is patient. Maura voices her appreciation and thanks the woman profusely before hanging up. She calls Angela first, then Frankie, and then Korsak. She saves Frost for last, as he was conducting an interview with one of their main suspects, Olivia. Olivia had turned herself in, covered head to toe in blood. Sarah was still missing, but Frost had begun to suspect that Sarah may be dead based on the story that Olivia is sharing. Maura knows that Frost would be affected by the news of Jane in surgery, so she waits to call him.
It feels as if it were just yesterday that Maura was in this same waiting room, pacing the room after witnessing Jane get shot. This time, she sits alone as she waits for the others to arrive. A woman in scrubs walks into the room, heading straight for her as she is the only one there.
"Hello, are you Maura Isles?" The woman asks.
"I am, is she okay? Is she out of surgery yet? What happened?" Maura says in a rush.
"It's too early to tell. She is in surgery with Doctor Luna, one of Boston's most talented surgeons. It may take a few more hours to fix all of the wounds that were inflicted upon Ms. Rizzoli but we are doing everything that we can. It is a very good thing that the paramedics were called when they were because had Ms. Rizzoli gone any longer without oxygen, the paramedics would not have been able to bring her back in the field. We don't know how long she was unconscious without CPR though, so it's difficult to gauge how much brain function she will have if she wakes up after the surgery. I'm really sorry, Ms. Isles. That is all that I have for now."
Maura has a thousand more questions, but she thinks about how the woman in front of her has likely told her everything that they know. She knows that surgeries were complicated and could go wrong at any second. Thanking the nurse, she returns back to her seat. As Jane's life hung in the balance, there was nothing else to do but wait.
Doctor Luna had never seen a patient with injuries like this. When the paramedics had brought her in, the patient was an unidentified Jane Doe, so she had been unaware of who this woman actually was. As she scrubbed in, preparing for the surgery, a nurse had held the phone to her face as she finished washing her hands.
"Doctor Luna, this is Director Spiles. I am the head of Boston's FBI branch and I am calling to let you know that your patient is Detective Jane Rizzoli of Boston Homicide. Please be aware that she will need the utmost privacy and ensure that there will be security around her room at all times. Please let us know if we can help in any way and know that the woman on your table is one of Boston's finest."
As Doctor Luna dried her hands off, she had replied, "I understand, Director Spiles. Thank you for letting me know. We will do all that we can for Detective Rizzoli. Please excuse me as I am headed to surgery now." With that, she had walked into the operating room, beginning what would be a five-hour surgery.
"Suction, please," Doctor Luna says as the assisting surgeon next to her responds. Her field of vision was getting smaller every second and Doctor Luna was beginning to get frustrated. It seemed like just as one hole was patched, another would begin bleeding. She felt for her patient, as the woman's body was covered in puncture wounds from stabs, broken bones, and lacerations. The cuts were clean, almost like the ones that she made on the woman herself with the scalpel. Doctor Luna felt a sinking feeling as she realizes that the wounds must have been from something sharp, like a razor. However, there were so many throughout the patient's body that it couldn't have been a single razor that inflicted all this damage.
"We need to hang more units of blood. I can't control her bleeding right now."
Her team moved swiftly around her and Doctor Luna is grateful that she works with some of the most efficient providers in the country. Around hour 4 is when they begin to see some improvement, as the patient's internal bleeding has been controlled. Doctor Luna pages the best plastic surgeon that Boston has to offer, asking his help for the botched stitching that was all over the patient's body. She wanted him to fix the stitches, as she knew the assailant had haphazardly stitched the patient up only to prevent more blood loss. Doctor Luna wanted to minimize scar tissue and disfigurement on the poor woman, so she called Doctor Morales, who was an artist fluent in the mastery of stitching up patients. As Doctor Luna finishes up her work, Doctor Morales had scrubbed in as well, working alongside her as they operated diligently on Detective Rizzoli.
"This is one strong woman," Doctor Morales says as he ties the final knot. His face is covered up by a surgical mask and his eyes are partially obscured by the surgical loupes that allowed him to see a zoomed-in perspective. Despite most of his face being hidden, Doctor Luna could see the emotion evident on his face. He grieved for this patient and what Detective Rizzoli had gone through, and so did she. He shakes his head, placing the surgical instruments back in the tray next to him. They look at each other with mutual respect as both of them realize the immense effort and time that they had just spent on saving this patient's life. As the Chief of Surgery and the surgeon with the best track record in the entirety of Massachusetts, Doctor Marie Luna knew that she was Detective Rizzoli's best chance. They had managed to pull their patient from the grasp of death and straight from the reaper's hold.
After standing up for hours, Doctor Luna felt drained physically, but also mentally. The emotional distress that she had experienced while operating on Detective Rizzoli had given her an intimate glimpse into what the woman had endured the last few days. And it broke her spirit.
Doctor Luna checks in with the anesthesiologist before she exits the operating room and heads straight for her office. Closing the door and the blinds, she turns off the light and sits in her office chair. For the next hour, she cries silent tears of sympathy, relief, and exhaustion. She was due back in Detective Rizzoli's room in two hours to check in on her patient and she only hoped that the detective would wake up.
Not only did she pray that her patient would wake up, but that Jane would wake up without any neurological deficits or memory loss.
If the woman had to rely on machines to breathe for the rest of her life, Doctor Luna would seriously regret bringing her back to life under such horrible conditions.