Take my breath away (EN)

Pieces of my heart

Flashback

I had just taken the house keys and I was going out to join you for our pizza and movie Friday (which lately was less pizza and movies and more other stuff), when I open the door and I realize that ready to ring the bell there is... your mother. Or rather, Hope, your biological mother. I never liked her, the way she treated you when you met her for the first time, for disappearing and then magically reappearing when her daughter needed a kidney... your kidney. I'll ask her to take a sit even if I can't wait for her to spit it out and go back where she came from. Luckily I don't have to wait to much, she's not a fan of pleasantries. I wonder where you get that from.

"I'm here because I'm going back to London on business. And I'd like Maura to come with me." And there it is, the ice-cold shower.

"I was offered a professorship at Imperial College for my work in Third World countries ... and they ask me to offered the chair in forensic pathology to Maura. It would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for her. And her experience at BCU for that seminar she gave excited her." And she's right, you haven't talked about anything else for days. You seriously wondered if teaching could be your new path, but you joked that you couldn't make fun of me all day at work and that without you they would find out that I'm not very good at solving cases. "I don't want them to bring you back on doing traffic reports because of me," you said laughing.

"Jane... you haven't said a word. Unfortunately I can't wait long, the current teacher is ready to retire and there are other candidates on the list, but Maura is absolutely the first choice for them."

I can't blame them for this. You'd be a perfect teacher, just see how you shaped poor Susie Chang in your own image over the years working alongside you.

"It's a great opportunity" - that's all I can say. "You know very well she'd say no just so she doesn't have to give up on you." I'd like to believe it wouldn't be like that, but I can't. Like when you testified on my behalf when I shot Paddy Doyle. You got a little carried away, positively, during the deposition. If I think that we didn't even talk to each other in those days: you knew that I had done my job, but I had the impression that there was something consuming you inside. I never understood what it was.

I'm trying to to put things into some order in my mind. Your mother looks at me, she knows I never liked her, but right now she needs my help.

"You're here to ask me to end it with her..."

"I know it's hard, Jane. I'm not hiding from you that since I found out, I've had a lot of doubts about your relationship."

"Really? You don't say..." I reply caustically.

"Hope... why is she here? Maura knows how to make her own decisions, there's nothing I can say to convince her...in one way or another" I keep going on, knowing very well that what I said is true, but I also know that our relationship will surely have a weight in your list of pros and cons.

"Give her a reason to accept." Those words were enough to make me fall apart. My world, our future, had just been demolished. I could do nothing, but I always wanted your happiness more than any other thing. And I know exactly what I had to do.