Not the sidewalk.
Don't spread arms out. Hold on to her.
Twist the body sideways.
Look up at the sky. Face up. Look up!
Hold her.
Not the sidewalk. Please not the sidewalk.
Is that her screaming? Who is screaming?
Please let there be grass down there.
Twist! Hit the ground first. Then the girl.
God.
If there is a God.
Please not the sidewalk.
Please.
Please.
…
…
She opens her eyes.
Everything is white and silent and calm.
She's dead.
The realization hits her hard, like a pound of bricks on her chest. She died. She's dead. Her life is over.
She tries to shake her head and it doesn't move. She tries to will herself back into life, but nothing happens. She is immobile and mute, staring up at the long expanse of white that can only be the entry way to heaven. Is she going to heaven? Maybe this is hell. Lord knows she might be destined for that place instead. She blinks, and the edges of the white start to glow. They pulse and glow around the edges like a white fluffy lampshade, and maybe this is purgatory. Did the little girl make it? If she did that has to count for something. Surely she can't be condemned to hell if she saved the life of a...but wait.
She blinks again and the fluffy whiteness seems to be moving, the glowing seems to be shifting and changing and..she is looking...she is looking up at….at a cloud.
She is looking up, from the ground….
At a cloud.
"CLEAR!"
The world comes wailing back to life. Now everything is noise and chaos and panic. Layers of noise. Sirens and screaming and the pounding of feet. Noise on top of noise and, and pain, and jane longs for the silence from before, the moment when none of her senses seemed to be working.
"Nnnngh," she manages, and at once there is a hand on top of her hand. It hurts to have it there, but when she tries to pull away, she is met with such a fantastic spasm of pain that she is sick. She tries to turn her head to the side.
It doesn't go.
"Shit!" a voice says, "She's vomiting over here, can we get her on her side so she doesn't fucking choke to death!"
That voice. She knows that voice.
Jane tries to open her eyes so that she can see his face, but another wave of nausea overtakes her and it's all she can do to stay conscious.
"Hang in there, Janie," the voice says. "Hang in there, Jay, we got you. Jesus H...Just hang on okay? We're gonna get you to the hospital and they're gonna make you as good as new...just...don't give up."
Voices, overlapped with voices and underscored by pain. She shuts her eyes, hoping that it will dim everything, but instead the throbbing over her body seems magnified, white hot neon bolts of pain shooting across the dark expanse of her eyelids.
"Uhhhhnnn," she groans, and the hand over hers squeezes, which makes her want to vomit again. Or cry.
"Okay, fellas, on my count. One, two, and…"
"Jane!"
That cry. It makes her eyes fly open.
"Jane!"
Madison.
She tries to sit up, but her whole body is on fire. Is she okay? she feels her eyes clamp shut at the pain that rockets around her skull.. Is Maddie still trapped in that house? For a moment Jane remembers herself weightless in the sky, propelled forward by her legs, out, away from the windowsill.
Wonderfully weightless, before she'd started to fall.
Had all of that been a dream?
"Jane!"
"Maddie, darling, don't! You have to let the EMTs do their wor-"
"Ma'am if you can't keep your daughter back, we're going to have to-"
"Jane!"
Madison is crying. Jane can hear it in her voice. Is she hurt? Why is no one helping her? She tries to tell them, but her tongue feels too big for her mouth. Her hands don't obey her.
"Madison, sweetheart, you have to come over here, these people have to look at your-"
"Jane!" Right up close to her face. She can feel the girl's breath on her eyelids. "Jane please. Open. Your. Eyes!"
Only that command, from that little girl would make it possible for Jane to obey. She forces herself to open her eyes and there she is.
Madison looking down at her, her features contorted in terror, tears dripping down her face. "Jane!" She cries, and the detective wants to gather her into her arms and reassure her that everything is okay. That everything is going to be okay.
She blinks, and tries to smile, but her jaw feels like it's been slammed against concrete. She feels like all her teeth are loose and on the verge of falling out of her mouth.
Frost's hand on hers is replaced by Madison's tiny fingers slipping into her palm. They don't squeeze, but trace the lines there carefully.
"Please," she can hear the little girl whispering by her ear. "Please be okay. Please please please."
Madison puts her palm against Jane's, and the detective uses all of her energy and willpower to curl her fingers around the little hand.
She hears Maddie make a sound like a hiccup, maybe in surprise. But then whatever she is lying on is lifted up into the air, and shuttled forward, and she feels a sharp stabbing pain on the inside of her elbow.
And then everything is dark.
…
…
She opens her eyes to see Frankie dozing in the chair next to her, his feet propped up on the foot of her bed. He looks exhausted, with circles under his eyes, and one of his tennis shoes half on his foot.
Tentatively, she tries her arms, surprised and relieved when they obey, her hands coming up to rub at her face, which feels tight and bruised and sore.
"Frankie," she croaks, realizing as she speaks that she is very thirsty. "Frankie...wake up."
Her brother's eyes shoot open and he looks around, momentarily disoriented, before he seems to remember where he is, and why.
"Jane...Jane! Shit!" He leans forward and reaches for her hand. "You're awake! You're awake and you know my name!" He looks relieved and happy and a little bit teary.
Jane closes her eyes so he can wipe discreetly at his own.
"Did I not know your name?" She asks, and when she feels him hesitate, she shakes her head, even though it makes her feel like she might throw up. "Don't tell me," she amends. "I had a lot of LSD type dreams, and I don't want to know what was real and what wasn't."
She cracks an eye to look at her brother, who is looking down at his hands. "Hey," she says, a little gentler. "I'm talking, right? I know who you are...It can't be all bad, right?"
Frankie looks like he's going to argue with her, and then decides against it. He bends down underneath his seat and pulls out a plastic tin. He pops the lid open and Jane can smell something garlicky. Her mouth waters. How long has it been since she had actual solid food? Her teeth feel loose inside her mouth.
Frankie looks at her guiltily. "Sorry, I can wait until-"
But she shakes her head and smiles. "Ma was here," she says, and Frankie nods.
"Took Tommy and Frost and Korsak and me to convince her to go home. We all took turns sitting with you."
"Aw, you guys took turns crying at my bedside? I bet Ma's been a wreck." Jane tries to turn the words into a joke, but her ribs won't let her laugh, and Frankie doesn't even crack a smile.
"Yes," he says seriously. "Yes, Jane, she has been. We've all have been. We've all been sitting by your bedside and we've all been a little teary. Do you know how long you've been out of it?" Now that she is lucid and awake, it seems that Frankie has dropped his fear and his grief for anger. She doesn't blame him. "I can't believe you did that, Jane. Do you have any idea what it looked like? What the hell were you thinking?"
Jane closes her eyes and reminds herself that she cannot sigh without a great deal of pain. "I was thinking I didn't want to get shot," she says darkly. "I was thinking I didn't want the kid to get killed."
The mention of Madison makes her heart hurt.
"SWAT was there."
"SWAT was downstairs, and unless they've changed the protocol for clearing houses, or they've given each agent a suit that allows them to move faster than the speed of a bullet, they were never going to make it in time."
Frankie doesn't respond, and Jane lets her head fall back against the pillow. "Stop acting like this is something I did to you," she says.
Frankie takes a deep breath, holds it for a couple seconds and then lets it out. "I'm sorry," he says quietly, and Jane sees his shoulders slump a little bit. "I'm sorry, Jane. I don't...I can't imagine the kind of hell you went through for the past eighty six days. You just gotta understand that being out here without you...not knowing what had happened to you or where you'd been...that was our own sort of hell too. Especially watching Ma try to...I don't know, function, without you." Frankie leans forward a little in his chair. "She might come in here and give you a hard time, Jane...but she was lost without you. We all were."
Silence.
Jane listens to the gentle beep of her heart monitor. She looks away from Frankie and out the window of the hospital room. It is late August, and the sky is a brilliant luminescent blue, bright and inviting. It had been grey and cloudy when they'd found her at Whitehall's house out on the outskirts of the city, but today it is bright and blue and cloudless. Like the weather itself is celebrating her awakening. "How long have I been here?" She asks, trying to sound like she really wants the answer.
"Three weeks," Frankie says quietly. "The doctor's didn't know what to expect when you woke up, Jane." She hears Frankie say the words, but she can't really make them process in her mind. It does not seem possible that three weeks of her life have disappeared without her knowledge.
"Shit," she says quietly. "I'm sorry."
Frankie sighs heavily like, 'of course you are, but you'd do it again in an instant and so your sorry means nothing'.
"Jane," he begins, but she shakes her head once, and closes her eyes, suddenly too tired to do anymore thinking.
...
"GO!" He shoves her down the stairs so hard that she almost loses her balance. "Get out. Get out! If you don't want to be a family then fine. Fucking fine! Get out!"
He shoves her again and she staggers, not used to moving so quickly. He snorts and moves past her, pulling open the front door of the house and then stepping back.
"Go!" He says for the fiftieth time. "Isn't this what you wanted? You want to leave here, so leave?"
Jane looks at him for a full ten seconds, and then shifts her gaze to stare, squinty eyed, into the bright afternoon sun...and her freedom. Her collar is off for the first time in over a month. He has stepped away from the door. He is letting her go.
She takes a step towards the door.
He's letting her go.
"GET. OUT." He bellows, and she takes another step, and then another. He makes no move to stop her.
The soft 'thhp' of a cord on a line reaches her, and she tears her eyes away from the door to look around.
Madison has come into the front hall, her index finger pushed up into the space between her collar and her neck, a feeble attempt to keep it from hurting.
Her eyes widen at the open door and the sunny day, but she looks at Jane, waiting for instruction the way she's been taught.
The way Jane has taught her to do.
Reagan seems to hear the sound too, because he turns to her, grinning maliciously. "Say goodbye to you friend, little girl," he growls. "In fact...say goodbye to everything." He reaches for her, and before she can process a single thought Jane has hurled herself away from the door, launching herself at Reagan, knocking him off his feet.
"Stay still," she screams at Madison. "Don't move."
And even when Reagan nearly regains his feet and reaches for the child again, she obeys, tears dripping down her cheeks to her chin.
The beating is mercifully short, and he has nothing on hand but his fists and his boots. She hasn't eaten well in days, and he outweighs even a healthy her by a solid one hundred pounds, so before she knows it, he has his knee placed squarely on her spine, and is fitting the collar back around her neck.
"Say it," he growls in her ear.
Jane coughs and spits onto the floor.
He grabs her hair and yanks her backwards, knee still pressing her stomach into the floor.
"SAY IT, or you watch her die, and you and I can live together forever under the weight of what you've done."
Jane looks at Madison's sock feet, unmoving barely ten feet from her. If Reagan lets Jane go and grabs her, Madison will stay put through the whole thing...because Jane has told her to.
"I love...our family," she growls. "I love being here...I wouldn't want to be anywhere else."
He grumbles, and gives her hair one last yank before standing up and moving to shut the door, sliding the deadbolts into place.
"There's food in the refrigerator," he says heading up the stairs. "I want dinner in an hour."
As soon as he has disappeared, Maddie starts to cry in earnest, still standing like a statue in front of Jane.
"I'm okay," Jane says… "I'm okay...come here, slowly," Madison walks carefully over to Jane and sets herself down in the detective's lap. She clings to the collar of Jane's shirt and sniffles, not saying anything.
Jane moves a hand to wipe at her split lip, and then wipes her fingers on her jeans before pulling them through Maddie's hair.
"Okay...you're okay...we're okay."
Madison holds tighter. Jane bends slowly to kiss the top of her head.
"A couple more minutes and then I have to get up and make us something to eat."
"Jane?"
"Yeah, baby?"
"Were you gonna leave me?"
Jane shuts her eyes for a moment. Was she? Cowardice tastes like rust in the back of her throat.
"No," she says, aware that she might be lying. "No. I promised I'd be here until you got back to your mother."
"Promise?"
"Yes."
"Jane?"
"I'm right here," Jane says it, but suddenly the little body doesn't feel so heavy in her arms anymore. "Madison?"
"Jane!"
"Maddie!" the detective tries to sit up, but something holds her back. Her hands shoot up to her neck, feeling for the collar.
"Maddie!"
"Jane! Janie! Wake up! Wake up!"
Jane jerks away with another cry, this time in pain, looking around wildly. Everything is blurry, and she feels sweaty and disoriented. There is a hand on her shoulder and someone's fingers around her wrist. She doesn't want them there.
"No! Madison!" She tries to jerk away but it makes her feel ill. The room spins.
"Jane!" It's a woman's voice, a familiar one, but Jane is still half in her nightmare cannot fully place it. "Honey, you have to calm down. You have to lie still."
"Madison," she says again, but her arms are empty. The child is gone.
Someone is leaning forward next to her, stroking her hair out of her face. Someone is saying her name over and over, and as the nightmare fades and her vision clears, she realizes it is her mother.
Her mother placing her cool hands on either side of Jane's face and whispering. "She's okay. She's okay, Jane...breathe. Breathe honey."
"Ma," she says weakly, and for a moment, relief overtakes her. She is okay, Madison is okay. It was just a dream.
A new voice speaks to her from the opposite side, making her jump, and then wince, "Jane? Can you relax your neck for me? Can you try to relax the muscles in your neck and shoulders, please?"
Angela leans back, deferring to the doctor, and Jane shifts her eyes to take the woman in. She's tall and dark skinned, with black hair that falls braided past her shoulders.
"Hi, Jane," she says smiling. "Welcome back."
Jane grins weakly. "Yeah...thanks...my brother told me it's been a while."
The doctor consults her chart. "Twenty three days," she says, nodding. "Actually, for the number and type of injuries you sustained, it was really a blessing in disguise. We could keep you immobile, and thereby allow a lot of your smaller fractures to heal on their own...without a full body cast."
Jane catches sight of her mother's strained expression, and reaches out to take her hand. "You say 'a lot of my smaller fractures' like I had hundreds of them," she says, trying again to add some levity to the conversation.
The doctor looks back down at her chart. "Nearly," she says after a moment, "but no. Not quite."
Angela bursts into tears. Frankie looks at her angrily.
"Aw," she says, trying to suppress the gasp of pain that threatens when her mother squeezes her hand. "Ma...I'm fine...I'm okay."
But Angela cries harder, bending to rest her head on the bed. "You're not, Janie!" she cries into the sheets. "You're not...your head was fractured and your shoulder and your wrist! Your hips were shattered up, and I don't know what you were thinking! What could you have been thinking?"
Jane tries to swallow past the lump in her throat and is not entirely successful. "I was thinking that I had to save her, Ma," she says, her voice catching. She looks around at the doctor, making her mouth ask the question. "Did I? Did I save her? Is Madison okay?"
The doctor smiles at her. "Yes, detective," she says with a nod. "You did. She didn't even need to be kept overnight. A bit of a neck strain from whiplash, but...you protected her phenomenally."
Frankie nods, sounding a little reverent as he says, "yeah...you twisted in the sky like...like…"
"But your back!" Angela wails, cutting him off. "Your head! Your shoulders."
Jane opens her mouth, but the doctor cuts her off. "Those are all things that will heal, Mrs. Rizzoli. Jane's injuries are all things that can heal. She's relatively young, and very healthy. If she's willing to do the work, we'll have her back up on her feet in a couple of months."
Angela's chin quivers as she looks up at her daughter, "I just...I thought I'd lost you. I don't know what I'd have done if…"
Again it is the doctor that answers, smiling at Jane. "So you know what it would have been like for that other woman...to lose her daughter at the age of six," she says gently. "You should be proud that you've raised a daughter who understands that bones heal. The loss of someone you love does not."
Angela blinks, considering this, and Jane mouths 'thank you' at the doctor.
The woman winks at her.
…
…
The days are monotonous, tortuous. They are endless hours of pain and sweat and grueling, dogged, work.
She can sit up for more than ten minutes without her face contorting in pain. Her shoulder blades stop feeling like they have been smashed in with bricks, and her hips stop keeping her awake at night. She does cognitive exercises on paper for the neurologist, and then on a computer screen for the neurosurgeon, and her headaches lessen and the sensitivity to light goes away.
All her doctors comment on how strong she is, how fast a healer, and she smiles at them and wiggles her toes, pointing to the places along her legs where she still feels pain.
But she can't stop thinking about Madison.
"You're gonna get back on your feet," Korsak tells her over a subdued game of slapjack meant to stimulate her neural pathways. From his seat in the corner of the room, Frost nods.
Jane puts her card face up on the table, and Korsak does the same. An ace and a four. They repeat the motion.
"I was thinking last night," she says carefully, making sure that her voice does not carry too much hope. "It's been nearly a month and a half. I can't walk, but I don't look like a reincarnated corpse anymore…" She trails off, and looks up in time to see Korsak and Frost trade glances.
"What?" she asks nervously.
They both look at her with twin expressions of innocence. "What?" Frost parrots evasively.
"No, no," Jane says, shaking her head slowly, "I fractured my skull, maybe bounced my brain around a little, but I'm not an idiot. What was that look for?" She gestures between the two of them.
"You guys don't think I should see Madison?"
Frost looks away, and Korsak swallows. "Look, Jane," he begins, "It's not that we don't think you should see her-"
"Is it Ma? Does Ma think I shouldn't? Because I know she's trying to do what's best for me but"
"No," Korsak cuts in. "No, Jane...she agrees. She thinks that you should be able to see Madison too."
Jane frowns, trying to make sense of this. "Should be? Yes, I should be...so…"
"Her mother is refusing," Frost bursts out from the corner of the room. "She's a doctor, apparently, and she thinks it's best if her daughter tries to get over what happened as quickly and as smoothly as possible."
Jane blinks at him, unable to comprehend the words that he's saying. Not see Madison? Ever?
"But we spent three months together in that hellhole," she says dumbly.
Korsak reaches for her hand, but she jerks back, shaking her head. She hates how her injury and the pain medication make her feel. Slow moving and heavy. Like she's underwater. "Wait...so...she thinks...she doesn't want Madison to see me again? Ever?"
"Not right now, Jane," Korsak says quietly. "Not in the immediate future. She thinks her daughter needs time away from any reminders of the ordeal to get back to a normal-"
But Jane lifts her hand and shakes her head, and Korsak stops.
She can't see Madison. She can't see Madison.
"Jane," Korsak tries again, "I spoke to Dr. Isles. Frost and I...we spent time with her when we were looking for you...She might not understand all the nuances of human emotion and relationships...but she is completely devoted to her daughter," Korsak pauses, but Jane does not look up at him. She doesn't know what she's supposed to say in response to that. She rubs her forehead absently, shutting her eyes.
"She thought she'd lost her little girl, and then, she finally has her back, in her arms, and the kid is screaming for you. That can't have felt good."
Jane looks up sharply. "What?"
Korsak nods, "yeah, when they were loading you into the ambulance...do you remember? It was all she could do to keep Madison from throwing herself onto the stretcher with you."
Jane searches the memory of that day for Madison, but only comes up with white hot pain and scalding black terror.
"Oh," she says quietly. "Well...we spent a lot of time together."
"That's the point," Korsak says gently, "You're a reminder of the nightmare her daughter went through. The one her own mother couldn't save her from."
This stings, even though she knows he doesn't mean it that way. She cannot explain her desire to see the little girl to these men. She can barely explain it to herself. She flips a card from the stack in her hand down onto the table, and after a hard look at her face, Korsak does the same.
A king...and a jack.
Jane slaps her hand down on the pile, just managing to beat out her former partner.
"Do you think maybe? Down the road a bit?" She asks, trying to sound casual as she gathers the cards up into her hands.
Korsak watches her arrange them into a neat pile.
"Maybe, Jane," he says after a moment. "We just have to wait and see."
…...
So it is just a new type of cage.
Jane knows she shouldn't look at it that way. She knows that she should focus on the fact that she is free. She should concentrate on getting better and getting out of the hospital.
She should…
But she cannot.
The days drip by slowly, agonizingly. She can pull herself up to the sitting position in bed. She can sit in her wheelchair for an hour without aching. She can shuffle a deck of cards.
Her family comes daily. Her mother in the morning, usually with something to eat, and then one brother or the other in the afternoon, usually Tommy, who brings her the newspaper and talks optimistically about the business he's trying to start with his roommate walking dogs.
But one morning, about twenty minutes after her mother has left, she gets a visitor she wasn't expecting.
"Detective Rizzoli?"
Jane looks up from her lap board at the unfamiliar voice.
A woman is standing in the doorway, the hand she used for knocking still pressed against the frame, and Jane knows immediately from looking at her who she is. She has the same green eyes and blonde hair of her daughter.
She looks away so that she's not staring, and nods at the windowsill. "Yeah," she says clearing her throat. "That's me."
She can hear the click of the woman's shoes as she steps into the room. "My name is Dr. Maura Isles...I'm-"
"Madison's mother," Jane cuts her off, nodding again but not looking up. "Yeah, I know. You look just like her." Something occurs to her, she looks up quickly, searching the other woman's face for an answer. "Is she alright?" she asks anxiously. "I thought you wanted to keep your distance from me. Did something happen?"
Dr. Isles' face changes, though Jane can't quite tell to what. "No," the doctor says quickly, "nothing's happened...I mean," she rubs absently at her neck, "I mean...she's not injured. She hasn't suffered any injury since her rescue." This sentence seems to make the doctor relax a little, and she drops her hands to her side. "I just...I wanted to come see you, detective...To thank you."
Jane blinks at the other woman for a long moment before shrugging her shoulders. "Nothing to thank me for," she says gruffly. She feels irrationally angry at the doctor for showing up. For showing up without Madison. She runs a hand through her hair, careful not to jerk her neck.
The doctor stares at the brunette, and Jane looks away, back out the window, so she doesn't have to keep making eye contact.
"I owe you...a great deal," the woman says after a moment. "Her life...mine."
Jane glances at her. "It's my job," she says, and out of the corner of her eye she sees the doctor make an irritable movement with her shoulders.
"It was not your job to nearly shatter your skeletal system to pieces just to save my daughter. There are many law enforcement officers who would not have done that."
Jane blinks at the windowsill, her fingers tightening around the arms of her wheelchair. "It was that or have them wheel her out to you in a body bag," she says bitterly, and the woman in the doorway flinches. "Is that all you came for? To tell me thank you?" It feels good to be angry at this woman. It feels good to be angry in general.
"Yes," she says quietly, her voice a little shaky. "No...I mean...I did come to thank you. I'm not quite sure what I would have done if-" Jane looks up, catching her eye, and the doctor breaks off abruptly. She clasps her hands together, blushing slightly. She does not seem the type to get flustered, and Jane can tell she doesn't quite know what to do with the emotion. She bites her lip, looking down at the floor.
She looks like Maddie would when Reagan would tell her she was worthless.
"What do you want?" Jane asks, and though she means to sound less harsh, she can hear that she just sounds exhausted.
"Well, I...I owe you a great deal, as I said. And I know that it must seem very forward of me to come here and ask you for something more, but I-"
But Jane cuts her off, tired of pretending. "It is very forward, doctor," she says, "It's really, very fucking forward, that you would come here to ask me for something, what, a blow by blow of the eighty six days I spent with your child, a comprehensive list of the injuries she sustained?" The doctor looks very taken aback, but Jane does not care. "You come here wanting something from me, yet you don't want me to have any contact with her. You want to keep her from me like I'm the one who kidnapped and collared her."
Madison's mother flinches, but takes a step forward putting her hands out. "It's nothing against you," she says pleadingly. "I want what's best for my daughter. There have been several studies that show that children as old as eight who are completely removed from a traumatic ordeal, and given the chance to move forward, show no residual signs of post traumatic stress-"
Jane snorts. "Majority? It's sixty nine percent. Sixty nine point three. That's not even three quarters." She grins bitterly at the shock on the doctor's face. "I can read too, Dr. think I was just counting minutes in that house with your daughter? You know her. You think I could spend one day in that situation and not come to...not…" Jane leans back in her wheelchair, trying to ease the throbbing in her lower back. "I care about her," she says after a deep breath, "I care about Madison, no matter how hard it is for you to hear that. If you want to gamble your kid's health on sixty nine point three percent, there's nothing I can do to st-"
"Madison has stopped eating," The doctor cuts her off with a voice that is as close to a yell as possible.
Jane stares at her. "What?"
"She's...she's stopped eating. Just recently. And she's developed several," the woman pauses and seems to search for the right words, "habits that I don't...that I can't find any reason for…" She pauses again, and then straightens, looking Jane straight in the eye. "She cries for you, Detective Rizzoli, and I can't stand denying her any longer." She wrings her hands and looks away for a moment, like what she's about to say is costing her a great deal.
"I was wrong," Dr. Isles says. "I was wrong to keep her away from you and...it would mean a great deal to me if you would see her. I mean," she looks up at Jane again, "If she could come and spend some time with you."
Jane is not sure she fully understands what it has taken for this woman to come and ask this of her, but by the way the doctor avoids her eye and begins to smooth her skirt down nervously in the lingering silence, the detective understands that it must have been a lot.
She waits until the other woman glances at her, and then she nods.
"Yes?" Dr. Isles says, taking a step forward. "You'll see her?"
Jane nods again. Of course she will.
"Of course I will."