Medicine

by Julie Verne

Spinoff from Be My Guest's flashback chapter. Jane Rizzoli met Doctor Maura Isles back when she was on Vice and didn't make a good impression. Soon after she was abducted by a serial killer and her hands were mutilated, pinned to the ground by a scalpel. A year later she goes back to work, and the sight of a scalpel still chills her - unless Doctor Isles is the one holding it.

7. it's Just Medicine

Sunday

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Jane and Frankie played ball in the front yard while Ma made dinner. Jane knew Frankie was taking it easy on her, and her hands seriously hurt from dribbling. But she made one glorious basket, right as Ma called them in for dinner, and Frankie slapped her shoulder the way he always had. Jane turned at the door and watched the sunset fill the street with golden light. With Tommy still in jail, the house was quieter than Jane was used to, but she appreciated being able to use her own cutlery again. Sometimes she ate with her fingers, and Ma always started to yell before remembering and handing her a serviette.

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The game was on after dinner, and she and her brother and father sat on the couch, tensed up around their beers as Angela worked in the kitchen. Normally Jane would get hauled in to help, but these days Angela was making Frankie senior pull more of his own weight instead, and Jane was glad. Less dishes for her.

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Angela hugged her as she left, foisted some leftovers on her. Jane would have protested, but she was in no state to cook after work. Her hands hurt - at the end of each day she pulled a tray of ice from the freezer and dunked both hands in an ice bath. Next week she'd be going for her gun cert update, and she needed to save her hands for that.

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Back home, she settled herself under a blanket on the couch and opened her laptop, connecting to the BPD VPN and accessing that week's autopsy recordings. They were mostly just vocals, but Doctor Isles occasionally turned on the overhead camera feed as well. The other ME's didn't, so Jane had no choice but to pull up one of Doctor Isles' videos, watch her slice into human tissue, hear her record her findings. Somehow she fell asleep to Doctor Isles' smooth, even voice.

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Notes:

The are multiple inconsistencies with the timeline of pre Rizzoli and Isles. Season 6, ep 1 Maura says she's been working there 'about 5 years', but they met before Jane was on homicide and Jane's hands would have at least taken months to heal, even if she'd been immediately promoted.

In addition, Stanley only starts working at the Division One cafe at the start of season 2, yet he's running it when Jane us running with the drugs team, prior to being in homicide. He used to run the post office?

Anyway, have a short chapter before tomorrows update.