Series title: Whumptober 2023

Chapters: 1/1

Characters: Jane Rizzoli / Frankie Rizzoli Jr / Nina Holiday / Maura Isles

Trigger warnings: Sickness

A/N: The characters and universe don't belong to me. All rights go to TNT, and everyone involved in the production of Rizzoli and Isles, as well as Tess Gerritsen. Everything else belongs to my twisted imagination.

A/N 2: Sort of prequel to the second shot of the Whumptober 2023's series, "I'll call your name, but you won't call back."

Jane pulled the suspect out of the pool. He had taken her in his fall, had tried to drown her but she was an excellent swimmer, and she could hold her breath for a moment. He had lost his own game by dragging her on a field where he thought he could have the upper hand on her. He had made a mistake and now she was getting to arrest him. Well, first, she had to revive him. She placed him on his back and started pressing his chest and blowing oxygen into his mouth. Mouth to mouth wasn't a recommended action in those dark times but she wouldn't let him die before he was brought to justice. He had to be punished for what he had done, and she wouldn't let him have the easy way out. The families needed justice to be done, and that could only happen if the bastard was staying alive.

She smiled when he coughed and spat water out of his system. As soon as he was done, she rolled him on his stomach, put his hands in his back and handcuffed him. She read him his rights and forced him up. Frankie and Nina were surprised to see them coming back completely soaked.

"The idiot thought he could outrun me," she shrugged.

Frankie chuckled and shook his head. No one could outrun his sister. She was too good of a cop. She had proved it many times over, and her results at the police academy were still some of the bests, if not the best. She had had years to perfect her skills.

Yet, a way to outrun her existed. One she had no control over as frustrating to her as it was sometimes. It was the moment where the culprit was sitting on the accused side of the court, when a judge and twelve ordinary citizens who knew barely anything about the case, who hadn't seen first-hand the horrors of the crime they were judging had to decide whether they could free them for a certain price or if they were se ding them in jail until their trial. The first option always infuriated Jane. It was worse when the culprit was declared non-guilty and released. Better not be around her when it happened.

Today was the day of that preliminary hearing of the suspect. Jane technically didn't have to be there. She had done her job. Now it was up to someone else to do theirs. She wanted to be sure they would send him to rot in jail, and if they released him, she would be after his ass.

Jane rubbed her temples with a sigh. She had woken up the previous day with a headache that wouldn't leave despite the aspirin she was gulping down. It troubled her focus and left her exhausted. She had had a hard time getting up that morning. She blamed it on her latest case. She was always putting all of her energy to catch the bad guys and her body needed more and more time to recover. She was still young, but not as young as when she started, and her body was telling her to slow down. That jump in the pool in the middle of March hadn't helped either. She surely had caught a cold. Nothing that couldn't be solved by aspirin.

The audience went fast and was satisfying. She usually would have celebrated with a drink at the Dirty Robber with the team, but all the bars and restaurants were closed because of the pandemic. If the country was at a standstill, the crime wasn't. Criminals were taking advantage of everyone being locked in the apparent safety of their home to steal and break and murder.

She headed to the precinct. It was a quiet day and no new case had come. The officers on duty were busy with paperwork and were getting calls for minor crimes and phone jokes by people who were getting bored. Jane loved her work. She would go crazy if she didn't have it. She couldn't imagine herself pacing around her flat all day until the lockdown was lifted. But she had a hard time focusing on it with the headache pounding just behind her eyes. She closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. She muffled a cough in her shoulder and glared at Nina and Frankie who looked at her.

"What? Has it become illegal to cough now?"

"You okay?"

"Just a cold from diving in cold water in March."

"Sure?"

"Does Maura love shoes?"

The three of them laughed. It was no secret that Maura Isles loved shoes. She even had a mug saying 'Keep calm and buy shoes' in her office. That fact put an end to that talk.

Jane's cough didn't get any better. The next day, she could barely breathe between two coughing fits. She requested to work from home and only went to the precinct to grab a few files. Maura stopped by after her shift. Jane was slouched on her couch, wrapped in a couple of blankets. The file she had been reading before falling asleep had slipped from her lap and fallen to the ground.

"You should get yourself tested, Jane."

"I'm fine," the detective mumbled sleepily.

"You don't look fine."

"It's just a cold, Maur."

Later in the night, she was starting to doubt her self-diagnosis as she was profusely sweating under the pile of blankets she had wrapped herself into and yet still feeling cold inside. Her breathing was more of a painful gasp and the coughing wouldn't stop.

In a rare moment of feeling rather good, she drove to Maura's place. It was late in the night and the medical examiner had just come home from a long shift at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Jane stumbled in the house, scaring her friend who immediately rushed to her side.

"I don't feel so good."

"I'm driving you to the hospital."

"No, no. Not the hospital. They're overwhelmed."

"You need a doctor."

"You are a doctor!"

The words barely left her lips that Jane collapsed. Maura barely had the time to catch her before she hit the ground. Her eyes grew wide when she touched Jane's skin. She was literally burning up. She dragged her to the guest room that she had turned into an isolation room a few weeks ago. It wasn't an easy thing to lift her and settle her in bed. Getting her out of her soaked and crumpled clothes was easier in comparison. Jane didn't fight her like she had when Maura had had to force her into her uniform years ago. That time, she only put a shirt and sweatpants on her. Jane was always leaving clothes behind when she was staying over.

Maura did a quick examination of her friend who was mumbling incoherent words and gasping for air. She connected her to a portable heart monitor and to a bottle of oxygen. She left for the bathroom and came back with a bowl of water to an ambient temperature. It would feel cold to Jane whose temperature was verging on 105 degrees. She ran a wet compress on Jane's face and neck. Anything to bring the fever down.

The day had been long for Maura and the night promised to be even more as she wouldn't leave Jane alone. She tested her. It came back positive. She decided to write down everything on a notebook to keep track of the evolution of the virus. She also had the heavy task to tell Angela about her daughter. The both of them would have to work together and to keep an eye on Jane for as long as she would be sick...