From: Kel Date: Fri, 03 Nov 2000 23:05:25 -0500 Subject: NEW: Failure to Die, by Kel (1/8) Failure to Die, by Kel Feedback: ckelll@hotmail.com Website: http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Realm/9374/ Rated: No sex, but PG-13 for some bad words and icky stuff. Set during Season Four. Told from the POV of a veteran FBI agent working with other agents whom you might recognize. An undercover assignment lands Agent Jerry Luskin and his colleagues in a "cursed" hospital. Can Dr. Scully handle an emergency without calling for the paramedics? Just watch. Sincere thanks to Trelawney, for holding my hand while I wrote, electronically speaking, and for being ever-ready to discuss any of the eternal questions. Don't worry, I won't divulge the questions. And look what she made me: http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Realm/9374/FailureToDie.html Thanks to Maria Nicole for her fine-toothed beta reading. Thanks to Linda and Erin, who did the "rough-read." Disclaimer: Did Homer own Ulysses? Did Shakespeare own Macbeth? Did Jerry Garcia own Casey Jones? Draw your own conclusions. Failure to Die 1/8 The FBI has three missions. Hunt down lowlifes. Play ball with the big boys. Generate paperwork. Myself, I'm a paperwork kind of guy. I've done my time in the street. I did good work, too. But the day comes when you know you're finished. You put your ass on the line catching some mutt, and nine times out of ten there's a weasel deal down the line that puts him back on the outside with a big smile on his face. I learned I could be perfectly happy without getting shot at. I'm still a Special Agent, but everything I do is electric now. Phone calls and data searches. I'm the king of the background check. When I got the call that AD Skinner wanted to see me, I could only think of one reason. Had to be my weight. Every year I manage to starve and sweat my way past the physical, but it keeps getting harder. They were sending me to Skinner so he could chew my fat ass. I've never been in Skinner's office, but all AD's offices look the same. All ADs look the same, too. I mean, they come in different sizes and colors, and some of them are women, but they all look constipated. "Agent Luskin." Skinner didn't sound friendly or unfriendly. "What's up, boss?" I asked. I can't call these guys "sir." "You've been with the Bureau since 1978. Have you given any thought to retirement?" he asked. Yeah, boss, I wanted to tell him. I think about it every single day. It's my supreme ambition. But I'd be darned if I'd let him weasel me out of my benefits, and I knew I haven't put in my full time yet. If this guy wanted my resignation, he'd have to fight me for it. And then he could battle it out with my wife. "I'm not ready to retire, boss," I said. "I'm good at my job and I have a lot more to contribute." I managed not to gag, and, to his credit, Skinner managed not to laugh. "Good," he said, "because the Bureau needs your contribution. But this operation is strictly voluntary." "I'm listening," I said. He was a weasel, wrapping a voluntary assignment into a threat. "Undercover. You're going to 'retire' in Savant, New York," he said. He even pronounced it right, with the accent on the first syllable. I should know. It's my hometown. "What's in Savant?" I asked. "Other than the obvious." The obvious is the prison. And then there's the old Rolling Hills State Psychiatric Hospital. Involuntary hospitality was the big industry in Savant. "The University Cardio-Thoracic Center," Skinner told me. "And their star patient, Johnny Cardell." He paused in case I had any questions, but I just nodded. Everyone knew about Johnny Cardell. Like most mutts, he was vain, stupid, lazy, and greedy. What distinguished him from the rest of the dregs was his sadism. The guy was an artist. Not to mention a snappy dresser. We would have never got this guy locked up if his brothers in the mob hadn't decided he was too scary even for them. I don't know why they didn't just whack him themselves. When Johnny decided to flip for us, in exchange for some nicer accommodations, the other mutts finally sent somebody to take him out. But they blew it. "You retire from the FBI and you move back home to Savant," Skinner explained. "And just to keep active, you accept a position as the chief of security for the Cardio-Thoracic Center." I got the picture. Keep Cardell alive so that he could roll over on his friends. There was only one reason I could think of that Skinner wanted this job done undercover: he expected the hit to be an inside job, someone at the hospital. "You'll be working with three other agents," Skinner said. "Jim Givens. Sharp kid. He was just transferred from the Detroit office." God save me from sharp kids, I thought, those are the guys who get themselves killed. Maybe Jim Givens was a good agent, but he was going to be mighty conspicuous in Savant, New York. I'm not saying there are no blacks in Savant, but most of them are guests in the Pen. I nodded again. "Dana Scully," Skinner added. My wife is not going to like this, I thought, squirming. "And Fox Mulder." I remember when Fox Mulder was a sharp kid. I didn't know much about him except he had managed to stay alive, and I gave him points for that. This wasn't the team I would have picked for myself, but they'd watch my back. "Okay," I said. But I was wondering about something. See, Scully was a doctor, and I think Givens was a medic in the service. And I'm from Savant. But why Mulder? Were we looking for mobsters or monsters? But I didn't ask Skinner. = = = = I expected our first session to be a lot of blah-blah-blah, but it was an eye opener. It's one thing to have some general idea about Cardell and his kind, the things they've done. It's different to hear the details, see the pictures and the autopsy reports. Mobster, monster... not really much of a difference, sometimes. You know what else I learned? I wasn't the only one who'd been weaseled into this job. Mulder was griping under his breath like a kid in detention and Scully was playing the martyr. Givens hardly spoke. He was damn lucky to be here, assigned to DC after only a year in a field office. I figured he was a little intimidated. The second briefing was about the Cardio-Thoracic Center. There was no Cardio-Thoracic Center in Savant when I was a kid. What we had was Savant General Hospital. Savant General made legal history one year, highest award ever in a malpractice suit. Then they changed their name to Valley Medical Center, but the local people still wouldn't go there. The place did a booming business anyway, thanks to the prison and the psych hospital. Didn't need voluntary customers. Last I heard it was saved from bankruptcy when the Diocese bought it and renamed it St. Andrew's. But that didn't last either, according to the file, and it was acquired by University Medical Center, over in Schuyler. The old hellhole had been gutted and renovated, and now it offered world-class medicine and surgery. That's what their brochure said, only it didn't use the word "hellhole." The third time they got us together, it was down to business. We met around the big conference table in Skinner's office. The meeting was at eight in the morning, and like a clown I showed up with my brown bag from the deli. Nobody else brought their breakfast. Nobody even had a coffee. "Agent Luskin," Skinner told me, "you will be working under your own name. Your bio has you retired from the Bureau and taking over security for the Cardio-Thoracic Center." "No sweat, boss," I said, pulling my Danish from the bag. "I think I can pull it off." Jim Givens had been an x-ray technician in the Navy. They got him fixed up with a job in the radiology department. Dana Scully was going to play a doctor. Excuse me, be a doctor. They were going to put her in charge of the ward where Cardell was being kept. Scully looked at Skinner as if she'd spent the last hour trying to teach him to multiply but he still insisted four times four was forty. "Your objections have been noted," Skinner said tartly. "Nevertheless, I would like to restate them for the benefit of my teammates," Scully said, still staring him down. "Number one, I am not a practicing physician. Number two, even if I were a practicing physician, I would not be able to perform the full-time task of managing patient care while also providing security and conducting an investigation." "Number three," Mulder interrupted dryly, "if she was a practicing physician, she wouldn't accept a full-time position paying under fifty grand a year." Scully shifted her glare from Skinner to Mulder. "Scully, you know you'll draw your regular salary, plus expenses," Skinner said in surprise. Apparently this was one concern she hadn't shared with him previously. "It's the principle," she said defensively. "The Cardio-Thoracic Center was intended to be a cash cow. Perform lucrative procedures and transfer the patients out in a day or two. Instead they've filled up with patients that can't be transferred because they are too unstable to move or impossible to place." "Gorks," Mulder said. "I don't use that word!" Scully protested to Mulder, before continuing her explanation to Skinner. "Anyway, now that the CTC is overloaded with a population of chronics, they're looking for cheap labor. It's not just the money, sir. I'd work for less if it was a fellowship or educational opportunity." "Oh, chill out, Scully," Mulder said. "I'm sure they're paying the staff psychologist even less." "Mulder," Skinner said, as if he'd suddenly remembered, "that 'staff psychologist' thing didn't work out. We've arranged a different cover for you." "Luskin, give me a piece of your Danish," Mulder told me with a grin. "Looks like I'll be working security with you." "Not security. We wanted you where you could remain close to the patient," Skinner explained. "You'll look cute in candy stripes, Mulder," I ribbed him. Mulder laughed, but Givens scowled at me. Poor kid; it was his first taste of real action, and he was stuck with a bunch of malcontents and cutups. "Nursing assistant," Skinner said. "An orderly." Mulder cringed with mock horror. Nope, make that real horror. "I'm not good with that kind of stuff," he said. "And I don't have any experience." "You are Prescott Harrington the third, and he doesn't have any experience either," Skinner said. He sounded smug. He was trying to hide it, but you could tell. "Prescott Harrington must have had one hell of a midlife crisis," Scully observed, poker-faced. I had to guess she was enjoying Mulder's discomfort as much as he'd enjoyed her indignation about her salary. "Prescott Harrington just spent a year on vacation at Club Fed," Skinner explained. "Courtesy of the Securities and Exchange Commission. When Prescott's cocaine habit became too expensive for him to support on his own, he turned to his clients for help. He is banned from working in the financial arena." "Do I get a new identity too?" Givens asked hopefully. "It's not indicated, Agent Givens," Skinner told him gently. "Your own name and background will serve." "It's better to keep it simple. We're not getting new names either," I said, gesturing toward Scully. Givens nodded seriously. "As a condition of his parole, Harrington has to keep himself clean and work at something of benefit to society," Skinner related. Mulder looked miserable. He looked like he'd prefer to go back to his minimum-security country club. Skinner moved on to cover the rest of the details. Organized Crime had handled most of the set-up, and I couldn't find anything to complain about. I knew damn well that if they were placing their own agents undercover in a hole like Savant they would have found a way to add a few luxuries, but we were only on loan to OC. They put the kid and me in a couple of apartments near the hospital. They stuck Mulder in a cottage by the lake. I had to admit that was brilliant--it was exactly the kind of place that some family friend would make available for a blue-blooded stockbroker getting out of the joint. It wasn't exactly convenient, though. Scully was going to live in the old egg-processing factory. I used to work there after school when I was a kid. You had to crack eggs into a basin and then sort them according to how rotten they were. Now it was called the DeWitt Garden Condominiums, but Scully would figure it out as soon as she got a whiff of the place. "What about cars, boss?" I asked Skinner. I hoped they weren't planning to have the four of us breeze into town with matching Tauruses. Mulder came back to life. "Harrington's not going to drive a Ford," he noted. "OC made the arrangements with motor pool," Skinner said. "Agent Givens, Luskin--you will use your personal vehicles." Givens nodded. With the cover stories they'd set up for Givens and me, our own cars would make the most sense. "Harrington's not going to drive anything American," Mulder said, and I had to agree with him. "Agent Scully, you've been matched with a Volvo," Skinner continued. "On my salary?" Scully asked. "That better be a ten-year-old Volvo." She had nothing to worry about. "Come on, boss, I'm sure Prescott the second bought something nice for Prescott Three to drive," Mulder said. He'd picked up the "boss" habit from me. Skinner grimaced. "Beemer. Okay? And you'd better take care of it," he said. The four of us were scheduled for another two days of training, but then word came that one of Johnny Cardell's correction officers tried to finish the job right there in the hospital, and the Bureau decided to hurry things along. = = = = I don't do well with driving ten hours straight. I headed out that evening and drove as long as I could keep the car in the lane. Then I spent my first night away from my wife in fifteen years and hit the road early the next morning. The motel's complimentary continental breakfast was piss-poor and they didn't provide lids for the Styrofoam cups, so an hour later I had to stop for more coffee. It was late afternoon when I reached Savant. The countryside hadn't changed, but the town itself--big difference. I had to follow the map to find my new home. When I was a kid, Savant Heights was the classy part of town, but now the big old homes had been split into apartments or converted for business. It seemed that every other house was selling beepers or renting videotapes. My landlady lived in the same building. I was expecting an older woman, some down-on-her-luck aristocrat now forced to take in lodgers. Ms. Kohl turned out to be younger than me. She gave me two sets of keys and warned me that the far end of the graveled parking area flooded when it rained. I was prepared to chat her up, tell her how I was semi-retired, looking to buy a little place of my own, retreating to the country, blah-blah-blah, but she didn't seem the least bit interested. God bless her. I also figured she'd tell me how her other new tenant worked at the Cardio-Thoracic Center, same as me. Jim Givens beat me into town, as I had expected. But Ms. Kohl didn't say a word, and I didn't get to "meet" him until the next day. = = = = I showed up at the Cardio-Thoracic Center nine the next morning. The administrator was supposed to be ready for me, but he was tied up with a phone call to Albany. "Go get a cup of coffee," he said, cupping his hand over the receiver. "The Department of Health is trying to tell me it'll be a month before my new doctor gets her license to practice in New York." Instead of the cafeteria, I headed for the security office. I wasn't officially on board yet, but I could still go greet my men. My crew received me with indifference and wariness, and they didn't impress me either. For starters, let's just say this was a group that made me feel young and svelte. I turned on the charm, commiserated over their underpaid, overworked existences, and then I asked them if they saw any problems with security at the hospital. None of them did. "Well, what about your star patient?" I asked. "I understand there was an attempted murder." They didn't know what I was talking about until I prodded them, then finally one of them answered me. Kirby Collins was the brightest star in my dim little galaxy. I guess the good thing about Kirby was he was too dumb to lie. "See, Jerry, I don't think there was no murder," he explained. "Change of shift, ya know? These things happen." "Kirby, you do know that Johnny Cardell is a convicted mobster, don't you? And the officer who was supposed to be guarding him turned off his respirator," I said. "Yeah, I know. But we get a lot of prisoners here. And whatever he used to be, now he's just another patient. I mean, he can't talk or nothing. It don't make sense that someone would want to waste him," Kirby said earnestly. "Okay, Kirby, I hear you. But if that's true, why did someone turn off his breathing machine?" I asked. I could tell by the way my guys were looking at me that this was a stupid question. Finally Kirby explained it, since I was too dumb to figure it out on my own. "I'm thinking, Jerry, that probably the alarm was ringing, and it was change of shift. He probably made a mistake when he was trying to turn off the alarm. Anyway, Johnny was okay, so what difference does it make?" Kirby's theory was the conventional wisdom on the matter. The police had questioned the corrections officer without charging him, and the Prison had him out on paid leave while they conducted their own investigation. That officer was our best lead so far. When I could get some privacy, I would call our Syracuse office and have them do a little gentle coaxing to put him back on his post. That way we could watch him and maybe find out who was pulling his strings. At noon the hospital served a free lunch for the new employees. Unfortunately it was accompanied by a presentation about fire safety. After a while the instructor shoved a cassette in the player, cut the lights, and left us alone to watch it. "Hey. Anyone free this Friday? I'm having a housewarming party." Scully pulled it off. New in town, just trying to be friendly. There were a couple of people in the class who did not work for the FBI, and I wanted to make sure they didn't accept the invitation. "Great. Where do you live?" I asked. Sure enough, once they understood that her condo was in the egg processing plant, the two locals declined to attend. Givens told Scully he'd come. Prescott Harrington III ignored her. = = = = Chief of Security was not the cushy spot that Skinner thought it would be. It was a pain in the ass. It's difficult to secure a hospital. The public is supposed to have access, and the staff is accustomed to the presence of strangers. Punks and junkies love hospitals because they're open all night and they have narcotics. The nurses, doctors, and patients see the security team as their personal servants and mechanics. "Fix my flat." "Drive me home." "Carry my bag." Other than Kirby, very few of my men were bright enough to perform these functions. Listen to this. A call came in to my office from one of the nurses: A patient's son had telephoned threatening to bring his shotgun and kill his mother, her doctor, and himself. My officer listened intently, taking notes on the details. And when the nurse was all done, he gave his reply. "Okay, ma'am, just give us a call when he gets there." So even if I was only the chief of security, and not working for the FBI, I would have had to take a personal interest in keeping Johnny alive. I made an appointment with the doctor who was making the day-to-day decisions regarding his care. Hey, what do you know? Turned out it was the same doctor I'd met earlier that week at the fire safety course. I asked if she could spare a few minutes to talk to me. I rarely closed my office door because I needed to keep an ear on the geniuses in the outer room. So I heard when Scully arrived. She introduced herself to the boys and told them she was there for an appointment with "Chief Luskin." She made a good impression, by the way. Later Kirby told me he wasn't sure about the whole idea of women as physicians, but Dr. Scully was "a real sweetheart." She was a real sweetheart. She came into my office with a big smile and shook my hand. Then she closed the door behind her. "No one's trying to kill Johnny Cardell. They're trying to kill me," she moaned. "Do you want some coffee?" I asked. "I am up to my eyeballs in coffee, Jerry. I am living on caffeine and sugar. I have been on duty for forty-eight hours straight!" "Is that legal?" I asked. "No, it's not legal, but if I go home now that will leave my *intern* in charge." She flopped down in a chair and put her feet up on my desk. She made "intern" sound like a synonym for turkey. "Do you mind?" she asked. "Just till the throbbing stops." "Not a problem," I assured her. "So, you don't think Cardell's in danger?" I poured myself a cup of coffee. "Cardell's on a banana peel, but no one's trying to kill him other than my clueless intern," she said. Then she reached for my cup of coffee. "He's on a banana peel?" I asked, pouring out another cup. "Oh, yeah. Big time. Playing hardball," she said. Took me a while to catch on, but the gist was this: Johnny Cardell was in critical, unstable condition. He'd been dead, technically speaking, a couple of times, but medical intervention had brought him back. "He's never going to die," she groaned. "He's going to live forever and I'm going to spend the rest of eternity keeping him alive." "When do you think he'll be able to testify?" I asked her. That would wrap up our chore here. "Testify? Never," she said. Suddenly she yanked her feet off my desk as if it was on fire. "What's the matter?" I asked. "My feet stink, don't they? I haven't had a shower in two days. Damn it all." She started pacing the room, and I could see she'd progressed to that point where exhaustion makes you restless. "When can you get some sleep?" I asked her. "My third-year is back on call at five. If things look quiet I'll go home for the night," she said. "How about an affidavit, then?" I asked. "Huh?" She was raking her hand through her hair, like when you're trying to get the sand out, after the beach. "When do you think we'll be able to get a statement from Cardell?" I guess I'll always be a cop at heart; I want to see the bad guys in jail. If Johnny was too sick to go to court, the judge would probably accept his sworn testimony. "I told you. Never. He can't talk, God knows if he can hear. He seems to make eye contact now and then, but that's about it." She sat down again. "This is bad," I said. "Very bad," Scully agreed. "And Mulder doesn't use bleach." Huh? She was starting to scare me. "Dana, I have an idea," I suggested. "Why don't you take a little nap right now? I'll wake you in an hour." "He did my laundry, but he doesn't use bleach," she explained. "Thanks, Jerry." She closed her eyes and she was asleep. = = = = After I woke Scully, I headed for the cafeteria. Thursday: vegetable lasagna. I carried my tray past Mulder's table, but he called me over: "Hey, security guy! We want to report a crime." He was eating lunch with a skinny guy who looked to be even younger than Givens. I decided to join them. "Ignore him," the other guy told me. "He's having a bad day." "Jerry Luskin," I introduced myself. "I just took over as chief of security." "Rolando Espinosa," he said, shaking my hand. "I'm trying to keep him out of trouble." "Good luck," I said. "That's his middle name." "I've paid my dues," Mulder whined. "You're wasting your time waiting for me to screw up while someone else is robbing the store." "If you think Patty's giving you a hard time, talk to her," Rolando said. "Don't get security involved." "She's a thief," Mulder said. "Why do you think we're out of Tylenol?" "She took *all* the Tylenol?" Rolando asked indignantly. "I think she left some suppositories," Mulder said. "Why, you got a headache?" "Is that a come-on?" Rolando fluttered his lashes. "Look, fellows, frankly I'm not that interested in petty pilfering. And Harrington, you should have plenty to do just keeping your own nose clean," I said. "Officer, she takes the ice creams off the meal trays," he said. "And the little packages of Fig Newtons." I have to tell you, that got to me. I mean, when you're laid up in the hospital feeling lousy with nothing to do, you care about things like that. I'd be mad as hell if someone took my Fig Newtons. "I'll send one of my men over to investigate," I said. There was no point in making a federal case out of it, but I hoped that Mulder's suspect would back off, once she knew she was being watched. "Thank you, sir," Mulder said. "I think we'd all feel a lot safer." = = = = end part 1/8 Failure to Die, by Kel 2/8 That Friday was Scully's housewarming party. After work I stopped off at my apartment to call home, and then I drove to Scully's place with Givens. I showed him some of Savant's points of interest along the way. Mickey's Market was a 7-Eleven now. I used to love Mickey's. He sold something I've never seen anywhere else--frozen chocolate-covered bananas. And at the far end of his long magazine rack, at the back of the store, he had magazines I've never seen anywhere else. The old fairgrounds had been paved over for a K-Mart, but the street was still called Fairgrounds Road. "The Clark County Fair. Same acts every year," I told Givens. "Now, up there on the right. You see that crumbling fortress?" In the dark, the abandoned monstrosity loomed at us like something from Hitchcock. "Is that the prison?" he asked as we approached. "Rolling Hills Psychiatric Hospital," I said. "It's more than twenty years since they shut it down, but they still can't agree on what to do with it." "That's interesting." He yawned. I had a yen to drive past the high school, but I figured Givens had suffered enough. "Jerry," he said sharply, snapping me back from memory lane, "do you see that?" "Where?" I asked. My kids drive me nuts with that. Can't get it through their heads that if I'm watching the road, they have to give me some hint what they want me to look at. "Ahead, by the loony bin. Better pull over." "Okay, okay," I said, flipping on my turn signal as I pushed on the brake. "But do you mind telling me what's going on?" I still couldn't see what he was looking at, but he sounded antsy as hell. "A hitchhiker. Something strange about him," Givens intoned. A chill went through me even as I heard him start to snicker. "You son of a bitch," I swore, as Givens started to howl. "Gotcha!" he crowed. "That's not funny," I said angrily. He was lucky I didn't run us off the road. Givens was out of control, wheezing with laughter. "Are you ready to apologize?" I meant to sound stern, but his laugh was infectious. So the quiet, serious kid from Detroit turned out to be a comic. I could handle it. "Yeah, man, I'm sorry," he gasped. "I didn't realize you local boys took your legends so seriously." "Jimmy, it's not a legend," I said. "Course not, old man," he taunted me. "Mysterious hitchhiker, pick him up by the local nuthouse, he tells you to drive up to suicide hill. . ." I guess every town has a legend like that. In our story, the ghostly passenger directs the driver to take him to Leyden's Ridge. It's the highest point in town, with a radio transmission tower on top. At this point, the versions differ. Maybe the hitchhiker starts to climb the transmitter and the driver follows. Sometimes the driver feels compelled to make the climb on his own. It's a good story when somebody knows how to tell it right. The trouble is that every summer we get a slew of kids climbing up the transmitter tower for real. So the part about the ghost hitchhiking out of the mental hospital may be a legend. But the boys who get bored and drunk and dare each other to make that climb, that part is real. I don't know how many kids managed to kill themselves over the years. The boy who would have been valedictorian the year I graduated ended up as a paraplegic. But that wasn't the worst that happened. "You want to hear something really frightening, kid? I'm going to tell you about Scott Ellison." Scott Ellison was very real, and he wasn't a ghost story. Scott Ellison was the guy who first taught me that there are worse things than dying. "Come on, Jerry, get over it," Givens said. "I was just playing with you a little." He'd been a good sport, listening to all my nostalgic drivel. "Yeah, I know. I was just playing along," I said. "So who's Scott Ellison?" he asked. I was sorry I had brought it up, but I gave him the condensed version. Scott was the kid next door, about ten years older than me. Plenty of kids climb the tower to the top without incident, but Scott must have touched the wrong thing. I don't know how many volts went through him. Enough to blow him off that tower and burn his arms off. Not literally. But burned him bad enough that they had to be amputated. Yeah. Both. When he came home from the hospital he used to stay in his room all day. He seemed a little better after he got his prostheses. He worked hard with those things. Practiced. When he thought he was good enough, he tried to commit suicide. He should have practiced more. He screwed it up. His mother visited every day. Not his dad, though. He couldn't take it. I don't think Scott knew the difference anyway. We arrived at Scully's building in silence. Like I said, the old egg processing plant had been converted for residential use, but the architect had succeeded in preserving the original character of the structure. The prison was charming, by comparison. I parked next to Mulder's BMW. There was an intercom panel by the main entrance. I rang the bell for Scully's place, and she buzzed us in. Scully opened the door, and we entered directly into a small living room with a kitchenette tucked into one corner. She must have gotten some sleep because she looked a lot better. Mulder lounged on the couch in the center of the room, squinting at a small TV. He raised his palm in greeting. Two large cylindrical candles burned on the coffee table and a mushroom-shaped candle flickered on the kitchen counter. The odors of pine and citrus and wax mingled with the smell of rotten eggs. I felt weird for a minute, like I should have brought a gift. Like Mulder was going to get up and offer to show me his new chainsaw. "Three minutes. One point lead," Mulder said, and Givens and I crowded onto the couch with him. The clatter of dishes as Scully set the table made Mulder reach for the remote to turn up the volume. "I'll do that, Agent Scully," Givens offered, but he didn't actually get up until the first time-out. "Nice threads, Mulder," I said. I haven't known a lot of guys like Prescott Harrington III. Maybe they do wear cashmere sweaters and Savane pants. "I had a meeting with my parole officer," Mulder explained. "Otherwise I could have worn Levis and my FBI T-shirt." "Damn, this is nice," Givens said as he moved Mulder's jacket from the table. "Lamb leather, right? Damn. Do you get to keep it?" Mulder started to answer, looked around the room, looked to Scully, and smiled sheepishly. "The occasional item does find its way into the permanent collection, yes," Scully answered crisply. They exchanged glances--a whole conversation without words. "Can I help with anything else?" Givens asked Scully. "No, thank you. Go ahead and watch the end of the game," she said. Allan Houston sank a totally improbable three-pointer--hell, he wasn't even facing the hoop--and the back of the couch jolted into me as Givens gave it a smack of frustration. "Damn," he muttered. "Yes!" Mulder exulted. The intercom buzzed, and Scully opened the door. "Domino's," Mulder noted. "They won't deliver to my place. One of the disadvantages of living on a private road." "Why don't you hire a cook?" Scully asked sourly. "Get yourself a whole domestic staff." "That's a good idea," Mulder said. "It's a long walk from the hot tub to the kitchen." Some agents say they wouldn't want a woman partner, but in my experience the male-female partnerships work the best. See, two men hanging out together requires an explanation. Givens and I might as well drive around in a cruiser with the lights flashing. But a man and a woman, especially once they get to know each other, they just seem like they're married. "Is there any place to get good pizza in DC?" Givens asked. "Because I haven't found it." "No," said Mulder and I together. "What's wrong with the pizza in DC?" Scully asked. She and Mulder locked glances again. It was kind of like watching two mimes play tennis. "Nothing," said Mulder at last. "It's delicious." "I'm always eager to hear your opinions, Mulder, I'd just appreciate some concrete facts to back them up," she said. "You may believe that, Scully, but the truth is you dismiss all my facts as fabrications. If I said these pizzas were round, you'd ask me how I knew that," he said. "I'm a scientist," Scully said. "And as a scientist--" "As every scientist knows, pie are square," Givens said, very pleased with himself. "Good one, Jim. Let's have some pizza," I said. Scully had ordered two large pies, one with olives and mushrooms, one with sausage and pepperoni. Givens and I were very, very careful to consume equal amounts of each. It occurred to me that if Givens and I weren't there, Mulder and Scully would have wrangled out their differences by now. This was a team accustomed to presenting a united front. "Do you two argue a lot?" I asked. "Or just about pizza?" "We don't argue," Mulder said. "I propose a theory and she dismisses it. Argument implies an intellectual process." "Oh for heaven's sake!" Scully snapped. "Go ahead and propose your theory, Mulder. Givens and Luskin and I are busy trying to catch an assassin, but you go right ahead and make up ghost stories." Mulder began to present his case: "Fact: Johnny Cardell ought to be dead. Fact: You can't explain either why he's so sick or why he's still alive. Fact: The ultrasound," he said. "You can't tell me what I saw or didn't see unless you're willing to look at it yourself." "Mulder, I saw the ultrasound," Scully said. "You did?" he asked in surprise. "You said I was a nave and unreliable observer." "And I stand by that. But I reviewed the recording anyway." She took a large bite. "And? What did you see, Scully?" "What did I see?" she echoed, her mouth full. It wasn't clear to me if either of them remembered that Givens and I were in the room. "I saw exactly what I expected. Liver, gall bladder, common bile duct. All roughly normal," Scully said. "And what else, Scully?" he prodded. "Kidney," she said. "Damn it, Scully, I was there when that ultrasound was taken," Mulder said. "You saw something else, too, didn't you?" "Mulder," she said, shifting her eyes over my way. She was warning him not to embarrass himself in front of outsiders. "You must have seen it," he implored her. "The image varied and it wasn't always visible, but you must have seen it." "Mulder, please," she said quietly. "In the middle of the screen. A dark figure, vaguely humanoid in form. Evil and foreign. Leering at us," he said. "You know, I could never make head or tails of those ultrasounds," I said. It was true. I'd seen a number of them, now that expecting parents were getting them as souvenirs from the obstetrician, but they always looked like moonscapes to me. "You saw it, Scully, you had to," Mulder begged her. "Mulder, I did not see a demon, leering or otherwise," she said. Her voice was low, as if she didn't want Givens or me to hear her disagreeing with her partner. "What I saw was the portal vein." "The portal vein? The portal vein?" He sounded incredulous. "Are you sure of that, Scully? Are you sure it wasn't the planet Venus?" I'd like to say I admired his confidence or his honesty. But what I was really thinking was that he was a little long in the tooth to be playing the angry young man. I took back some of those points I'd given him for not getting himself killed, and I awarded them to Scully. "How many abdominal ultrasounds have you examined, Agent Mulder?" Givens asked. Mulder didn't have a snappy comeback, but he made a pretty respectable recovery. "Okay. I stand corrected regarding the ultrasound. But the fact remains that Cardell's condition defies conventional explanation and that this whole area demonstrates unusual levels of negative psychic energy," Mulder said. "Lay it on us, Yappi," I said, and Scully's ice-blue glare told me I might want to stick to calling him Mulder. "Let's examine the evidence," Mulder said. "Exhibit A--the aroma in this apartment. How would you describe it?" "Sulfur," said Scully. "And thanks so much for bringing it up." "Sulfur, exactly," said Mulder. "You know, sulfur was known to the ancients. The word itself is from the Sanskrit, *sulvere*, or, in Latin, *sulpur*. Or course there are numerous biblical citations; in Genesis, it is referred to as brimstone." "Is this going to be on the test?" It was kind of fun hearing Givens rag on somebody else. Mulder gave him a hurt look, but he continued to lecture. "Sulfur is found in the vicinity of volcanoes, which may explain its long association with the fires of hell. You grew up here, Jerry. Any volcanoes in the area?" I didn't want to mess with him too much, not with Scully ready to smack me down, but he was making it so easy. "Why, no, Mulder, none that I know of," I said. "Meteors contain sulfur. I take it they're not common here either?" Mulder looked at me, eyebrows raised, waiting for my confirmation. He reminded me of Mark, my oldest. When he was little, he'd get all serious and wide-eyed, trying to talk me into something preposterous. "I promise, Daddy, I'll clean the stable and I'll pay for his food from my allowance." Mark didn't convince me either. "Ben Stein," Givens said, snapping his fingers triumphantly. "That's who you sound like. It was driving me nuts, couldn't think of his name." "Mulder, are you saying that in the absence of meteors and volcanoes, the smell of sulfur indicates the presence of evil?" Scully said. Once again she was practically whispering. "Scully, it sounds so stupid when you phrase it like that," Mulder complained. "You know, Mulder, I really don't recall any volcanoes or meteors falling here. Not on this exact spot, anyway," I said. "And yet the odor is intense here, wouldn't you agree?" Mulder asked. "Goddamn it," said Scully. "I've used sprays and plug-ins and that stuff you vacuum out of the carpet. I bought some plants, but I couldn't get home all week and they died. And don't know what else I can do, Mulder, but I don't even care because I'm never here anyway!" "I think you missed the point," Mulder said. "Eggs for Industry," I said. "What?" Scully snapped. "Before this was a condo, it was a factory. Eggs for Industry. They bought outdated eggs and sold them for commercial use," I said. "Hence the smell," said Scully. "I'm living in a rotten egg factory." She didn't sound happy about it but she was taking it in stride. I suppose it was better than finding out you lived on the outskirts of hell. "That was my next question," Mulder said, tipping back in his chair. "After I eliminated volcanoes and meteors, I was going to ask if there had ever been a rotten egg factory on this site." "Listen and learn, Mulder-san," I said, "for the most complex question may have the simplest answer." I brought my hands together and bowed my head, a gesture he returned. "Teach me, old learned one. For your land is dark and full of mystery," Mulder said. "Just don't ask him about the ghostly hitchhiker," Givens said. "You'll be sorry." "I heard that one, Givens," Mulder answered. "And even I know you can't hitchhike without arms." = = = = end 2/8 Failure to Die, by Kel part 3/8 = = = = I was on my own for most of the weekend. Givens was getting claustrophobic living in a town where everyone knew your business, and he decided to give himself a day in the big city--Syracuse. Mulder was scheduled to work. And Scully, well, it goes without saying. She was working too. I poked around town awhile, even did the dutiful nephew bit with my Aunt June. By Sunday I was homesick enough that I was starting to miss those tag sales and flea markets. I sat through Forrest Gump, with the help of a jumbo popcorn and a giant Tootsie Roll, and then I went home to bed, where I had bizarre tie-dyed dreams about the sixties. I was at the Monterey Pop Festival, but I couldn't see the band because Scully was in the row ahead of me, dancing on her seat. I asked her nicely to get down, but a red-eyed Mulder growled, "Peace, man," and I decided to drop it. I was reflecting that Givens wasn't in the dream because he hadn't been born yet, when I realized he was on the stage, his paisley tie trying to ease the transition from his pinstriped suit to his bushy Afro. He set his guitar ablaze, and as it whined its swan song, he told us about class C fire extinguishers, the only type you should use on electrical fires. But even without my bizarre dream, I would have been awake when the phone rang at four A.M., because a man my age does not drink a thirty-two ounce Pepsi and sleep through the night. I had to rush back to the hospital, where some smart-ass punks had mistaken the emergency room for a self-service all-night pharmacy. Fortunately, no one got hurt. I went over the course of events with the city police and the ER staff. "Course I gave them the drugs," the charge nurse said. "Fine by me if they kill themselves." She sounded tough, but her eagerness to repeat the story told me she was more scared than she let on. She had plenty to say about my lard-ass officer who did nothing about the situation except for dialing 911, but I didn't fault him for that. "Hey, you don't pay me enough to get myself killed," he said staunchly, and basically, I agreed. At least he didn't make things worse. The city cops had their routine down, and I was pretty sure they'd catch the perps. It's not that hard in a town where everyone knows your business. I was in my office writing up the report when the phone rang. The ID showed the number for the surgical ICU so I grabbed the call myself, thinking it might be Scully. "Jerry? I don't know if you remember me." She was talking low, as if she didn't want to be overheard. "Nancy Benton," she said. "Used to be Nancy Engels." "Nancy, sure," I said. "You played the guitar." "So did you," she answered. I'd forgotten about that. "What can I do for you?" I asked. I didn't think she'd call me at six in the morning just to see if we could have lunch some time. "I must be getting soft in my old age," she said. "I let Mr. Ivankov's mother sit in his room all night. But now I can't get her to go home, and my head nurse is going to have a cow when she gets in." "I'm on my way," I said. My officer was doubly relieved, I think, when I left to handle the call. He didn't have to go himself, and he wouldn't feel me looking over his shoulder any more. Working in a hospital is entirely different from being a patient or visiting someone in a hospital. I walked right through the doors to the ICU, ignoring all those signs that make you feel like you must be doing something wrong. Nancy was waiting for me. Luckily she was wearing a name tag. "Jerry," she greeted me with a tired smile. Hell, she'd been up all night. "Ivankov is one of our long-term patients. It's a strain on the family, coming in every day, hoping to see some improvement." "So you felt bad for the guy's mother," I said. "Let her visit at night." "It's really easier for everyone," Nancy explained. "The mother and the wife have been fighting. So we'd have the mother come in at night so she could see him without all that tension." "That was nice of you," I said. I understood perfectly. My mother-in-law tolerates me only because I'm related to her grandchildren. "She usually leaves around midnight, but not last night. Just now I offered to drive her home, and she says she's not going to leave him alone," Nancy said. "I'll talk to her," I said. I knew how I'd play this one: Jerry Luskin, authority figure. "She doesn't speak much English," Nancy warned me. "Good luck with her." "Hopefully I won't have to wrestle her to the ground," I said with a reassuring grin. Well, one look at Mrs. Ivankov, and I knew I couldn't wrestle her to the ground. She was almost as tall as me, with a neck like a linebacker and a bust like that woman in the Marx Brothers movies. "Mrs. Ivankov, I'm Jerome Luskin, chief of security," I said in my deepest voice. "I must insist that you leave the premises." "Please. Please," she said. She sounded intimidated, all right, but she wasn't going to fold. "Ma'am, I understand your concern for your son, but I'm absolutely sure he's getting the best possible care," I said. Yeah. Like I would know. "Yes, yes," she agreed. "Wonderful care. Wonderful people who work here. But very bad place." "You need to go home and let the people here take care of him," I said. "Help him get better so he can get out of this bad place." "I protect him so he can get better. So demon cannot steal his strength." Her thick accent made me question if I understood her correctly. "Who told you about a demon?" I asked, ratcheting my tone down from tough guy to sympathetic ear. "Nobody told me," she said indignantly. "A secret. Nobody talk." "Then why do you think there is a demon?" I asked gently. "I see him! I see myself," she said. "You will tell me also there is no such thing, but I see it, over him, not let him wake up." "You see it now?" I asked, offering her my handkerchief. She shook her head. She was doing that silent sob thing, with her great bosom heaving up and down, but she didn't make a sound until she honked loudly into her own hanky. "I keep it away," she said at last. "But before, I see it. On him, on top of my son. Very bad thing, trying to hurt him, trying to suck up his strength." "You saw it yourself?" I asked, waiting for her to explain that while she hadn't actually seen it, she knew it was there, and someone else had seen it. "Somebody must stay with him," she said. "If somebody stay with him, I will go." I had a nagging suspicion, despite her denial, that someone had been giving her ideas, and I decided to go with it. "Would you like Prescott to stay with him?" I asked. "Yes, yes, very good," she agreed. "Very nice man. He drive me home last week." Bingo, I thought. Clumsy questioning by Mulder was the source of this woman's delusion. "I'll find somebody to stay with him," I promised, and I went out to tell Nancy she was off the hook. Nancy was talking to a heavyset blond woman, and both of them agreed that "her majesty the boss" would be a raging bitch if she found visitors around this early. "I know it's crazy," I said, "but Mrs. Ivankov swears there's a demon trying to suck the life out of her son. She's afraid to leave him alone." I thought Nancy would be relieved, but instead she turned pale. "I'll sit with him," the other woman said. "We'll take turns until visiting hours." "You'll get in trouble, Beth," Nancy said. "The secretary has to be out at the desk." The blonde looked at me. "Can you stay in the room until we work something out? His wife will be here at eleven, and she's never late." The two women exchanged glances, and I would have loved to hear what else they had to say, but they weren't going to talk in front of me. I know they sighed with relief when I agreed to help out. I went back to Ivankov's room and told his mother that I would watch him. "Why do you think the demon wants to hurt him?" I asked her. She gathered up her purse, coat, glasses, and shopping bags, and it was a moment before she answered. "You do not understand," she said. "A man can eat bread and a plant can eat sunshine, but a demon must eat pain and fear." She yawned as she left the room and I settled down in the chair she had vacated. Mr. Ivankov, I have to tell you, did not look like ICU material. He was around my age, but tan and muscled, and his breathing was quiet and comfortable. He looked like he should be taking a snooze on a chaise longue by a swimming pool. About five minutes later Nancy came back to the room. "Thanks, Jerry, I'll watch him," she said. "You've been up all night, Nancy. Go home and get some sleep," I told her. "I'm just staying until Beth can take over. Brenda from housekeeping will watch until Prescott's ready to do his AM care, and if the wife isn't in by then, Beth will take her break here." I had given Mrs. Ivankov my word that I wouldn't leave her son unguarded, and I like to keep my promises. But why was Nancy so serious about keeping up the vigil? "You've seen it too," I said. I made it sound like a statement, because I wanted her to feel comfortable talking about it, but I was careful not to lead her. "No. But I've felt it many times, and I've seen its image," she said. "Its image? Where?" I asked. "Sometimes it shows up in x-rays. They used to take the machines out of service and run diagnostics, but now they just toss out the films and repeat the x-ray," she said. "Toss them out," I repeated. "In other words, you can't show me one of these pictures." "Everyone knows about the x-rays," she said. "Same old Savant," I said. We were having this chat as if there was no one else in the room, and for all practical purposes, there wasn't. "Nothing to do but gossip and pass around urban legends." "When you work nights in a hospital, you realize that there are lots of things you can't see," she said. "Believe me, Jerry, evil is very real." "There are evil men, and evil women, and unfortunately, evil children," I said. "That doesn't mean there are evil demons." "I'm not saying it's a demon. But pain can be stronger than death," she said. "You're tired," I said. "Go home and get some sleep." "Tired? I'm delirious, or I wouldn't be talking to you like this. But there's been a lot of suffering here in this building, for going on a hundred years. At some point it took on a life of its own, and a shape." "Have you been talking to Prescott Harrington?" I asked. He'd have to watch what he said, because he had everyone going on this demon stuff. "The new orderly? Yeah, all the time," she sighed wistfully. "In my dreams." = = = = By afternoon I was beat. I was tired of chasing my tail about stuff that had nothing to do with the case. I was fed up with Mulder's growing circle of believers. Add to that, the stuffed peppers from the cafeteria were hitting me exactly the way my wife's always do, and I was tired of running everyone out of the bathroom. I decided to go home early. I stepped out, squinting at the light of day, and as I crossed the parking lot I noticed a dark sedan pulling in. My spider senses started tingling. I got in my car and waited. Hoods aren't the only ones who drive dark sedans, after all. Hell, half of Washington drives dark sedans. But this dark sedan smelled like hoods. And when four men got out, with their nice suits and pinky rings, well, I didn't need the BSU to tell me that these guys might fit the profile. I watched them as they walked to the door. One guy took the lead, it seemed to me. He was older than the others, a little meatier, too. I thought I recognized him, but then I wondered if I was being like Mulder, seeing wiseguys all over the way he sees demons. Then the big guy turned to say something to one of his goons, and I knew for sure. Nicky "the Bear" Postino. What the fuck was he doing here? It just didn't fit. I followed in after them, keeping my distance. I had to figure Nicky's fuzz sensor was at least as sharp as my mutt sensor. See, Nicky Postino was not someone that should be trying to take out Cardell. It didn't make any sense. But you never know with these guys, they're all related, all into each other's business. Maybe something else was going down that we didn't know about. Maybe Postino owed a favor to the Sartore family, after that fiasco in Newark. I lost them when they took the elevator and I raced back to the desk, startling the receptionist. "I want you to page Dr. Scully for me," I said. "Do you know his beeper number?" she asked. "Don't use the beeper. I want you to page her overhead, on the loudspeaker," I said. That was our plan, so Mulder and Givens would hear it too. "We're not supposed to do that without authorization," she simpered at me. If I had known how to use the system I would have done it myself. "Very good," I said as patiently as I could, taking out my ID badge. "Oh," she said with a little gasp of respect. "Now. Page Dr. Scully for a Code G in the lobby," I said. Code G meant "gangster." Tricky, huh? Mulder had promised he'd page me for a Code D if the demon showed up. Scully rang me on my cell phone right away. "Nick Postino is in the house," I told Scully. "Nicky the Bear?" She was as surprised as I was. I heard Mulder's voice behind me. "I'm on it," he said over his shoulder as he raced away. He'd run down the stairs while I was watching for the elevators, and I hadn't even realized he was there. I made a quick call to the Syracuse office and then I raced up after Mulder. Except I took the elevator. Scully didn't exactly jump when I dodged into the ICU, but I could see she'd been watching the door. "Nothing here," she said in a harsh whisper. "Nothing." And then she looked at me and asked, "Where's Mulder?" Like I was hiding him in my pocket or something. "He's not armed," she reminded me. Well, neither was she or Givens. And Givens hadn't even made an appearance. Next thing you know the overhead loudspeaker was squawking at us: "Code G in Pediatrics." Scully almost knocked me over running for the door. I caught up with her and followed her to the stairwell and down to Pediatrics. There was enough of a commotion down there that no one even noticed when Scully and I ran into the unit. Nicky the Bear had Mulder by the shirt, and he was shaking his beefy finger at him. "What the hell's the matter with you?" he was screaming. "You stupid or something?" A chubby child in Jurassic Park pj's was screaming at him too: "Don't hurt my grandpa!" The other three thugs were enjoying it all. Finally they noticed Scully and me. "Hey, Nick, look who ain't dead yet," one of them announced. "It's Jerry the Feeb." Nick released Mulder with a dismissive shove. "Jerry, what are you doing here?" he asked warmly. We had one of those awkward moments when you don't know if you're going to hug each other or not. "I retired from the FBI. I'm in charge of security," I said after we'd released each other from our clumsy embrace. "Perfect. That's what I need. This crazy guy is in my face, I don't know what his problem is." Nicky pointed at Mulder with the greatest annoyance. The little kid was stomping on Mulder's feet now. "I've had trouble with him before," I said. "What are you doing here, Nicky?" "It's my grandson, Little Nick. He needs another operation. But he's going to be just fine, aren't you, Nicky?" He beamed at the child. "Hey, Nicky. Don't kick. It isn't nice." Before I took Mulder away, I asked Nick to drop by and see me if he had time, and a little later he was kind enough to comply. We chewed the fat a bit, and he showed me pictures of the rest of his brood. "I heard about Johnny Cardell," he told me. "They say he'd be better off dead." "Heard anything else?" I asked him. "Anyone planning to do the job?" "Whack Johnny?" he asked incredulously. "What the hell for?" = = = = Finding a way for the four of us to meet turned out to be a major headache on this case. Luckily Givens and I had no problem, since we were practically roommates, and Mulder and Scully were together all the time, both of them working in the Post-Surgical ICU. No question, it was Scully who had it the roughest on this investigation, and the rotten eggs turned out to be the least of her troubles. Keeping her patients alive was no picnic. It didn't leave much time for anything else. I used to call up to the post-surgical ICU every couple of days and summon Prescott Harrington to my office. I made sure everyone knew he was an ex-con and that I was keeping my eye on him. Usually Mulder would saunter into my office and say something snotty and I'd holler at him to close the door and shut his mouth. Of course Mulder loved it when I called him in to meet with me. He spent forty-plus hours a week up to his elbows in blood and shit, so our little visits were a real treat. He was working a double-shift one Wednesday, a couple of weeks into the assignment, so I figured I should give him a break. I called up to the nurse in charge and told her I needed to see my felon again. "Just make sure he doesn't get lost on the way back," she said. "I've got a full unit and I'm short-staffed as it is." Mulder was at my door five minutes later. It was too bad Mr. Andover-Choate hadn't learned any manners in the pen. "Jerry, baby! You're going to have to do something about security in the parking lot, my good man. I found an Herbalife leaflet on my windshield." "Can it, Snowbird," I barked at him. "I just talked to your PO and he thinks you've got a spoon up your big nose again." Mulder closed the door behind him and we dropped the charade. "Hey, Luskin, do you know the technical term for Johnny Cardell's current condition?" he asked me. "They call it T.F. Bundy syndrome." "Bundy? Like Ted Bundy?" I had learned a lot from Mulder about life and death in the ICU. For one thing, he thought it was highly plausible that the corrections officer really had turned off the respirator by accident when he only meant to silence the alarm. "Totally fucked, but unfortunately not dead yet," Mulder explained. "Couldn't happen to a nicer guy," I reminded him. "The question is, do you still believe he's being targeted?" "Well, just this morning someone stuck a knife in his back." He said it very casually, but he was eyeing me, waiting for my reaction. I sat up. "With two corrections officers on duty? They had to be in on it. We're going to squeeze them until they tell us who did it," I said. "I know who did it. It was Scully," he said. "Har-de-har-har," I said. Mulder loved to give me all the gory details. Every time Scully rammed a lamp up somebody's butt or a snake down their throat, he had to tell me about it because he knew it made me want to puke. He described how Scully had poked a big needle between Cardell's ribs, and then cut a slit, and he had me going until he told me she had stuck her finger in there too. "Sure, Mulder. And then I bet she pulled out a plum," I said. "You know what, Luskin? You have to get out of this office more," he said. I realized he was right. I had my doubts by this time, but with nowhere else to start, I'd have to spend some time hanging out with Prescott and Johnny. = = = = end 3/8 Failure to Die, by Kel 4/8 Givens was out on the front porch when I got home, sitting on the steps and smoking a cigarette. It's twenty years since I quit, but at that moment I wanted a smoke so much I could taste it. I sat down next to Jimmy to share the sunset with him and catch a precious whiff of second-hand smoke. "Don't start, man," Givens said. "I'll quit when I'm good and ready." I kept my mouth shut and let him enjoy the rest of his cigarette. Finally he pitched the butt onto the sidewalk. "That Dana Scully is a major ball-buster," he said with a sigh. That took me by surprise. I never found Scully to be a problem. "Is she nagging you about your smoking?" I asked him. Givens had missed out entirely on the incident with Nicky the Bear because he'd been outside sneaking a cigarette. He never heard the overhead announcement. Givens didn't answer. "Sometimes it's different, working with a woman," I offered. "It's not about that," he snorted as he rose to his feet. "Oh, just forget it. Come on. I'll make you dinner." Givens and I were eating most of our meals at the Boulevard Diner, which had expanded since I was a kid but still made the best home-fries in the world. It wasn't a good place to talk, though Givens's apartment was small, but it was a nice set-up. I only used two of my rooms anyway. We sat at his wood-tone Formica table and ate Rice-a-Roni with crescent rolls. That kid could really cook. "You don't know me very well, Jerry," Givens said at last. "I know you've got a good record," I said. "Four years in the Navy, top of your class at Lehigh, CPA, lots of commendations in Detroit. Come on, Jimmy, they wouldn't have brought you to Washington if you weren't on the ball." I figured he was beating himself up because he'd missed out on making a fool of himself in front of Nick Postino. Maybe he was asking himself why he'd been teamed up with a burn-out like me or a flake like Mulder. "I'm not looking for a pep-talk," he said softly. "I just want you to know that I'm a normal guy, not a weirdo or a mystic, nothing like that. And I know I was kidding with you about that hitchhiker, but I don't do practical jokes, especially not where it involves patients." I nodded, waiting for him to bring the threads together. "Dr. Scully asked me to shoot an x-ray," he continued. I nodded again. "Cardell. She wanted to confirm the placement of his nasoduodenal tube and rule out aspiration," he said. "Uh, Jim? Does it matter whether or not I know what you're talking about?" I asked him. "She wanted to make sure that he was being fed into his stomach and not his lungs," he explained. "And no, it doesn't really matter." Every time he paused, I gave him a little nod so he'd go on. "I was careful taking the x-ray," he said. "I knew I was rusty and I didn't want to screw it up. And she had told me exactly what she was looking for--I knew she needed to see the lungs and below the diaphragm." "What happened?" I asked. "I developed the x-ray. But the image. . . it was like, I don't know, like a cave painting or something. Ugly. A hideous little face on a long, twisting neck." Givens looked at me with narrowed eyes, waiting for my reaction. "A demon, perhaps?" I asked, reminding him of how Mulder had misinterpreted something he saw on the ultrasound. Of course I was also thinking of what Nancy had told me. "Maybe it was somebody's idea of a joke," Givens said. "You know, Jerry, it's really not funny. I had to go back with the portable machine and take another x-ray." "Pain in the ass," I sympathized. "Mulder complained the whole time 'cause he'd just made the bed and I was wrinkling his sheets," Givens said. "Screw 'im," I said. "A bum like Snowbird can stand to do a little honest work." Givens smiled. "Yeah. Funny," he said. "I took another x-ray. Doubly careful this time. I developed it right away." "This one came out?" I asked. "Yeah. I checked. Lungs, diaphragm, feeding tube. I'm no radiologist, but I looked it over and it was okay. Normal. I walked it back to the ICU myself. Stuck it on the light box. Walked away." I took another crescent roll. They get greasy if you try to save them for later. "Then I got paged back to the ICU. Stat. Of course, everything you do for Dr. Scully is stat," he complained. "She's standing by the light box, hands on her hips, tight little frown." "Dr. Scully can be very exacting," I said. "Jerry, I can't blame Scully for this. And I can't even begin to explain it. She had the x-ray there. And it was definitely the one I just took, or at least it was labeled exactly the same. And there are the lungs, and the diaphragm, the feeding tube. But the guy, the patient in the x-ray, he's got his hands on his throat. It's like he's trying to choke himself." "You didn't notice that when you took the picture?" I asked him. "He wasn't doing it when I took the picture!" Givens protested. "I'm not an amateur! Anyway, Mulder was right there, I think one of us would have seen it." "What was Scully's explanation?" I asked. "Dr. Scully thinks Agent Mulder and I are playing around when we should be getting our work done, because God knows she's doing two jobs without any help from anyone," Givens said. "Well, if it's not you. . ." I said. Givens shook his head. "It's not Mulder," he said. "Yeah, I know, I've heard all about his demon that feeds on suffering. But I don't believe he would falsify evidence, and there is no way he could have done this right under my nose." "Okay, Jimmy, take it easy," I said. "Tomorrow I'll spend some time in the ICU. See what I can figure out." "Thanks, Jerry. Thanks a lot. Cause the worst part is, you listen to how Mulder says it, and you start to believe it yourself." = = = = I brought a box of doughnuts the next morning when I went to visit the ICU. Mulder started to show me around, but after the third time someone asked him for his help, he gave up the guided tour and went back to work. The only people who weren't busy were the two corrections officers guarding Johnny Cardell. They sat outside his room on a couple of swivel chairs drinking coffee. I pulled up a chair of my own and offered them my doughnuts. One of the loafers turned out to be the guy who had turned off Johnny's respirator. I figured he owed me, since I'd help get him back on the job. I asked him about the incident. "Oh, that again. Jeez!" he said, wiping some Bavarian cream out of his moustache with the back of his hand. "I pushed the wrong button, and it's like I'm never gonna hear the end of it." "What do you mean?" I asked, reaching for a plain cruller. The guard told me his version: That big machine next to the bed, which was a ventilator, not a respirator, made a lot of noise. Sometimes it rang like a telephone, and sometimes it put out this steady high-pitched whine. Sometimes the noise stopped by itself and sometimes it didn't. There was a button on the machine to make the ringing noise stop and another button to make it stop whining. Usually someone would come in, look the ventilator over, and do something to make it shut up. But this time it was change of shift and all anybody seemed to care about was getting out the door. Fred was getting a headache, listening to that thing. He'd seen the staff take care of this hundreds of times and he decided to take matters into his own hands. He went over to the machine and pushed a button. It worked great. Everything got quiet. "Sound like a perfectly honest mistake," I said. I could see now why the cops and even Mulder believed this guy. He was telling the truth. I offered him another doughnut. "You must get a good view of what goes on in this hospital," I said. "Notice anything fishy?" "Oh, yeah. The new doc. Very fishy," Fred said. "Tell him what you saw, Al." The other guard snorted. "Drugs. Her and the prep-boy orderly." "They're using drugs together?" I asked. "Not using. Selling," Al said knowingly. "We know you're keeping your eye on him," Fred added. "We know the mutt's done time." "One day I saw him," Al explained. "That door over there--that's her room." "The doc's?" I asked. "Yeah. That's her little room for sleeping in," he said. Scully was asleep about ten feet away from us, with her head down on a desk. I guess she didn't like her little room. "What did you see?" I asked. "I saw the mutt go into her room with a bag. And then he came out with a different bag," Al said. "Wow," I said. "I'm going to get on this right away." "I bet she's stealing drugs from the hospital, and he's getting them out on the street," Fred speculated. "Okay, boys, like I said, I'm on it. What I need you to do, though, is keep a real good eye on Johnny." I was hoping I could cut some slack for my partners. "Hell, Jerry, I know it's a rule that a prisoner gets a couple of guards, but do you really think Johnny's going to make a run for it?" Fred asked. Johnny Boy had that big hose leading into his mouth, and one tube in each nostril, and hoses creeping out from under the sheet {don't want to know what those went to) and IV's all over, so I laughed along with them. "Humor me, okay?" I said. I sat and watched for a while. Mulder must have raced past me three or four times, but he hardly acknowledged me. The ICU was a noisy place. People spoke in loud tones to be heard over the beeps and hisses. The phones rang continually. Every five minutes someone would actually shout about something. Everyone who worked in this ICU wore scrub suits, which made it impossible for me to tell who was who. I mean, not just the doctors and the nurses, even the secretary and the cleaning guy. Anyway, the guy who came over and helped himself to a doughnut was Mulder's lunch buddy, Rolando, who turned out to be a nurse. "You brought these?" he asked me. "Thanks. And thank you too, boys. Thanks for leaving a few for the rest of us." He gave a sarcastic smile to the corrections officers, who answered him with their stony sneers. "You can toss out the rest of the box," Fred told me as the nurse hurried off. "That's Rolando. He's one of them." "Queer," Al explained. "You fellows don't miss a thing, do you?" I asked them. "Nope," Fred said. Rolando was back in under a minute. Even I can't eat a doughnut that fast. "Move aside," he said. He gave Fred's chair a kick as he pushed his way through the doorway. I watched Rolando move around the room, making notes on a clipboard as he walked around the bed. He came back to the doorway, looking a little perplexed. "Prescott? Anybody see Prescott?" he called. "I'll find him," I offered, pushing my chair out of the way. This ICU had eight rooms for the patients. Mulder might have been in any of the other seven, or he might have been in a storage room or something, or even in Scully's little sleeping room. I just kind of roamed the unit, yelling Harrington's name derisively. Mulder stepped out of one of the rooms, holding a load of bloody sheets that bothered me a lot more than they seemed to bother him. "This is harassment, flatfoot. I'm just trying to do my job," he said. "What is your job, exactly?" I challenged him. "I'm at the beck and call of everyone I see," he explained. "Plus I empty containers of piss, shit, blood, and bile. Do you want a demonstration?" "Rolando's looking for you," I told him. "Which patient, Cardell?" he asked as he dumped his disgusting bundle into a plastic bag. At my nod, he headed in that direction, pulling off his gloves with a snap. The corrections officers were still parked like lumps outside of Cardell's room, and Mulder gave Fred's chair a shove as he pushed his way in. "What's up, muchacho?" he asked Rolando. The nurse was playing with some bleeping piece of equipment. I'm not editorializing, you understand. The thing was bleeping. "Prescott, did you empty the urine bag here?" he asked. "No. It was only a few cc's," Mulder answered. "Damn. Do we have a doctor around?" "Scully's here, but"-- he kind of shrugged-- "she's sleeping." "All right. As long as she's on the unit." Someone else started calling for Mulder, but I decided to hang out with my friends from the corrections department. They were such fine observers and all. A little while later Rolando addressed me. "Would you mind getting Dana--Dr. Scully--for me?" he asked. I felt bad waking her. It was amazing she could sleep through this racket to begin with. "Dana," I said, touching her shoulder, "one of the nurses needs you." She was easy to wake up. That's a good trait in an agent. I guess in a doctor too. She looked like dog shit. Not ugly, not by a long shot. Just puffy-eyed and disheveled. Hey, who am I to talk? I look like that all the time. She conferred with Rolando. It sounded like he'd already done most of what she wanted him to do, and the only thing that made a difference to me was when she asked for an x-ray, cause that meant Jim would make an appearance. Scully left the room, and I tagged along with her. "How's it going, Jerry?" she asked. "I'm great, Dana," I said. "How have you been?" I hadn't talked to her directly since the pizza party after our fire safety class. I wasn't worried about how it would look, Scully and I strolling through the ICU together. Most everyone was too busy to care, and the CO's would think I was investigating their accusations. "I'm exhausted," she said quietly. "I've never seen a group of patients try so hard to die." "As long as they're not getting any help from the mob," I said. But I didn't think they were. "Let's round," she said. Mulder and Scully had been partners longer than Baskin and Robbins, and one reason they worked so well together was that they were opposites. Mulder was kind of a stream-of-conscious theorizer, but Scully was so damn cautious she couldn't help hedging on everything. See, Scully wasn't one to say, "Here's what I think, Jerry." It was more her style to lay on the evidence, one patient at a time, and see if I would read the facts the same as she did. As I've said, the surgical ICU had room for eight patients. She walked me past the four patients at the far end of the unit. They'd all had surgery that day or the day before, and she expected them to get better so she could have them transferred out of the ICU. "But you can never tell," she warned me. "Stuff happens. Especially here." Then we got back to Johnny's neighborhood. Scully called this the chronic side. The acute patients were the ones who would progress. They would be dependent on ventilators or drugs for a day or so, and then they'd be well enough to move on. The chronics were the patients like Johnny. They got better for a while, and then worse, and then maybe better again. But they never got better enough to survive without the technology of the ICU. This is one of my wife's nightmares, by the way. She doesn't want machines to keep her alive. I always tell her I don't want to talk about it. Scully's grand tour was disturbing, even though she tried to be scientific and clinical. Johnny's story started out simply enough--stabbed in the heart at the prison and rushed to the Cardio-Thoracic Center. "A knife doesn't always do much damage," Scully said. "Yeah. Doesn't spread like a bullet," I agreed. So Lucky Johnny survived the ambulance ride and got his heart stitched up in the OR. "He will never get out of here," she said. "But you made it sound so simple. Take him into surgery, repair the damage . . ." She was trying to get me to connect the dots, but I didn't have the background to catch where she was going. "There were multiple complications. He excannulated in the OR, he nearly exsanguinated post-op, he was re-explored without uncovering the source of the bleed, and he tamponaded after the second surgery." Her voice was hoarse and her pitch was rising and falling. "Oo-kaay," I intoned, stretching out the syllables as I waited for her to clarify. "I'm sorry, Jerry," she said. "He bled. Many separate incidents." "I guess I'm dense," I admitted. "He's not bleeding now, is he? Why doesn't he get better? What's wrong with him?" I knew Scully didn't suspect foul play here, and I trusted her judgment. I just wanted to understand. "Failure to wean," she said, and then she saw my impatience. "He's on life support, right? The ventilator, those heavy-duty drugs to maintain his blood pressure, and the pacemaker that keeps his heart beating." "Yeah." I was with her so far. "The goal is to 'wean' that support, to turn it down gradually so that his own body can resume those functions by itself," she said. I didn't know that. I guess I thought they would just shut off the machines and wait to see what happened. "But when we try to wean the support, he fails," she continued. "We lowered the rate on the ventilator, but his system couldn't tolerate it. When we turned down the medications, he dropped his blood pressure." "So he's okay as long as the machines keep going, but he can't do without them," I concluded. "Exactly. Failure to wean," she said. "Which is also the situation for Mrs. Klein." She droned on for a while about the next patient. From what I could see, this lady was a victim of alphabet soup: CAD, CHF, CRF, CVA, PVD, COPD. At first I thought Scully was trying to impress me, prove she was a real doctor, but that wasn't it. She was exhausted and frustrated and she just needed to talk. So I listened and nodded. "Can you give it to me in layman's terms?" I asked when she was finished. Mulder must be a quick study if he can follow this kind of talk. "She's a sick old lady," Scully said. "I got that part," I told her. "She's a sick old lady who barely survived the surgery. She's close to death. She's been close to death for months." Scully was rubbing her temples hard with her fingertips. "And you can't figure out what to do for her?" I asked. "Jerry, I can't figure out why she's alive," Scully said. "Kind of like Johnny?" I asked her. I had to wonder if she was coming around to Mulder's way of thinking, that something evil and supernatural was keeping these wretches on the brink of death but not letting them slip away. "A lot like Johnny. Too sick to live, but doesn't die." There was one patient left. Mr. Ivankov. "How about this last guy?" I asked. "Another failure to wean?" "No, he's different, she said. "Ivankov's fifty years old, active, no previous medical history. His doctor picked up on some EKG changes during a routine physical, and after some tests, he was referred for surgery. Triple bypass was performed uneventfully. But he never woke up." "That's a glitch," I said. "Jerry, there's nothing wrong with him. Every test is negative. He just doesn't wake up," she said. "So Ivankov should sit up and go home. . .and Mrs. Klein should go to heaven. . .and Johnny Cardell should go to hell," I said. "He's trying," Scully said. "If Givens would shoot that chest film for us, I might have some idea what was going on." end 4/8 Failure to Die, by Kel 5/8 She headed back to check on her hell-bound patient, and as I followed her into Johnny's room I heard Mulder calling her name with ragged urgency. "Scully, get in here--oh, that was quick," he said. You have to picture this. Mulder had Johnny by the ankles, and he was holding his feet up in the air. At least three separate machines were squawking at us. Rolando was up by the head of the bed, and he and Scully conferred in hurried gibberish. Something I noticed about the argot here--it was a mixed bag of Latin, acronyms, and baby talk. People spoke of "pee" and "poops" as well as "vasovagal response" and "PE." Rolando was saying that Cardell couldn't be dry, and Scully was saying well, he could be dry intravascularly, but if that was it, the Trendelenberg should help. They talked about calcium and albumen and pressors, and where the hell was x-ray anyway? Mulder's jaw was clenched. Cardell was a big boy, and hanging him halfway upside down could not have been easy. Rolando attached a glass syringe to one of the IV lines. It seemed to help. Mulder lowered Cardell's legs back onto the bed. He and Rolando were both looking at Scully, waiting for her to tell them what to do next. "We still need that x-ray," she said, looking out the door. From outside the room, someone was calling for Prescott in the same tone of voice you'd use to tell Rover that dinner was served. "It's your girlfriend," Rolando snickered. "I'm going to kill her," Mulder muttered. "Do it," Rolando said. "We'll swear you never left this room." A scrawny-armed woman with a head of auburn frizz stuck her head through the door. "I'm busy, Patty, helping Rolando," Mulder said sullenly. Patty sighed impatiently, but she brightened when she noticed Scully. "Dana, did you have time to look through that catalog?" she asked. "No, I didn't. I don't have the money now anyway," Scully said. "But you can start with something small," Patty said. "The Hawthorn Collection offers a variety of exquisite figurines. The little choir boy is only forty dollars." "How did Mr. Scaglione do when you got him out of bed? Do we need to order physical therapy?" Scully asked. "He hasn't been out of bed. And the baby elephant is only ten," Patty said. "Maybe she should skip lunch for a week. Then she'd have money to buy the baby elephant and time to get your patients out of bed for you," Mulder said. "Pres-cott," she whined in protest. "And if you're finished helping Rolando, I need you to shave Mr. Scaglione. I've been too busy." "You had plenty of time to plan Trevor's birthday party," Rolando said pleasantly. "I'm a working mom!" Patty retorted. "Mr. Scaglione doesn't want a shave," Mulder said. "He said he hasn't shaved since he retired. He likes his beard." "But it looks so scruffy," Patty complained. "Don't give me a hard time, Prescott." "Ma'am, I served many years in the FBI," I said, stepping forward and treating her to my Jack Webb impersonation. "I would have to arrest Mr. Harrington on charges of assault and battery if he were to shave a patient without consent." "Did you hear that, Patty? The new security man is from the FBI," Rolando said, grinning wickedly. "Maybe he'll finally solve the mystery of the missing slipper-socks." "Or those disappearing tea bags," Mulder said. "Or the pillowcases." "What are you talking about?" Patty asked defensively. "Rolando, I know someone's been spreading rumors about me. Is it you?" "Never, Patty. I can't tell you how many times I've defended you." Even Patty realized she was being ridiculed, but Rolando managed to say it without malice, and she was forced to smile along with him. "Oh, shit," said Scully, staring at the monitor. "Push an amp of calcium." Rolando opened a drawer near the bed and slammed it shut. "I don't have any more. Patty, get us a couple." She hurried off, hampered considerably by Fred and Al, who had gathered in the doorway to enjoy the action. "Move it," I said. "You're in the way." Then I backed myself into a corner of the room, so I could watch without making people climb over me. "Epi?" Orlando asked, holding up a gray box. Scully nodded, and he tore it open. There was a rumbling noise outside the room, and then I heard Givens telling the two corrections officers to move their butts. He carried something into the room, a flat rectangle. That was the plate for the x-ray. His eyes scanned the room, from the patient to Scully and Rolando and then to the monitors. "You still want that x-ray?" Givens asked. "He's de-satting. I need someone to bag him," Scully said. Givens leaned the x-ray plate against a wall and walked around the bed. Rolando passed something to him, about the size of a football. I couldn't see what he was doing, with Scully and the nurse in my way, but he seemed to know what to do with it. "Jerry, get us more help," Scully said. "Patty or someone else. We need that calcium. Prescott, get the crash cart." She was cool as a Creamsicle, by the way. Even remembered to call him Prescott. "What's going on?" I asked Mulder outside the room. "He's crashing," Mulder explained. "What does that mean?" I asked, trying not to sound flustered. "How the fuck should I know?" I looked for Patty in Mr. Scaglione's room without success, but then I found her complaining about something to Beth. The secretary was half-listening as she cradled a phone against her shoulder and entered something on a computer. "They need you in Cardell's room," I told Patty. "They need the calcium." "Oh my God. I completely forgot." She rolled her eyes. "Can you believe it? I came out to get it, and then I remembered something I had to tell Beth--" "Go," said Beth, replacing the phone. "Now, Patty." Patty caught on at last and I was going to go back with her, but the other woman stopped me. "I'll show you where to get the calcium," she said. "Thanks," I said, but before she could move there was a crash, a really loud crash, even amid the dull roar of background noise. It was Mulder, staring down at the floor where a big, red mechanic's box, the kind with wheels and drawers, was lying on its side. I couldn't see any broken glass but I'd heard it. The corrections officers were braying their amusement, but Mulder looked more exasperated than embarrassed. "Get the other crash cart," Beth said. "And unplug the defibrillator this time." Beth got me a handful of stuff to take back in the room, and I left her to deal with the wreckage. Patty had taken over my corner, and she leaned against the wall, writing on a clipboard. I handed my little boxes to Rolando. Everyone had their own job to do. Givens was "bagging," Rolando was giving the drugs, and Patty was writing it all down. Scully called the plays. Mulder rolled in a red cart like the one he'd destroyed. "Bring it over here and plug it in," Scully said. "Rolando, another amp of epinephrine. And start a drip." "Tell Beth," Rolando said to Mulder. "She'll get it for us." "Wait," Scully called. "I need a wire cutter." "Shit," said Patty. "Tell Beth," Rolando said again. "Tell her 'open chest emergency'' She'll know what we need." Mulder was halfway out the door when Scully called him back. "Up here, Prescott," she said very quietly. "I need you up here. Jerry, you talk to Beth." I ran out to Beth's desk, and she nodded without answering. It was nice to know that everyone else knew what to do, even if I didn't. I ended up with my own little role in the drama. I stood in the doorway, yelling for people to bring things that I'd never heard of and then passing them inside. Mulder was doing CPR, leaning over the bed and compressing the guy's chest. The room was filling up with equipment and people, too. A woman took over the "bagging," and Givens moved down to my end, taking the stuff people gave me and distributing it or setting it up on a table. Then Givens started putting people in blue paper gowns. Well, Scully put hers on herself, although he tied it for her. But Mulder, who was doing those compressions, and the woman who was bagging, Givens practically dressed them. Then face masks, and finally goggles. "Jerry--four units packed cells, two FFP. I want it replaced as we use it," Scully said. I relayed her message to Beth. "I'll send for it," Beth said. "And tell her Dr. Bolton is on the way, and OR two will be ready in twenty minutes." Scully nodded absently when I told her. "Pleurevac's full," Givens said. "We need another one." "And a new ambu," the bag-woman said. I should say here that the bag-woman's name turned out to be Francine, and she was a respiratory therapist, but I didn't know that at the time. I didn't know what a pleurevac was, or an ambu, but I hollered for them and they showed up. If you're eating, you probably want to skip the rest of this part. Don't say I didn't warn you. The ambu was the name for the football-shaped thing you use to squeeze air into someone who isn't breathing, and the reason that Francine wanted another one was because hers was filling up with foamy red blood. And when she made the switch, to change over to the clean one, a big blob of that stuff flew up in the air smack into Scully's face. Right onto her goggles. And it hung there. She took off the goggles, rinsed them in the sink, dried them with some white gauze, and put them on again. "Francine, would you be able to run a blood gas, if Jerry could bag for you?" Scully asked. "Sure," Francine said. Givens was handing me a gown, but then he gave me a funny look and he changed his mind. "I'll do it, Jerry. Go sit down," he said. "I'm fine," I said, but luckily he ignored me. "You okay, Prescott?" Rolando asked. "That's a long time to do compressions." "Yeah," Mulder grunted. "I'm okay." "I need an OR and a surgeon," Scully said. "Someone check on that for me." That was a job I could handle. Besides, it had to be ninety degrees in that room and I needed to get out. "The OR's ready now. Bolton, I don't know. I'll try him on his cell phone," Beth said. "Okay." I braced myself to go back in the room and give Scully the latest, and Beth slapped something cold into my hands. "Packed cells for Cardell," she said. Two bags of blood. Two plastic bags full of cold, red blood. Believe me, I've seen blood before, and sometimes my own. It's just that she took me by surprise. I took a deep breath and carried my offering back to Scully. "Hang it," she ordered Rolando. It was hard to hear her because she didn't turn to face him and her voice was muffled by the mask. "Come on, Patty, check it with me," he said. Then, I swear, Patty came over and the two of them chanted over the blood together. Rolando stuck some tubing into one of the bags. "Prescott, pump it in," he said, and that's when I realized that Mulder wasn't doing CPR anymore. Rolando and Scully were jammed together on one side of the bed, and Mulder wedged himself next to Francine, on the other side, and took the bag of blood from Rolando. I was trying to take in the whole scene, but for a minute I didn't understand what I was looking at. They'd covered the bed up with dishtowels, and I couldn't see Johnny at all until I looked closer and saw some metal thing, like a C-clamp, only shiny. And under the clamp, on the left and the right, it looked like something from a butcher shop. And right down the center, I knew what that was because I knew what it had to be. Givens squeezed the ambu bag while Mulder pumped the blood. Rolando was unplugging machines and rearranging the IV poles. Scully was up by the head of the bed, with her hand inside that gaping hole, like she was holding that heart in her hand. My stomach tried to turn inside out, lurching up toward my throat. "What happened?" asked a voice from the heart of Brooklyn. Distracted from my misery, I looked up and saw a broad, short man with black-framed glasses. "Must be bad," he joked. "Everyone's glad to see me." It clicked. This was Dr. Bolton, the surgeon. "Sherman, I wanted to get the name of your landscaper," Patty said. "After you showed us the pictures, I was telling Bob about that walk you have in front. Is that real railroad ties? Or the reproductions?" Scully didn't wait for her to stop talking. "Remains hypotensive on phenylephrine and dopa, de-satting on a hundred percent," she reported. "Transfusing to maintain a crit of thirty," Rolando said. "Four bags since midnight, four more on the way. Coags are normal." "Dropped down to a systolic in the sixties. We started compressions and he dumped a liter in less than half an hour. I opened his chest and found about five hundred cc's of clot and a bleed off the aorta," Scully said. "I've got my finger on it." "Don't press too hard," Bolton said with a whistle, "and don't let go. Are you all packed up and ready to roll?" "We're good to go," said Rolando. "Meet you there," Bolton said. I helped them push the bed as far as the door to the OR. Mulder was pulling from the other end, and I think Rolando helped too, but mostly he was herding along the IV poles, making sure that nothing got pulled out. Givens gave us a hand with the steering, but he never stopped squeezing the ambu bag. Scully sidestepped along, keeping up with the bed, her finger on that hole in the heart, not pressing too hard and not letting go. All that adrenalin, all that puckering up and fighting the heaves, and then it was over. Cardell was the OR's problem now, and Bolton's. I had about a hundred questions I wanted to ask, but no one to ask them. Givens's pager was backed up with calls, Rolando was deep into the paperwork, and Scully had to refloat a swan. Which brought it up to a hundred and one questions. "Refloat a swan?" I asked her. "It doesn't wedge," she explained. Mulder offered to answer everything if I'd help him get through the rest of the shift. I told him that wasn't much of a bargain, since he didn't know shit either. "Wrong, flatfoot. I do know shit. Shit is my life," he said. end 5/8 Failure to Die, by Kel 6/8 I left Mulder to his happy tasks and went back to my office to call AD Skinner and lay it on the line for him: There was no reason for us to stay in Savant. No hit, no hitman, no testimony. Johnny Cardell was stuck between life and death and his cronies were content to let him stay there. "I will take your assessment under advisement," Skinner said. I wondered if Mulder had given him a different report, something to buy himself more time for his demon-hunt. But Mulder stopped by my office at the end of his day and groaned as he lowered himself into a chair. "I think it's time to cut our losses," he said. "Skinner wants us to stay on the case," I informed him. "Another week of this and I'm going to be out on comp," Mulder complained. "I may start snorting coke for real." "Givens and I are heading for the diner after work. Want to come?" I asked him. "I'll pass. I'm going to swallow a bottle of Advil and go to bed," he said. I tried to get hold of Scully, see if she'd join us, but someone told me she couldn't come to the phone because she was holding a groin. So it was just Jim and me that evening. He stared in horror from across the table as he contemplated my dinner. "Keep it up, man, and you'll be ready for some heart surgery of your own," he said. I was treating myself to the specialty of the Boulevard Diner, the boburger. I'd gone all week without ordering one, but one way or another, we'd be wrapping up soon. This might be my last chance. A boburger is a cheeseburger with a fried egg on top. "Hey, have I said one word about your smoking?" I countered. "I'm going to quit," he said. "Soon as we're done here." "Jimmy, we are done," I said. "Cardell is in no position to flip and the gang knows it. There's not going to be a hit." I was the last to come around. Scully and Givens had been saying it from the start and by the middle of the week, Mulder agreed with them. "I still don't feel good about this," Givens said, taking one of my fries and dipping it in the sauce from his gyro. "Me neither. It's been a long time since I got a hoodlum off the street. I guess I was hoping to get one more," I admitted. "Do you know what happens when you get a hoodlum put away? Nothing. Nothing at all, because there's a steady supply of new hoods to take his place," Givens said. He was turning out to be quite the philosopher. "I noticed that," I said. "But this was different. At first because we were going after someone bigger than a street punk." He took another fry. "And then?" I asked. I dunked a fry in his yogurt sauce and it dribbled a white trail across the table on its way to my mouth. "Forget it," he said. "I'm beginning to sound like the Snowbird." I wondered if that name would follow Mulder back to the bureau. Spooky the Snowbird. With a corncob crack pipe. "Mulder's very convincing," I said. "Look, Scully's a damn scientist, and he's got her believing." "You think that's what it is, I've just let Mulder talk me into something?" He sighed. "Maybe you're right. I don't know any more." "You're tired, Jim. We all are," I said. "Yeah. But we've got to sit here until Mr. Skinner gets tired too," he said. The waitress came over and refilled my cup. Givens stifled a yawn. "How much of that do you drink, anyway?" he asked. "All I can get, buddy. Helps keep me sharp," I said. "Want to split a turnover?" "I don't know, Jerry, will half be enough for you?" Givens was trying to play it straight, but he couldn't help smiling as he ragged on me. "I wouldn't want to hear later on that you had to hijack a bakery truck," Givens said. "Couldn't help it, man," I said in a husky, theatrical sob. "Big picture of a Twinkie on the side. Why'd they have to make is so easy?" "Damn. That's it," Givens said, suddenly wide awake. "Jerry, this just might work." I guess I just stared at him, because he said it again: "It just might work." "We're going to hijack a truck?" I asked him. "Call Mulder to meet us at your place," he said. "We can pick Scully up at the hospital." "Are you going to tell me what this is about?" I asked, signaling for the check. "Not here, man. Just make the call." He was busy with his own phone, and he placed several calls before concluding that Scully had finally left the hospital. Meanwhile, I got Mulder on the line and told him he had to get over to my place. "Why?" he asked. "We have to talk," I said. "Tomorrow," he said firmly. "It's important," I said. "Give me a break, Luskin, my neck hurts down to my feet," he groaned. "I don't think I could get out of this hot tub if I tried." "We'll meet at your place," I said. I was dying to see it anyway. "Great. Tomorrow," he said. "Sounds like Prescott Harrington got himself a hottie," Givens said. I snapped the mute button. "That'll be the day," I said. Then I turned off the mute and told Mulder we'd be there in an hour. Givens insisted on driving. I think he was afraid I'd take him sightseeing again. We climbed into his pick-up and I gave him directions while he told me his idea. "We have to stay here until some wiseguy comes to whack Johnny. So what we have to do is provide the opportunity and the motivation," he said. "I like it," I said. "We'll get Harrington to bankroll the contract." I was kidding him, because I had a pretty good idea what he was really suggesting. "We have to spread the word that Cardell is recovering. And then we have to find a way to make him more vulnerable," Givens explained. "This is good," I said. "Plus, win or lose, it brings this operation to a close. Hey, turn here. You can catch the Route Five extension." Route Five was your basic "scenic route" for most of its length, two lanes of blacktop cutting through undeveloped woodlands and past rolling dairy farms. Mulder's cottage was off the main road by a couple of miles, on the shores of Lake Atakatua. In the summer season, and especially when the speedway was open, people got good and sick of crawling along on two lanes of blacktop, and a lot of them supported the idea of replacing Route Five with a real highway. Like everything else around Savant, the job was only done halfway. The Route Five Extension is about five miles of superhighway connected at either end to the old two-lane blacktop. The original plan was to replace the old road, but it ran into a ton of opposition and ground to a halt. If they'd completed the project, we could have been at Mulder's door in half an hour. The little stump they'd built would only shave a few minutes off the trip. The road was empty and Givens picked up speed. "Next exit," I told him. "Coming up after the overpass." That exit sneaks up on you and Givens was still sailing down the center lane. "Come on, Jim, you have to move over," I said. Well, I'm old and stupid, so of course he didn't listen and he missed the off-ramp. "Sorry. I'll take the next one," he said. "Hey, Speed Racer," I said. "There is no next exit." That's how they built it. If you don't turn off in time, you come to the end of the road. "Yeah? We just have to keep driving till we hit Toronto?" he asked. "No, smart guy, you have to slow it down and drive it over the median," I said. "You're putting me on," he said. "Is it really that far until the next exit?" "The road ends in about five hundred feet. Really." He flipped on his brights. "Don't make me shoot you, Givens, because I will shoot you in the chest," I said, bracing myself against the dash. I could feel the blood draining from my face. That got his attention and he applied the brakes. The truck came to a smooth stop about an inch from the "No Dumping" sign at the end of the road. "That's cold, Luskin," he said. "I'm your partner. Shoot me in the head." He had to back it up to make the U-turn across the road, and by the time we reached the exit and Old Route Five, we'd lost any advantage the shortcut would have given us. It's a scenic drive in the daylight but we were in a hurry and we couldn't see it anyway. Traffic was light, but the headlights of the occasional southbound driver were blinding in the darkness. "No wonder Domino's won't deliver," Givens said. We left Route Five for a turn marked by a weathered wooded sign illuminated with a spotlight. "Fox Trot Village: Cabins, Campgrounds, All Facilities, Weekly or Seasonal," read the faded paint. A mile further we passed rows of identical bungalows, some with RVs or boats on trailers in the driveways. "This is it?" Givens asked, clearly disappointed. "Almost," I said. The gateway to Mulder's private road was a symbolic barrier. Two brick pillars marked the spot but did not block access. We turned onto a road that was well lit, although the source of the lighting was tastefully concealed. Signs along the way reminded us not to hunt or fish. I'd like to think that if Jim hadn't thought of his scheme to flush out the hitman, I would have dreamed up something similar. We were stuck, and even though Skinner wasn't breathing down our necks yet, it was time to shake things up. I wondered how far we could get tonight without Scully. The scam depended on leaking the news that Johnny Cardell was on the mend. She would know the right medical-sounding bullshit to spread around. The road took a turn and brought us to Mulder's cottage. I use the term ironically here. But you probably got that. I'm not sure what you call this kind of house. Modern, contemporary, I know that much. Huge, asymmetrical, and you know it's going to have one of those two-story living rooms with heavy wooden beams. Usually they make them out of that unpainted wood that turns gray, but this one was, I don't know, maybe teak. Some orangey color. Huge floodlights came on as the truck got closer. The drive seemed to wrap around the house, but Givens came to a sudden stop right in front. Mulder opened the door for us wearing a white bathrobe, with "Watergate" embroidered on the front in blue. What a guy. "In the back," he said, leading us from the marble-tiled entryway onto an expanse of bare wood floor. "Hey," said Givens to Mulder's back. "Aren't you going to show us around?" Mulder looked sore and exhausted, but he gave it a half-hearted try. "Sure. Living room, uh, another room, entertainment center . . . " He kind of pointed out each area with a wave of his hand or a jerk of the head. "Up there, bedrooms, I guess, and some little area, I don't know, kind of like a lobby. . . . dining room's behind that door, breakfast nook, kitchen. . . You want a beer or something?" As we passed through, it looked as though he had only been living in one room. His stuff was scattered about the entertainment center and the couch had a pillow and blanket tossed casually on it. I noticed that Givens was eyeing the Hitachi big screen television. "I'll take a soda if you've got one," Givens said. "And I'm sure Jerry wants to see how the other half makes coffee." Mulder gave me a tired smile. "Is this going to be a long night? Coffee might be a good idea," he said. "Man, you old white guys and your coffee," Givens said. "Remember how quiet he used to be?" I asked Mulder. "Yeah. Respectful, even," Mulder said. Let me tell you, if nothing else, that kitchen was worth the drive. I guess it was just your simple, basic professional kitchen. Two huge, industrial-looking stoves, a big flat griddle, two long islands of stainless steel, one of those black refrigerators that go right into the wall, and big, deep sinks. Coffee makers like they have behind the counter in a diner. That did intrigue me, a whole urn of coffee all my own. But Mulder opened a cabinet to reveal a collection of normal-size coffee makers. I chose an electric percolator and got it going. I wanted to nose around the kitchen while the coffee perked, but Givens had his soda and he was anxious to get started on our strategy session. "You know, Prescott, you just blew your cover," I told Mulder. The real Harrington would have never served Shasta cola or expected his guest to drink it right from the can. "Come on," he said, herding us out of the kitchen. "Let's get this show on the road." He walked us past the mudroom, where a clothes dryer tossed around a loose tangle of laundry. We arrived at our destination. "Rec room, I guess," he said. "Or solarium. Gym, maybe?" This room was full of surprises. There was every piece of exercise equipment I've ever heard of plus a hot tub the size of a small swimming pool. A "conversation pit," if they still call them that. Also a bar, to make sure you wouldn't get too healthy. Also a pool table. And also Scully. "Hey, Dana," I greeted her with surprise. She was using the pool table to fold her laundry. "Hi," she said. She had on navy sweat pants and a white t-shirt that seem to swallow her (Mulder's, maybe?) and a towel over her hair. Like Mulder, she was barefoot. "I told you he was with a woman," Givens said, "Doesn't count," I answered. "This is some set-up," Givens said, making himself at home. He left his soda on the bar and began to admire the apparatuses. "Look at this. The screen gives you a choice of scenery, and the little icon shows how far you've gone, and the graph here displays your heart rate." "They didn't really come to work," Mulder told Scully. "Luskin just wanted to drool over the kitchen while Givens lusted after the treadmill." "I came to do laundry," Scully said. "Because in the condo, you can't run the machines after eight o'clock." "You can use ours," I offered. We lived a lot closer. "Mulder, you dog," Givens said, his voice choked with admiration. He was standing by the hot tub, but that wasn't the target of his envy. "This is Waterford crystal." He was holding a large, cut-glass tumbler in one hand and a can of Genessee in the other. Do you know that old joke about Genessee beer? A guy sends some to a lab for analysis, and he gets back a report that says, "Your horse has diabetes." I mean, it's the kind of beer you drink out of the can, if you're going to drink it at all. I had to laugh, picturing Mulder living his version of the high life, drinking horse-piss beer out of a crystal glass. "Talk about pearls before swine," Givens groaned. "Million dollar house, and you're sitting in the hot tub drinking toxic waste out of Waterford crystal." Scully grabbed the glass out of his hand. "That's mine," she said. "Genessee Cream Ale." Smart girl, I thought. Genny Cream isn't half bad. "Feel better, Givens? I drank my toxic waste out of the can," Mulder said. Scully opened a panel on the outside of the hot tub and tossed in the beer can. She carried her glass over to the conversation pit. "Let's get started," she said. Givens was eager to prove himself and he began to present his plan. "Johnny Cardell is our bait, and nobody's biting," he said. Mulder's furniture wasn't as comfortable as it looked. I felt like I was wallowing in the too-soft cushions, and Givens was perched on the edge of his chair. "Mutts are dumb, but they're not that dumb," I said. "He's no threat to them and they know it." "Exactly. But what if we start up the buzz that Johnny's getting better?" Givens said. "Easiest place in the world to start a rumor," Mulder commented. He looked at Scully. "Or the second easiest, after the Hoover Building." Scully had a look of perplexed concentration, and I thought she was going to start shooting holes in Jim's plan. She surprised me. "Suppose they discovered something in the OR today, something that was keeping Cardell from recovering," she said thoughtfully. "A narrowing or a blockage, something that interfered with cerebral perfusion." I didn't know what she was talking about, but if it was good enough for Scully, I was sold. "Dr. Bolton performed an endarterectomy," she decided. "Johnny woke up." "But if Johnny woke up. . ." Mulder started. "Johnny woke up, but we're keeping him under heavy sedation," Scully said. "Okay," I said. "That'll explain why he still acts like he's in a coma." "Johnny's going back to the Pen. He's going to be transported to the infirmary in the prison as soon as possible," Givens said. Now I got my inspiration. "Going back to the prison, where he will be locked up tighter than a cat's ass. In fact, once he's back in the Pen, he's going to be untouchable," I said. I was relying on the corrections officers that guarded Cardell to spread the word for me. They loved being in the know, and if I planted the idea with them they'd be unable to keep it to themselves. "So the mutts decide to whack him in transit," Mulder said. "I've got a map somewhere. . ." He had stacks of papers on the floor by the couch, and he started to dig. "I'm going home to get some sleep. I have to be back at work in six hours," Scully said, putting her shoes on. "You know where to reach me." Our plan was far from finalized, but Scully had given us what we needed. I was glad to see she'd left most of her beer in the glass. "Night," Mulder said, barely looking up. He was excited about the plan. I think, like the rest of us, he'd begun to think he'd spend the rest of his life here. Nice house and all, but I don't think he was enjoying his work these days. "Let me help you," I said. She'd slipped her long coat on over the sweatpants and T-shirt, and she seemed to be struggling a bit with the laundry bag. "Luskin, we need you to plan a route from the hospital to the prison," Mulder complained as I hoisted the sack "I'll be right back," I said. Scully had parked behind the house, and we used the side door by the mudroom. "Drive carefully," I said, settling the laundry into the back seat behind her. She looked beat, and I had to rap on the window to tell her she'd slammed her coat in the door. Mulder and Givens had a map spread out on the floor when I got back inside. "You cover the details, Jerry," Givens said. "We have to coordinate with the Department of Corrections as if it was a real transfer." "We need some escorts," Mulder said. "One car, maybe two. No more than that." "Bureau guys," Givens said. Both of them were giving me instructions now. "The Marshals screw up too often." "And then they have to shoot the survivors," Mulder said. Givens and I didn't leave until after two. We had our plan in place, and one way or another this assignment was going to end. end 6/8 Failure to Die, by Kel 7/8 Monday was the big day. Jimmy was disappointed that he wouldn't get to drive the ambulance. I told him I needed someone with some medical training to work the radio and send out some realistic chatter about the "patient." The real reason, though, was this: it would be bad enough with me slamming the big bus through the traffic in the grim winter twilight, even without the icy roads and the possibility of a high-speed chase. If I had to sit in the ambulance while someone else did the driving, I would shit my pants. Doing nothing can be the hardest thing. That's why Mulder's job was the hardest. Givens tucked him in on the stretcher and fastened a couple of the straps. Mulder must have felt like a sitting duck, but he looked like the bionic FBI agent. Givens had slapped some monitoring stuff on him so that the screens would bleep, but his gun hand was free. His gun was under the gray blanket. "How'm I doing, doc?" Mulder asked. Givens glanced at the monitors. "You're hyperdynamic," he said. "Thanks," said Mulder, sounding rather pleased. "That means your heart rate and blood pressure are elevated," Givens explained. "You pansy," I said. "You're chicken, aren't you?" "Listen, Luskin, I'm a certified expert ass-wiper. But if you crap your pants, you're on your own," Mulder said. "We're going live, boys," Givens warned us as he turned on the radio. Our conversation and Mulder's vital signs would be beamed out for anyone who wanted to catch them. I revved the engine a little--don't ask me why--and turned on our flashing beacon. "Come on, Johnny, you're going back to the big house," I said. "Transport one, underway," Givens announced into the microphone. We had four special agents to escort us, in two unmarked cars. The first car pulled out ahead of us and I had to put on the juice to keep up with him. FBI agents come from all parts of the country, but without even seeing him I knew that the guy I was following had to be one of those flat-top, square-jaw Midwesterners. That's how he drove, anyway. Like he'd never seen traffic before. I was trying to get some speed from the clumsy bus, because I didn't want to let another car between me and Kansas City Slim, when Givens let out a whistle and a shout. "Look out, Jerry!" Out of nowhere a kid in a green parka tore in front of me on her bike. I slammed the brakes and the rear of the ambulance fishtailed to the right. There was a thump from the back and a bit of a grunt from Mulder, and then a creak and a rumble as stuff tumbled out from one of the storage bins. I missed the kid. She kept right on pedaling and never looked back. She looked so much like my daughter she could have been a twin. That shook me up as much as anything. "What happened?" Mulder asked. He wasn't supposed to talk, but it was only two words. "Little boy on a skateboard," Givens said, scrambling from the passenger seat to the back of the ambulance to check out the damage. "Shut your trap, Johnny," I reminded him, wondering why Givens had lied to him. The traffic was sluggish and stubborn, and I had to use the siren as well as the lights to force my way into the flow. "Jerry, it's freezing back here," Givens said. I turned the heater on high, even though I was starting to sweat. Givens was muttering to himself, either for Mulder's benefit or whoever was monitoring our broadcast. I couldn't make out what he was saying, and I tried to ignore him so I could concentrate on the traffic. "Something's wrong," Givens said. "I can't wake him up." I figured Mulder was playing possum. He had a reputation as a smart-ass, and I was starting to put the pieces together. First he had rigged something with Jim's x-ray, and now he was trying to give the kid another good scare. I hate hazing anyway, and I was on edge. I turned around to tell Mulder to give it a rest, only I wasn't going to be so polite about it. I turned around and I got a good look at the two of them. Givens was bug-eyed with fear. Every breath he took was rattling through his throat, and I could see his shoulders rise and fall with the effort. But Mulder. He was blowing up like a balloon. His face, anyway, which was all I could see. His lips, his eyelids, even his eyeballs. Like he was filling with air. What the fuck was going on? All I knew was I had to get him back to the hospital. "Jim," I managed to croak out, "I forgot my hat." It's very important, when you're in law enforcement, that you never let yourself sound panicked. I knew that and Givens knew it too. "Better go back for it," Givens said very slowly. "Yeah," I agreed. Now, it's not that easy to make a U-turn in an ambulance. This thing was bigger than a van, more like a small truck. It even had a camera mounted in back, in case you ever had to put it in reverse without somebody there to help back you up. I looked on the TV screen, hoping like hell that the unmarked cruiser was right behind us. I'll tell you what I saw. I'll tell you what I saw, even though it isn't possible. That girl in the green parka, the one who cut me off on her bike? She was hanging off the back of the ambulance. She didn't look anything like my daughter now. She didn't look like anything I'd ever seen before. Her head was little, real little. No bigger than her neck, but her neck was like an eel. Just a wicked little face on the end of her neck, and her neck was twisting and her evil lips were spread wide in a snarl or a grin. I couldn't look any more, and I couldn't turn around. I just wanted to run. "Don't go back," Givens shouted. "Floor it, Jerry!" I couldn't exactly floor it, but I put on the siren and rode a little closer to the bumper ahead. The whole ambulance began to shake. At first it was like a vibration but it grew more and more violent until we were bouncing up and down on the pavement like a hammer against a board. "Don't stop, Jerry," Givens said in a strained roar. I had a route planned out to the prison, but that didn't matter now. I had my siren going and I cut across the lanes to make a left against the light. I could see the other motorists slam on their brakes, skid on the slush, and they must have been honking their horns and cursing me out, but I couldn't hear them. Only the squeal of my shocks as the ambulance bounced against the road, and a sound like someone was stomping on the roof. I suppose I could have forced myself to turn around, but instead I kind of called over my shoulder: "Jim? Talk to me, buddy." "Oh, man. Oh man, oh man." "Come on, Jimmy, what's happening?" I hoped I didn't sound as scared as he did. "It wants me, man. It wants to get me. Get us out of here, man!" "Yeah," I said. "That's what I'll do." The road ahead of me was clear, and the old Route Five extension was coming up. I knew I'd have clear sailing there. Hardly anyone took that road because it didn't go anywhere. If I had had somewhere to go, I wouldn't have taken it either. But I didn't. I just wanted to go. The speedometer was showing ninety miles an hour, but I don't think that was possible. I eased up on the accelerator, but that needle just kept climbing. "Jimmy?" I called. "Jimmy! Mulder? Damn it!" I wasn't thinking about Johnny Cardell or the mob hit anymore. I just wanted to know I wasn't the only one alive in this runaway wagon. "Pull over, man! It's got him!" Givens's voice was a sob. "It's right on top of him." I heard a snap. a hiss, and a metallic clunk and the engine went dead. Suddenly it was very quiet. No engine noises, no hammering, no stomping. I pushed on the brakes, but we weren't slowing down. "Oh, shit." Givens didn't sound scared any more. He sounded like he was going to puke. Me, I was scared. I couldn't get the fucking bus to stop. I pulled the lever for the parking brake and I tried to shift into reverse, and then I pumped on the brake pedal some more. We were just sort of coasting, doing maybe twenty when we went through the barrier and into the garbage heap at the end of the road. It doesn't sound fast, but it was enough to throw Givens up front with me when a pile of construction debris brought our speed down to zero. The windshield was shattered into a network of cracks and the floor was covered with glass and metal. I was dimly aware of something shoving me back, and I had a second to realize it was the airbag before the dust from the propellant sent me into a coughing fit. There was a blob of something dripping down my neck and onto my shirt. Not warm and sticky like blood. Something cold and tingling with that sulfur stink. Givens was scrambling over the wreckage, fighting his way to the back of the ambulance. "Mulder!" he yelled. "Jerry, give me a hand!" Still hacking, I got my seatbelt off and stumbled after Givens. "Help me, Jerry!" Givens was digging, tunneling through a mound of amber foam, rubbery tan stuff that smelled like rotten eggs. I nearly slipped on something as I reached his side. I tried to push the foamy stuff out of the way, and it made my hands tingle unpleasantly. "What the hell is this?" I asked. "That fuckin' demon exploded all over the ambulance," Givens explained. "Is Mulder in there?" Now I wanted to puke too. "Okay, okay, okay," Givens chanted to himself as he swept the sludge aside. "It's Mulder. He's breathing." 'Cause there he was, stretched out on the stretcher. And he wasn't just breathing. He was snoring. "Wake up, you son of a bitch!" I screamed. Somehow, in the back of my mind, I still had the idea that Mulder had started all this by trying to scare the crap out of Givens. Mulder scrunched up his face and dragged his arm across his eyes. "Scully?" he said groggily. "He's awake," Givens said. Mulder opened his eyes and pushed the blanket aside, grimacing as he touched the foamy amber sludge. "Hey!" he complained. "What did you guys do to me?" "It's gone," I said. I was sure of that. "It's quiet now." "Yeah," Givens agreed. "No shaking. No banging. Can't see it." I couldn't see it or hear it and I didn't have that feeling of dread. "What happened?" Mulder asked, fumbling to release the safety straps. "I'm not going to drive this thing," I said. "I don't think I can." "Get it to the lab. Flatbed," Givens said numbly. "Yeah," I said. There had to be a few answers hidden in the ambulance. "The camcorder. Videotape?" Givens asked. Good question. Maybe we had captured the demon on tape. Something else to check out. Also that amber foam all over Mulder. "You wrecked the ambulance? Where's our back-up?" Mulder asked, swinging his legs over the edge of the stretcher and flipping the sudsy sludge out of his way. "What is this, meringue?" "Do you think we killed it?" I asked Givens. "By luring it away from the hospital?" "Maybe the demon fell for our scam," Givens suggested uncertainly. Mulder was fiddling with his cell phone and he snapped it shut in frustration. "No one's answering," he said. "I'll try the radio," I said. See, I figured Mulder was trying to get the Bureau guys on the line, or maybe the city police, to get us a ride out of here. But he was trying to call Scully. "We left her alone," he said. I couldn't raise our escorting agents on the radio, but I finally got the local cops to send a car for us. By the time we got our ride, Mulder had managed to place a call to the hospital. "She can't come to the phone, and I need this line clear. Everyone's crashing," someone snapped at him. It was the voice of Beth, the unit secretary. I could hear her clearly although Mulder held the phone against his ear. The Savant patrolman who picked us up in his cruiser offered to take us to the regional hospital, since the Cardio-Thoracic Center was a specialized facility that didn't even have an emergency room. I told him the Cardiac-Thoracic Center would be fine. The cop's name was Barry Ochs, by the way. There was a Jay Ochs on the debate team with me in high school, and this guy turned out to be his son. Wild, huh? Anyway, he told us what had happened with the two FBI cars that were supposed to be escorting us. You know why I couldn't get a response from them? Because Kansas City Slim and Salt Lake Sam were busy apprehending Markie Lemonte and Darryl "Dusty" Rhoades. Markie and Darryl had ignored the decoy ambulance and gone after the speeding black sedan. The second Bureau car, the one that was supposed to stay right on our tailpipe, stuck to the original route and arrived in time to help with the arrest. I turned around to slap Givens a high five. We had flushed out the hit men *and* vanquished Mulder's demon. Mulder sat in the back next to him, pondering the phone in his hand. It started to ring, as if on command. "Scully?" he said. He was quiet for a while, and then: "I'm on my way." Another pause. "Absolutely." Pause. "I'll tell him. And Scully, we got them. A couple of hoods took the bait. Okay. Five minutes." He was scowling to himself as he put the phone away. "Mulder?" I prompted him, wondering exactly what was wrong. "The ME says hi," he said. "Clark Duncan. He says hi." So I still didn't know what his problem was, but I knew he was distracted when we pulled in at the hospital. Most patrol cars don't open from the inside in the back seat, and Mulder must have known that as well as me. When the handle didn't work, he gave the door a vengeful punch before I was able to scramble out myself and set him free. He took off at a run, leaving Givens and me to report back to Skinner before the other agents grabbed all the glory. I had Givens make the call from my office. It was his plan that had produced the collars, and I thought it would be a good experience for him. Meanwhile, I had a long session with the chief EMT, so we could discuss repair and compensation regarding that ambulance we had borrowed. But when I returned to my office, there was a message that Skinner wanted to talk to me. "Nice work," he said when I reached him. "Thank you." I waited. I knew he hadn't insisted on this call just so he could tell me that. "Givens handled himself well," he continued. "Bright future." "He's a good agent," I said. And waited. "Difficult case to document. I'd like you to assume that responsibility," he said. My weasel sensor was tingling. "Can you recommend any particular approach?" I can weasel with the best of them. "The facts, Luskin, I want the facts," he said. "All the truth that fits?" I asked, letting some of my cynicism show. "Write whatever you want. You've been around a long time," he said, and then I understood. He didn't want Givens branded as a lunatic at this stage of his career. "I'll do my best," I said. "Agent Scully has had considerable experience reporting on unexpected findings. Perhaps when she's more composed she can offer some suggestions," he said. That comment was one reason I figured it was time to check in with Scully. The other reason was the two correction officers, Al and Fred, who dropped in for a courtesy call. "We're heading out now, Jerry. Thanks for everything," Fred said. "See you around," said Al. "And here's a tip for you: At this moment, Snowbird and the doc are having a private conference. Wonder what *that's* about." "You might want to look into it," Fred advised me. I shook their hands, and then I took their suggestion. end 7/8 8/8 The Surgical ICU was deadly quiet when I got there. You remember, I told you how noisy the place was normally. I didn't hear any conversation at all and I didn't see any of the staff, at first. Probably in the rooms with the patients, behind the closed doors. I saw one guy, who looked familiar to me once I looked at his face. But since he was a big, tall man wearing a short little gown, his face was not the first thing I noticed. I found him sitting by the secretary's desk. "Can I help you?" he said. "Mr. Ivankov? Are you all right?" I asked him. "I think so," he said. "I had heart surgery. I'm in the hospital." Then the phone rang, and damned if he didn't pick it up. "ICU, Arthur speaking," he said. "Dr. Scully is busy right now, can I take a message? All right, I'll tell her." He made a note on a pad as he hung up the phone. "Are you cold?" I asked him, keeping my voice calm and steady. "Beth is going to find me something to wear," he said with a trace of embarrassment. There was a white lab coat hanging from an IV pole by the desk. Whoever owned it didn't need it half as much as this guy. "You can use this for now," I told him, and he put it on gratefully. "Beth will be back in a minute," he volunteered, his thick fingers slow and deliberate as he buttoned the long coat. "That's nice of you, helping out like this," I said. I wanted to look for Scully and find out what was going on but I wasn't comfortable leaving Ivankov alone. "I'm still trying to get my bearings," he admitted. "I thought I was dreaming." "You've been asleep for a long time," I said. "Yeah, that's what they've been telling me," he said. "I got out of bed, and I wasn't wearing anything except that little gown, but I didn't think it mattered. Just a dream, you know?" He looked at me as if he was still having some difficulty focusing. Maybe he was trying to decide if he was dreaming now. "A woman was calling. 'I need help in here!' So I went to see. It was like 'ER.' The lady's doing something, sticking something down somebody's throat, and she says, 'Get me the number seven endotracheal tube.' And I wanted to help, especially since I thought I might be on television. And I took a package from on top of the bed, and I tried to give it to her." "Where was everyone else?" I was talking to myself, basically, but Ivankov had an answer for me. "I'll tell you what it was. You know how they do it on 'ER,' with different plots in the same show? They shift you from one little story to another, so you can see all of them. But what was happening here was that all the stories were going at the same time," he said. "A lot of emergencies at the same time?" I asked. "Yes, that's what it was. And I could see that I was supposed to be a patient in the story, but I liked this better, being one of the doctors. So I tried to give the lady what she wanted, but she said, 'Open it.' Cause it was wrapped in plastic and she wanted me to open the wrapping." "Did you open it for her?" I asked. "I opened the package, and she grabbed it right out, and she got it pushed into the woman's mouth. And then she looked up, to tell me more stuff to do, and then she saw that I was dressed up to be a patient," he said. "What did she do?" I asked. "She said, 'Mr. Ivankov?'" His eyebrows and his pitch rose in imitation of Scully's shock "When she called me that, I started to get confused," he said. "You didn't remember your name?" I asked him. "I remembered, but I thought my character should have a different name. And my ass was getting cold, and that made me realize that it might not be a dream," he said. Under the circumstances, I thought, he was holding up pretty well. "I was starting to remember. Going for tests, going to the hospital for an operation. Then the woman said her name was Dr. Scully and she needed my help," Ivankov said. "No kidding," I said. "Nope. She told me what to do and I did it. Finally some other people came in the room, and she disappeared," he concluded. I still wasn't clear about how he became a receptionist, but that's when Beth returned. "Here, Arthur, put these on," she said, handing him a crisp-looking set of scrubs. "Do you need help?" "I don't think so," he said, lifting himself slowly from the chair. "Here are the messages, mostly for Dr. Scully." I was holding my questions to Beth until Ivankov shuffled out of earshot, but she was the first to speak. "We could have used you here," she said hoarsely. "It got a little busy." "What happened?" I asked her. "First we lost electricity," she said. Obviously that's a serious problem in a place where people are dependent on respirators, but the system is designed to cover a power outage. "You have back-up," I said. "Yeah. I don't know why it took so long to come on, though. And everything went fluky after that. The monitors and the wall suction and the oxygen system. While I was on the phone with the engineering department, room eight went into v-tach and room four went flat-line," she said. Room four was Johnny Cardell, by the way. "Dana was pushing drugs in room four and calling out instructions for room eight. Talk about grace under pressure," Beth said admiringly. "And then Patty started hollering because Mrs. Mallory couldn't breathe." I don't suppose you can call 911 if you're already in an ICU. "What did she do?" I asked. "She told Patty to get into room four and start compressions. She called for the cat box for Mrs. Mallory. She told Jessica to re-bolus with Amiodarone and shock at two hundred joules if there was any more v-tach. She told me to find more help." Beth took a deep sigh. "Of course I had already paged half the departments in the hospital and their supervisors." I didn't understand everything she was saying, but I got the picture. "That's when Mr. Ivankov got out of bed," she continued. "I tried to get him settled back in his room, but he was too nervous. I brought him out by the desk." "He's still kind of fuzzy," I said. "Jerry, the guy's been unresponsive for a month. He'll need some time to get it sorted out. He was calm as long as I was talking to him, but when Andrea started calling for a doctor in room five, I left him alone and he wandered off," she said. "So that's when he decided to assist Dr. Scully?" I asked. She shrugged with a mixture of resignation and amazement. "Good thing he did," she said. "They saved that one." "But not the others?" I asked. "Two out of four. Cardell and Klein never came around at all," she said. I remembered what I had said when Scully gave me the grand tour. Mrs. Klein should go to heaven and Cardell should go to hell. "Mrs. Mallory's stable on the vent. And room eight is doing fine," Beth concluded. Now Ivankov was walking toward us, steady but very slow, wearing the scrub shirt and pants that Beth had found for him. "Are you hungry, Arthur?" Beth asked him, and I got up to give him a place to sit. I was ready to look for Scully. = = = = I found both of them in the conference room, Scully hunched in a chair with her arms folded across her chest, Mulder standing next to her, leaning against the table, his hand capped over her shoulder. Mulder heard me enter. "Luskin," he said. Scully didn't look up. "Rough day," I said sympathetically. "Two deaths." "That's not what's bothering her," Mulder said. Scully sat back in her chair, and Mulder withdrew his arm. I expected her to be shaky, teary even, but her face was cold, hard, and furious. "I will never do this again," she said. I don't like working undercover either. Makes me paranoid. "She had to choose who to save," Mulder explained. She turned on him. "You still don't get it," she said sharply. "You know why, Mulder? Because you're a selective listener. You pick out what you want to hear and you ignore the rest." Sometimes cops will refer to a partnership as a marriage. Like, "How long have you been married?" It means, "How long have you been partners?" With most partnerships, it's just a figure of speech. "I wasn't finished," Mulder said calmly. "But you tell him, Scully, tell it your own way." Beth appeared at the door. "There's a Mr. Skinner on the phone," she said. "I have nothing more to say," Scully said flatly. "I will call him tomorrow." I don't know if my jaw dropped, but I was definitely surprised. Mulder's eyes shifted nervously from Scully to me. "I'll take it," he said as he darted out of the room. Now Beth was looking suspiciously from me to Scully. "He was calling for you, Jerry," she said. I didn't want to insult her intelligence with some lame explanation. She stood her ground long enough to make her point and then she turned and walked away. I took a chair at the end of the table. "My wife says I'm a good listener," I said. It was a lie, but what the hell. "Then listen carefully," Scully said. "I'm not upset because I had to choose. I don't like it, but it's part of being a doctor." I nodded. "Cardell was never going to make it out of here, and neither was Mrs. Klein. I told you that a week ago," she said. "I know," I said. "I did what I could. I tubed Mrs. Mallory and I coded Mr. Hayes," she said. I just waited. Told you I was a good listener. "It's called triage. If you can't treat everyone, you concentrate on the ones who can benefit. Write off the people who will die either way, and defer treatment on people who can wait," she said. She turned her chair toward me and pulled out another chair to use as a footrest. "It shouldn't happen in an ICU," she said. "Usually it doesn't." "Is that why you're angry?" I asked. "It's harder than it sounds," she continued, ignoring my question. "Life and death decisions, and you make them on the fly. You don't care if the patient is Mother Theresa or a wife-beater--you usually don't know, for one thing. Medical decisions based on medical judgment." Then she swung her feet back to the floor. Like I noticed in my office, she gets fidgety when she's tired. "It's wrong, what I tried to do. You can't combine medical judgment and legal strategy," she said. "You can't be a doctor and an FBI agent?" I asked her. "Is that what you were trying to tell Mulder?" "Not this kind of doctor," she said. "Do you know the difference between forensic pathology and medicine? Medicine is an art, but pathology is a science. Sometimes they use the same technologies, but the goal is different. Medicine is a search for wellness, but pathology is a search for the truth." "I don't think Skinner understood what he was asking of you," I said. I've done a lot of things in my career that don't make me proud. When you're chasing mutts through the sewers, you're going to get dirty. If that's the only way, it's worth it. This time it wasn't worth it. We could have done it without Scully, or we could have put her on the scene under a different cover. She was right to be angry. "I know he didn't," she said. "I didn't understand myself until I was in the middle of it." "Hell of a strange case," I said. Scully looked surprised. "Not particularly," she said. "Skinner's asked me to prepare the report on this one," I told her. "I don't think I'll need anything from you except a copy of Cardell's chart." She started to laugh. "You see that carton in the corner?" she asked, pointing toward a cardboard box filled with reams of papers, rubber-banded into two-inch stacks. "That's Cardell's chart." "Oh. Maybe you can tell me what I need to include," I said. Mulder was back in time to catch that last sentence. Don't let anyone tell you the guy isn't paranoid. "How about the truth, Luskin?" he asked, with that aggressive whine I hear from my kids. Scully didn't say anything, but I could see she was telling him to shut up. He dropped the challenge from his tone. "The truth," he repeated. "I'll support your version of events." "That will make for an interesting report," I said, "since I was going to include that you were unconscious during many of the significant events." "Men. Always have to turn it into a pissing contest," Scully commented, not quite under her breath. "I'm trying to be helpful," Mulder said. "I think the first thing we need to do is create a timeline, see how the events in the ambulance correlate with the problems in the ICU." "Why?" Scully asked, giving him a hard look. He turned from her with a grimace of frustration and addressed himself to me. "A demon derived from human suffering thrives in an atmosphere of misery. In time it learns to cultivate its source of nourishment, trapping its victims and holding them at the brink between life and death," he said. I know my jaw dropped that time. I hadn't planned on that particular wording, or even that particular theory. "Mulder. . ." Scully said. "Learning that Cardell will be transferred, and fearing the loss of its livestock, the demon is lured away," Mulder continued. "But it has become so integral to the fabric of this hospital that the departure is cataclysmic. Its remaining victims escape into life or death, and the very structure of the hospital is affected." "The very structure?" I asked. "Power outage," Mulder explained. "Telemetry malfunctions." "I see," I said. It was a wild idea, but I couldn't just laugh it off. It was no wilder than what I'd witnessed myself. Bottom line: I wasn't willing to lie about what I'd seen with my own eyes, but I was reluctant to go further out into left field than I had to. I would describe what we'd observed, what we'd done, and what had happened. Period. I had no intention of trying to explain it. "If you want to develop a timeline and speculate about the implications, I'll include it as an addendum," I said. "Okay," he said, sounding quite satisfied. "Scully usually makes me write a separate report." "What did Skinner want?" Scully asked. Mulder's eyes narrowed as he considered the question. "I don't know," he said at last. "Mostly he wanted to discuss Givens." "That's so unfair," Scully said. "Givens did a great job. How did he end up on the shit list?" You know, I had wondered about that myself. Why would they bring Givens to the capital and then make him work with the Bureau's version of the Sweat Hogs? "Skinner had a lot of questions about how Givens managed to operate so effectively within a group of agents 'not noted for their teamwork.' I don't think it's Givens who's on the shit list," Mulder mused. "The nerve! What does he mean about teamwork?" Scully asked indignantly. Well, I could recall a few times she'd complained that no one was working with her, but it hardly mattered now. Our conversation stopped short when Givens entered the conference room, and he looked us over apologetically. "Oh," he said. "I guess you heard. I just wanted to say good-bye." "Good-bye?" Scully asked with concern. "Are you leaving the FBI?" "Nothing like that. I've been reassigned." He said it without the trace of a whine. So they'd bounced him out of DC. If they sent him someplace like Salt Lake City, I was pretty sure I could get him transferred to the New York office. I still have some influence. "Those bastards," said Mulder. "They couldn't make you change your story, so they're moving you out of the way." "Mulder, I've been campaigning for this assignment from the day I joined the Bureau," Givens said. "I finally got it." Givens was waiting for Mulder to slap him on the back or something, but Mulder looked like he wanted to spit in his eye. "Congratulations," he hissed. "You'll go far. Sell-outs always do." "Jim, I don't care what you tell the brass," I said. "But you know what you saw." I shouldn't have been disappointed. He was trying to build a career and along the way he'd face many choices like this. Years ago I busted some mutt who turned out to have a congressman for a daddy. Word came from up high to let him go, and I had to sign a statement that I'd forgotten to read him his rights. Like I said, you make your choices. "Wait a minute, just a goddamned minute!" Givens said angrily. "Who do you think you're talking to? I'm not a sell-out and I'm not a liar." "Just because he didn't see exactly what you think you saw. . ." Scully began, but Givens interrupted her. "I saw it! I saw Mulder puff up like a balloon until I thought he was going to bust, and then I saw this snake-neck thing jump up onto his chest, and then I saw that thing explode into a bunch of demon-slime!" Givens said. "That's what I told Skinner. That's what I saw." Mulder paled. Most of this was news to him. "You don't hold a monopoly on telling the truth," Givens concluded. "If I can't make my mark without selling out, I won't make it at all." "So, what's your next gig?" I asked casually. I don't mind apologizing, but usually it just embarrasses everyone. "Oh, nothing much. Price fixing, fraud, money-laundering, lnfluence-peddling, industrial espionage," he announced. He couldn't stay mad at us. He was just too pleased about his next case. "I guess that could be interesting," Scully said politely. "I suppose you had your fill of demons and wiseguys," Mulder said. "Right." Givens smiled. "I'm sure I won't find pure evil in corporate America." We shook hands all around. Mulder, Scully and I tried to sound enthusiastic while Givens tried to mask his sympathy for the old dinosaurs. "Oh, Mulder, one more thing," Givens said, snapping his fingers as he remembered. "Give me your car keys." "My keys?" Mulder choked as he said it. "I can't infiltrate the Fortune Five Hundred in a pick-up truck," Givens explained. "I'll take the Beemer, and you can use my truck to get home." "My Beemer?" Mulder asked again. Mulder looked forlorn. Givens looked downright crafty. "Oh, and one more thing, Mulder," he added, his eyes a-glow. "What size do you wear?" end Feedback to ckelll@hotmail.com