From: Nicolette Date: Fri, 30 Jul 1999 13:14:23 -0400 Subject: Catharsis by Nicolette Source: direct Title: Catharsis Author: Nicolette Rating: R Feedback: Send to : cheri@tiac.net Category: S Summary: Scully addresses her grief over losing Emily. Spoilers: Emily Archive: Ephemeral. Elsewhere only by permission, with my e-mail, name, and credits listed. Disclaimer: None of these characters are mine. Acknowledgments: As always, heartfelt appreciation and gratitude to Justin. You purify my words. And to Jori, for her support- even when things get ugly. This is for Cameron. I love you, little angel. XXXXX Catharsis In the last three weeks, I have discovered a new means to measure the passage of time. I mark it not by the conclusion of cases, or by the numbers on the calendar grid, but by my sleep. I measure time since the dream first began. It is the same nightmare every night, for the last seventeen nights. The first time it bothered me only in the few hours after I awoke. The images crept into my morning routine. I kept having to redirect myself around my apartment. I would forget mid-step where I was headed. All the stopping and starting made me late for work. In the following days, the dream followed me into quiet times at the office, sneaking up as I typed or searched the file cabinet. But now it hangs in my thoughts all day, pushes it's way around my head when I am mid- thought, mid-conversation. It stops me dead in my tracks. That is how Mulder noticed, and why he asked after me. I told him it was nothing, nothing's wrong. His brow line bent inward as he looked at me skeptically. His hand moved over mine, his palm resting on my knuckles, the tips of his fingers hooked over the fleshy plane beneath my pinkie. He let his touch linger a few long seconds. Then he pulled away. I felt his reluctance, his respect for my distance. I'm not sure what triggered this dream. One night a while back, as I headed for the lab, I passed a childbirth class taught behind a glass-paneled wall. I wondered at all those protruding bellies pistoning as they hissed their breathing exercises. Then, a few days later, my brother Bill called, his two kids chirping and yelping in the background. Maybe it was the Christmas-in-July festival on TV a few weekends back. All those Rudolphs and Frostys and Santas reminding me of the holiday. Reminding me of Emily. In the dream, I am lying in bed at night, reading. I am pregnant, in my fifth or sixth month. Showing, anyway. I balance my book on my belly, which is covered by floral print sheets. I feel a painful pinch down low, and peel the sheet away to investigate. I discover the skin over my stomach is translucent. Baby Emily is looking out at me with her four year old face. She is distressed, looking as she did in the hyperbaric chamber. Her tiny fists pound from the inside as her muffled voice pleads with me. "Help me Mommy! Please, help me!" As I sit up, the skin of my stomach snaps down like an eyelid, becoming opaque, looking as a normal pregnant belly should, swollen and lined by white stretch marks. Emily's pummeling stops. My head tips back as the pain begins. First a pulling, then a cramp, a tight grip closing around the muscles in my groin. A contraction. I scream, knowing what this is. Too soon, too soon! Blood runs down my legs as I run to the bathroom. As I crouch in front of the bathtub, I look down at the red river on the tile. I put my hand down and catch a large black clot in my palm. "No no no no," I am sobbing and rocking myself. As I feel Emily's head crown, she whispers inside my head. "Goodbye, mommy." Then I wake up. Each night I awaken with the same ritual. I sit bolt upright and whip the covers back. My stomach heaves with the adrenaline, but is flat and pale as a plate. It is completely unmarred by stretch marks, no baby swells it from within. Emily is gone. I am utterly alone. The tears come hot and fast with the adrenaline still rushing in my blood. I sob, my nose runs, and a hundred tissues later, my wastebasket full, I am drained. With the shock dulled under the deluge of my tears, I fall back to sleep on a soggy pillow, sticky hair. Eighteen times now. I am drained again. Time is moving so slowly for me, so painfully. I feel trapped and out of control in the grip of this nightmare. I want it to end, but it is unrelenting. Mulder once said a dream is an answer to a question we have not yet learned to ask. Clearly, I have not yet learned the lesson this dream has to teach. I am grieving. I know this is part of the process. I have been mourning Emily, in my silent reticence, for nearly two years. I have not spoken of her to my family or my partner. I have not moved on, or marked the passage of time in any way that recalled the impact of her presence in my life. Until now. I find cannot I go through each day thinking of her face. Imagining that tiny version of me, my own eyes peering back at me. Knowing she is gone, that little piece of me and Melissa, and Mom, and knowing I shall never have her, or another child, again. I think of her and feel splintered. Is this how it was for Mulder, after Samantha was taken? Did he find himself crippled remembering her face? Did he find her waiting for him in his dreams? Does he still? Mulder knows grief, knows the face of this particular demon. His life's work is guided by it, is a memorial to the memory of his sister. He has gone on not in spite of his grief, but because of it. Thinking of his gentle touch today, I can almost feel the heat of his hand on mine. He wanted to help. To ease my pain, without knowing he was singularly qualified to do just that. And although I am exhausted, I reach for the phone. His voice, heavy and slow with sleep, garbles out, "Mulder." I set the phone back in the cradle. For tonight anyway, the assurance he is there is enough. End.