February, 5 - Dr. Mulder's House - 5:46 p.m.
Mulder awoke to find himself sprawled on his bed, dressed in a T-shirt, slacks and still wearing his shoes. He had a killer headache and every muscle in his body screamed in discontent. The call of nature forced him off the bed and into the bathroom. After relieving himself, he faced the mirror and was taken aback by what he saw. Dried blood caked beneath his nose and at both corners of his mouth. His right cheek was slightly swollen and colored a deep purple, matching the hue circling his half closed left eye and the markings around his throat.
"What the hell happened to you?" he asked his reflection, equally surprised by the hoarseness of his voice. He searched his memory for an answer and saw brief flashes of fists repeatedly pounding into him. The images only added to his discomfort, so he pushed back the memories for the present and concentrated on doing something about his aches and pains.
He opened the medicine cabinet and grabbed the infrequently used bottle of aspirin. He rarely got headaches and only used it occasionally after over-exertion on the basketball court or other sports-related injuries. After popping a couple of the pills into his mouth and chasing them with water, Mulder turned on the faucet in the shower and began to undress. Luckily, there was no more blood to be found, but he did find a new set of bruises covering his mid-section. Although he was extremely stiff and sore, nothing felt broken. He stepped into the shower, wishing it was a hot Jacuzzi. A hot Jacuzzi with a Baywatch babe, he thought lazily. Seems like he'd wish for that before. The Jacuzzi, he could manage on his own, but getting Pamela Anderson to join him in it....
He chuckled lightly to himself, wondering if Frohike had gotten the chance to chat with Pamela Anderson on-line last night. Last night. Images were starting to come back to him. Fists hitting, and smoke in his face and tears flowing down his cheeks. He turned off the water and stepped clumsily out of the shower, remembering the fear, the threats, the betrayal. He grabbed a towel drying himself as he went back into the bedroom and reached for where his bedside telephone should have been. Still, half wet, he quickly pulled on some underwear and jeans, then went to the door. He put his ear to it, listening for signs that he was not alone. When nothing was heard, he cracked the door open and peered outside. No one was in view and no odor of smoke could be detected.
Mulder cautiously worked his way downstairs, stopping off at the hall closet to grab a baseball bat, then searching his home for intruders. He let go a nervous breath he'd been holding in when he had reached the kitchen and found no one else present. His bloodied shirt and tie still lay in a ball on the dining room table near the bag containing the videos he had rented. Detecting a distasteful odor, he picked up the bag of Chinese takeout and checked out one of the cartons. It surprised him that his dinner had gone that rancid overnight. But he didn't dwell on that, instead he reached for the kitchen phone which he saw had been unplugged. As soon as he placed the plug back into the wall jack, the ensuing ring, startled him, causing him to jump slightly and clutch at his heart. His phone line had Caller ID and he felt some anxiety at seeing that the call was coming from the Georgetown Hospital.
"Hello?"
"Where the hell have you been for the past two days?" his father's voice bellowed at him.
"Two days?"
"We've been phoning and phoning, and never got an answer."
"The phone's been out of order," Mulder replied weakly. "Is something wrong, Dad?"
"It's your sister. She's in the Georgetown Hospital Intensive Care Unit. You'd better get down here."
"Dad?" His voice held an unspoken question.
"Just come, son," his father spoke with a deep sigh. "Now."
Georgetown Hospital ICU - 6:32 p.m.
Mulder walked up quietly behind his father and placed a caring hand on his shoulder. The old man's eyes did not shift from his daughter's prone form as she lay comatose in the intensive care unit. Five gunshot wounds had riddled her body, leaving her with a collapsed lung, an impaired heart and possible brain damage. Mulder had spoken with the doctor about his sister's condition before entering the room, but he still wasn't clear on the details of the attack.
"What happened to her, Dad?" Mulder asked, keeping his voice low.
"That good-for-nothing ex-husband of hers. Can you believe it? They actually let that son-of-a-bitch out of prison. They claimed it was some kind of computer error. An unfortunate mistake. They let him just waltz out a free man, Saturday morning without even notifying anyone, and what's the first thing he does. He gets a gun and goes after my baby girl."
His father's words were bitter and the anguish in his voice was undeniable. Still, without further prompting, he continued. Mulder listened in silence, his tear-filled eyes never leaving his sister's pale face.
"She had just come home from grocery shopping and he was outside the house waiting for her. She tried to run but he chased her down, firing at her, screaming that he was going to hell and he was taking her with him. He fired five shots into her, two in the chest, one in her left arm, right hip and one in the neck. He saved the last bullet for himself. He'd better be glad he's dead 'cause I would have cut his heart out and shoved it down his throat, so help me."
Mulder knew it was his fault. He had placed his sister's life in jeopardy the first time he had refused the smoker's offer. "I should have warned her," he unintentionally spoke aloud.
"Warn her? How could you--" His father turned to look at his son at last and did a double take, appalled at what he saw. "My God! Look at you! He did this to you, didn't he?"
Mulder wasn't sure who his father was referring to at first so he didn't respond.
"I remember he threatened you too," William Mulder continued, "but I didn't think to check on you. When you didn't answer your phone, I didn't stop to think that he had gone after you too."
It dawned on him then that his father was assuming that he had been attacked by the same person who had attacked Samantha. Mulder shook his head, wanting to explain what had really transpired but not knowing exactly how to go about it.
"Have you seen a doctor yet?"
"No. Dad, I'm okay. Really. Just a little sore is all."
"Your mother's going to be upset with me that I didn't come and check on you."
"Where is Mom?"
"A friend of hers stopped by. I got her to take your mother home so she could get some rest. She hadn't slept since before we got the news."
"How about you, Dad? Don't look like you've slept either."
William shrugged and waved off the question. "You get as old as I am and you don't need that much sleep."
"I'll stay here with Samantha, Dad. Go on home and look after Mom." It seemed as though his father was going to reject the idea, so Mulder gently insisted. "Go home. I'll call if anything changes."
William nodded, gave his son one final pat on the arm, then withdrew from the room. Mulder took hold of the untethered fingers of his sister's left hand. So much medical equipment was hooked up to her that it was hard to find a safe place to touch her.
"I'm sorry, Sam," he whispered to her. "I'm sorry I did this to you. But promise me you won't die, okay? I'll let you fix me up with one of your girlfriends. I know how much you like to play matchmaker.... Just come back to us, okay?"
He sat down in the only chair in the room and remained alert for any change in rhythm of the attached monitors. After about twenty minutes, a nurse chased him off, telling him he could return in half an hour. He reluctantly departed, then went to sit down in the waiting room where three members of another family huddled together for support. Mulder propped his elbows on his thighs and his still aching head in his palms. Not long afterwards, a hand landed on his shoulder and a female voice called out his name. He thought it might have been one of the nurses at first, but when he looked he found a familiar face brimming with compassion.
"Dana." He was almost able to smile.
"Oh, my God!" she gasped after getting a good look at his face. "What happened to you?"
"Long story. How did you find me?"
"I got a call from Frohike. He said that you had called him Friday night to set up a meeting. He said he got suspicious when he saw that you were calling from home and using your cordless phone to do it. And he said something about you calling him Marty, which is some kind of secret code?"
Mulder managed a brief grin. "Marty is the name he uses to uh... call women with 1-900 numbers."
"Phone sex," said Scully, not at all surprised.
"He prefers to think of it as a kind of inhibitions therapy. When I handed him the documents, I told him it was hot stuff and the owners might come looking for it. He insisted that we have some sort of warning system in effect. Those guys are normally pretty paranoid anyway, so I was hoping they'd take precautions, but I wasn't sure. I was forced to call them and I was afraid that they would get tracked down through the phone number. But you say they're all okay?"
"Yes, they're all fine. He told me that they have abandoned their previous location and that the number you had to reach them before is no longer valid. He tried several times to contact you yesterday and today, but never got an answer."
"All my phones had been turned off or disconnected. I guess they didn't want my sleep to be disturbed."
"Frohike said that you were either taking a massive amount of showers or that.... Well, later, he heard about your sister on the news and figured if you were still alive, this is where you'd be."
"They punished me by going after her."
"I don't understand."
"They came to me at my house and demanded to know about the documents and who I turned them over to. If Frohike had gone to meet me, they would have been waiting for him. We'd probably be able to pass for twins by now."
Standing in front of him, Scully, raised his chin with one finger, taking in his injuries with a critical eye. "They really did a number on you. Have you seen a doctor yet?"
"No, I'm all right. But Sam...."
"What's the diagnosis?"
"She's stabilized now, but comatose. They're not sure, but they think she may have suffered some brain damage. Anything from partial paralysis to complete vegetation. They won't know for sure until she wakes up.... if she wakes up." Mulder shook his head mournfully. "I did this to her. I knew what they were capable of doing and I did nothing to protect her.... I did nothing to protect her."
Scully knew no words that could console him or make him think any differently at the moment. She did the only thing she could think of. She stepped closer and draped her arms about his shoulders, pulling him into the warmth of her bosom. His arms encircled her slim waist automatically, his knees parted further to make room to draw her nearer. As her lips pressed sweetly against his forehead, she felt him tremble and heard the sobs. She squeezed him tighter to convey that she was there for him as long as he needed her.
It took a good five minutes for him to cry himself out. He was glad that his face had been hidden away from onlookers by the folds of Scully's opened overcoat. He found a temporary peace with his head nestled against her soft breasts, moving with the rise and fall of her breaths, and listening to her heartbeat. Under totally different circumstances, he would be in heaven. He finally loosened his grip and she moved to sit down beside him, their hands now keeping contact.
"Thanks. I'm glad you came. Dad sent Mom home and I sent him. I thought I wanted to be alone."
"Have you been here all day?"
"No. I didn't get the call till a couple of hours ago when I woke up. I think I'm missing a day. The last I remember, it was like 8:00, Friday night."
"Are you saying you've been unconscious for over forty hours?"
When he merely shrugged the question off, Scully rummaged through her purse and pulled out a penlight. She held Mulder's head still with one hand and focused the fine beam of light into his retina. He blinked and turned away from it, wincing in pain.
"You're light sensitive. That's not good."
"Just got a bad headache. Probably because I haven't eaten since lunch time Friday."
"I think you should be examined by a doctor. You could have some serious injuries."
"Can I get something to eat first? I'm starving."
Scully sat quietly in the hospital cafeteria watching her doctor, the man she was beginning to think of as more of a friend, fill the vacancy in his stomach. She had warned him against eating too much too quickly, so he settled for a bowl of chicken noodle soup and some crackers which he ate slowly.
"You know, I'm feeling another bout of deja vu," said Mulder, scraping the bottom of his bowl for the last of the noodles.
"When your wife passed away?" Scully asked.
Mulder nodded sadly, bringing the spoon to his mouth, then stopping in mid-travel, suddenly losing his appetite. He lowered the spoon back into the bowl then stared down at the contents.
"My sister brought me down here to eat something because I hadn't eaten in two days. Amanda was in ICU and we were all just sitting around waiting for her to...." He sighed deeply, not caring to finish the sentence. "I didn't know how I was going to make it on my own without her. Didn't know how I would live with the guilt. A friend and colleague of mine spent six weeks talking me through the pain, trying to convince me to let go of the guilt. When I couldn't let go of it, she told me to compromise, to bury it so deep that it would take an emotional earthquake to bring it to surface again." Mulder raised his eyes to meet Dana Scully's. "I'm starting to feel the tremors now," he uttered, his voice growing shaky.
Scully reached her hand out to cover his. "I wish there was something I could do to help," she said, her eyes a bit moist.
Mulder encased her hand with both of his and stated softly, "You're doing it. You're doing it."
Scully stayed close to Mulder as he was checked out by an emergency room intern. Despite the unattractive bruising and swelling, he was deemed to be in good health with no fractured bones, internal injuries or head trauma. However, the young doctor voiced concerns about the blood work results which left him scratching his head over an unidentifiable compound in Mulder's blood stream. Anxious to get back to his sister, Mulder waved off the concern, joking that perhaps it was remnants of the Japanese blowfish he'd eaten earlier. Too harried to spend any more time on this particular patient, the intern released Mulder from his care, instructing him to have his own physician give him a thorough check up as soon as possible.
As Scully accompanied her shrink back up to intensive care, she considered the doctor's findings carefully. "You said that you were unconscious since Friday night?" she asked on their ride in the elevator.
"As far as I can tell. Why?"
"That's what I'd like to know. Why? There was no sign of head trauma, so that means you weren't knocked unconscious. So why were you out of it for over forty hours?"
"I uh... I don't know."
The elevator doors opened to the desired floor and they stepped out. Scully had planned to go back into the waiting room while Mulder visited with his sister, but he tugged at her arm and urged her to go with him. In passing the nurses' station, he introduced the woman with him as his fiancee since admittance to the ICU was limited. Scully cocked an eyebrow but said nothing. They entered the room quietly, and Mulder timidly approached the bed. He called to his sister softly, then reached out and stroked her hand hoping to get some sort of response.
"She has always been hard to wake up," said Mulder to his companion. "She could sleep through the loudest thunderstorms when she was little. I, on the other hand, would wake up and go running to her bedroom to keep her company so she wouldn't get scared." Mulder threw a soft smile over his shoulder at Scully and she returned it easily. "Even now, she needs two alarm clocks to wake her up in the morning; one she keeps next to the bed and one she keeps on the other side of the room. She really likes her sleep is all. Once she's all rested, she'll wake up."
Hospital Garage - 11:15 p.m.
Mulder had appreciated the company, but he knew that Scully was tired and had a job to go to tomorrow. He wasn't sure at what point he had taken hold of her hand, but he became aware of it as he was walking her to her car. It was exquisitely soft and delicate and her fingers laced through his in a perfect fit. She must have understood that he needed the emotional support holding her hand supplied because she never showed objection to it.
"There was an unknown substance in your bloodstream," she said out of the blue. Obviously, her thoughts weren't on the same plane as his.
"What?"
"Is it possible you were given something, some kind of drug to make you sleep that long?"
A flash of memory hit him and he shivered noticeably.
"What?"
"There was a hypodermic needle on the table. It was filled with some kind of light green liquid. I--I remember thinking when they gave me the shot... I didn't think I was ever going to wake up again."
Scully stopped in her tracks, pulling her hand from his, then turned to face him. "We can't let them get away with this," she spoke adamantly.
"I think they already have."
"But they should be made to pay. These people are nothing more than criminals and they should be brought to justice. What they did to my sister and yours, and your patients and to you... they shouldn't be allowed to continue to destroy peoples' lives like that."
"I agree, but... what can be done if the people in charge of upholding the law are the same ones who are breaking it? They could have killed me if they wanted to but they didn't because they wanted me alive to see what happens when someone crosses them. My sister is up there in a coma because some sick, black-lunged devil wanted to demonstrate his power to me. Well, he's taught me a valuable lesson... several in fact. I've learned that I'm definitely no James Bond. Truth be known, I believe that even Miss Moneypenny could easily kick my ass. I've learned that I don't enjoy having my faced smashed in or a gun pressed against my head. I've learned that my family is more important to me than my need to know things better left forgotten. I'm sorry, Dana. If it was just me, I'd do whatever I could to expose these bastards." He shook his head sadly. "But I can't... I refuse to put my family's life in danger again."
He was afraid that she would see him as a pathetic coward, or worse, she'd never want to see him again. He had cast his eyes away from her for a moment while awaiting her response to his declaration. A delicate hand stroked his stubble-covered cheek, careful to avoid the bruised areas. He closed his eyes for a moment at her touch, relief coursing throughout his entire body. When he turned his gaze back to her, a compassionate smile awaited him.
"It's okay. I understand," she said in lowering her hand. "I wouldn't want you to do anything to jeopardize your safety or those around you."
"I usually take it as a come-on when a beautiful woman strokes my face like that," said Mulder changing the tone of the conversation as well as the direction.
"So what do you usually do when a woman comes on to you?"
"Beautiful woman," Mulder corrected her.
"All right. What do you usually do when a beautiful woman comes on to you?"
"Well, after I melt into her eyes, I usually, sort of...." He leaned down and gently pressed his lips to hers. The attempt at romance faltered when he winced in pain at the gentle pressure on his previously damaged lower lip.
"Are you all right?" Scully asked in concern.
"Yeah, I'm fine. Sorry, I guess I shouldn't try to respond to come-ons so soon after getting my face smashed in." Recalling what he had seen in the mirror, he added, "I'm probably grossing you out, aren't I?"
"A little," Scully replied, then located an unabused spot on his cheek and carefully landed a tender kiss there. She smiled at the surprised look on his face, then took hold of his hand again and silently continued the walk to her car. Once she was safely tucked inside her vehicle, Mulder leaned over and spoke to her through the rolled down window.
"I don't believe I can continue in good faith to be your doctor, Dana. I believe it would be a conflict of interests. I have a colleague I can recommend to you though."
"I don't think that will be necessary. I believe all I need is a good friend whose ear I can bend occasionally."
Mulder smiled. "Just call me Dumbo."
"Try to get some sleep, Dr. Muld--"
"Fox," he corrected her.
" I'll check with you tomorrow, Fox. I hope your sister gets better real soon."
"Thank you, for everything. Good-night, Dana."
Mulder leaned into the car and gave her a simple peck on the cheek to end the evening. He stood back from the car as she eased out of the parking space and threw her a wave as she drove off.
Copyright © 2019 · All Rights Reserved · Fran Glass