Author's Note: Taken from my story "Increments," which is a set of one shots. Felt this four-piece story deserved its own publication, so to speak. So my apologies if some of you who've read this already may have been expecting a different or an extended version of the original. Again, thank you to those who expressed their reviews of this set, both on this site and Tumblr.

-x-x-x-x-

She's running as fast as she can.

Her boots skid noisily across the floor as she turns a corner, wondering madly if she's okay and musing inwardly if she needs to draw her gun to get some answers straight away.

Thankfully, the latter thought yields a negative as she comes face to face with a nurse who looks familiar.

Jane may not know her, but apparently the nurse did.

"If you're looking for Dr. Isles, she's in room 406. But you'll have to wait for her attending to finish examining her."

The detective is quite unsure how to respond to the petite blonde who waylaid her. In the process of trying to come up with a coherent reply with all the thoughts raging through her mind, Jane suddenly finds herself in the waiting room, apparently ushered to it by said nurse without her conscious knowledge.

She is barely able to mumble a "thank you" before the nurse leaves with a "Mhmm…the doctor will be out to see you soon."

-x-x-x-x-x-

She isn't fully aware of what happened.

One minute she's in the middle of a "lively" discussion with a fellow detective on the merits of a particular Italian restaurant and the next thing she knows, Suzie is calling to let her know that her best friend was rushed to the hospital.

Jane is quite disappointed in herself for forgetting to ask Chang for details.

All she knows is that she went running to her car, somehow managed not to get into an accident, ended up in the hospital, and is now seated in the waiting room.

Waiting.

-x-x-x-x-

She's pretty sure that Maura has been avoiding her for some time.

It started with small things like being too busy with her work to go for lunch, nag her to eat this, jog there, attend yoga. And it wouldn't have been a big deal usually since both were well aware of how the other can get caught up in their profession–except Jane started noticing that they hardly saw each other anymore. Rarely enough in fact that Jane began to miss! Maura's reminders to eat leafy greens, wake up calls to go jogging, rude awakenings to do yoga...

And when Jane got to corner the ME to spend what spare time the doc seemingly had to spare, Maura seemed to be stiff as a board, never quite able to meet her gaze, and if she wasn't mistaken, looked like she was losing sleep –and weight. She had those nasal juggle thingies. And her clothes looked…well, they certainly didn't cling to her as it used to. Not that she was looking or anything.

While waiting for the doctor to let her know she could finally see her best friend, Jane tries to backtrack and pinpoint where and when Maura started acting "weirdly" around her, to say the least.

The last time they went out, Jane recalls, was when they went to the cinema to watch Captain America. Maura wasn't all too excited about the choice of film, but understood that it was technically Jane's turn to choose their Friday night activity.

From there, the detective tries to piece a timeline in her mind as to when things started changing.

A throat clearing snaps Jane out of her internal sleuthing and she is quick to get to her feet as she greets whom she understands to be Maura's attending.