DISCLAIMER: I do not own this show, the books, or these characters. I only borrow them.

Chapter 7

After Jane's initial wake-up, she was in and out of awareness throughout the day. The second time she woke up, she stayed lucid long enough to listen to Maura tell her that Frankie has been resting but stable.

Jane closed her eyes again in sleep, and Maura yawned wishing to do the same after her long night of waiting and then finally sleeping in a chair.

"Why don't you go take a nap, and I'll give you a call if your needed and you can be right back over here." Angela was a great mother, and that tendency didn't just stop with trying to manage her own kids' lives. "Thanks for staying with the kids last night, but now I think you could use a breather."

Maura wanted to stay. Hell, she wanted a lot of things right now. Mainly for Frankie to open his eyes. But she knew she needed to get something to eat and could use that nap that Angela was trying to force on her. Plus maybe this way she would get the chance later to be alone with Jane and Frankie again if she and their mom took shifts sitting with them. "Okay, but doesn't hesitate to call."

The closer she got to the hotel and the comfortable sleeper sofa, the more her body seemed to drag the last few feet. She collapsed on the sofa and as sleep started to overtake her she grumbled that her shirt was going to wrinkle. Seconds later the sound of a soft snore was the only thing that could be heard. Nearly two hours later, Maura stretched, feeling much more like herself. She walked in to the bathroom and noticed she was looking more like herself too as the dark circles had receded even more than the previous morning. Except for the shirt...she really couldn't stand to wear wrinkled clothing. She got a change of clothes, today a pair of navy slacks and a light blue sweater knowing it would help against the chill of the hospital. After she showered and changed she briefly thought about changing again as the colors made her think of the horrible uniforms she had to wear at the Catholic school she attended for awhile. Those nuns still occasionally showed up in her nightmares. Granted she wasn't sure which was scarier...the nuns themselves, or when they told her she was wrong. However she didn't want to waste any more time away from her friends and so she decided that her outfit was presentable. She grabbed her purse, checked to see if any new messages on her cell phone, and hurried out the door.

Maura Isles rushed down the hospital corridor on a mission, to get back to her friends and continue the waiting game. Her sun-kissed brunette hair seemed to fly behind her due to her quick pace. "Dr. Isles..." she was tempted to pretend that she didn't hear the melodious voice trying to grab her attention, but thought that maybe the speaking nurse was trying to tell her that one of her friends had been taken down for more scanning. She turned and faced a nurse with a pixie haircut of her dirty blonde hair, wearing a pink set of scrubs, who looked somewhat familiar.

The nurse leaned over the nurses' station desk looking like she was about to jump over to literally grab Maura's attention if she wouldn't have turned around. "..Dr. Isles I hope there wasn't some mix up. Someone from your office already came and picked up the body."

Maura felt frozen to the spot, the sweater didn't help the chill that seemed to grip at her heart. Her brain didn't seem to process the facts, like the fact that Angela said she would call. She knew that in an emergency it might take awhile for the phone call to be made, but in the back of her mind she knew that time gap wouldn't be long enough for her office to be called and to be finished with the pick up. She could only think of what might have happened. Frankie still wasn't waking up, was something worse off then the doctor's thought. Jane did wake up, but she had a lot of injuries that could cause her body to cease functioning properly. She wanted to bolt down the hallway and see which of her friends was now gracing her place of work. She also feared looking into that door and seeing which bed was now empty of it's occupant. Her breath started coming faster as she pondered what to do, and what had happened. She almost missed the conversation that started up next to her.

The same night nurse, Margaret, must have been close enough to hear the statement and see the panicked look on Maura's face and so she rushed over to intervene before she had another patient to take care of. "Denise, Maura isn't here professionally but personally."

Denise first had an odd look of confusion on her face, before she blanched as she thought of how her words might have been perceived, "I'm so sorry, Dr. Isles. I didn't know."

Maura didn't have a chance to respond, even if she could have thought of the words to say, as Margaret led her away to chat. "Both Jane and Frankie are doing well. I even think Jane is still awake and talking with her mother. Come on breathe. You don't want to go and worry your friends, do you?" Maura saw the smile grace the older woman's face. Her dark hand clutched Maura's own and she took a deep breath, pulling strength from this amazingly kind woman. "That's better. Sorry about Denise. She's been out the last few days so wasn't aware that you've been around so much."

The nurse stood with Maura as she recovered from her bout of heart-numbing fear. She smiled briefly at Margaret before pushing away from the wall she was leaning on, and started her trek back down the hall, albeit a little slower then before. She pushed on her mask of calm indifference that made so many assume that she was an unfeeling bitch, the 'Queen of the Dead.'

She was about to enter the room when she heard an odd conversation coming out the partially ajar door. She wished she would have caught the beginning of the conversation as her curiosity was piqued as she heard Jane ask her mom, "So it's okay for me to have a girlfriend, but not for Frankie to have a boyfriend?" Her mask shifted a bit at the interesting pieces she heard, and she couldn't help but cracking a smile at a few places.

Angela had been sitting reading a couple articles from a Good Housekeeping magazine that she had found in a nearby waiting area. She heard her daughter's breathing change as wakefulness again pulled her out of a blissful sleep. She watched her daughter start to stretch as she often did in the mornings, and then heard a hoarse, "Aww, fuck." Even knowing her daughter was in pain, she couldn't help the usual words from spilling out as she approached the bed with a cup of melting ice slivers.

Jane slowly came to. Hearing the beeps of the machines and soft breathing of the people in the room. Before she could think better of it, she stretched trying to get the usual kink out of her back from laying down too long. The pain in her chest and stomach flared and she pulled her arms against her chest as if she could hold in the pain. But she couldn't. Nor could she hold in the first word that popped into her head. "Aww, fuck." The voice sounded strange to her ears but she couldn't bring herself to care. Granted she did care and even got a chastised look on her face as she saw her mother approach her side.

"Janie, language."

But before she could spit out the whole, "sorry, Ma," her mother shoved a spoonful of ice in her mouth. Well that works too, Jane thought before she closed her eyes in bliss as the ice melted and helped quench her parched throat. Any other time she would have hated the babying that she was receiving, but as long as the ice kept coming she was too happy to care...at least for the moment.

That moment was short lived after about the fourth spoonful. All too soon, Jane turned her head away from the embarrassing spoon feeding. Seeing that her daughter was sated for the time being, and didn't look like she was going to fall right back asleep, Angela went into her mother detective mode. Where did the kids think they got their ability to roast suspects, really. She heard her daughter's voice answer her thought, Grill Ma, grill suspects, not roast. Angela pulled her chair closer to the bed, sat down holding on to her daughter's hand and started the questioning. The sunlight pouring in the window made a good impression of a spotlight right in the victims'...er, her daughter's eyes. "So..."

For once Jane wished sleep was trying to pull her under again. She heard the inflection as her mom started talking and all she could think about was, Oh crap, I've been stuck in bed, what could I possibly have done wrong...well, other then ending up here. Granted she never would have been able to even imagine where her mother was going to take the conversation.

"...are you and Maura seeing each other?"

Jane just sputtered, and tried to pull her hand away from her mother in shock. Angela held tighter as if thinking her daughter could get away, but the cords and IVs tethered her to the bed more then her mother's hand-holding was. "What?... Ma, no."

"Your father and I would support you, Jane."

"Ma," but before Jane could ask if her mother was going delusional from lack of sleep, her mother continued.

"Granted, I'd still want grandbabies... but there are ways."

"MA!" Jane wondered if she was really awake or dreaming herself into 'The Twilight Zone.' "No, Maura and I are just friends," at her mother's speculative look Jane defended, "and no, not the 'just friends' that Cousin Sharron says she and her 10 year live in-roommate are."

Jane was surprised to see the regretful look that replaced the questioning one on her mom's face. "Oh, well...too bad, she'd make a nice addition to the family. She's a sweet kid."

"So have Frankie date her," Jane suggested.

"He's seeing someone. Pretty serious too. He asked for your Grandma Regina's ring to give her."

"Really?" Jane knew that her brother was seeing someone, but she didn't know he was that serious about her. She even tried to grill him about it, but all she could get from him was that they met through work. Jane was still thinking it had to be Erin Volchko from the hair, fiber, and trace evidence lab. "Have you met the girl? Does she know he's injuried? Has she been around?" Jane was curious to know if the question of who her brother was seeing had been answered while she was out of it. That would be so unfair.

Her mother brought an end to the rapid-fire questions. "She might have been in. You both had lots of visitors from the precinct come by early on. But no one said anything to your father or I, so I'm not sure."

So the question still hung in the air. Jane knew she would get to the bottom of it sooner or later, so she decided to go back to the earlier questioning her mother started. "So..." now the questioning tone was coming out of the daughter's mouth eerily like her mother at times. "...you want the nice daughter, so by default I'm the last pick to get her in the family." Maura would be a lot better at playing dress up like her mother always tried to get her into. "There's always Tomm..." she shuttered a bit at that brief thought, "never mind that's just cruel." She was surprised that her mother didn't jump down her throat to defend Tommy as she always did. Wow, the golden boy finally did something to piss Ma off, Jane thought before trying to bring the conversation back to the usual fun, yet annoying banter. "Are we sure Frankie's seeing a girl?" Jane thought the question was only fair. She almost chuckled at the stricken look on her Ma's face, but she curbed her humor knowing that the pain it would bring wouldn't be worth it.

"Jane, don't joke about something like that." Angela said that seriously then cracked a smile, "plus Nana's ring would be too small."

Jane couldn't help the small chuckle that escaped before she could stop it. The chuckle turned into a swallowed moan of pain, but she wasn't about to let the conversation slide. "So it's okay for me to have a girlfriend, but not for Frankie to have a boyfriend?"

"Well, no... but there is less chance of getting my grandkid then. Why else do parents put up with kids doing stupid stunts and aging them much too fast?" Angela glared at her daughter as if the current predicament was all her fault.

"I love you too, Ma," Jane cracked a smile before a yawn decimated it. Jane was tired of this, and just literally tired. Between the pain meds and her body trying to heal itself, she never had long moments of lucidity. She knew she was about to lose the battle of keeping her eyes open soon.

Angela chuckled at her daughter's answer, with both a touch of sarcasm and affection. She noticed her daughter's eyes start to droop. Leaning over in her chair, Angela brusheed a clump of sweat soaked hair off Jane's forehead and lovingly stated, "I love you too, baby. Go to sleep." Jane didn't need to be told twice.

Maura stood outside the door for a few moments longer. She heard the sincerity mixed with the sarcasm from Jane. Heard Angela's warm response, and a feeling she wasn't really used to tried to overtake her. Thinking about it, and the vast amount of feelings she understood mainly through pictures and biological responses, she was able to come up with the word...envious. She was envious that the entire Rizzoli family was so close and quick to say, and show love. She took a few calming breaths again and entered the room.

Angela looked up as the doorway pushed open. "You just missed her. She fell back asleep."

Maura caught herself before she said, I know, "Oh, that's too bad." But she was grateful for it, too. She needed the now comfortable silence that hung in the room, plus Jane would have been able to see past the slight crack in her mask and know that something was up with Maura. For the first time she was grateful that both were still asleep so she could process her thoughts and emotions privately.

AN: Sorry it's short, so I thought I'd post it early and try for a longer one soon. Hope you liked the fun mother-daughter chat as much as I enjoyed writing it. Thought we all needed a little bit of brief humor. Please review and let me know what you think. Thanks :D