From: Nascent <jrobbins@leland.Stanford.EDU>
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1998 00:49:22 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Pillar of Salt

Title - Pillar of Salt
Author - Nascent
E-Mail address - nascent70@usa.net
Rating - NC-17 (sexual situations, disturbing themes, language)
Category - XA
Spoilers - through Fight the Future
Keywords - None provided at author's request
Summary - A casefile which tests the depth and strength of Mulder and
Scully's partnership.

Archive - Feel free, but please let me know.

Feedback - Very much welcomed.

Timeline - Matters very little, but is probably winter of 1998-99.
However, for the author it's fall of 1998, pre-season six, so please
forgive any inconsistencies with that season.

---------------------------------------------------

"Pillar of Salt"

by Nascent (nascent70@usa.net)

---------------------------------------------------

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

I am one lucky little Nascent; I have an editing team who are not only
dedicated and thorough readers, but writers as well.  This story would not
be what you're reading were it not for them.  Please take a second to read
these paragraphs if you're going to read the story.

Dahlak and Flywoman both came back on board despite having worked with me
on T&P; they knew exactly what they were getting into and for that I thank
them deeply.  Dahlak lent her sharp eye and unflinching criticism to every
chapter, making me think very carefully about the motivations of every
character and the realism behind their voices, as well as the tempo of the
plot.  In particular, she helped me iron out the ending, which was very
rough the first time around. She has an unfailing instinct for pacing and
populating a story, and I thank her for sharing it with me.

Flywoman has had a busy few months but that didn't stop her from reminding
me of the difference between natural and synthetic ligand in naming ion
channels, and thus she became my official science editor for this piece,
keeping it close enough to reality that a scientist can smile and yet
simple enough that a layman can too.  I hope.  =)  Without Fly, the climax
would've been completely different as well--I was stuck in a narrative that
just wasn't working no matter how I tried to get around it, but she snapped
her fingers and said, "change the tense!" and the solution was clear.

Jordan and Marguerite not only beta-read large portions of this fic,
telling me frankly what worked and what didn't, what surprised and what was
expected, but also provided ubiquitous cheerleading throughout its
creation, without which I might never have finished it, especially given
the half-finished X-File I trashed a couple of months ago, upheaval in real
life, and all the barnyard antics.  Thank you, ladies.

Finally, it's to Justin Glasser that I owe any polish in the themes or text
of this piece.  He didn't know what he was doing when he sent me back that
first chapter with a comment on every paragraph: I snatched him up and
reeled him in right away, before he could figure out how extensively I was
going to use him.  He was unafraid to be honest, never coddling, and he
taught me volumes about the power of suggestion over the explicit--a tough
lesson for a science geek like me to learn.  Now I feel compelled to go
back and rewrite every pre-Justin piece I've written using his guidelines.
Further, the Scully first-person voice as well as the M/S angsty
interactions would NEVER have worked without his help.  Never.  Justin, you
have a mastery of understated intimacy between these two that shines in all
your work; thanks for helping it glow a little brighter in mine.  Your
facility with language and precise knowledge of what should NOT be said is
superbly, vastly, wonderfully appreciated.  Did I mention Justin hates
adverbs? <g>

If you enjoy this story, go check out work by the above authors; without
their contributions it wouldn't be what it is.


NOTES:

The science in this piece, like that of most X-Files science, is derived
from real principles that have been distorted.  If you're curious, what's
wrong and what isn't will be explained in notes at the end of the piece,
but don't believe everything you read.  =)


DISCLAIMER:

Damn, I've run out of clever things to say here.  So: The X-Files, Mulder
and Scully are the property of Chris Carter, 20th Century Fox and 1013.  No
profit made, no infringement intended.







Thanks, Jordan.











Prologue

---------------------------------------------------

When Mulder asked me to spend the weekend with him at an old friend's ski
place near Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, the invitation rolled off his tongue
with such well-executed carelessness that I almost said "Sure, Mulder,"
before I even realized what he'd asked.

Mulder does that.  He sneaks up on you when your guard is down, and, like a
stealthy virus, doesn't signal his intentions until he's fully colonized.
I keep thinking one day I will acquire immunity, but it never happens.

"Su--" I started, barely looking up, then performed a classic double-take.
"What did you say?"

Mulder smirked and leaned back in his chair, watching me from across the
room.  "You heard me, Scully," he answered. I could almost hear him filing
my reaction away for later entertainment on his mental VCR, and it irked me
unaccountably.

But this was not a battle he could win.  I schooled my features into my
best G-woman stare, and let it never be said that I don't know the effect
of that expression on testicles.  Mulder flinched, and I felt avenged.
"What's in Stroudsburg?" I asked.

"Someone I want to talk to," he answered, rapping his pen against his left
knuckles.

Ah, here it comes, I thought.  Not that I'd suspected for a moment that it
would be anything else.  I waited, my silence an obvious signal for him to
continue.

After a pause, he did, but I knew he was leaving something out because he
kept staring at that damn pen, unable to meet my eyes.  "A friend
recommended I go talk to this man--he's well-respected in the
parascientific community.  And Keith Fields--you remember Fields from
Quantico?--he's always said I could use his condo up there.  It's supposed
to be gorgeous this time of year."

Contemplating the wet, brown slush that passed for snow outside, I pursed
my lips into a thin, suspicious line.  "So why are you asking _me?_"

Mulder feigned injury, but it wasn't very effective as he was still unable
to meet my eyes.  "Well, I want to hear what you think of this guy.  And I
figured you could use a weekend away."

I blinked.  "I'm away virtually every other weekend.  With you."

I thought I had managed to convey, in not so many words, that vacations--if
that's what he really had in mind--should be from each other as well as
work.  But he missed the point, or pretended to, waving it away with a
dismissive flip of the pen.  "Not a case," he said, as if that should
explain everything.  Then: "Come on, Scully.  You're always complaining
that I leave you out of things like this.  So now I'm asking you: do you
want to come with me?"

"Just to talk to some paranormal 'scientist?'"

"Yeah," he replied with a shrug.

So I agreed.  I knew he was lying, but I figured it was an innocuous lie.

Throughout the week, Mulder was predictably if charmingly coy about the
weekend.  He didn't mention it again for several days, and I followed his
lead, assuming he felt as absurd and awkward about it as I did.  Agents
Mulder and Scully chase killers, question suspects, buy plane tickets, hunt
for aliens, rent cars, save one another's lives and on occasion cry in one
another's arms, but they do _not_ spend weekends together in ski condos.  I
had deliberated and rejected half a dozen believable excuses to gracefully
back out of the increasingly uncomfortable prospect when at last he brought
it up again on Thursday.

He suggested we leave work early the following day to make the drive.  When
I asked him again about the man we were going to see, suggested he at least
provide me with some background to review, he only offered a mysterious
smile and told me to "Wait and see."

"I'm not in the mood to play games, Mulder," I told him flatly.

His immediate expression of contrition was genuine.  With his patented
earnestness he touched my arm and said: "I don't mean to play games.
Just--just trustme, okay?"

I lowered my eyelids, acquiescing with a brush of my fingers against his.
I _did_ trust him.  Only later did I realize that the game hadn't stopped,
and, as always, we played by his rules.

The drive was peaceful and the condo beautiful if a little small.
Well-hewn peaks frosted with snow and sprinkled with evergreen hemmed us
in, abrogating the need for any decor other than windows.  Mulder insisted
I take the bedroom, and after we'd relaxed some from the drive, we went to
dinner down in Analomink. We shared a bottle of wine and spoke very little,
content that for once there was no investigation to discuss.

To his credit, he did finally tell me that our appointment with Dr. Arthur
von Deer was scheduled for the following morning.

His behavior was suspiciously affectionate--or perhaps it was the wine--as
we returned to the condo; he walked with his arm threaded through mine and
held my hand as he drove.  In retrospect, this should have set off warning
bells, but I was too comfortable at the time.  I was only a little
disconcerted, abstractly worried about what to do if this morphed into
something unexpected later on that evening.  But the warmth of his hand,
the cold, snow-laden air and the freedom of our caselessness was enough to
keep me from worrying much.

When we returned, we built the obligatory roaring fire and played a game of
chess on a cardboard set we'd discovered in the closet.  Mulder and I have
surprisingly similar chess strategies: we are both unwilling to sacrifice
pieces, even when such action would be advantageous.  Almost, I speculated,
as if we're both unwilling to make even a pawn suffer capture under our
respective commands.  It makes for a long game.

I won, but not easily.  We both fell asleep sometime after that, in the
middle of a sparse conversation about the reliability of evidence in animal
behavioral science.  He sprawled across the couch and I stretched out on
the floor, my back against the couch's base, my head tipped back and turned
so that I could watch his face and feel his warmth.   He argued,
predictably, that we could perform meaningful analysis on animal
communities, while I cautioned that such studies are too much colored by
human worldviews, and that since the system is almost impossible to
perturb, observation would never be sufficient evidence.  But neither of us
invested much, and the silences were long enough for us to finally fall
asleep, Mulder's fingers wound loosely in my hair.  I woke late in the
night, threw a blanket over his lanky form and pressed my palm fondly
against his cheek, soft enough that he didn't even stir.  Then I crept away
to the bed.

At the time, I chastised myself for having questioned my partner's motives.
I was very glad I'd come.

Between the chess game and the argument, I'd asked him again: "So you
brought me up here just to talk to this paranormal scientist?"

"Yeah," he'd said, staring  into the fire, again unable to meet my eyes.

I knew he was lying; I just didn't know how big a lie it was.








Chapter 1

Where I Stood

---------------------------------------------------
10:02 a.m.
Saturday
Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania

Saint Luke Hospital was an unexpectedly bustling facility for what I'd
anticipated to be a backwater clinic.  Its physical therapy and orthopedic
surgery departments are nationally recognized, which is to be expected of
the only major hospital in a snowskiing community.  But it also claimed 650
beds and reasonably highly regarded residency/internship programs in
internal medicine and emergent medicine affiliated with two universities.

I learned all of this in a two-minute perusal of the usual cardstock
pamphlet I picked up at the door, the purpose of which was presumably to
make me wonder why I, a physician, hadn't previously heard of their program.

I tossed the pamphlet in a garbage can in front of the elevator doors.

"Scully, we can't exactly be ourselves for this," Mulder said then, looking
at the lights above the elevator instead of at me.  "I told him my name's
George Hammond and you're my wife: Dana."

"Mulder...." I warned.  I recognized the names as one of the multiple
aliases Frohike et al. had painstakingly constructed for us should we ever
need to disappear, but his use of them today reawakened every dormant
suspicion.

His worried sidelong glance to evaluate my expression did nothing to
assuage my concern.  But then the occupied elevator arrived and there was
no more time to talk, as he'd no doubt intended.

Dr. von Deer's office perched on the fourth floor in a secluded wing
labeled "Clinic" which hung off the bulk of the hospital like an undergrown
appendage.  A few outpatient consultations were underway in the hallway's
lighted offices, but Dr. von Deer's light was off.

After a glance at me to assure himself of my complicity (I refused to look
at him), Mulder rapped sharply on the door.

An elderly male voice from within answered.  "Come in!"

We did.

The little man who greeted us could have had a role in any movie as the
perfect grandfather, right down to the bright, bespectacled eyes, the
male-pattern baldness fringed with white, and the permanently fixed smile.

"Hello!" he cried, circumnavigating his desk and extending an enthusiastic
age-spotted hand.  Mulder shook it.  "Mr. Hammond?"

"George," Mulder corrected him, and I looked out the window.  "And this is
my wife, Dana."

I offered my hand to the little doctor, and he took it but instead of
shaking it he bent his dry lips to the backs of my fingers.  "_Dana,_" the
man repeated reverently, as I deliberated with a wide-eyed look at Mulder
whether to be flattered or offended.

Before I could decide, the little man popped up again, favored me with a
raucous grin, and quipped: "You're too good for him, I can tell already."
He turned to Mulder, who watched with ill-concealed amusement.  "You know
that, don't you?"

Mulder grinned.  "That's what _she_ tells me," he replied, with a
significant glance at me that I knew was intended to make me hear a
different answer.

And damn him, it worked.

We settled into the two taupe chairs facing the desk, and Dr. von Deer
returned to his seat, still sporting that indeflatable smile.  I had to
smile back; everything about the little man pushed childhood buttons which
memorialized my own grandfather.

"I hate to do this," von Deer said, "but I need to see two forms of
identification from both of you.  To make sure you're not reporters, you
understand."

Mulder half stood to reach into his back pocket.  "How will that prove
we're not?" he asked.

"Well, it won't," the doctor admitted.  "Not really.  But I did search the
internet and Newsbank for your names before you arrived and didn't find
anything other than your address, so this is the best I can do."

I snorted softly at the boys' ingenuity.  I didn't know George and Dana had
an _address._  I wondered where we lived.

Mulder handed two I.D. cards across the desk and flashed me an expectant
glance.

I spread my hands.  "I didn't bring my wallet," I lied, with more pleasure
than I should have permitted myself.  My wallet was actually in my purse.
Right next to my gun.

"Oh," Mulder said, unfazed.  "Hey! I think I still have your driver's
license from when you asked me to carry it last night."  He made a show of
rummaging through his wallet.

"She still gets carded," he confided to von Deer as he produced a card and
handed it across the table.  Then he snuck a triumphant grin at me.

I ignored it.

While von Deer peered at the plastic cards, I casually inspected the
office.  The only light came from without, and was dimly grey.  An
expensive-looking stereo sat atop the two filing cabinets.  An entire wall
hosted bookshelves, and the polished teak desk boasted several
official-looking stacks of papers.  A Gateway 3000 perched on the lefthand
side, and a family picture featuring a far younger Arthur von Deer with a
smiling wife, daughter and grandson (presumably) decorated the wall beside
his framed diplomas.

I squinted at the diplomas hanging over Mulder's head, but I couldn't make
out the writing.

"So," von Deer said finally, satisfied that our fake I.D.'s were not fake
as he returned them to my partner, "I'm sure you have questions."

At the time, the phrasing struck me as odd, but Mulder didn't let me dwell
on my suspicion for long.

"Well, yes," he said.  "As I told you, Pamela McGinnis and I have been
friends since childhood, and she told me about her enlightening experience
with you."

Pamela McGinnis? I didn't recognize the name.

"Yes," von Deer beamed.  "Pamela had wonderful results.  Wonderful.  Very
encouraging.  I'm glad she referred you."

"She told me a lot," Mulder continued, "but I do have a few questions."

"Of _course,_" von Deer soothed.  "Go on."

Mulder leaned back in his chair and propped one ankle on his knee.  "Well,
to start with, how did you get interested in NDE research?"

_NDE?_ I thought.

Dr. von Deer nodded his encouragement like a teacher pleased with his
pupil's insight, though I saw nothing outstanding.  "Good question.  Not
exactly something they teach you about in med school.  But did you know
that 21 percent of physicians have had at least one patient claim to have
had a near death experience? It's not as uncommon as you might think."

And suddenly I began to understand.

"So a patient piqued your interest?" Mulder prodded.

"No," von Deer admitted, and a grey cast seemed to overwhelm his features.
"Though I had had one patient claim it.  But the impetus of my study was
the death of my daughter and her family."

I blinked; I had not expected that.

"They were killed in a car accident," the old man continued.  "Sixteen
years ago.  My daughter, her husband, and their four-year-old son, Peter."

"I'm sorry," Mulder said, and I heard the honesty in his voice and his
regret at having asked--Mulder's ever-reliable capacity for probing others'
pain.  "But why--?"

"Why did this interest me in NDEs?" von Deer smiled gently. "Don't worry,
George.  The memories are old and not as difficult now.  But I became
interested because my daughter and I, we had some unresolved issues between
us, and the guilt over her unexpected death was very painful for me.  I
began to seek a way to tell her I was sorry.  I met Timothy Leary at a
conference in 1984, and he suggested some people I could talk to.  Ever
since then, I've been perfecting the technique."

"Technique for _what?_" I interrupted, including Mulder in my alarmed glance.

"Why, for inducing near death experiences, of course," von Deer explained,
as if he were surprised I didn't know.

"And how do you do that?" I drawled, aware that I had slipped into a more
severe investigator's voice than Dana Hammond should be capable of.

"Well, I've already explained this to your husband," von Deer said
helpfully, "but I'd be happy to explain it to you too, if he hasn't."
"I--" Mulder started, but I silenced him with a glare.

"Please do," I said to Arthur von Deer.

"Well," von Deer said, all brisk good-naturedness again, "you see, a person
experiencing an NDE usually exhibits depressed neural function and their
heart usually stops.  I know that sounds severe, but it's not quite the
same as death.  All of our cells, but especially our nerve and cardiac
cells, have small, tunnel-like proteins called 'ion channels' in their
membranes, which is how electrical current is carried through our body,
making our muscles work and making thought--"

"I _know_ what ion channels are," I fairly growled, no longer unbalanced by
his friendly appearance.  I knew now this man was dangerous.  "What do you
do? Introduce a hallucinogen? Or just stop the heart?"

"Well, I'm getting to that," the old man said.  "First, I anesthetize the
patient with a mild opiate.  Then I inject a drug which stops the heart."

"What drug?" I asked. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Mulder.  He
watched me impassively.

"Well, it's a chemical, actually.  Potassium chloride."

"Which is used in lethal injections," I noted.  "For a reason: it's lethal."

Now it was Dr. von Deer's turn to blink in surprise.  "Are you familiar
with the drug, Dana?" he asked me.

I chose not to answer.  "How do you sap up the ion imbalance to restart the
heart?" I asked.

"I inject a chelating cocktail to complex the ions and then defibrillate,"
he said quickly.  "It's perfectly safe, I assure you.  Most subjects
experience a little disorientation for an hour or so afterwards.  They may
feel a tingling in their lips or loss of sensation in their limbs, and they
may experience defective blood clotting if injured, but all those symptoms
can be abrogated by chewing on Tums or Rolaids."

_Why are you assuring me?_ I wanted to ask, but I feared I already knew the
answer and Mulder's conspicuous silence confirmed it.

"Tums?" I repeated.

"High in calcium," von Deer explained.

I nodded, understanding.  "It saturates the chelator."

His lower lip twitched nervously and he glanced at Mulder.  "I thought you
said your wife was a homemaker," he said through a forced chuckle.

With his usual easy smoothness, Mulder answered before I could register
my...I suppose the nice word would be 'surprise.'  "Dana is a nurse," he
said.  "But she's taken something of a sabbatical the last two years to
paint."

I hoped the inevitable memory of Amy Cassandra he'd just evoked had been an
unconscious association, though such a prospect wasn't very reassuring.
Nonetheless, von Deer seemed to relax, the effect Mulder had obviously
desired.

"Oh, how _nice!_" he dimpled at me.  "I wish I could do something like that
myself.  Take time off, that is.  But my research....  I must say, I'm
impressed, Dana.  I know few nurses--or _doctors_ for that matter--who
remember their chemistry so well.  My assistant, who also happens to be my
lovely wife, is also a nurse and another such exception.  I can't wait for
you to meet her."

I smiled back but not with my eyes.  "But _why,_" I said carefully, "would
people want to do this?"

He blinked again, confused, glanced at Mulder and I was certain what was
coming.

"Well," he said, flustered when my 'husband' didn't speak.  "People have
been trying to induce NDEs for years just for the experience, for the same
reason they try sky-diving, I imagine.  Some people have used a method
similar to mine; others use drugs like ketamine or LSD, and fighter pilots
claim to be able to reproduce the phenomenon with high-G dives.  Several
dozen researchers around the world claim to be able to induce it (quietly
of course, but they boast a large clientele), and many important names have
studied it--Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, George Richie, Raymond Moody, Timothy
Leary.  But the reason people come to me, as I'm sure your husband has told
you, is that a special feature of the NDE I offer is the chance to
communicate with loved ones on the other side."

"The other side," I repeated, skepticism coloring my tone.  Timothy
Leary--now, _that's_ a credential only Mulder wouldn't back away from.
"How do you do that, Dr. von Deer?"

"Call me Arthur," he insisted.  "It's a fascinating thing. I think it tells
us a lot spiritually as well as scientifically, and one day when I can
publish my findings without fear of reprisal, many fields will be very
interested, I think.  I'm a neurologist, you see.  I spent several years
doing basic neuroscience back in the pioneering days of electrophysiology,
and I've kept up with the work ever since.  Can we ever cease to be amazed
that something as small and disparate as the millions of cells which
comprise our brain can actually contain our consciousness?

"This problem has fascinated me all my life.  But only after the death of
my daughter did I begin to wonder exactly what that meant.  Is the brain
the _source_ of consciousness, or is it merely a transmitter? While I once
believed the former, the incredible complexity--not to mention the
incredible mental leap from chimp to human with very little cellular or
genetic change--argues against that.  Are you following me?"

Mulder hid a smirk behind his hand, but I simply nodded.

Arthur continued enthusiastically.  "Now I've come to believe the brain is
simply the wire that connects our consciousness to our bodies.  How
well-developed and how well-trained one's brain is determines how much of
our true consciousness, which is vast, can be accessed.  This theory goes a
long way toward explaining intelligence, emotions and even reported psychic
abilities, don't you think?"

Mulder waggled his eyebrows at me but I ignored him, listening closely to
the old man.

"Though nerve cells die with bodies, consciousness--our souls--do not.
This is widely accepted by almost all religions throughout time, though
they may argue about an afterlife versus reincarnation.  I have come to
believe this is true, and by manipulating the brain in specific ways, we
can follow the path of our consciousness to its source, a place where all
souls mingle and distance is immaterial.  To do this, your soul must be
'tricked' (in a manner of speaking) into believing your body is dead.  Just
before stopping the heart, though, I inject phencyclidine, which releases
magnesium in N-methyl-D-aspartate, or NMDA, channels--"

"Long-term potentiation," I breathed, suddenly understanding and torn
between fascination and horror.  "LTP."

The doctor looked inordinately pleased.  "You've heard of it?"

"Yes," I said, with a glance at Mulder, who watched me now with interest.
"It's a relatively newly described phenomenon where a single nerve cell is
depolarized for a very long time, on the order of seconds."  For my
partner's benefit, I added: "By depolarized, I mean that the cell is
conducting electric current, as when it transmits an impulse.  But in LTP,
it keeps going.  Researchers think it may be a clue to how things are
learned or remembered, but as far as I know it's only been seen in
hippocampal brain slices."

"You mean, the cell may be storing information somehow?" Mulder asked.

"Essentially," I replied.  "But it's probably not just binary--that is,
each cell being 'off' or 'on'.  LTP may be an analog, or flexible, code in
a multidimensional matrix where each cell represents a point.  The output
of the matrix may be what we call memory."

"That's right, Dana, I'm _very_ impressed," von Deer said, beaming.
"Dissociation of glutamate from NMDA receptors in an isolated hippocampus
seem to trigger LTPs, and the EEG we see when we administer NMDA to
patients suggests that it may have the same effect on a whole person."

"Don't the subjects experience memory loss?" I asked.  "You could be
erasing information in the matrix that's already there by inducing random
LTPs."

"I worried about that myself," von Deer admitted, "which is why we did many
trials with animals and then with both myself and Eleanor--my wife--before
we tried it with anyone else.  The time we're talking about here is less
than five minutes, well under the time in which protein kinase activity is
required. And we've never seen any evidence of change in brain function,
which suggests strongly to me that LTP is just a mechanism for the brain to
_access_ the memories, which are actually _stored_ in one's consciousness.
Again, we must learn to view the brain as a mere _transmitter_ for
consciousness."

I frowned.  "So you, as you say, 'trick' the brain into thinking the body
is dead, then the soul is able to travel back to it's source.  Why do you
induce LTPs as well?"

He held up a wizened finger.  "Because this single difference in the near
death experience, the NDE, allows the traveler to meet with the souls of
loved ones--both living and dead, but mainly dead because the souls of the
living are occupied here--in the place from whence all souls come.  What
researchers call the memory function of LTP may just be the ability of the
soul to access this place, while the NDE merely permits the start of the
journey.  This way, one can experience both without dying.  Do you
understand?"

"I understand perfectly," I said calmly.  "I understand that you're risking
the lives of hapless volunteers with quackery.  How much do you charge
them?"

"Now, Ms. Hammond," von Deer chided.  "I wouldn't do that.  As I told you,
I've undergone the procedure many times myself and my wife has undergone it
many more times--probably scores of times.  It's perfectly safe, and
although I can't guarantee the results, I've been able to make peace with
my daughter and grandson, and over half my subjects have likewise had
success.  And surely you know I don't charge anything.  I'm performing
_research._  All I ask is to be able to keep the data, anonymized of
course, and I ask also for your discretion."

"Because you'll lose your license if the AMA heard about this?" I demanded.
Mulder reached out to touch my arm but I shrugged away.  "Who pays for
this?"

"Private individuals," the man said in a tone meant to impress us with its
solemnity.  "You'd be surprised."

"I bet I wouldn't," I muttered, remembering Gibson Praise.

"I assure you," he said again, "it's perfectly safe.  I'll be happy to have
you in the room with us the whole time--in fact I asked your husband to
bring you because we believe it makes the return trip easier if a loved one
is there to coax the subject back and be there when he awakens."

My worst fears confirmed, I rounded on Mulder, unwilling to abandon our
charade but making him see the hurt, horror and shock in my eyes.  He
looked away.

Was I supposed to be grateful he hadn't ditched me this time? Because
gratitude was the last thing I was feeling.  I had a sudden, bizarre image
of Mulder lying on a granite slab beneath a heavy black pall, and I knew he
was dead but then his eyes snapped open and he said: "Scully, I'm so glad
you're here!"

I gave a violent shake of my head as if that could dislodge the vision from
my memory, but it clung there, an uninvited and stubborn guest.

I felt his hand on my forearm.  "Are you okay?" the real Mulder asked.

What the hell kind of question was that?

"I can see," von Deer said, "that you two need a little more time to talk
about this.  I'll step downstairs for a bit of coffee.  Would you like
something? The room won't be ready until noon anyway."

"I'd like some coffee," Mulder said; his voice was dry and a little
cracked.  "Dana?"

"No," I said, suddenly resentful at the sound of that name.  I barely
noticed as von Deer shuffled out of the room.

The anger boiled in me, expanding my chest and bubbling at the underside of
my skin.  I surged gracelessly out of my chair and, with a deep breath to
recover control, stalked over to the bookcase, as far from Mulder as I
could get.

I heard his voice, strained and soft.  "Dana," he said, and I almost
snapped at him for calling me that, but then realized he feared a tape
recorder, and his fear was probably well-founded.

Remembering the stereo I'd observed earlier on the far wall, I moved to it
and pushed 'play.'  Billie Holliday's raw and lilting voice tumbled forth,
and I cranked up the volume, moved back toward Mulder, who nodded with
approval.

"Scully..." he murmured, leaning down toward me to whisper over the music.

I cut him off with a raised hand.  "What the _hell_ were you thinking,
Mulder?" I hissed.  "Why didn't you tell me?"

To his credit, he looked miserable.  "I knew you wouldn't go along with
it," he admitted.

"Then how could you _do_ it?" I demanded.

"Would you rather I not have told you?" he whispered, too passionate to
achieve the reasonability he was aiming for.  "Would you rather I just
called you up on Sunday and said, 'Oh, hey, Scully, I just had a near death
experience and talked to my father, what do you think about that?'"

"Don't you mean, would I rather the hospital called me to tell me you were
dead or brain-damaged for life?" I stared into his hazel eyes, daring him
to guess which was worse.  "Was this what last night was all about?
Something to remember you by, 'just in case?'"

He looked surprised.  "Wha--?" he began, then comprehension dawned in his
eyes and was quickly replaced by something unrecognizable.  "Jesus, Scully.
No."  His injured expression suggested I'd just damaged a memory as
precious to him as it had been to me, but at the moment I didn't care.

"The sky is blue, and high above," sang Billie with enthusiasm. "The moon
is new, and so is love...."

I tore my eyes away from his and looked steadily out the window at the grey
wintry clouds.  "It's _bullshit,_ Mulder," I told him finally.

"Near death experiences featuring a light at the end of a long tunnel have
been described for over a millennium in every culture," Mulder replied.
"There has to be something to them."

"There is," I snapped. "Lack of oxygen.  When circulation ceases, the
retina is one of the first organs starved for oxygen, and nerve cells start
firing at random.  There are more nerve cells in the most sensitive part of
the retina--the fovea, so it appears to the subject that a bright spot is
generated.  That's why it happens to fighter pilots in dives--rapid
pressure changes deprive the blood of oxygen.

"Further," I continued, "endorphin production increases dramatically in the
last minutes or even hours before death, as a feedback response to quell
pain.  It's like a natural buzz--the subject feels peaceful and cogent,
though he probably isn't.  It's easy to imagine that he's reviewing his
life, another common feature of NDEs."

"How--"

"How do I know so much?" I snapped.  "I read up on it about a year ago,
when I spent some time researching ketamine, a drug which many believe can
induce NDEs, and which, maybe not surprisingly, bind NMDA channels.  Now,
why would I have been researching that?"

I let that sink in for a second.  "I don't understand you, Mulder," I said
softly.  "Why do you do these self-destructive things?"

"It's perfectly safe, Scully," he replied.  "Von Deer has never lost a
patient."

"How do you know? What he's doing is illegal.  We should be arresting him,
not supporting him!"

"He's been reported to the AMA twice by subjects who didn't see any
ghosts," Mulder answered.  "I checked him out thoroughly after hearing
about him through a friend of a friend of Frohike's--that Pamela McGinnis
woman.  Who was very pleased with her NDE, I might add.  The police
investigated him a couple of times too, but he has powerful friends, though
I don't think he knows it.  _Someone_ believes in his research.  And I'd
think you would too.  You've had a near death experience yourself, right?"

"That was completely different," I snapped.  "I was in a coma."

"But you believe in souls," he insisted.  "You believe that you were
waiting somewhere during that time."

I frowned at the window, angry that I'd ever told him and frustrated that
there was no reply I could make.

"The sky is blue, the night is cold," Billie told us, her voice quickening.
"The moon is new, the love is old."

"I didn't _choose_ it," I told him at last.

"I know," he said, soothing but firm.  "But this is _my_ choice.  If it
works, Scully, maybe we can learn something.  Maybe I can ask my father....
or maybe Samantha--"  His voice cracked almost imperceptibly on the final
word but I didn't relent.

"Mulder, the only conceivable reason the NMDA could seem to allow contact
with loved ones is probably because it's randomly triggering memories.
I've never heard of it being administered to a live patient--the effects
are completely unpredictable.  It could affect your memory, could give you
brain damage, anything.  As could the simulated death.  It's ridiculously
dangerous, and you can't trust anything you'd 'learn.'  This isn't the way!
I thought you'd agreed with me before."

"I'm not asking you to do it," he said.  "I'm just asking you to stay with
me while I do it."

"So I can talk you back to reality with tender endearments?" I demanded,
aware of the irony dripping off my tongue.  "I'm a little too angry right
now, Mulder.  How dare you put me in this position, where to refuse you is
to somehow betray you and to agree to play along is to betray myself?"

He winced.  "I didn't realize it would be that kind of a decision for you."

I stared at him, threatening and studying.  His features were earnest,
hopeful and apologetic, but I recognized the familiar determination that
lay beneath it all.  He was really going to do this.

"Please, Scully," he said softly, using that rarest of words.  "I'm not
asking you to participate.  I asked you along because if I'm going to do
something stupid like this I trust you to watch, to do the right thing if
something goes wrong, to bring me back."

"I've already given you my advice, and you're still doing the stupid
thing," I pointed out.  "What the hell do you need me here for?"

"Please, Scully," he repeated steadily, and I closed my eyes against the
power of those simple words.

---------------------------------------------------

12:31 p.m.

I hadn't said yes, but here I was, in this tiny surgical teaching room.
Dr. von Deer explained that he'd had a special second lock put on the door
to which only he had a key, and he conducted his infrequent experiments
only on the weekends, when no students were scheduled here.  Safest, he'd
explained, to do this in the hospital, where, if anything when wrong, he
could rush the subject immediately to the ER.  Life, he said, was always
more important than the research or his medical license.

But he'd never had to abort a trial yet.

Mulder believed him, and I just didn't know what to believe.  Yet I was
certain that this was very, very wrong.

Eleanor von Deer, a grey-haired nurse whose stark thinness and dour lips
were the very antithesis of her husband's jolly visage, moved about the
yellow room in blue scrubs, arranging and rearranging equipment.  Arthur
was busily adjusting the mesh net of suction cups over Mulder's hair; it
would record impulses from the various regions of his brain.  Before
adhering each cup, he'd fuss with the my partner's hair, then swab a bit of
grease onto his scalp and slap the cup down, sculpting him into a cross
between Alfalfa and Frankenstein's monster.

Mulder lay prone and naked on the gurney, a sheet modestly draped over his
hips and legs.  The EKG leads were already affixed to his torso and the IV
situated in his thigh, where it would be least likely to dislodge when they
defibrillated him.

I shuddered at the memory of the last time I'd seen that, four years ago.
Then, I'd been holding the paddles, and adrenalin had sustained me enough
to watch his body seize as the voltage pulsed through him, rising up and
then slamming back down into the table as we both fought for his life.  I'd
never forget the sound of his skin smacking the cold metal or the way his
fists involuntarily clenched with each surge.  I did not care to witness it
again--my nightmares were a more than sufficient reminder.

I stood several feet away, watching with my arms folded on my chest, as
anger and anxiety warred over every fiber of my body.  Why did I let him do
this? Why did I let him make me watch it?  Why did _he_ do it?

I didn't know what he expected to find.  An unprovable, inscrutable droplet
of 'wisdom' from the imbibed font that was his father? I knew better.  This
was not about truth, or even answers.

Mulder just wanted to know if it would work.  He wanted, as we all do, for
the world to be bigger than reality tells us it is, for confirmation that
we are not meaningless and random.  He has a greater capacity for hope than
I, and I admire and love him for it, but....

But.  There I stood.

I felt an unfamiliar hand on my arm, turned to see Eleanor at my elbow.
She was much taller than I, and it was vaguely disconcerting.

"Come have a seat," she suggested with a kindness that belied her harsh
features.  "I promise, he'll be fine and it will be wonderful for him.
I've done it thirty-eight times myself."

If that was meant to reassure, she'd missed her target, but I let her guide
me to the chair she'd positioned at his right side, and he turned his head
to look at me.  The movement forced van Deer to reposition one of the
suction cups.  "Please hold your head still," Arthur said, and Mulder
telegraphed me a chagrined smile while staring back at the ceiling.

Not knowing what else to do, I reached for his hand, and he squeezed back
with a grateful tightness I hadn't quite expected.  I shook my head slowly
at him, biting my lower lip.

"Well now," von Deer said, all doctorly efficiency.  "I think we're ready.
George?"

"Go ahead," 'George' answered with a cheerfulness only I recognized as forced.

Eleanor produced a syringe, moved to the crimp in the IV line, which hung
from a stand by Mulder's hip.

I swallowed; my throat was dry.  This was not right.

"Wait," I said, and she looked at me, holding up the needle.  The doctor
raised his eyebrows, trying to maintain the appearance of patience though
he was clearly tiring of me.

Mulder looked at me too, the same pleading that he'd exhibited upstairs
Arthur's office evident in his eyes.

"Wait," I said again, trying to collect my thoughts.  I wet my lips.  Then
the words tumbled forth before I could stop them.

"I can't be a part of this," I told him, wishing these two strangers
weren't here.  "I can't.  It's your choice, you're right, but it's mine
too, and I just....I _won't._"

I wrenched my hand from his grasp, trying not to look at his pained
expression.  I stumbled blindly to my feet and started for the door.

"Sc--Dana!" I heard him call after me, and the pain and betrayal in his
voice clamped a chokehold on my throat.  "Please.  I need you..."

But I walked out the door and didn't look back, unwilling to become a
pillar of salt.

---------------------------------------------------






Chapter 2

Spiritual Counseling Available

---------------------------------------------------

I walked away, my arms stiff at my sides, my right hand clutching the purse
that was heavy with my gun; somehow the responsibility of a weapon endowed
me with a greater sense of control than I might have otherwise felt.
Ironic, considering the current list of candidates for acquaintance with my
Sig was quite short and irrational, given that it included my partner.

I didn't really know where I was going, but I have never been a wanderer; I
moved like I had a destination.  Out of the small teaching wing, through
the double doors into surgery, I navigated around groggy patients on
gurneys and fast-moving doctors and orderlies.  I barely saw them.

Past the entrance to the emergency room and down an endless corridor, the
signs on either side of me seemingly written in a language I once knew but
had long ago forgotten: "Radiology," "Nutritional Services," "Urology,"
"Endoscopy."

I passed the cafeteria, and briefly deliberated whether this would offer
the best seclusion--it is sometimes easier to find solitude in crowds.  But
my feet kept moving, as if the choice of waiting room weren't mine to make.

The trite little gift shop tried to lure me in with cheery "It's a boy!"
balloons and tasteful flower arrangements, but I wasn't so easily ensnared.
I kept going, past the families with strollers and the elderly couples and
the noisy, squalling children.  And found myself at a plain wooden door
marked "Chapel."

I entered.

Someone had done a good soundproofing job; the sudden quiet was so complete
that one could have heard a pin drop--except the burgundy carpet and
draperied walls would have absorbed even that sound.

Four dark pews saluted the crucifix, which hung on the far wall to my left.
Below it and to the side was a rack of candles, improperly placed but there
was no room near the door and no windows, either.  Near the communion rail
stood a tastefully-carved confessional, and in the far corner to my right a
low cabinet sported several books.

The only other occupants of the tiny chapel were the woman and her son, in
that corner.  The woman was helping the boy, who looked about six, to write
something in the large white binder, and her words dimly registered in my
brain.

"Sound it out," she murmured.  "Haaa-piiii.  That's right.  'H'...'A'...."

The boy didn't look very happy.  He looked confused.  I wanted to see the
spines of the books propped on the cabinet, but was reluctant to intrude on
the mother and child.

So I moved away from them, crossed myself, and eased into the pew furthest
from the door, closest to the communion rail.  A church is thankfully one
of the rare places where not acknowledging one's companions is considered
polite.

I rested my elbows on my knees and leaned forward, trying not to imagine
the sound of the EKG, the beeep...beeep........beeep........beeep, and then
the endless, urgent tone.

How could he do this?

I had never told him the whole story of my experience, of the things I saw
in that coma.  For awhile after it first happened, I believed it had been
something marvelous, but in the ensuing years I have come to doubt some of
its elements.  I have strangely fractured memories--images and voices, a
few words--but nothing concrete.

I remember my mother, Melissa and Mulder.  I can at times convince myself
that I saw their faces, but it's not unlike one of those memories of young
childhood, of which you one day discover a photo.  Suddenly you wonder
whether you actually remember what happened or you just got the Polaroid
version.

I remember a few of their words, but nothing very concrete, and again, I
don't know which words were actually spoken and which imagined by me.  I am
certain I heard their voices.

I remember an overwhelming sense of peacefulness, and associated with that
is the sound of water, and the scent of the air just as autumn turns to
winter--my favorite time of year.  But I don't have any real recollection
of my surroundings.

And I remember the voice of a woman who called me by name and whispered for
me to come back.  She said it wasn't my time, and I believed her.  I
believe it now.

But what I remember most clearly from that time is my father.  The only one
of those people who was actually dead.  And I did feel as though I had
achieved a certain resolution with him, one we never attained in his
lifetime.  Sitting there in that anonymous chapel, the memory made me
uneasy.  I did not want to think there was truth in von Deer's claims, that
he had tricked heaven into giving him with his daughter what I'd had with
my father.

And if there were, was it fair of me to deny Mulder the same peace I'd
found? Since when did my role as his partner and protector conflict with my
role as his friend?

But I still do not know if the vision of my father was a true one, and I do
think it matters.

I believe our souls carry on after death, from which we should therefore
have nothing to fear.  I have certainly seen enough to convince me that on
rare occasion the living may even be permitted to communicate with the
dead, though it is very difficult to convince even myself that this
explanation is correct.

Equally difficult to believe, however, is the idea that these events can be
explained away by LTPs and New Age posturing.  There have been times in my
life when I doubted the power of miracles or when I doubted that God has
intentions, but my experiences with the X-Files have, if anything,
strengthened my beliefs in these regards.  I don't know if the white-haired
benevolent old man to whom I grew up praying really exists, but I do know
there is a powerful force beyond (or at the root of) nature, and that He
watches over and acts in this world, but never without reason.

If I did see my father, it was because God willed it, for a reason.  Not
because of my own selfish desires.

And if I didn't see him, then maybe it was for my selfish desires, and....
I tightened my jaw.  Were the answers never easy?

Miracles are not formulaic; you cannot obtain them by performing the
correct ritual, whether that ritual is a sacrifice or the stopping and
starting of one's heart.  To suggest otherwise is offensive not only to God
but to the ghosts one hopes to summon.  I have always resented the Billy
Grahams of this world with their $29.95 cookbook miracles: those who seek
the miracles are the least likely to find them.

But of course I could never persuade Mulder with an argument like that--he
didn't see this issue as religious.  I wasn't sure of it myself, and it
wasn't really something for arguing over anyway.  Regardless of the
spiritual implications of his daredevil routine, the scientific and medical
ones were sufficient reason to object.

I wondered if he was, at this moment, alive.  Should any person with sane
friends have to ask that question, and so often?

I almost laughed, but it wasn't funny.

My thighs were tingling, and I realized I'd been unconsciously digging them
into the hard wood of the pew.  My throat felt dry and sticky.  I got to my
feet, intending to leave the chapel and find a drinking fountain, anxious
for some function with which to occupy my body.  But instead of going to
the door, I found myself moving toward the flickering candles.

The mother was still quietly encouraging her son in the opposite corner,
but I couldn't hear her.  I wondered if she had lit a flame for someone,
why she was here.  Had she lost someone, or did she fear a pending loss?

If her loved one only _might_ be dying, then she had no idea what 'pending'
meant.  I knew all about 'pending.'  Every day spent with Mulder was
pending my loss--if not by this ridiculous NDE scheme, then by a bullet or
a bee sting next week.

I tried to suppress the self-pity, which I loathe, but I am far too
well-acquainted with its subversion, and at times like these I know
full-well that reason will not triumph.

I chose a new candle and made it bow before its neighbor, wick to wick,
until the white woven threads protruding from the cold wax glowed orange.
The automatic reflex of my lips shaping words was not as comforting as it
should have been.

_Blessed are all thy Saints, O God, who have traveled over the tempestuous
sea of this
mortal life, and have made the harbor of peace and felicity. Watch over us
who are still in our
dangerous voyage, for frail is our vessel, and the ocean is wide...and the
ocean is wide...for frail is our vessel, and...._

I couldn't remember the rest, though I was sure Augustine's prayer ended in
something about peace.  Something neither Mulder nor I will ever know
anything about, so perhaps it's not surprising that the words escaped me.

I stared into the flame for a long moment, and had begun to turn away, when
my eye snagged on a small wooden box beside the candles.

It was painted white, and in plain, stenciled black letters were the words:
"Prayer Circle for the Dearly Departed."

I had to lean in closer to read the small, awkwardly-phrased type
underneath.  "Saint Luke Hospital hosts a prayer circle of men and women
from local churches who gather once a month for non-denominational prayer
for those who have passed on and for their loved ones.  To be included,
please write the name of the deceased and the names of the bereaved on the
paper provided.  Address or phone number optional.  Spiritual counseling
available."

To this day, I have no idea what compelled me to open the box.  Perhaps the
names were perversely alluring to my currently maudlin state.  Maybe my
hands lacked something better to do.  Maybe miracles do happen when we ask
for them, just not the ones we asked for.  Or maybe--well, I don't know.

Neatly folded rectangles of paper were piled high in the box--the end of
the month must have been nearing.  I glanced furtively at the confessional
and then at the woman and her little boy, as if I were doing something
wrong, but the confessional was, of course, empty and the woman was about
to leave.

"Alexander Garbo," said one.  "Loving husband, brother, father.  Mary,
Jewel, Casey and Sam."

I folded it neatly and picked up another one.

"Kimberly Black died on January 9, leaving behind her husband Mark and her
two children Sandy and Mark, Jr."

"Please pray for Jerry Chartram."

"Jacob Hanover, age 19.  Mother--Lila Hanover, Sister--Karen,
Grandmother--Margaret.  Thank you."

And on and on.

Dozens of names passed between my fingers, written by people who _had_
lost--a much-needed reminder that I had no monopoly on pain.

I closed the box and crossed the room to examine the books on the wall.
The mother and her son must have slipped out while I was reading.

Bibles in several languages, a Torah, a Qur-a'n, a Book of Mormon, and a
Sukhmani were stacked side-by-side on top of the cabinet.  But what drew my
attention was the binder that the little boy had been writing in.  It was a
looseleaf, three-ring affair filled with white pages, and I knew the
childish handwriting on the top page must have been the boy's prayer.

"Dear God," it read.  "Please let my daddy get better.  When he is not
home, I am not happy.  I wish he did not have to feel sick.  Please let him
come home soon.  I love you.  Richard Purcheski."

I frowned.  On the one hand, it was endearing, and probably intended to
help the child deal with his feelings.  On the other, I wondered how much
of the words had been the prompting of the mother.  Children do not
comprehend death, and frankly I am not confident that they should, at least
not in the way we grown-ups do.

I turned back a page.  More adult handwriting, now.  "Dear God, two years
ago I prayed to you to remove my wife Deborah's cancer, and it was gone but
now it has returned.  Please allow her to fight off this disease again,
with your help.  May we grow old together.  Amen, Tim M."

Here, the loopy cursive of a young teenager.  "Please bless my uncle threw
his surgery tomorrow at 7:00 a.m. in the morning.  Please gide him, give
him his strength and health and happiness he had with his loved ones.
Please gide the doctor and nurses for the job their doing to him. Amen,
Jana Keller."

I do not believe that prayer can be used to sway God; that would imply that
God favors the fortunes of popular people with pious friends.  Prayer is
for the comfort of the one who does the praying, and, perhaps, for the
object of the prayer, if he knows it.

Mulder knows I pray for him; at least, I've told him so once or twice and
he knows me well enough to guess it wasn't a one-time deal.  I pray for the
usual things--safety and freedom from pain, resolution of hardships.  But I
also pray for small secret things, like that he gets some sleep the night
after he's shot someone (or almost shot me).  Or that sometime in the next
week or two he'll go eat cheesesteaks with the boys, which, though it's not
exactly _my_ idea of entertainment, is at least diversionary in name.
Sometimes I just pray he'll leave me alone for a few days (but the truth is
I'd be disappointed if he didn't _try_ to call and I think he knows that).

The ironic thing is that I think he prays even more than I do.  He prays
for my safety, for his sister's return, for an irrefutable scrap of truth
which doesn't come with pain attached.  He just doesn't recognize it as
prayer because his vocabulary is different.  So how could he not understand
that I would react as I did to his ridiculous scheme?

If he _were_ dead now, what would I do?

It was a question I'd asked myself before without resolution, and the
answer was no clearer today.  Life without Mulder is unthinkable, not
because it would not go on (it would), but because it is simply impossible
to imagine.

What hurt the most was not Mulder's stupid idea or even that he hadn't told
me what he was doing.  And though it hurt tremendously to know that the
stain on last night's wonderful and rare shared evening could never be
washed out, that was minuscule compared to the accusation in his words as
I'd left the room.

"I need you," he'd said, but what he meant was: "How could you abandon me?"
Somehow he'd managed to pervert his (also painful) knowing compromise of my
character into a betrayal of _my_ loyalty to _him._

My knuckles were white and cold from gripping the edges of the book, and
just as I forced my fists to unclench, I heard the chapel door open.

I turned my shoulders away from it and bowed my head so that my hair
curtained my face, hoping to make it clear to the newcomer that I wanted to
be left alone.

If I had done what he did today, he would have forcibly dragged me from
that room, free choice or no.  It seems an antiquated or even patriarchal
move to make, but is it any different from the assumption that I'd sit
there and hold his hand like some loyal, thoughtless Penelope waiting for
Ulysses? And, a quieter voice asked, _was_ it disloyal to leave him
(especially given my own indecision regarding von Deer)?

But I know it's not any simple anti-feminist issue, not for Mulder.  It's
just that I am me and he is he.  Him.  Whatever.

I heard the stranger's muffled footfalls approaching me.  Apparently this
person had not been educated in the rules of chapel etiquette.

But then I felt a familiar palm on my shoulderblade and I knew he was no
stranger.  It could not have been over this quickly, which must mean that--

"I didn't do it, Scully," Mulder said, his voice soft and sad, and I let
out a long breath.  His other hand came up to my waist, confining me there
at arms' length, as if afraid to embrace me but equally fearful I'd walk
away.

He hadn't done it.  He had told them no.  My head slowly rose of its own
accord, but I couldn't permit myself to look at him.  The immediate burst
of relief was followed by red-hot anger and then a confused....what?
Disappointment?  Surely not.  Surely I wouldn't feel this way just because
he'd confounded my expectations.

"You were right," he continued, still talking to the back of my head.  "I
shouldn't have put you in this position.  I'm sorry."

I didn't know what to say--whether to pound my fists into his chest or wrap
my arms around him, so I kept turning the pages of the binder.

"Hello! It's me again," I read silently.  "My dad Jerry was confined here
again 3 days ago, and now he's delirious.  He doesn't know what he's doing,
'cuz of the medication that they give him.  Please help him get out of it
and the rejection of the kidney to get better.  Help my family and me to be
strong.  I love you, Jesus. - Cassidy Chartram."

"Scully?" he asked, deeply concerned.  His hand traced a light circle over
my shoulder.  "Scully, are you okay?"

My partner had just misled me, used me, the told me he was going to
volunteer himself for death, and now I was supposed to forgive him just
because he was here?  Yet he was only here because I had goaded him by
withdrawing the only thing I had that Mulder valued: my support.  Oh sure,
I'm fine.  I'm perfect.  I'm okay.

But I didn't say a word, and I didn't turn either, which undoubtedly made
him think I was trying not to cry.  The inevitability of his suspicion, and
that I _knew_ it, made me even angrier.

"You can yell at me now," he suggested.  "Or maybe say you told me so.  Go
ahead."

He would have loved for me to yell at him, because anger is a language that
Mulder understands.  He craves my anger like an alcoholic craves straight
vodka, because even when it hurts it reassures him I'm invested.  What
he'll never understand is my sorrow.

But of course I would never say that aloud.  I hardly knew what I meant.

Finally, he sighed, tried another tack.  "What are you reading?" he asked,
leaning over my shoulder so that I could feel his warmth through my back.

My eyes returned to the page: "My God, Oh my God, please hear my cry.  I
know in my heart you are with us all, please reach down and touch the hands
and hearts of the doctors, help me bring Jacob home.  He's a good boy.
We're in your hands now.  I love you.  Lila Hanover."

In a strange, unexpected moment of clarity which had nothing to do with
Mulder, it hit me.

I wrenched myself free of Mulder's grasp and, carrying the binder, crossed
quickly back to the candles.

"Scully?"

But I ignored him.  I opened the little white box and drew out the topmost
scrap of paper.

"What are you doing?" Mulder said, and I heard the edge of uncertainty in
his voice that suggested he was questioning _my_ sanity.  Ironic,
considering.

Didn't he understand that, if I said anything at all, it would be so brutal
or so teary that we'd both forever regret I'd said anything? But I was only
secondarily aware of him now.

I looked at the paper in my hand: _Ricardo Cabarillo._  Flipped through the
pages of the binder until I came to: "Dear Jesus, please protect my father
through this night.  The accident was bad but I know you can save him and I
know he deserves to live.  His family needs him.  Please, it's not his
time.  I know I do not come to you often enough, but I swear I will if you
help make him better.  Thank you for all you have done for me and my
children.  - Ana."

I set Ricardo's name aside and folded down the corner of the page in the
notebook.  I heard Mulder approaching behind me, and then his hand entered
my field of vision, tipped down the lid of the white box to read its
purpose.  I could hear him breathing.

Here was a scrap of paper for Bernard Keller, here one for Deborah Murdoch.
I turned down the corners of the corresponding pages.

"Scully?" he asked for what seemed like the hundredth time.

"I think I want to talk to the priest," I told him, distracted.

"About what I did?" Mulder asked, and I resented the incredulity in his
tone, but only favored him with a cool stare.

"No," I answered, and gestured at the box. "About _this._  I think we may
have a case on our hands."

His mouth relaxed in relief at my apparent lack of injury and I resented
that too but this wasn't the time to discuss it.

I picked up another name, but didn't find it in the binder.

I could tell when his shoulders straightened from a slouch that he'd caught
on, and abruptly he took out a handful of names.  "Peter Coutts," he read
aloud, and I glanced at him, then began flipping rapidly through the pages.

"No," I said.

"Valerie Skank?" Mulder suggested, and I found her, marked the page.

He unfolded another note.  "Bluffton is the kid's name, no first name for
the grandmother."

I found no Blufftons.

We went through the entire box that way, and when we'd finished, nearly
half of the deaths were in the pile and about eighty percent of the pages
in the binder from the last month was turned down.  I looked up at Mulder,
who was biting his lower lip in thought.  "Well, Scully," he said.  "I
don't think I'd want any prayer circle affiliated for this hospital praying
for me."

"And I was just about to write you in," I remarked, only half-joking.
"Let's get the hospital's death records.  They'll be much more complete,
and we can compare dates to the dates in the binder."

"Not to mention check out causes of death," Mulder added, and I knew we
were Agents Mulder and Scully again.

So much for a weekend vacation.  Thank God.

---------------------------------------------------
2:45 p.m.

Some gratuitous and well-rehearsed badge-flashing earned us a printout
listing all the hospital deaths within the last three months, both
inpatient and outpatient.  We co-opted a booth in the cafeteria, despite
Mulder's unmentioned but obvious concern that von Deer or his wife might
find us here and realize we'd lied to them.  Secretly, I wanted them to.  I
wanted to see the look on that old man's face when he became acquainted
with the business end of my badge.  But neither appeared.

Mulder sat across from me and combed through the abducted binder to make a
list of the names within and the dates of the entries.  In many cases, he
had to guess, and sometimes couldn't get a name at all, as when "Carol"
mentioned her "husband," but even then he often still had a date, or could
guess at it from the pages it was sandwiched between.

I took each page as he finished it and ran my finger down the pages of the
inch-thick printout, marking the name if I found it and adding date and
cause of death to Mulder's list.  I was able to match every single name
he'd listed, and in the ambiguous cases I was still able to make an
educated guess based on the note's date.  It took almost two hours, but
when we finished, 256 subjects of the 303 prayers (not counting occasional
duplicates) were shown to be dead.

"It might not mean anything," I cautioned as Mulder pored over the pages.
"In hospitals, people don't pray for loved ones who are well."

"No," Mulder said firmly, and I nodded my agreement.  "The dates are too
consistent.  Almost all of the patients died within one or two days after
the prayer entry.  That can't be coincidence."

"Yeah," I said, drawing the word out.  I'd considered this carefully.
"Plus, only two people on the list from the last month, excluding the last
two days, are still alive, whereas two months ago the survival rate was
much higher."

"You think it's an escalating serial killer, huh?"

"Don't you?"

"How could he have done it? We're talking about 256 potential deaths in the
last twelve weeks, and no one at the hospital has caught on?"

"Well, some of the deaths could be just coincidence," I pointed out.

"Sure," Mulder acknowledged.  "Okay, let's say as many as half are
coincidental.  That leaves 128 deaths.  Still a pretty high rate."
"Someone could be drugging them," I suggested.

"And nurses wouldn't have noticed this suspicious person shooting up
patients' IVs?"

"It could be a nurse," I replied.  "Or, more likely, someone in nutrition
services, someone who delivers or makes the food.  Cyanide, arsenic,
iocaine...there're dozens of ways it could be done."

A woman at the booth behind Mulder glanced back over her shoulder with a
horrified expression and I ignored her but lowered my voice. "Many of them
wouldn't turn up in autopsies, and autopsies weren't even done on most of
those patients."

"Yeah," Mulder said with a frown.  "Many of these just list 'respiratory
failure' as cause of death.  Not very explanatory."

"It's a catch-all for 'we don't know,'" I answered.  "But no one was
surprised when these people died.  They were cancer, AIDS, geriatric
patients...the kind one prays for.  'Respiratory failure' indicates that
the doctor presumed the disease killed them."

"Some of these did have autopsies, though," Mulder noted.

"Yes, the healthier ones, where death was more unexpected.  One of them
died after childbirth, and there were a couple cases of food poisoning, one
bronchitis, things like that.  Unusual but not unheard of.  Still, the
autopsies apparently produced no significant findings, because the cause of
death is still 'respiratory failure.'"

Suddenly, something caught Mulder's eye and he flipped fast through the
pages, scanning them from top to bottom.

"What?" I asked.

"The times of death are all at night," he observed, looking up at me.

"I noticed that," I answered.  "Which seemingly supports the idea of a killer."

"But not one in food service."

"If the drug were administered at a consistent meal, say, lunch, and didn't
take effect until night..."

"The patient wouldn't feel the effects before that?"

"Okay, maybe it's in a time-release capsule."

"And the patient wouldn't notice he was eating a pill?"

"It could be snuck into his meds."

"Then it would be harder to control time of death, and besides, not all
patients have meds."

I shrugged, not seeing his point.  "So? Maybe the killer uses a variety of
mechanisms so as not to be detected."

"Maybe," Mulder said.  "Or maybe not."

I gave an exasperated sigh at his cryptic sage routine.  "Look, Mulder,
this isn't really our case anyway.  We haven't done any paperwork, and
we're supposed to be consulting in Seattle by Monday.  It should start with
the local police--"

But he knew I wasn't too serious.  "You gonna give the local police this
list? They'll laugh.  No one else will see this as evidence--250 deaths
sounds far too ridiculous.  We'll do the paperwork _after_ we're sure
there's a case."

"You're already sure," I pointed out, with more acid than was warranted.
Wouldn't want him to forget I was angry.

But he just grinned.  "You're right."

---------------------------------------------------

4:45 p.m.

We had been fortunate: Father Thomas was in his office that day.  He was a
pleasant middle-aged man with a thick but alluring South American accent;
he explained early in the conversation that he had grown up in Peru but had
requested that the church find him a flock in the United States after
serving in Lima, Mexico City and Rome.  Not the sort of priest one expected
to find at a hospital.

I asked him how long the prayer book had been in residence in the chapel,
and, still confused about why the FBI wanted to talk to _him,_ his answer
was a little defensive.

"I added the book myself when I arrived here three months ago," he said.
"It seems to have been a very positive addition to the chapel.  Many people
are using it."

"We noticed," Mulder remarked.  "Funny that the people who get prayed for
seem to wind up dead."

I winced at his forthrightness, but I knew he was only interested in
provoking and studying a reaction.  From my vantage point, the result was
confusion mixed with horror.

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"Just an observation," Mulder answered, and he dropped our list onto the
desk.  "See those names? They're from the prayer book."

Thomas scanned the list from top to bottom, his lips moving silently as his
eyes widened.  He flipped to the next page and the next.  I folded my arms
on my chest, waiting.

"But...but...people die.  It happens.  And people who are sick enough to so
desperately need prayer..."

"Not that many people die, Father," I said.  "And not within two days of
the time their prayer was written."

Thomas crossed himself reflexively and gave me an almost plaintive look.
"You think someone is _doing_ this?"

Mulder opened his mouth to reply but I was quicker.  "We don't know."

A sharp knock at the door stopped Thomas before he could speak again, and
he shook his head to clear it, called out: "Come in."

A young woman entered, her cheeks streaked with tears.  She looked
nervously from Mulder to me, biting her lip.

"Katie," he said, his voice edged with undisguised concern.  "What is it?"

"He's back in ICU, Father," the woman sniffled, and I caught Mulder's eye,
signaled for him to follow me as I made for the door.  He followed with the
reluctance of a hound called off the hunt, but not before snatching back
the list.

In the hallway outside, he leaned his elbow against the wall and propped
his head on his hand.  I sidled closer to him.

"Do you think he has something to do with it?"

Mulder's eyes unfocused.  "No," he said after a moment.  "No, I think he
was genuinely surprised.  There's definitely a religious theme here, but
he's not the type to be involved.  I can't quite put my finger on it."

"Someone playing devil, intervening to show that God won't?" I suggested.

"I thought of that," Mulder admitted, as usual oblivious to having stolen
my thunder.  "But it doesn't completely fit."

"Why not?"

He shrugged, still looking through me.  "I don't know," he confessed.  "It
just doesn't."

Did he have any idea how frustrating that was? I was not in the mood today
for the enigmatic Fox Mulder, and even though I knew it wasn't deliberate,
I had to bite down hard and look away to keep from demanding he demonstrate
his rationale.

But I knew from years of experience without a manual that there was nothing
else I could say, so after a long hesitation I finally asked what I didn't
want to know.

"What happened after I left?"

His eyes found mine as if surprised I was standing there, much less asking
such a cryptic question.

"When?"

I already regretted asking.  "This morning."

"Oh."  He shrugged.  "They gave me the opiate, took some preliminary
readings.  I stopped them before they injected the NMDA.  I combed my hair
and came after you."

Implicit was the observation that he hadn't had to look too hard.  But this
was beside the point.  "You took the opiate?"

"Yeah.  It was a small dose."

"So you were drugged when you found me?"

"Not too heavily."

I leaned my head against the wall, defeated.  "Mulder," I groaned.

"What?"

"How do you feel now?" Straightening, I hooked my hand around the back of
his neck and dragged his head down toward me so I could better see his
pupils.  He came willingly, and I cupped his cheek to pull at the skin
below his left eye with my thumb.

"I feel fine," he said.

His pupils looked dilated.  I wished I had a penlight.  Maybe I could
borrow one--

At that moment the door opened and I dropped my hand fast as if I'd been
caught doing something wrong, but it was only Katie, coming out of the
room.  She'd bent her head to hide her tears with her hair, and she crossed
the hall back into the chapel without looking at us.

I walked back into the office with Mulder in tow.  Father Thomas stood at
the window, staring out into the grey afternoon.

"Running an interfaith chapel in a Catholic hospital isn't easy," he said
before we could speak.  "You have to play all angles, provide every
traditional formality as well as every modern psychological ritual.  I
thought the prayer book was just a good idea, and I don't want to believe
what you've told me. But if you're right, or even if you're just
investigating the possibility, I think we have no choice butto remove it.
Thank you for telling me."

"No, don't remove it," Mulder said, from behind me.  "I have a better idea."

Abruptly nervous, I looked back at him, one eyebrow already on its way up.

---------------------------------------------------





Chapter 3

Minenfield Voran

---------------------------------------------------
9:45 p.m.

It was too late to object, but in our haste to execute the plan we'd had no
time to talk alone until now.  Had he intended that? I liked to think the
negotiations had been mine, but sometimes I suspected Mulder of trying to
make me think that when it wasn't completely true.

I let the irritation in my voice underline the concern. "Mulder, I don't
like this at all.  Why does this have to be _you?_"

My back was turned to him as he undressed for the second time that day.
"Well, Dr. Scully," he answered in his most reasonable tone, "I figure
you're a lot more qualified to look after me than I am to look after you."

"You realize that using an officer as bait to trap a killer goes against at
least a dozen bureau regulations."

He ignored me.  "We'll call up some boys from the Buffalo office tomorrow
to keep an eye on me so you don't have to stick around the whole time if
you don't want to.  You can turn around now."

I did.  Mulder was sitting on the edge of the hospital bed dressed in a
silly-looking blue gown, his clothes folded neatly beside him.  "No," I
said.  "I don't trust that.  I want to keep an eye on you myself."

"Scully, I'm touched."  He laid his palm dramatically over his heart.
"You've never offered to share a hospital room with me before."

"Quarantine," I pointed out.  "But I didn't want to do it then and I didn't
say I _wanted_ to do it now."

He had turned to pick up the pile of multicolored check-in literature on
the bed beside him, but the acid in my tone made him glance back at me.  He
knew I hadn't forgotten the morning.

In a syrup-coated voice he pretended to grumble: "Well, at least in Q we
got HBO." He tapped the TV channel listings on top of the paper pile.  "How
do you feel about ESPN?  ESP-en, Scully.  You ever really think about that?"

What I was thinking about was my almost insurmountable desire to be back in
my own home with the past twelve hours erased.

Though we hadn't told him the whole story, only saying we needed it for an
undercover investigation, one of the hospital vice presidents had been
sufficiently impressed with our credentials to provide us with the tiniest,
shabbiest room the hospital offered.  If I learned nothing else on this
trip it was that health care really has become as much a bean-counting
industry as the federal government.

The view from the window was of a white cement-block wall about six feet
away.  Two thinly-blanketed beds were separated by a curtain.  Not exactly
where I'd expected to spend my weekend.

I was very glad that Mulder hadn't asked _me_ to write the prayer.  It
would have been dishonest somehow, to have to make up words for how much I
cared about him just to further a ruse.  Thankfully, he seemed to know
that, though I couldn't help but wince when I saw he'd signed the note
"Samantha."

"Heavenly Father, You are the Greatest Healer in the world," he'd written,
imitating the style of the other prayers.  "Please hear my prayers for my
brother, George.  He has so much to live for and you have the power to help
heal him.  Please be with the doctors and nurses and our family in this
time of need. Your servant, Samantha Hammond."

Okay, my reaction was not just a wince, more like a recoil.  Mulder saw it,
of course, and looked down at the floor.

"I think it's important that there be at least a little honesty," he
muttered, and I didn't ask him why,because he'd only tell me he didn't
know.  Nonetheless, it seemed perverse somehow, like attending a loved
one's funeral dressed as a clown.

He was listed in the hospital database as George Hammond, diagnosed with
pneumonia and a secondary nosocomial staphylococcus infection.  I was
listed as Carl Castle, and I was also supposed to be suffering from staph.
Hopefully, if we had a night visitor, he wouldn't realize my name was by no
stretch of the imagination 'Carl' until he was looking down the barrel of
my gun.

At least, that was the plan.  My idea of the plan.  Mulder's vague
suspicions suggested he might have had other ideas, but nothing concrete
enough to share, and I couldn't grasp even his intuition this time.  Mulder
is like a book, but not in the usual way that phrase is intended: sometimes
I can open him up and read every page, but other times it's as if some
magician has cast a spell to lock him closed and I can't see a single
sentence.

While he'd gone back to the condo to get our things, I'd spoken with a
handful of nurses who'd been acquainted with some of the patients on our
list, careful not to tell them that we were investigating more than the one
death I asked about.  No need to induce hysteria.

Tim Gallagher in CICU claimed that Carol Farquar's death had been
completely unexpected--though she'd suffered a heart attack two days
earlier the doctors had thought she was safe and planned to move her out in
the morning.  Gracie Bovak had thought nothing of Dale Jenner's death--the
man had been slipping in and out of oncology for months.  No one had seen
anything suspicious.

There was a sharp tap on the door and our nurse JoAnn entered before we
could invite her in.  She was a "floater," a floor nurse who moved from
wing to wing almost daily, filling in wherever she was needed.  From the
dossier of personnel files which the vice president had provided me, I'd
selected one floater from each of the three shifts to be at least partly in
on the plan, and in true HMO tradition we'd chosen our doctor from a
similar list.  Dr. Bannerjee knew only that we were FBI agents and that she
didn't have to do anything about us but let us forge her name on our
charts.  She'd agreed eagerly, excited to help in an undercover
investigation.  That made me a little nervous, but there was nothing to be
done about it now.

A rotund African-American woman of about fifty-five with a with an enormous
pair of tortoise-shell spectacles, JoAnn had the disarming ability to pose
as anyone's cookie-baking mother (what, I imagine, most people would
incorrectly label optimal training for an R.N.).  But her appearance was a
clever disguise; within thirty seconds one began to suspect she'd gotten
her qualifications acting as an army drill sergeant, which in fact she had.
It was one of the reasons I'd picked her.

"Mr. Hammond," she barked, though she knew Mulder's real name.  "Get your
skinny white butt underneath those blankets right now.  You are not getting
out of that bed unless it's to piss, and even then, you call me first."

Mulder gave me a panicked look but I didn't bat an eye, making it clear
he'd get no help from me.  Unfortunately, he knew my glare, and it only
made him grin.

"Yes, _ma'am,_" he said to JoAnn, punctuating the words with an invisible
salute and swung his legs up under the covers.

Her expression softened into a hint of a smile and I blinked in
disappointment.  Apparently no one is immune to Muldercharm, which I
suppose should have made me feel better about my own weakness.  But it
didn't.

I was grateful, though, when she turned to me and asked: "So how real are
we getting here? Are we gonna hook him up to everything?"

I shook my head.  "We just want to make it look good.  Heart monitor and IV
are all we need, I think.  The heart monitor should be treated as real.
But just tape the IV to his hand and leave the needle capped so he can move
fast if he needs to."

"You're not expecting violence, I hope.  I won't tolerate any risk to
anyone here," she warned.

"Neither will we," I assured her.  "And no, we're not expecting violence,
but--"

"But you can't tell me anything more than that this is undercover," JoAnn
finished, and I nodded.  "Well, that's fine, but I will tell you I tried to
find out who George Hammond is and couldn't."

I realized she was assuming that 'George Hammond' was the bait in the
sting, which he was, but not in the singular way she supposed.  Good.  We didn't need the a serial killer rumor spreading.

"I imagine there are lots of G
eorge Hammonds," Mulder said mildly, and I knew he was advancing her
suspicion deliberately.

She moved over to the IV stand, tapped the blue plastic housing on top of
the pole.  "This ain't gonna look right if it's not plugged into him," she
said.  "It's programmed to watch the drip rate, and if there's no
dripping...."

"You can put it in," Mulder said.  "It's just saline and a needle."

"So someone can come along with a syringe full of potassium chloride and an
easy route of administration?" I asked, aware but unable to prevent the
sharpness in my tone.  "No.  We'll have to jury-rig it somehow."

The three of us spent the next thirty minutes fiddling with the IV until
JoAnn found the satisfactory solution: she added a Y-clip to the tubing and
spliced a third plastic coil into a closed circuit which excluded the
needle entirely, cleverly making the IV bag drip back into itself.  After
twisting the tubes up, the ruse was apparent only upon close examination.
Only our trusted nurses would notice that it never needed changing.

Then JoAnn gave a brief, practiced spiel about the use of the call button
and left.  The small room was suddenly very, very quiet.

I wasn't ready to be alone with Mulder, not now.  The vision that had leapt
into my brain that morning, the one of his lifeless eyes staring into mine
while a lifeless mouth spoke lifeless words--"Scully, I'm so glad you're
here!"--still lurked in the back of my brain where it seemed to have taken
up permanent residence.    And I was still hurt, still angry.  If we were
alone together for too long, there was a dangerous possibility that I'd
actually tell him how upset I was.  I'd learned long ago how pointless
_that_ was.

Instead of looking at him, I went to the window, tugged the Venetian blinds
shut.  Unwilling to cross back to his side of the room, I parted the blinds
with two fingers and peered through the slats.

Scant moonlight glinted blue off the snow outside, but there was nothing
more to see.

He said my name, quiet and serious, and I snapped the blinds back together
a little too violently.

I turned to look at him; he was sitting up in bed, knees drawn up and back
pillowed on the headboard, watching me with a darkened eyes.

"I'm sorry," he said, when he decided he had my attention.

Angry that he'd seen my pain though I hadn't chosen to reveal it, and even
more angry that he thought my expected forgiveness would make everything
better, I took a long deep breath, then unzipped the shoulder bag on my
bed, the one he'd brought from the condo.  Fished out my bag of toiletries
and a pair of pajamas while he watched without comment.

"I'm going to take a shower," I announced, and headed for the bathroom.  I
could feel his eyes burning holes in my back.

---------------------------------------------------

11:45 p.m.

I stood naked in the tiny, sterile bathroom, my arms folded over my breasts
and my wet hair tickling my shoulders as I waited for the mud on my face to
turn dry and uncomfortable.   On the other side of the thin bathroom door,
I could hear soft voices on the television and the creaking of the mattress
every time Mulder so much as breathed.  The masque was already starting to
feel like pins and needles, inaccurate acupuncture.  Usually I find these
rituals relaxing in their forced meditation, but tonight I resented the
quiet time: I didn't want to think.  Sometimes flawless skin exacts a high
price.

"I didn't do it, Scully," his voice repeated in my head for the thousandth
time, and God, I wished he would shut the hell up.  Why does he invade
every second?

Maybe because I let him, and today, letting him was dangerous.  I tried to
school my thoughts back to the 'case,' to the loosely calculated statistics
which undeniably indicated a pattern.  But the only thing I could think was
that this could not be the best way to corner the killer, and that was
Mulder's fault too.

Some subconscious neurological process resolved these trains of thought
into the sudden image of Mulder howling a girlie scream from his hospital
bed as a comically proportioned serial killer raised a knife over his
chest.  I would then burst from the bathroom, naked but for the green-brown
mud plastered on my face and the gun in my hand, like some avenging angel
out of a surrealist painting.  I suppressed a chuckle and the masque
cracked.

Good enough.  I leaned over the sink to scrub it away.

Mulder was risking his life again, but this time I was going along with it.
Why was this any different from this morning?

Not because it was a case, no.  It was, I reasoned, because I suspected we
were dealing with a real, concrete person--the kind that could slip into a
room, inject something or drop something in a glass of water and slip back
out again.  This kind of enemy I could not only see on approach, but defeat
with a gun.

Let it _never_ be said that I don't support my partner.

But Mulder thought it was something else.  I didn't know what, and I didn't
think he did either.  Something more ephemeral than a renegade and
disenchanted hospital employee.  An X-File.  Was I only playing along
because I didn't believe him?

I ran a comb through my damp hair, then shrugged into my blue cotton
pajamas.  Opened the door and was frozen by the blast of arctic air from
the main room.

The head of the bed was elevated, and Mulder lay propped there, his eyes
closed and jaw slack.  A moment of irrational panic gripped me, and I moved
quickly to his side, but he heard my approach and his eyes fluttered open.

"About time," he grumbled.  "What, were you washing each strand of hair
individually?"

I exhaled, ignoring him, and anxious to hide my momentary concern I turned
my face toward the TV.  Jay Leno was yapping about breath mints and chewing
gum with some overly-ebullient actress I didn't recognize, and, rolling my
eyes, I reached across Mulder for the remote and banished Jay with a click
of my finger.

"We need to think about suspects, Mulder," I announced, moving around to
the other side of the room.  My side.

He leered at me.  "Oh, serious conversation? I don't know, it's a little
hard to take you seriously in those cute flannel pajamas."

He should have seen the masqued naked woman.  "Do you think it's really
coincidence that we're here, Mulder?" I asked, as if I hadn't heard.

"Ah, paranoid Scully reveals her true colors."

I rolled my eyes.  "I'm serious.  What are the chances that we'd bump into
something like this on a weekend off?" I paused to let that sink in, then
answered my own question.  "Pretty low.  I think we artificially selected
for it by coming here in the first place.  Because what else is unusual
about this hospital? Arthur von Deer."

"He's not involved," Mulder said, immediately serious.

"Why do you say that?" I asked.  "He's interested in both death and
spirituality.  And with a conservative estimate of one hundred victims in a
few months, we're talking about something very systematic here.  Something
which might be data collection."

"It's not him," Mulder repeated stubbornly.

"How do you know?"

"It just doesn't fit," he said.

"You've said that about every suggestion I've made.  What exactly is the
mold you're trying to fit people into? What's the profile?"

"I don't have one," he confessed.  "Not yet."

I wasn't in the mood for Mulder's touchy-feely Spidey-sense.  "Then I think
we should interview von Deer tomorrow."

"You're only looking for an excuse to shut him down."

"I don't need an excuse.  If I wanted to shut him down I could have flashed
my badge this morning.  The reasons for my suspicions are sound, Mulder,
and--"

"I think you're letting your feelings and prejudices color your judgment,
Scully," he interrupted, and his matter-of-fact tone angered me.  He _knew_
that was one of the most serious accusations he could make, yet he tossed
it off as casually as he'd remarked on my pajamas.  At least before, when
he'd said things like that, he'd done it gently, cautiously, and on this
case _he_ was the one with the bias.

"Just what are you implying?" I demanded, sitting back on my bed and folding my arms over my chest.  

"I wasn't implying anything," he said calmly.  "I th
ought I was being quite clear.  You're angry at me and by extension at von
Deer, but you're sidestepping that, using your perfected mask of
professional detachment as a shield for your motives in this investigation."

_Mulder_ was lecturing _me_ about using a case as an excuse to pursue an
agenda? "My motives?" I echoed.  "How can you sit there so blandly accusing
me of something like that? It's your agenda that brought us here."

"Yes, it is," he said with a nod.  "And I said I was deeply sorry, but you
won't acknowledge that.  You're avoiding what happened this morning, and I
don't want this to bite us in the back when we're facing down a potentially
dangerous case."

"We have work to do," I snapped.  "I've put it behind me."

He grinned, but not nicely.  "You're such a terrible liar, Scully."

"Don't get all mushy on me, Mulder," I said icily.  "I wouldn't want to
lose my 'professional detachment.'"

"No danger of that," he snorted with a smirk, and I almost exploded but
then a flash in his eyes betrayed him and I suddenly realized I'd been
seeing the whole conversation through a smudged pane of glass.

Clarity descended.

"You're goading me," I said, disbelief coloring my voice.  He lowered his
eyes and I knew I was right.    "I'm not a suspect, someone to...to be
_manipulated,_ Mulder.  What are you trying to prove?"

"I'm not goading you," he said, but his denial was two beats too late.

I nodded to myself, surprised I hadn't seen it earlier.  He was trying
again to make me surrender to my anger, because it was easier to deal with
than my disappointment, or, worse, my pain.  Because he thought I could
yell at him and he could take it, and then everything would be okay.  He
was wrong.

He saw my certainty and his shoulders sagged with defeat.  A long silence
settled over the room, the air between us no longer crackling.  "I just
want to know what I'm supposed to do, Scully," he said finally.  "You're
angry when I ditch you, and you're angry when I don't.  It seems to me that
the problem isn't what I do with respect to _you_ but what I do in general."

I sighed.  "Mulder, you know that's not true.  I'm angry because you
brought me here under false pretenses.  You knew how I would react, so you
deliberately maneuvered me into a situation where you thought you could
count on my instinct to support you to override my judgment. You were so
focused on your own agenda that you didn't stop to consider the position it
would put me in."

"Scully, I left!" he protested.  "I didn't go through with it."

"And that's supposed to make me feel better?" I asked, cocking my head at
him.  "It makes me feel _responsible,_ Mulder.  You've all but said I was
responsible for your decision to walk out of there; the obvious conclusion
is that if I'd stayed I would have been responsible for that too.  That is
not a burden I'm prepared to accept."

"What--are you saying you _wanted_ me to go through with it?"

I took a deep breath and considered for a long moment, refusing to let him
push me but already trapped.  "I'm saying," I said finally, hesitated,
began again.  "I'm saying that I...that going off half-cocked and doing
crazy things like this is what you do, Mulder.  Maybe that's inextricable
from who you are.  Maybe I don't want to see you lose something of
yourself, your belief.  I don't want to see...that."

My words unbalanced him, and I could see the heat draining away from his
eyes.  He'd been prepared to accuse me of not accepting who he was; he
wasn't sure what to do with what I'd given him instead.  He studied his
knees, worrying at his lower lip as he considered how he should respond.
But I charged ahead before he could speak, and my voice was threateningly
uneven, like the sea before a storm.

"On the other hand, I don't want to see you dead.  How am I supposed to
reconcile these two things?"

Mulder heaved a long, slow sigh and turned his head to meet my gaze.  "I
don't know," he confessed, his voice low and a little husky.  "But,
Scully--as longas you...as long as you feel.... I don't want to hurt you,
Scully.  I can't."

Oh, this was going too far.  His honesty summoned tears to my eyes, and I
couldn't bring myself to say what I probably should have--that he hurts me
more often than he knows.

It's a widely-spread myth that the way to keep from crying is to blink
rapidly, but I've known better since I was a girl: it's best to keep one's
eyes open wide.

"But," Mulder continued, "I can't win here, Scully.  If I do these sorts of
things, you're hurt, and if I don't...well, here we are.  It's a lose-lose
situation."

"It shouldn't matter," I said softly, trying to ignore the tiny part of me
that wanted it to matter.  "You should do what you believe regardless of
how it makes me feel.  You have to be true to yourself first."

I meant that.  I did.  Sometimes I feel like I exist only to hold up a
mirror for Mulder, to show him through my faith in him that he is
beautiful.  This wouldn't bother me if Mulder occasionally peered around
the glass to remember who is holding it.  I may be Mulder's "one in five
billion," I may make him "a whole person," but where does that truly leave
_me?_

But should I be surprised that this is the nature or our relationship, when
these are the things I say, that it 'shouldn't matter?' Apparently I am a
character-actress: there's only one role I can play.

"Not wanting to hurt you--that's true too," he said, and his voice was
barely above a whisper.

"Mulder, I don't want to hurt you either, but...."  My voice trailed off.

This was far more than either of us had bargained for.  I felt a tear slide
down my cheek and when he saw it he winced, turned his head away.  "But you
manage it," he said to the bathroom door.  "You walked out of that room.
You wouldn't compromise."

What was I supposed to say now? Assure him that it wasn't because I felt
less for him than he for me? Or tell him the alternative: that I was simply
stronger than he? Tell him that it hadn't been easy, and thus multiply his
guilt for having put me in that position in the first place?

The correct response, I reasoned, would be the true response, regardless of
how it made him feel, but I didn't even know which was true.

The paradox was as unfamiliar to him as it was to me, though it had been
creeping up on us for years.  We hadn't seen it coming but I knew we'd
always sensed it, like red eyes following your back in a childhood
nightmare that disappear whenever you whirl around to confront them.

Though those who know us believe that Mulder and I are polar opposites, we
are in reality more similar than we are different: stubborn and ruthlessly
upholding our beliefs above all else.  We had both known defeat, but until
now, we had never known surrender.

He wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand and I wanted to go to him,
comfort him, but perhaps that was exactly the problem.  I wanted to tell
him that I would never think less of him, but such words would be
tantamount to saying he _should_ compromise his beliefs for me, and,
actually, neither was true.

I wanted to tell him that I was not fragile, point out that he'd bruised me
a hundred times but I'd never broken, but to say that would suggest I
wouldn't care enough should he wind up hurt or dead, and again, neither was
true.

Once when I was sixteen years old my father was stationed in West Germany
for two months, and he took Mom, Charlie and I with him.  We mostly stayed
at the base, but vacationed one week at a small country club just south of
Neustadt, near the East German border.  The facility had once been a Nazi
resort, but all signs of that were now erased, and the beautiful, verdant
countryside could hardly be imagined to have hosted such powerful, terrible
men.

A placid mountain lake reflected the surrounding evergreens and played
mirror to the incredible purple-and-gold sunsets.  Brochures in the main
building advertised "Wollen Sie am morgen zu ausuben? Laufen Sie 5K
ringsherum der See!"  _Want some morning exercise? Run 5k around the lake!_
I couldn't read the rest of the text, but it sounded like a good idea and
Charlie and I set out to try it one morning.

We found a poorly cleared trailhead and began to jog.  He was faster than
I, but I could run longer,  and he knew that if he ran on past I'd overtake
him eventually, so he stayed by my side.  We ran and ran, over dirt-paved
hillocks among black walnut trees and loudly chirping birds, and I truly
felt it was the most beautiful place I'd ever been.

But as the morning wore on, we still found ourselves overlooking,
essentially, the same part of the lake we'd started at.

"This has to be more than 5k," Charlie finally huffed, stopping to pant
with his hands on his knees.

I stopped as well, bent to stretch my aching muscles.  "Yeah," I agreed.
"Much more.  I think we've already done seven or eight."

"Maybe we're on the wrong path," my brother suggested.

"Do you want to go back?" I asked.

"Nah.  Just a little further.  Let's see where it goes."

So we kept jogging and, fifteen minutes later, we came upon a sign hidden
under overgrown branches.  It was a large metal sign, like a highway road
marker, but it had been planted facing away from us, obviously intended for
people approaching from the other direction.

I raised my eyebrows at Charlie, who shrugged and walked around to the
front of it.  I followed.

"Vorsicht!" It read.  "Minenfield voran.  Eintragen Sie nicht!"  And, just
in case this was unclear, both English and French translations followed.
"Caution!  Land mines ahead.  Do not enter!"

Charlie and I had just jogged across a minefield.

We panicked, we deliberated, but finally we decided to go back the way we'd
come, because we frankly had no idea where we were.  My throat was dry, my
steps cautiously measured, and it took us two hours to walk back, but
nothing happened, and we never told our parents.

I remembered now how that had felt, to have stumbled across that warning
sign after we'd already long since crossed the invisible line and journeyed
far into unknown, dangerous (if beautiful) country.  I felt that Mulder and
I had made the same mistake, except that here and now I had no idea how we
could find our way back to safety.

"Scully?" he said, stirring me from my reverie.  I was relieved that
neither of us were crying now, but my partner, perched on the side of his
bed, still looked grey with misery.

Why hadn't our trail been better marked? Why hadn't we stopped to ask
ourselves where it was leading?

"I'm tired, Mulder," I told him, and he nodded.

"Go to sleep then," he suggested.  "We'll talk about suspects in the morning."

A long, reluctant pause filled the room.

"We should close the curtain at least partway," I said absently, with the
small part of my brain still concerned with the case at hand.  "In case
someone tries something."

He nodded again and I got up to pull the curtain, dividing the room, but
leaving a gap near the heads of our beds, large enough that I could still
see him and small enough that it would not be noticed.  Just before I
retreated to my side of the room, Mulder stretched out his hand to me,
opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out.

I started to reach back with the intention of clasping his hand, but before
I could get very far he drew back anyway.  "Good night, Scully," he said.

I crossed to my side of the room and flipped off my light.  "Good night," I
answered, and burrowed under the covers, after checking to be sure my gun
was safely ensconced beneath my pillow.

Through the window, the winter moon cast a cold rectangle of light across
my blankets.  I lay still for a few minutes before I heard the high-pitched
whine of Mulder's television clicking on; he must have been using earphones.

Or just staring, like I was, at pictures without sound.  So much for not
looking back.

---------------------------------------------------






Chapter 4

Not Exactly A Lie

---------------------------------------------------
Sunday
3:33 a.m.

The mousy footsteps would not have been loud enough to wake most people,
but I was alert before the door was clicked shut.

I groped under my pillow for my gun, withdrew it with only the softest
rustling of the sheets.  I placed the intruder mentally at the foot of
Mulder's bed, separated from my line of sight by only an inadequate curtain.

The stranger did not move.  I listened for breathing.  Mulder's was shallow
but even, and I heard the soft smack of his lips parting; I felt sure he
was awake.  Playing the dutiful worm on a hook, waiting for the intruder to
bite and trusting me to reel him in.

I couldn't make out the third set of lungs in the room, perhaps because I
was less in tune to their rhythm than I was to Mulder's.  But I knew he was
there.  I suddenly saw the foolishness of our alignment--we'd wanted to put
Mulder near the door, but the moonlight was behind me; I would cast a
silhouette if I sat up.  We should have rigged a nightlight on the other
side of the curtain.

Sixty seconds passed in indecisive silence, and then I heard another
footfall.  Moving toward or away from Mulder? I couldn't tell.

Enough.  No nurse would have stood there so long.  I was not adverse to
risks but there were limits.

In one fluid motion, I swung my legs over the bed, threw back the curtain
and clicked the safety on my Sig.  "Stop right there," I said, and my
voice, so divorced from sleep, sounded like it could not have emerged from
my mouth.

In the pale grey light, beside my partner's bed, stood Father Thomas.

Mulder's eyes had snapped open at the sound of my voice, and now he leaned
up on his elbows without a glance at me.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded, recognizing the priest.

The young man's eyes stared me down like headlights, but I was no deer.
"I'm sorry!" he said, squeaking almost imperceptibly on the last syllable.
"Please put the..._that_ away."

I made no move to lower my weapon.  "Tell us why you're here."

"I just...I'm sorry.  I haven't been able to sleep, after talking to you
today.  I didn't want another death on my shoulders, and so I came here to
pray for you."

Mulder snorted and sat up with a casualness in which only I saw the
strategy.  He swiveled to face Thomas so his back was presented only to me,
careful to leave me a clear line of sight.  "I could do without the
prayers, thanks," he said dryly.

"What do you mean, 'another death?'" I asked.

"Please, Agent Scully," the priest said.  "Guns make me very nervous.
Where I come from they aren't just for defense."

"Nor where I come from," I muttered, but I lowered the weapon.  The safety
stayed off.

Thomas reached for the light switch above Mulder's bed, but Mulder seized
his wrist, and again I saw the strategy: he didn't want me blinded.
"Answer the question," he said, his voice like polished steel.  "Why do you
feel responsible?"

The small man pulled his hand away, bringing his wrist to his torso like a
cradled kitten--Mulder hadn't been gentle.  "It was my idea," he said, as
if saying that snow is white.  "The notebooks, I mean.  I should have
noticed what was happening.  I had terrible dreams tonight...I just needed
to know you were all right."

"How did you find us under these names?" Mulder asked, and I tried to
fathom from his tone whether he considered the priest a threat but couldn't.

"I saw your prayer, of course.  I came in to check that no more had been
added, like you wanted me to."

Mulder turned half-away from the priest, swinging his legs back under the
covers.  It was tantamount to dismissal.

"Well," I said, "now you know not to startle FBI agents.  Thank you for
your concern, Father, but it's best if you stay away from the
investigation."

"I see that now," he said, and even in the dim light his features looked
contrite.  "I'm sorry."

He turned to go, but just before stepping out the door, mumbled something
that sounded like "God be with you."

When he was gone, I flipped the safety back in place and tucked my gun
away, searched out Mulder's eyes with a question on my lips.

He frowned at me across the darkness, perplexed.  "I don't know," he said,
before I could ask what he thought. "Maybe.  But he's not coming back
tonight."

I swung my legs up under the covers and lay back.  We left the curtain
open, but I slept restlessly throughout the night.

---------------------------------------------------
7:02 a.m.

The sound of the shower woke me, and it bothered me that I hadn't heard
Mulder get out of bed, but perhaps my nervous senses were attuned only to
noises more suspicious than the familiar sounds of my partner.

The morning nursing shift had arrived, and I was reassured when our new,
specially selected nurse rushed into the room only seconds later, alarmed
that Mulder's heart monitor had been disconnected.

I assured the nurse that Mulder had never been a cooperative patient and
that there was nothing to worry about, but to please keep up the vigilance.
The young man beamed with pleasure at both the compliment and the implied
authority, made a few notes on Mulder's chart, and left.  I was so far very
satisfied with my nursing cadre.

Breakfast arrived, catered by a college student dressed in polyester that
matched the pink tray she plopped in front of me.  As soon as she'd left, I
filled three glass vials from my evidence bag with samples from Mulder's
eggs and tea, and the nurse returned shortly with a fresh breakfast for my
partner that he'd bought from the cafeteria.  We had agreed that Mulder
wouldn't eat anything specifically intended for him, and if we found
nothing suspicious in a day or two, I'd feed the meal samples to a few rats
and monitor the effects.

The eggs tasted like wet styrofoam but I slurped them down anyway.  By the
time I was finished, the shower had stopped and Mulder emerged from the
bathroom, dripping wet and clad only in a towel.  He was using the other
towel, the one I'd used last night, to furiously sandpaper his hair.

"Sleep well?" he asked.

"I would have if it weren't for your snoring," I lied, determined to start
this day off better than we had yesterday.

He tossed the towel--the top one--at me in mock indignation.  "I do not."

I wadded up the towel and tossed it back, hard; he caught it.  "Put some
clothes on and plug your IV back in," I told him.  "You've already got the
nurse worried."

"This"--he held up the fresh hospital-issue gown that had been folded in
the bathroom--"does not qualify as clothing, Scully."

"It's better than the towel."

"You don't like the towel?" His hand went to his waist and I saw what was
coming, turned away in time, but I knew he hadn't missed the color rising
in my cheeks when he chuckled.   I felt my own lips curl in the faintest
hint of a smile.  I've seen Mulder naked more times than I can count but
presentation is everything.  In more ways than one.

I heard him shrug into the gown and climb back in bed, then I got up to
help him with the IV.  I took his left hand in mine and taped the capped
needle into place, then replaced the heart monitor on his index finger.
Its green-on-black readout stirred back to life, mimicking with a thin
digital string the dance of the strong muscle in my partner's chest.  I
thought his fingers tightened briefly around mine before he pulled
away--apologizing, forgiving, reassuring--but I may have just imagined it.

I eased back onto the edge of his bed.  "Mulder, I don't think it's useful
for us both to spend all day sitting here."

"I agree," he said.  "All of the deaths occurred at night anyway.  I was
hoping to interview that woman--Mabel Terman--one of the few who made the
prayer book and didn't die."

"I was talking about me.  It'd be suspicious if you just walked out for a
few hours."

"I wasn't planning on walking out--that's what telephones are for.
Besides, you know how much I love sitting in bed all day long dressed in
paper.  Who knows when I'll get another chance?"

"With your track record it won't be long," I said.  "So, what--you want to
talk on the phone while I do...something else?"

"That's what you had in mind, wasn't it?"

"Yes, but I'm not comfortable leaving you here alone."

"I'll be fine, Scully.  My gun's in the drawer."  He pointed at the bedside
table on which his breakfast tray rested.  "What were you planning to do?"

I tucked my hair behind one ear. "The most recent death was two days ago.
The body's probably still in the morgue."

He nodded, approving.

"What about Father Thomas?" I said.  "Did you believe him last night?"

Mulder tapped one finger against his belly.  "I think he knows something,"
he said after a pause.  "I'd like to talk to him again, but I don't want to
do it over the phone."

"I think he was genuine," I said, and immediately searched Mulder's eyes
for a hint of derision, waiting for him to note my defense of a priest.
But he didn't.

"He was nervous," Mulder said, his eyes focusing on some point just beyond
my head.  "But not because you were pointing a gun in his face--in fact, he
wasn't nervous enough about that."

"He grew up in Peru in the seventies, which wasn't exactly the safest place
with the Shining Path around," I said.  "He's undoubtedly seen guns before."

"Why is he here? What's a young, successful, multilingual priest with a
global curriculum vitae doing at a Pennsylvania hospital?"

I shrugged.  "He said he wanted to come to the U.S.  Priests get little say
in the parishes they're assigned to."

"I'd just like to know the whole story," Mulder said stubbornly.

I sighed.  "Set up an interview with him this evening, then," I said.  "I'd
like to be there for that."

Mulder opened his mouth to protest, I'm sure, that one interview was hardly
enough to occupy his entire Sunday, but I watched him consider the events
of the previous day and arrive at the conclusion that it was better to
appease me.  My lips fell into a slight frown, annoyed.  Wasn't this
exactly what I'd been talking about?

"I'm getting dressed," I announced, standing.  "Eat your breakfast--the
eggs are delicious."

I went to my side of the room and pulled the curtain shut, then stripped
off my pajamas and replaced them with dark pants and a sweater.  I should
have asked the nurse for a set of scrubs--it would make me less obtrusive
coming and going and if I managed to get permission for this autopsy, I'd
need them anyway.

I wasn't sure what to think of Father Thomas either.  The man struck me as
odd in a way I couldn't quite describe, but I chalked that up to cultural
differences.  Mulder was right: he was worth talking to again, but I still
believed we were looking for something more systematic and sinister.

I didn't feel entirely comfortable leaving Mulder alone all day, and not
just because I feared our serial killer would present himself.  I flirted
briefly with the idea of calling in someone from the Philly office or the
local P.D. to stand outside the door, but I doubted any typical officer had
the well-honed paranoia necessary to protect Mulder--unless the killer
walked in brandishing a butcher knife, an extra man wouldn't be much help.
And if Mulder decided to depart from the original plan, which was my other
fear, no two-bit rent-a-cop was going to stop him.  Regardless, this
operation was a violation of so many well-justified protocols that no one
in his right mind would go along with it.

What did that say about me?

---------------------------------------------------

I'd thought it was going to be a good day, at least by comparison to the
day which had preceded it, but by midmorning I knew I'd been wrong.

The list of deaths we'd made hadn't mentioned that the body in the morgue
was just eight years old, a victim of AML--acute myelogenous leukemia.
Christina Yates.

By eleven o'clock, the chief pathology resident had agreed by phone that I
could use the facilities, but I still had to get permission from the
parents, on their first Sunday morning without their daughter.

This was not the kind of thing one could do by phone.  I pulled up on the
street just as they arrived home from church--grandparents, parents, and
two brothers.  In an intellectual sense, I am glad that this is part of my
job at times: it prevents me from ever becoming jaded about the lives of
victims.  But it drains me; it boils water through my mind, percolating the
memories of my own loss through me, bitter and fresh.  As I stepped out of
the car, preparing to introduce myself to this bereaved family, I felt the
cold vacant space at my side with unexpected acuity.

I buttoned my trenchcoat, wishing I'd brought something other than these
black tennis shoes.  I wanted the family to know I was taking this
seriously.  They had noticed me just as they reached their front porch, and
now the father crossed the lawn to meet me, his brow furrowed. "Can I help
you?" he asked.

Somehow, smearing the fresh snow with my footprints seemed disrespectful.
I walked around to the driveway, met him halfway, and produced my badge.
"Mr. Yates," I said, considering my words carefully.  My breath floated
across toward his face, and even this struck me as potentially offensive,
so I moved to the right.  "I'm Dana Scully, with the FBI.  I'm very sorry
for your loss."

Mr. Yates turned around to the audience on the porch, waved his hand. "Take
the kids inside," he said, and his wife ushered the family through the door.

I told him that it was a routine investigation ordered by the Justice
Department at many hospitals.  He consented more easily than I'd expected,
and though I felt guilty for lying to the man, it would have been worse to
announce that we suspected foul play and yet had no answers.  _That_ was my
burden to carry.

Armed with the consent form, I returned to the hospital, where an intern
had prepared an autopsy bay for me.  I briefly considered going to see
Mulder, but since he'd been calling me every half-hour at my request, I
could think of no good reason to go.  So I changed into scrubs and walked
into the room.

These bays are all alike--you always feels at home once you know the
blueprint.  The only thing that changes is the body on the table, but even
that body is always a familiar structure--an optic nerve and a spinal cord,
a duodenum and a pancreas, a tibia and a diaphragm--all in ordered
positions relative to one another.  For every victim, the answer is
necessarily, thankfully different, but when one understands the map, one
can always find the destination.

I remembered my first cadaver in medical school--we'd been required to name
them so that we would not forget that the assembly of tissue and bone
beneath our virgin scalpels had once been a living, breathing person whom
others had loved.  Most of my classmates had called their cadavers after
literary figures or people they'd known once.  I'd named mine Jerome, but
not for any reason.  It had seemed contrary to the purpose of naming to
call him anything merely for its significance to me, like naming a child or
a pet.

Not that I don't believe people can be things with respect to one another.
I am glad to be my parents' daughter, my siblings' sister, my partner's
friend.  Jerome was my cadaver, I guess, but what was I to him?

At least I had the chance to be something to this little girl on the steel
table before me.  I could bring her justice.  But that didn't make it any
easier, particularly when I feared that her life had been claimed merely by
a tumor after all.  Nature commits as many tragedies as humans do.

I pulled the sheet back to her waist.  I hadn't been prepared for a child,
not today, and when I saw her soft, dark curls and cheeks still round with
baby fat, I had to cover my mouth to stifle a sound.   I was suddenly very
glad that I was alone.

But I remembered Jerome, and how the first incision--the first
violation--had been the hardest.  When beneath the skin of his forearm I
had discovered the layers--epidermis, fascia, muscle--then I remembered my
textbook and the body that lay before me became a puzzle, a problem, no
longer a person.

To be perfectly honest, I think it's better that way, for everyone
involved, despite what the medical schools try for.  Death and the dead are
two very different concepts.

And that's how I made the first incision on Christina Yates.  At least I
knew her real name.

Mulder called five times during the autopsy, each time increasingly abrupt.
The last time, all he said was: "Still alive," and then hung up, and his
flippancy about the subject did nothing to improve my mood.

But I found nothing unusual about Christina's death, and I did a complete
examination and torso excavation.  I took blood and tissue samples as well:
if she had been dosed with some lethal drug it would have degraded to
sub-trace amounts by now but the by-products might turn up.  I handed the
lymph biopsies over to the resident who kept checking on me "to make sure I
had everything I needed."  He obviously didn't have enough to do--he could
parafin-embed them himself and we would have the results tomorrow instead
of waiting for the technicians on Monday.

Mulder's impeccable sense of timing caused him to call again just as I
finished stitching the small body back up, and this time he had something
to say.

"I talked to Mabel Terman for the past half-hour," he told me.  "Her
husband had written her into the prayer book when she was in surgery after
a car accident.  But she went home a few days later."

I tucked the phone against my shoulder and flipped to the second page of
Christina's chart.  "Did she have anything to tell you?"

"Well, she didn't see anything suspicious.  But she also wasn't surprised I
was calling."

I scrawled my signature across the bottom of the page.  "What did you say?"

"I told her I was with the hospital, following up on her stay.  Apparently
she'd had an unusual experience which she'd told her doctor about, so she
thought that's why she was calling."

I waited a second for him to continue, and when he didn't, said: "Mulder, I
don't want to play twenty questions here.  What did she say?"

"She said she'd seen a light at the end of a tunnel while on the operating
table," I recognized the engineering of his tone, factual to disguise his
reluctance.  "She claimed to have floated out of her body, looked down on
herself on the table, even heard the doctors' conversations.  Then the
light, but she didn't go toward it.  She said she knew it wasn't time for
her to go."

I put the tablet down and took the phone in my hand, walking away from the
autopsy table.  "Who was her doctor?"

"A Dr. Tannis."

"Did she know von Deer?"

"No."  Well, at least he'd asked. "But it doesn't necessarily mean
anything, Scully.  Seven percent of patients who lose consciousness in
trauma describe this kind of experience."

"If coincidence are just coincidences, why do they feel so contrived?" I
asked, echoing his own words of years ago.

"Yeah.  Well.  I called him too, just to ask if he'd known anything about
the patient."

"You called von Deer? Without talking to me?"

There was a brief silence while he deliberated how to respond to that, but
finally he chose to ignore it.  "I honestly don't think he'd ever heard of
her, Scully.  I pretended to be a potential customer who'd known a previous
customer as well as Mabel Terman.  Asked what he thought about her case."

"You probably just alerted our prime suspect to the investigation, Mulder."

"How could he be responsible, Scully?  She was on an operating table, with
six people working on her, and she'd just come from the E.R.  She wasn't
alone for a second, certainly not long enough for him to administer
something even if he wanted to."

"He could have an accomplice," I pointed out.

"I checked.  None of the attending personnel had any connection to von
Deer.  He only does outpatient work anyway."

"Mulder, you and I both know that connections don't have to be on paper.
I'm serious about this--you should have consulted me.  I was beginning to
wonder whether this was a case after all, but I'm pretty damn sure there's
something worth investigating, and now you may have jeopardized it."

"Since when do we check with each other on every step in a case, Scully?"
If he was angry, I couldn't hear it through the weariness.  "You were busy,
and talking to von Deer was a much more logical next step than many other
steps I've taken without your complaining."

"I'm not complaining--I'm criticizing.  There's a difference."  I reached
up to massage my left temple, which was beginning to throb.  "You have a
preconceived bias about this suspect; there may have been questions I
wanted to ask, and I'd rather form my own impression of him."

"You have a bias too," he said, but his protest was weaker.  I opened my
mouth, sulfur on my lips, but he spoke first, acrid irritation soaking his
words.  "I know, I know, we would have balanced each other out.  It's what
we do best.  Fine.  I fucked up.  Sorry."

There have been times when I wished Mulder would apologize, or admit he was
wrong, but somehow the fantasy hadn't played out like this.  "You don't
have to be sarcastic."

"I'm not being sarcastic.  I'm just trying to find new and creative ways to
say I'm sorry and frankly it's about as enjoyable as learning how to plumb
your own toilet on 'This Old House,' which is the other thing I did today.
I'm not behaving any better or worse than I ever have in the six years I've
known you, Scully, so I don't see why this is all coming to a 'head' now.
No pun intended."

"I'm not behaving any differently either," I replied.  "The difference is
that you're hearing me now."

He was quiet for a long moment, but finally, enunciating each word, he
said:  "I always hear you."

I considered suggesting that he _listen,_ but I really didn't want to
discuss it further.  "So you really think he doesn't know a thing," I
stated instead.

"I do," Mulder said, with all the confidence of a boy scout pledge, as glad
as I was to move on.  "I thought about profiles a lot today too, and I
think the pattern we're seeing here is not motivated by method, or data
collection, as you suggested, but by passion.  Arthur von Deer is not a
passionate man, not this kind of passionate.  It's a very intense love--the
killer believes he's bringing his victims peace--or a very intense hatred,
where the killer himself has lost loved ones and now believes that others
should have to suffer as he did.  That's why I don't believe the nutrition
services theory--whoever this is wants to see the fruits of his labor.  He
wants to be there."

"Didn't von Deer say he'd lost a daughter?"

"Yes, but he's reconciled her death and his relationship with her.  This is
what he believes he's offering people--that chance to come to terms with
loss."

I wanted to ask if that was really what Mulder had hoped to get from the
doctor, but it seemed best to steer clear of all things personal.

"What about Father Thomas?" I asked.

"Can't get a hold of him.  He was at the parish church this morning, but
now no one knows where he went."

"Does he fit your profile?" I asked, playing the dutiful Watson.

"I don't know," Mulder said.  "I want to talk to him again.  I believe he's
capable of passion, but I'm not sure he's capable of murder.  I did request
a dossier on him from the Vatican, though.  Which reminds me--I had it
faxed to admitting.  Could you pick it up?"

"Yeah," I said.  "I was just finishing up here anyway."

"Find anything?"

"Nothing unusual.  Typical childhood leukemia."

"Oh, christ.  It was a kid?"

Had I not told him that? Maybe not--we hadn't spoken much all day.  I could
hear the renewed guilt in his voice as he assumed I must have been upset,
and I resented that too.  Thankfully, the pathology resident chose that
moment to walk into the bay again, biopsy samples in hand.  His fresh young
face still bore the suggestion of baby fat, though he was far too old.
Cherubic fair curls and an eager-to-help expression enhanced the illusion.

"I have to go," I said into the phone.  "I'll see you in an hour or so."

I hung up before he could reply and took the cardboard envelope from the
young doctor, gave the slides it contained a cursory glance.  "Thanks," I
told him.  "I'll take a look at these.  Could you give me a hand with the
body?"

He nodded, and I crossed the room to put the slide envelope on the counter,
then turned back to the autopsy table.  The resident was gently smoothing
the child's hair back, and when he realized I'd seen him, he snatched his
hand away guiltily, then checked himself with a sad, self-deprecatory
smile.  "Sorry," he said.

The last word I wanted to hear.  "Don't be," I answered firmly.  I crossed
the room and drew the sheet up over the body, pausing a moment to memorize
Christina's face before covering it.

He noticed my hesitation and asked, wistfully, "Does it ever get any easier?"

I looked up at the young man across the child's body.  "No," I said.  Not
exactly a lie.

---------------------------------------------------
8:34 p.m.

Mulder was propped up against the headboard watching television when I
entered the hospital room.  I tossed Thomas' dossier onto his lap and put
my hands on my hips.

"You don't look very sick," I observed.  "You've probably scared the guy
off by now."

Which, actually, was fine with me.  I hadn't liked this scheme from the start.

"I'm taking a break," he answered.  "Pretending to be sick is hard work."
He patted the mattress by his hip, inviting me to sit and thereby evading
the scathing comeback I'd been preparing about _real_ work.  Smart man.

In more ways than one.  I wanted to sit beside him, and, truth be told, I
wanted his hands to find their way to my shoulders and knead away the long,
draining hours spent in the autopsy bay, as they'd done dozens of times
before.  Such a simple thing, that touch, but profound enough that we knew
better than to ever speak of it.

But this time, I would have to wonder if it wasn't the latest form of
'apology,' and so I sat on my bed instead.  If he noticed the slight, he
gave no sign.

He put on his glasses and read the dossier I'd already skimmed while I
reviewed the autopsy reports of five other purported victims.  One head
trauma, one myocardial infarction, two 'respiratory failures' and one
emphysema.  They had nothing in common--ages, sexes, races and backgrounds
all varied as much as their medical histories.  Tox screens had been
performed on three of the victims, but had turned up nothing unusual.

Shared characteristics can tell you a lot about a case, but sometimes their
absence can tell you just as much.  A cross-section like this would make a
believable data sampling, despite Mulder's rejection of that theory.  And
the absence of evidence narrowed the field of possible M.O.s considerably.

The only problem was mechanism.  If it was a drug, why hadn't the
toxicology reports discovered it? A few poisons were undetectable by
standard pathological exams, and the potassium chloride von Deer used to
stop the heart was among them.  But the elevated saline levels _should_
show up both in the blood and perhaps via histological analysis of the
cardiac tissue, things which were not normally examined during autopsy but
which I had checked for.  And the swiftness of death didn't fit with most
other tox-evading poisons.

"I think our suspect must have a great deal of medical knowledge and
access," I said.  "It's the only way he could be doing this undetected."

Mulder looked up from the folder.  "Unless we're looking at something more
supernatural," he pointed out.
I blinked.  "An X-File? I have yet to see evidence for that.  I think
you're looking too hard."

"Maybe not hard enough," he answered.  "Even if we could come up with some
drug which could in theory kill this many people this reliably, the problem
of administration still isn't solved.  How could he get to every one of
these patients without someone noticing?"

"Well, it's not as if these rooms are guarded."

"No, but even if it's some trusted employee who wouldn't be noticed going
in and out of a room, the distribution is ubiquitous.  Nurse, doctor, or
janitor--they're all confined to specific specialties.  You won't see the
neurologists in the CICU, right? Unless we're looking at something much
larger than one person, someone would have noticed something by now."

"One: maybe someone has," I said.  "We haven't exactly been advertising for
witnesses.  Two: you're leaving out food service, which has access to all
rooms.  But I don't think it's anyone in nutrition per se, just that this
is the mechanism of delivery."

"I still think it's important for the killer to be present at the time of
death, but we'll know that soon enough.  When do you think we should try
the rats?"

"Tomorrow," I said.  "But if that doesn't work out, Mulder, I think we
should turn this case over to the local authorities.  It's too amorphous
and you and I are too invested."

He frowned.  "Amorphous is our specialty," he chided.  "But as for
'invested'--"

I cut him off.  "Mulder, it's been a very long day.  I don't want to talk
about that right now, and anyway, I think we've both said all we have to
say."

His hazel eyes, magnified through the glasses, studied me owlishly for a
few seconds, and then he nodded.  "Okay."

I was actually a little disappointed that he gave in so easily, but there
was no point in sharing that.

"This dossier isn't very helpful," he said.  "Quite the little Latin
scholar, our Thomas, and he obviously requested this position for no
obvious reason, but there's nothing more useful here.  I'd like to talk to
him again."

"Tomorrow," I said.  "But tomorrow's Monday, and we're supposed to go to
Seattle.  We can postpone a day or so, but we can't spend too much longer
up here."

"We'll see," was Mulder's only reply, and it didn't reassure me.

I really did intend to stick to my resolve on that point.  Our nurse JoAnn
came in to check on us, assured us that everything was going well, and,
finally, exhausted, I went to bed.

As I fell asleep to the whine of Mulder's muted television, I reasoned out
our position.  If this were a real case, then the statistics could be
proven by someone taking more measured steps.  Solving it might require a
large team with far more time (and, I admitted, medical expertise) than we
could offer.  And given that the tension in our working relationship could
be directly linked to a suspect in this case, it was unprofessional of us
to continue the pursuit.

I fell asleep planning to talk to the local authorities tomorrow regardless
of what Mulder wanted to do, but then morning came, and my nighttime
reflections all amounted to nothing.

Mulder wouldn't wake up.

---------------------------------------------------