The tracheotomy, in its existence as a procedure, has been attempted, performed, and perfected by many types of people: emergency medical technicians, otolaryngologists, general surgeons, and anesthesiologists, among others. As practice of the technique skyrocketed, complication rates plummeted – in the present day, those rates never exceed ten percent. There is a percutaneous route, and an open one, both relatively safe, and almost always life-prolonging.
Maura Isles performed an open procedure now. And, while she had seen Jane's work and called it inspired, she had to admit that her own was simply… classic. She cut with care and with skill; she infused personalization with assembly line ease. "Suction," she asked, and surgical technician Rollins obliged. Her scalpel sliced through a thin layer of fat, drawing a trail of blood behind it, blood that obscured her goal. She preferred the concrete colors of pink and yellow here covering the voicebox, for those were the colors of tissue, things that took shape. Blood got everywhere and made a mess of everything. Thus, she banished it, or rather, had Rollins banish it. She forged ahead as soon as the red coast was clear.
Sparing every frivolous movement, she exposed the trachea, bony and waiting. She palpated it, her gloved finger feeling for the sliver of tissue between the third and fourth rings and doing so with force, though not of the excessive kind. With a look of concentration she set her sights on the far wall, not trusting vision to leave touch uncorrupted: she poked and stroked, until she found what she sought. A smirk touched her lips, and when she incised the windpipe and exposed the new airway she was to create, she paused for a millisecond of silence for the life she was altering. This man, thirty-five and with multiple sclerosis, may not ever breathe on his own again. Thus, the stoma needed to be perfect.
So, she redirected the trachea toward the stoma she intended to create, and when she did, she intubated him: she thought it best not to waste too much time dwelling on that which could not be changed. This man would now rely on his family, herself, and his other physicians to help him live the best life that he could, and that included her work on the table. This filled her with a sense of purpose.
She half-expected to feel useless back in the United States, working in a relatively peaceful place with a relatively effective health system, rather than in the war zones she had previously doctored in. She took pride in her work at BMC, knowing that those patients needed her work just as much, needed the work of her and Jane to keep them alive.
Jane, who had indeed escorted her to work that morning, as she remembered fondly. Her sleep had been restless the night before and filled with not-quite nightmares about strange men following her, and strong women protecting her. She had chalked it up to the adrenaline of the night before and to the stress from the work week, but it still soothed her when the other woman appeared at her door.
"Hey. I know you don't drink coffee, so I brought you some decaf tea," Jane said, juggling two cups, a bag of pastries, her car keys, and the day's newspaper under her arm. "And you look great, by the way."
"You're a half hour early," Maura said, stepping aside, clearly not annoyed. "And thank you."
"Yeah well, I thought we could have breakfast, and I figured you'd be ready," the brunette commented. She set her coffee and Maura's tea down on the counter, along with the two croissants, and took her first good look around. She whistled. "Wow. Nice set up you got here."
"I decorated it myself," said Maura, much too chipper for 8 AM. It pleased her friend.
"I think I would have guessed that," Jane said, smiling. Then she headed for the dining room table without being shown where it was, and sat in the same seat as Constance had without so much as a flinch. The ENT marveled at her.
"Thank you for the tea," she finally said, taking a seat diagonal from her friend, tray with jams, jellies, and butter in her hands. Jane set a pastry in front of her.
"No problem," she replied. "Thanks for lettin' me do this. I couldn't really sleep last night after everything."
"Of course." Maura cut her croissant open with one of the knives she had brought over, and was about to curse herself for not handing Jane one first when she caught sight of the trauma surgeon ripping through the bread with her fingers. The act was… authoritative. Comfortable. She watched the fingers curl and pull apart from one another in a strange, violent, graceful dance, and reminded herself that hers were not the only surgeon's digits at the table. Jane moved in a completely different way: while Maura manipulated objects with expertise and elegance, she dominated and oozed physicality. It showed in the way she spread jam, the way she chewed, and from what Maura could recall, the way she operated. She snapped out of her inner trance when she heard the crinkling of paper not too far away. "You still read the newspaper?" was all she could manage.
"Yup. Can't convince myself to go paperless just yet. Plus," she explained, grabbing a pen from her dark gray blazer pocket, "I keep up with the Sox this way." Without a second thought or further words she sipped some coffee and circled stats from the box score she deemed most important, no doubt. Maura would not have been able to say for the life of her. Even if she knew anything about baseball, she was too busy feeling a pooling pleasure under her ribs at the intimacy of it all: of the ritual, of the smell of the newspaper in her home, of Jane's minute but increasingly agreeable Boston accent.
"You… circle these things every day then?" she asked.
"Pretty much. Ya see, I like to keep record of the team's average and number of hits and walks and stuff and compare it to the year before. See how they line up," Jane said as she pointed to the particular stats she had mentioned. "Gives me a way to be close to them when I can't always catch 'em on TV, you know? Especially in the playoffs."
This confirmed Maura's fears and ignited fires she thought would be banked for a long time. Jane had brought routine into her home, shared it with her, allowed her to view it without any stipulation or price. In fact, SHE brought HER the tea. "I can understand that."
They ate the rest of their food and then rose to make the trek to work.
"You ready?" Jane asked Maura before they walked out the door.
Maura was unsure how to answer but locked the door and walked out toward the elevator nonetheless.
The memories of the morning occupied her as she washed her hands free from the chemical grime of the operating room. The one thing Maura mourned since becoming a surgeon was the smoothness of those hands: the sheer number of sterilizations a day left no room for optimally soft skin. She did the best she could, moving toward her locker and taking out a bottle of lotion from her bag. Once she lathered a few times and rubbed the excess moisture away, she felt better.
Neuroscience research stated that the brain reveled in routine, so she set about making one at BMC as quickly as possible. This meant changing into her civilian clothes and completing some paperwork in the call room. She considered it a long shot, but if she happened to see Jane there, well so be it. She stripped her scrubs, opting instead for this morning's gray tweed pencil skirt, cream blouse, and teal blazer. She dropped the soiled textiles in a bag specifically marked for the hospital's outsourced healthcare laundry team, and then made her way down the hall toward the call room.
Men and women, physicians and other personnel alike, studied her as she passed: it had always been this way. They would peek from behind their charts or steal a glance as they too walked past, but whenever she worked somewhere for long enough, the scrutinizing would begin. Some of it was harmless enough, actually, most of it was: She had a… particular way of doctoring. She had a dogged commitment to the truth and the irrefutability of the hard evidence, and diagnoses based on these principles took time. In the hospital setting, time was not something that professionals were very willing to part with. At the least, this made her curious and a little confounding, and at the most, it made her infuriating – but she stuck by her method, and thus the stares. She certainly knew how to carve out a name for herself quickly, even if that was only a byproduct.
She finally reached the call room, and sighed when its doorway entered her line of sight. She would spend her lunch here, then return to see some patients at the clinic before her day was done. When she heard a familiar and gruff voice on the sofa, however, she stopped short of walking in. Instead, she listened.
"No. You better take care of it, Tom; I'm about done askin' nicely," Jane growled, on the phone with someone whom Maura assumed was her brother.
Maura swallowed. She couldn't bring herself to walk away, but that was not a promising start to her eavesdropping.
"I don't care what you gotta go through to do it, you just gotta do it. We were just doing our job. We should not be involved in your shit," Dr. Rizzoli's accent crept forward on the phone with Tommy – Maura couldn't tell whether this was to increase the power in her threat, or just her true voice when she didn't have to speak to stuffy doctors.
Jane's shoulders hunched forward when she ran a hand over her face. Maura heard a cacophonous sniff against cupped phalanges, like a cry for help in an abandoned cave. Her stomach dropped at the implication.
"Uh-uh. You don't understand. Me I can handle. But you involved my coworker. My friend, god dammit. Did you know it wasn't just me in that OR, little brother? Because it wasn't just me that put Flannery back together again, and whoever wants this little situation taken care of knows it. No no no, you're not hearing me. She's one of the best surgeons on the eastern seaboard, and if you somehow let this get out of hand enough for her to go down, I will personally… you know what? Just make sure I don't see anyone following me again. And if Maura tells me anyone's following her, I'll cut your nuts off, I swear to God," Jane threatened, rising from her seat before jamming the end button on her phone.
Maura contemplated walking away, she truly did. But the way Jane rallied to her defense, the way she growled her name into the iPhone's receiver, the arcane nature of the conversation, and that New England accent that had now crossed from agreeable to attractive, all churned two states of being within her: arousal and anger. The strength of the pull drew her body in.
"Ah, hey, Maura," Jane said as she turned, startled by Maura's presence. "You hear that whole thing?"
Dr. Isles, with a veneer of detached professionalism, answered. "Don't worry, Dr. Rizzoli, it's not my business and I certainly know how to use discretion. I was going to complete some paperwork here, but I can give you some privacy." She hoped however, that Jane would make her stay.
"Hey, don't do that – you're all flushed. Come in. It's definitely your business, and we got some things to talk about."
A/N: I appreciate all of you who have been reading. Drop a review and let me know what you think!