From: Meg <Marguerite@operamail.com>
Date: Sun, 23 Apr 2000 17:39:28 -0500
Subject: NEW - Whom My Soul Loveth (1/1) by Marguerite

Title: Whom My Soul Loveth
Author: Marguerite
Feedback: Please, at <Marguerite@operamail.com>
Rating: PG-13 for language
Spoilers: Brand X
Classification: Post-ep (I know you're shocked <g>)
Archiving: You're welcome to link to it, just please write and tell me
where it ends up. 
http://marguerite.simplenet.com/loveth.html
Disclaimer: No profit, no harm, no foul.

***
Asheford Hospital
***

"What part of 'now' did you not understand?"

Skinner has seen her in motion before but not like this, not with such a
combination of urgency, terror, and competence. The emergency team has
scarcely taken Daryl Weaver's vital signs but she is already halfway out
the door, cell phone to her ear, talking to a lab technician. "I want it
up there YESTERDAY. I'll be there in three. Yeah, you heard me." She
sets her mouth in a tight line as she hears a reply that does not please
her. "Just DO it. I'll take full responsibility."

In three quick strides he catches up with her determined step. "You're
sure about this?"

"It all makes sense," she replies as she pokes the elevator button three
times with a rigid finger. Dissatisfied with its slow response, she
heads for the stairs, making the phrase 'running commentary' seem
particularly apt as he lopes forward to keep up with her. "If the test
subjects who died were light smokers and the men who were just exposed
to secondhand smoke weren't smokers at all, then what other answer can
there be?"

Skinner reaches for the door to the stairwell but Scully ducks under his
arm and shoves it open herself. "What course of treatment are you going
to try?" he calls after her.

"We're basically going to pump nicotine in him until we kill those bugs."

Or him, Skinner thinks, but he does his damndest to push that idea
aside. They reach the ICU and Scully storms into Mulder's room with
Skinner at her heels like a mastiff. 

"Where's the damn cart? We're in a rush - let's move it!"

Two nurses roll equipment into the room and a breathless woman appears
with a large vial. Scully snatches it from her hand and begins to fill a
syringe with the amber substance, looking into the tube as she addresses
the man who lies on the bed. A respirator forces air in and out of lungs
that sound as if they had no more room. 

"Mulder, it's me. We've got something to try. It's not going to be a lot
of fun but it could well save your life." 

Skinner winces at the painfully shallow breaths that are scarcely enough
to cause Mulder's chest to rise and fall. Mulder's lips, distended into
a painful grimace around the tubes, are a ghastly shade of cold blue.

When the syringe is full she lets herself look down at her partner,
wrapping her fingers around his ghostly hand. "Mulder...Mulder, can you
understand me?"

Mulder's fingers tighten in response. Scully leans over him and whispers
something that makes Mulder squeeze her hand a second time. His eyes are
bright with fear above the tubes that breathe for him with decreasing
effectiveness, but something in Scully's words seems to calm him.

Scully empties the syringe into Mulder's IV bag. In seconds he starts to
shake uncontrollably, arms and legs flailing. "Dr. Scully, we need to
secure him," says one of the nurses as she tries unsuccessfully to hold
Mulder still.

"Not yet..." She tries to subdue him with caresses and soft sounds, but
to no avail. She looks pleadingly at Skinner. "Sir! I need your help!"

A nurse lets Skinner take Mulder's legs but he is stronger than they
expected, adrenaline giving him a force they cannot rein in. Mulder's
arms sweep across the bed and he tries to grab at the tubing down his
throat in spite of their combined efforts to calm him.  "Mulder, don't!
We're trying to help you!" Skinner's entreaty is lost on the desperate,
panicking man.

Scully's eyes well up but her voice is steady. "Get the restraints." She
looks over at the heart monitor. "I'm going to hit him again Thirty cc's."

With Skinner's help the are quiet and efficient as they strap Mulder's
wrists and ankles to the bed. Skinner finds it hard to look either at
either of his agents, the one who struggles for each breath and the one
who is trying so hard to save his life, but he must. They are his
responsibility. His team. 

Scully listens to Mulder's lungs through a stethoscope, frowning.
"There's progress; I think it's..."

Her words are cut off by Mulder's violent burst of coughing. Scully
steps back just in time to keep from being hit in the face by a stream
of insects as they pour out of Mulder's nose and from around the tubes
in his throat.

"God!" shouts one of the nurses as she jumps backwards. Skinner fights
down the sour taste of bile as he starts to stamp on the bugs. His shoes
nudge them but they do not move. 

"Scully. Look at this."

She spares a glance at the floor and at the still, black creatures on
Mulder's sheets. "They're dead." For just an instant a smile blooms on
her face, but within seconds she is back in control. "Mulder, listen to
me. What you coughed up this time were dead bugs. It's good, Mulder, but
we have to give you another dose to make sure the eggs and larvae die, too."

His head moves up and down, a sickeningly wet sound emerging from his
damaged lungs as he tries to take a breath on his own. Scully nods at
the nurses and the three of them start to take hold of the tubes. "We're
gonna take these out. We need you to cough for us." 

She must see the baleful look Mulder gives her, because her lips part in
a smile. "I don't care if you cough up bugs. On three. One. Two. Three!"

It sounds like the last wheeze of a drowning man, but Mulder manages to
free himself of the hated tubes and take a few tentative breaths on his
own. Nurses, having trouble containing their disgust, wipe away the
little maggots that have come out with the air while Scully clamps an
oxygen mask on him and smooths his hair around the elastic bands.
"That's it, that's good. That's good. Now we're gonna take out the last
of the little bastards."

"Hang on, Mulder," Skinner mutters, watching in concerned fascination as
Scully prepares another syringe and injects its contents into the IV
bag. 

For a few moments Mulder is calm, his chest no longer heaving with the
effort to inhale. Skinner observes Scully as she monitors Mulder's
progress with obviously feigned clinical detachment . "I think I hear it
opening up in there. Mulder, you still with us?"

He is still. The room is silent for a long, horrifying moment before the
machine alarms begin to shriek.

"He's not breathing, Dr. Scully!"

"Damn!" She turns up the flow of oxygen but Mulder does not respond, his
face taking on a sickly pallor. "What's his pulse?"

"Sixty and dropping. Fifty-six..."

"Damn it, Mulder..."

"BP's bottoming out!"

"No! No, Mulder, you're not gonna do this!" Scully puts a mask over her
mouth and leans over to perform artificial respiration, then at the last
second rips the fabric away and places her lips over his.

"Dr. Scully! You can't risk infection..."

"Shut UP!" Her scream is loud enough to drown out the shrilling alarms.
Taking a deep breath, she bends over and tries to transfer her life into
his body.

"Pulse is weakening," announces a nurse.

"Call in a damn code! NOW!"

As the crash cart team enters, a nurse pushes Skinner toward the door.
"You need to wait outside, sir. Please."

"I'm not going anywhere," he growls through gritted teeth.

"You're in the way. We need room to work."

His expression says fuck you but he steps away just far enough for the
team to work.

From the bank of monitors comes the call of another nurse. "We're losing him!"

"Mulder, come on, come ON!" Scully continues to breathe for him as an
orderly brings her the equipment. "Bag him! Somebody get that suction
equipment, stat!"

Before Scully's commands can be carried out, Mulder's whole body heaves
upward and he takes in a ragged breath, his eyes flying open in panic.

"He's back," Scully whispers. "Mulder, lie still. Don't try to move.
You're okay now, you're okay...it's all right..."

"BP one-ten over eighty...respiration is almost normal. What the hell
happened, Doctor Scully?"

Skinner can tell that she is beyond hearing them, that her whole being
is focused on Mulder's terrified eyes as she listens to the sweet sound
of his breathing. By degrees his anxiety dissipates and he relaxes
enough for Scully to motion Skinner forward to help remove the straps
that bind him to his bed. "You're gonna be just fine now, Mulder. I want
you to try and sleep. Can you do that?"

He nods, moving his lips silently and frowning in frustration when
nothing comes out of his abused throat. He lifts one hand, slowly, as if
he has to concentrate on the movement, and brushes his fingers against
her cheek. Skinner blinks rapidly, blood rushing to his face at
witnessing such an intimate gesture. He sets his jaw and turns his head
away, but even then he sees them reflected in the window of the ICU,
Scully grasping Mulder's fingers and putting them just above her heart. 

The nurses bustle with choreographed efficiency while Scully directs the
orderly to dispose of the beetles and their offspring in a hazardous
waste container and have the container put in a deep freeze just in case
there were still live specimens. "Burning won't kill them, obviously,"
she tells Skinner, her hands drawing a wreath of smoke in the air. "I'll
see that someone from the local health department gets them - maybe they
can find a safe, permanent method of destroying these hybrids." She
remains connected to Mulder the entire time, touching his wrist even
though his pulse is monitored electronically. 

"I'll get someone right on that." Secretly he is glad of the chance to
escape that room and the inhabitants who are so utterly wrapped up in
each other. He opens the door for the nurses and the orderly, then
follows them out into the corridor. His fingers fly over the keypad of
his cell phone with practiced ease. His glance returns to the ICU window
even though he knows he should not look, and he sees Mulder's grip on
Scully's fingers relax, his hand slowly lowering to the bed as he falls
asleep. 

He hates himself for watching, for making himself into a voyeur, but he
can no more look away than he can tear out his own heart - although his
heart tears anyway at the sight of Scully anointing Mulder's temple with
the lightest of kisses before crossing herself as she watches him
breathe. He busies himself with the phone, leaves his badge number with
the local health authorities, and pretends to be busy when Scully
finally joins him. 

"He's stable," she says in response to his questioning glance. Skinner
can see that she is trying to look in the window, so he shifts his
position slightly to angle her toward the best view of the bed. "That
was a pretty bad scare, but the worst seems to be over. I'm getting an
order for more chest x-rays to make sure the larvae are expelled and
he'll probably need at least one more deep suction treatment just to
make sure."

Skinner nods. "You were...great in there," he says, trying not to cringe
at the sheer inanity of his words.

Scully's teeth pull at her lower lip and she gazes at Mulder's still
form. "It's what I do. What I used to do." At Skinner's sudden shudder
she looks up at him as if for the first time. "What is it?"

He shrugs his shoulders and puts his hands on his hips, looking just
beyond Scully's head. "Dj vu. Georgetown Memorial, the night you
fainted during the hearing. Mulder and I were looking at you through a
window just like this one."

Her head droops and she puts her fingertips to her eyelids. "We spend
too much time in hospitals." When she opens her eyes again, her face is
anguished. "I'm tired," she says in a voice so low he has to bend over
to hear her.

"Let me take you back to the hotel..."

"No, I want to stay here."

"Then let me get you something to eat. You've been on your feet..."

She shakes her head, her eyes wide and shimmering. Skinner takes a step
toward her as if fearing she will collapse, but she moves backwards with
her hand up in front of her face. Pivoting on her heel, she looks first
one way and then the other until she finds a direction and begins to
take quick steps. Skinner stays a few paces behind her and watches as
she put her palm against a door.

Chapel, reads a discreet sign just above the entryway, and Skinner
starts to enter with Scully, wanting to be there if she falters, but
something holds him back. He waits until Scully turns around to face
him, trying not to let the pain in her expression shatter his resolve.
Through sheer force of will he inclines his head toward the door and for
an instant he feels the kind of wordless communication that Scully and
Mulder share as she thanks him with the smallest of smiles.

Just before closes the door behind him, he sees out of the corner of his
eye that she falls to her knees, half in exhaustion and half in prayer.
When he hears her sob he almost loses his resolve, but instead he stands
watch at the door, jaw set, shoulders back. His face is that of a
sphinx, stony and resolute, masking the tornadic activity of his mind.

They came because of him and now Mulder's life is in jeopardy - and
Scully's, too, in a way,  for they are bound together at a level that
transcends mere human understanding. He takes off his glasses for a
moment. Rubbing his eyes only spreads the graininess around. He wonders
what the eggs inside Mulder's lungs feel like, if they're hard and
sharp, then a new wave of guilt crashes around him.

Scully emerges from the chapel, her makeup slightly smeared. Her
expression is composed in spite of the redness at the rims of her eyes,
a redness that intensifies the blue until it is like Caribbean waters
struck by the first rays of dawn. She looks at her superior and offers
him a small smile. "I'm okay."

He allows himself to smile back. "I don't suppose I could persuade you
to go back to the hotel and get some rest."

"Not a chance." She shakes her head and brings her fingertips to her
lips as she fights back a yawn. "I'm just going to sit with him for a
while. He doesn't wake up well in hospitals and he doesn't always
remember what's happened. I'd better be there."

Skinner nods. He wants more than anything else in the world to draw her
into his arms and hold her safe, but it is not to be. Already she is
halfway down the hall, homing in on Mulder's room and tuning out the
rest of the world.

His world. He buttons up his jacket again and starts to leave, then
decides to enter her world for just a moment, to get some insight into
her strength and maybe to borrow some for himself.

It's a standard hospital chapel, non-denominational and somewhat
sterile. He imagines that the kneeler is still warm from her body but he
will not let himself touch it. Instead he turns toward a plain walnut
stand and the memory book placed there. People have left messages and
Bible verses for others to read, and the last entry is in Scully's
handwriting, small and precise just as she is herself. 

"I will rise now, and go about the city,
In the streets and in the broad ways,
I will seek him whom my soul loveth.
The watchmen that go about the city found me:
'Saw ye him whom my soul loveth?'
Scarce had I passed from them,
When I found him whom my soul loveth:
I held him, and would not let him go."

Someday, he thinks as he takes a seat in a pew and leans forward to rest
his head on his clasped hands, he will find a way to thank them. But for
now he just closes his eyes and imagines Scully holding on to Mulder's
life, to his soul, and never letting him go.

***

Thank you again and again and again, jordan. What would I do without you?

The quotation is from The Song of Songs: 3:2-3.

Feedback will be adored and lovingly answered at <marguerite@operamail.com>