"So how do you like Dr. Isles, friend?" Nina Holiday asked Jane Rizzoli. Her eyes held a certain droop of tiredness, but they also lit up with something else. The two women washed their hands and unfurled their hair from their scrub caps, and Jane laughed.
"She seems… professional," she said. "A little uptight, but she's new, ya know? I'd be clammed up if I didn't know anybody either. Her work is insane though. Did you see that internal fixation? I mean," she whistled at the end of her statement, and Nina smirked.
"Keep it in ya pants, Dr. Rizzoli," the shorter woman giggled.
"Hey oh hey," Jane warned.
"So you don't think she's pretty?" Nina prodded some more. She turned toward the hand dryer to hide her smirk.
"I don't know if you noticed, but we were all covered from head to toe in gear for our little pow-wow in there," Jane reasoned, shaking out her shoulders and waiting for her head nurse to get one last glance in the mirror before they headed out together.
"I guess you wouldn't have been able to see her. Oh well," Nina shrugged.
"And why are you stirring the pot? Especially the pot that doesn't really exist?" the doctor demanded with some side-eye and a perturbed smile. In the time that it took them to do their best to save Mr. Brannon, she noticed, an eerie calm had befallen the emergency room of Boston Medical Center.
"My shift's almost up," Nina offered simply. "And hey, we deal with death and dying all day. Can't a girl have some fun?"
"Does it have to be at my expense?" Jane mock-whined.
"It does when you're so… judicious about your love life. I been tryna to set you up with every male AND female surgeon that comes in here to no avail! I just want to see you happy," Nina said as she made a show of batting her eyelashes and grinning theatrically.
Jane rolled her eyes. "I'm going to the call room. Don't talk to me until tomorrow."
Nina cackled all the way back to her station.
Dr. Rizzoli turned into the call room, complete with two cots, a sofa, three vending machines, and a table, at which sat Dr. Maura Isles, the hero surgeon of the day. Jane slumped into a chair across from the other woman, and sighed with relief to be off her aching feet. Her face lit up with the delayed realization that she had just recognized Maura by her eyes alone – green and brown swirled together like a gem. "Hey," she breathed out, "you cleaned up."
Indeed Maura had. She wore her gray work pants and loose-fitting burgundy blouse, and her watch dangled down her wrist as she worried at her forehead with her hand. She wore her white doctor's coat, and her heels had replaced her operating room clogs.
Jane cared about none of that, though, not when she lost herself in studying Maura's face: sharp cupid's bow, full, but not plump, lips, thin and long nose. "You Italian?" she asked, before Dr. Isles could respond to her previous comment.
Maura removed her fingers from her forehead and put down her pen. Her eyes looked lost; a flash of helplessness erupted across her face for a brief second, and then disappeared. "I… I don't know, actually. I was adopted, and my file is closed," she replied. It was the first stutter Jane had heard from her in their now five or so hours of knowing each other.
"Well, shit. I'm sorry. You just look… ya look Italian, like maybe Irish-Italian or somethin'," the trauma surgeon attempted to back track. "I'm sorry, I'm makin' an ass of myself."
"Not at all. For all I know, I may very well be Irish-Italian. My adoptive parents are from Boston. My mother by way of England, however," Maura replied.
"Ah. So your mom's English, huh? How'd she end up here?" Jane leaned forward, crossing her arms and scratching lightly at her elbow.
"Her studies. She has her Ph.D in art history, and she taught here, in the city. And my father taught anthropology at Harvard – it's how they met."
"Ah, so they're humanities people."
"I suppose you're wondering how I ended up in medicine, then. I think they wonder that too, sometimes," Maura said almost in a whisper. She lowered her eyes, embarrassed of herself and of the fact that she had maintained eye contact with the woman across from her for an inordinately long time.
"Not at all," Jane assured her, "I see art in you. How else do you explain the way you wield that scalpel?" she grinned, teeth dazzling and straight.
Maura flushed red. "Th-thank you," she said, desperate to remove the spotlight from herself. "And where does Dr. Rizzoli hail from?"
Jane read right through her suave attempt at redirection, but played along. "From right here. Boston-Italian through and through."
Maura's body believed her, and seemed to quite like the fact. "All your life?"
"All my life," Jane said. At her confirmation, Maura felt warm – Jesus, it must have been a long time since she had intimate human contact. The combination of all of Jane's sharp good looks and her investment in learning about Maura's life proved an embarrassingly potent cocktail, and Maura wanted much to explore this woman.
"Are there other doctors in your family? What made you choose medicine?" the ENT found herself pressing, but Jane seemed more than accommodating.
"Nah, my dad's a plumber, and so was his dad. My ma's a homemaker, and so was hers. Her dad was a ironworker. I got two brothers," she began.
"Ah yes, the one who is a police detective," Maura inserted.
"Yup, That's Frankie. The other one, Tommy, he's got a job at the docks. I guess I like the hands on work of surgery, both general and trauma – and I love differential diagnosis, ya know, hunting for answers in the body, weeding out everything sorta right til you get to what's actually right."
"Well, trauma seems like a perfect marriage of the two, then," Maura called out when the other woman got up to make herself a cup of coffee.
"I'd like to think so," Jane said as she stirred the brew with a straw. Maura had thought her captivating, even dangerous, as she had pumped life into their patient there on the bloody gurney; now she found her handsome in this tired hour between morning and late night rushes. "What about you? Why'd you pick ears, noses, and throats?"
Maura hovered over a precipice for a few beats: to share a piece of her with Jane, or to not? Lying wasn't an option; she'd never been any good at that, but incessant teasing in her younger days made her wary of being open with any part of herself. "It is the most fascinating thing to me, the laryngeal system, and the hearing system: I find it so fascinating that this structure present in so many animals has given language only to us. To lay hands on one of the major things that allows us to communicate with each other is the only way I can imagine spending my life."
Jane walked back to the table and sat next to Maura this time, instead of across from her. "Sounds like a good reason to me. You want some coffee?"
Maura blushed at Jane's closeness to her – the brunette, however, seemed unfazed despite the fact that they breathed each other's air. "No, thank you. Caffeine is not very good for vocal hygiene," said the ENT. She refrained from commenting on Jane's already rough vocal quality.
"That doesn't surprise me. Anything fun is no good for you," Jane snarked and sipped from her cup.
"I suppose not."
"Listen, Maura. I'm gonna head out because my shift is over," said the trauma surgeon. She rose, and grabbed her coffee when she noticed the crestfallen look on her counterpart's face. She stopped then, turning with a slightly what-the-hell look in her eyes. "You, uh, you like sports?"
"I'm sorry?" Maura asked, confused.
"Do you like to play sports? Or watch 'em?" Jane clarified.
"Oh! I do. You know, I once attended the French Open; it was amazing. I also used to fence competitively in high school," Dr. Isles answered, lighting up immediately. Her smile strummed on Jane's heart.
Not enough to stop the gentle ribbing to ensue, however. "I mean, low-brow sports, like us peons play. Baseball, basketball, stuff like that?"
"Oh, no, I'm afraid I don't follow either of those," Maura said, tempering her voice, guarding herself again.
"Well, Miguel and I and some other people get together and play basketball on Saturdays at 3, back here behind the ER. You wanna come check it out?"
"This Saturday, as in tomorrow?"
"Yeah. It's just a way for us to de-stress, hang out, and exercise all in one go. Considering our time is pretty budgeted."
"Oh, I don't know, I've never really played before; I don't think it would be a good idea…"
"Just think about it, huh? I'm not gonna pressure you or anything. But it is a fun time."
"Alright, I will think about it," Maura acquiesced.
"Alright, maybe I'll see you there, then," Jane waved with her free hand as she exited the call room.
Maura cursed her decision the whole way to BMC. Now that she had crossed the street and entered into the hospital grounds, she shook in her hands. While that was nothing a good stuff into her North Face pockets wouldn't fix, her hammering heart refused to listen to any positive self-talk she doled out. The mid-fall day was crisp, cold, but sunny. Perfect sporting weather in New England – yet it didn't erase the fact that she had only seen a basketball game one time, let alone ever played it. She watched her warm breath writhe in front of her as she walked, but when she caught sight of her colleagues on the blacktop, it stopped.
She had felt out place as soon as she had decided to join them, but now she looked out of place. What did one even wear to play basketball, anyway? An exercise longsleeve tee and some yoga pants had been her best guess, clearly a dead wrong one. There were three women playing: Nina, Jane, and someone else she didn't know, and all of them wore gym shorts. The men did, too, including the two medical assistants from the head and neck cancer center.
There were shuffles, grunts, and sweat spots on the asphalt. Watching people do this up close was much more… exhilarating than the time she had watched it on television. Granted, then it had been to appease Ian, but now she was so much more invested. Charles and Daniel, her own medical assistants, seemed fast, but played with blunt force: they blocked with their bodies, swiped with paw-like hands at the ball in their opponents' grip.
She watched Dr. Concepcion, the anesthesiologist of her last surgery, lumber across the key, the position perfect for his large body and slow feet. It maximized his power and minimized his vulnerability. He stood there at the moment Maura stepped through the gate and onto the blacktop, and he had swatted a few balls from the players on Jane and Nina's team. Their biggest man came in at six inches shorter than Miguel, too short to attack the rim, and was beaten several times there. Maura marveled at the forwardness of their play – was it the game's purpose to send the two tallest males out there to bludgeon each other?
She folded her arms over her chest, distinctly aware of her presence as the solitary spectator, but anxious to see how the gladiatorial match would end. Their wheezing and shoving was her main focus, until she saw Dr. Bhattacharya, Jane's teammate and Miguel's opponent, back off – she followed him, saw his bearish hands latch onto the ball that Nina passed him. It was a curious and seemingly cowardly move, a retreat, until Jane herself flashed by, sneaking into the corner near the three point line in the flurry of the activity. She smelled of sweat and a cucumber scented deodorant, and Maura's head followed the intoxicating combination. It was mere chance that Dr. Isles then witnessed one of the most beautiful instances of movement in her adult life; how foolish she had been to give all her attention to the men clumsily parading their masculinity in the key: Jane and Nina had set this up from the beginning. While Dr. Bhattacharya pulled up to shoot, Dr. Concepcion followed with a smile spread far across his face.
It was not to last, however, because as soon as Miguel lunged forward to block a shot, Dr. Bhattacharya flashed a pass to Jane in the corner. Maura had never seen speed and power explode in the way that it did at Jane's feet. She attacked the rim, driving her body toward it with what Maura could only describe as stealthy ferocity: her muscles contorted under her tank top, teasing toned olive skin under its Boston green. Dr. Concepcion shouted something obscene; Charles thrust his hand toward the rising ball, but Jane, already off of her feet and in the air, windmilled her arms to the left and flicked the ball in, yelping when that hand came down and struck her full on the nose.
"Fuck!" She shouted, her voice the deepest Maura had heard it. The other players stopped, quiet even though the game had been won.
"Oh my god, are you all right, Dr. Rizzoli?" Charles asked, looking to his wrist and seeing blood. The others then all chimed in similar sentiments.
"I'm fine, I'm fine," said Jane, as though she'd very suddenly caught a cold. Her hand covered her nose and mouth, and she walked away from the small crowd.
Maura, however, had witnessed the smack full on, as Jane had been her focus. The trauma surgeon would not have been fine from a blow at that angle and velocity. "Jane! Jane," she said as she trotted over, both to greet her and alert her to her presence.
"You came!" Jane replied, her sentiment received, but her voice a little labored. "And hell, you used my first name. You that worried? I'm ok."
"Let me look at it, please," Maura insisted, her hand on Jane's wrist.
"I said I'm fine, Maura," Jane protested, but after a severe stare sent her way, she dropped her hand. That hand trickled blood onto the ground from the sheer amount that had pooled in it. Blood also ran down her lip and into her mouth, and her colleagues stood by in worry and some amazement at the scene unfolding. She spit some out close to Maura's brand new work out shoes.
"Are you finished?" Maura asked. Jane looked at her incredulously, but eventually nodded. "Hairline fracture," she eventually assessed, with her fingers on each side of Jane's long and thin Italian nose.
"Pop it out, will ya?" Jane asked, and it was Maura's turn to look incredulous. "What? What did I say?"
"There is a hospital literally 100 feet behind you. Wouldn't it be best to make full use of the finest medical care available on the eastern seaboard?" Dr. Isles replied.
"I wanna keep playin'. Plus, you're a nose surgeon for chrissakes! Aren't you the person I should be seein'?" Jane bellowed. Maura rolled her eyes at the statement, and swore she heard Nina giggle in the group of bodies not too far away.
"You alright, Jane?" the nurse called out, making sure to keep all their coworkers at bay, lest they invade the two surgeons' space.
"Yeah I'm good, Nina," Jane called back behind her shoulder. "Would you just fix it, Maura?"
"Alright, alright, but you're going to feel a little discomfort," Maura acquiesced. With a pop, she shifted Dr. Rizzoli's nose back into its proper place.
"Ouch, Jesus! A little?" Jane whined, and Maura guessed it was more for show than for real.
"It's finished. As soon as you're done here you'll need to ice it or tomorrow you'll look like Mike Tyson," she replied, following Jane a bit as the other woman walked toward her gym bag to get a towel for the blood on her face.
"Oh, so I see you're not totally ignorant of our more plebian games," Jane said, and when Maura looked at her with bite again, she decided to tone it down. She wiped her face, washed down and rinsed with her water bottle, and beckoned Maura back over to the court. "So, Christina's gotta go. She's gotta start her shift soon. This means that my team has a vacancy."
Maura nodded, unsure why she was being told all of this.
Jane waited, then continued when she realized she was going to have to learn how to be more blunt even than usual. "So whatta ya say? Wanna play with some winners?" She asked, and tossed the ball to Dr. Isles.
"I'd love to!" Maura answered, taking off her jacket and giving Dr. Rizzoli and Nurse Holiday a girlish grin.
"Guys, this is Maura Isles. She's the new ENT, and she's gonna be ballin' with us today."