A Winter's Tale, Part 9
Dec. 30th, 2007 12:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anjouficTitle: A Winter's Tale 9/21
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
comice aka Anjou (Anjou@rocketmail.com)
Posting Date: December 2007/January 2008
Rating: R for language and sexuality; M for Mature readers
Classification: Mulder/Scully, UST/MSR, AU
Archive: No archival until the story is completed, please. I'll be submitting to Ephemeral and Gossamer myself.
Spoilers: Through Two Fathers/One Son (S6), then AU. In other words, no Arcadia and beyond. Mytharc-y.
Disclaimer: All X-Files personnel belong to 1013 and Fox. All other elements are mine.
Author's Note: It's starting to look like this story will be 23 or 24 parts. I'm hoping to get it off to final beta by New Year's Day, and will have a better idea by then.
Daily posts can be read on my fic journal:anjoufic, as well as Ephemeral and other XF fic sites. The whole tale will be archived at my website, No Other … , maintained by the generous dtg, when it is completed.
As always, thanks to my sister and editrix, Suzanne, for her support.
Summary: Cast your memory back to the dark days of Season 6, to the period immediately following the confrontation between Mulder and Scully in the Gunmen's Office. It is late winter, dark and cold, the landscape obscured and transformed by snow and ice. One must step carefully, for the very ground can be treacherous. This is a lesson Mulder and Scully have already learned when the pristine snow in Antartica yielded a long-buried secret. But the winter can hold many secrets, and could tell many tales, if it so chose.
This is but one.
~*~
After breakfast and a stop at the mall to buy Hannah a new hat and some snow boots, they finally got on the road. Mulder was anxious to get going, and positively rushed them through the mall, even putting the kibosh on stopping to get Hannah some new pajamas. Exasperating as he could be, Scully understood. The drive to Rochester should have taken one day, but there was a distinct possibility that they were in for some rough weather. A huge snowstorm was expected to blanket the area in the next few hours, although how far north it was going to reach varied from forecast to forecast. All the meteorologists agreed, however, that the storm was going to be the prevailing weather for the next couple of days. Although they'd decided to push through the storm as much as possible, they both were concerned about driving in horrendous weather with Hannah in the car.
For her part, Hannah was excited about the possibility of actually being outside in the snow, as opposed to only seeing it from her window or on TV. She'd asked a million questions about why it had to be cold to snow, and how snow felt. Mulder had spent most of the morning listening to Scully's patient explanations to the child, smiling distractedly while he kept the radio tuned to an all-news AM band, looking for information about the snowstorm. She couldn't really blame him for his anxiety –- tramping through snowfields had permanently lost its luster for her after their sojourn to the Antarctic. After a couple of hours on the road, Hannah had finally run out of questions, and fallen asleep in the back seat. Scully saw this as evidence that Hannah was still tired from the night before and was just about to make that observation when Mulder spoke.
"I think that we should let her sleep for about an hour or so, then stop and get some lunch," he said. "If we stop at one of those McDonald's that has a playground, then she can get some exercise before we get back on the road. I'd like to get as close as we can to Rochester today."
"You don't think we're going to make it?" she asked, staring at the ominous sky.
"I have no idea," Mulder said. "But the closer we get, the better off we'll be if we can't get there today."
"Obviously," she answered.
"Sorry," Mulder said, "I guess I'm just worried. You know these rental cars have horrible tires."
Scully shivered, remembering more than a few dicey drives in their past. She changed the subject. "Where'd that number come from, Mulder?" She watched his hands tighten around the wheel at her question, knuckles whitening.
"Do you remember when I broke into Dr. Scanlon's office, and met the Kurt Crawford clones in Allentown?" he asked.
She stifled the sharp remark that rose to her lips. "When you found some of my ova?" She paused. "I'm not really sure how I could forget that."
Mulder sighed and shifted in his seat, then cleared his throat and answered in his most 'just the facts' monotone. "When I first met the Kurt Crawfords in Allentown, and they showed me the DNA storage chamber they had for abductees' ova, that sixteen-digit code was on the drawer with your name on it."
Well, she thought. That certainly was an answer.
"Scully," he said. "What are you thinking?
She breathed in and out for a few minutes, trying to gather her whirling thoughts. "Was that code only on the drawer with my name?"
"Yes," Mulder answered. "Other drawers had different codes."
"Was there anything else on the label?"
"A date," Mulder answered. "Your name, that sixteen-digit code and the date October 28, 1994."
She nodded, "Just before I was returned."
"Yes," he said, looking from the road to her. She had been staring straight ahead for this whole exchange, but could see his head swiveling back and forth in her peripheral vision.
"And you think that the date is when my ova were harvested," she stated.
"Yes," he answered.
"So, you're sure that she …" she turned now, to look at Hannah sleeping in the back seat and pointed at herself, just in case Hannah was only dozing.
Mulder took his hand off of the wheel and covered hers, looking her in the eye. "Yes."
"But she's not like …" Scully protested.
"I don't think she is," Mulder answered. "I think she's different."
"For what purpose was she created?" she whispered, and the tears were thick in her throat.
"I don't know, Scully," Mulder said. "I promise you, I don't know, but I'm hoping that we can get some answers where we're going."
"Where are we going, Mulder?" she asked pointedly, fighting back the wave of tears with a burst of irritation. She felt that she'd been more than patient in waiting for an explanation.
"I'm pretty sure that I've tracked down some other Crawfords," he answered succinctly. "I know that they were at this location a while ago, and I thought that if anyone had answers," he pointed with his chin toward Hannah in his rearview mirror. "They would."
*~*
They made it to Iowa City before the snow got really serious, and outside of Waterloo, Mulder made a bad joke about disastrous decisions and then decided to head west on Route 20. She'd argued that point with him. Mulder, of course, was consulting nothing other than the atlas in his brain, but she worried that heading deeper into the storm was a risky strategy.
"I don't want to go west, Scully," he answered, "but I don't want to go on a secondary road, either, and that's our choice if we continue north from here. You know the plowing is better on the interstates. If we go west about 50 miles, we can hook up with 35 and go north again on a bigger road."
She sighed and consented to the change in plan, turning around to check on Hannah who was quiet in the back seat. "Are you OK, Hannah?" she asked. The child looked terribly bored, and seemed lethargic.
"It's not as nice as I thought it would be," Hannah answered, looking out at the snow.
"Let's play a game," Mulder said. "How 'bout … 'I Spy'?"
"What's that?" Hannah asked, and Scully listened as Mulder explained the rudiments of the game.
It was enough to keep them occupied for a while, but the truth was that it was difficult to focus on the game when there was so little to see other than snow falling. Mulder finally gave up the ghost on driving somewhere outside of Mason City, and Scully was relieved to get out of the snow. It wasn't windy or excessively stormy, but it was snowing hard, and the sky was low and white as far as the eye could see. There was close to a foot of snow on the ground when they stopped, and the weather reports that they'd heard were predicting more of the same until the early hours of the next day. They found a large supermarket and got enough food and supplies to keep them fed and occupied for the next 24 to 48 hours.
Hannah had been tired and grumpy by the time they'd checked into the motel room and eaten, and had been unusually stubborn about taking a shower. She wanted to lie on her bed and watch TV instead, and Scully'd found herself hiding a smile as she watched Mulder trying to be an authority figure to a crabby child who'd never had a parent.
"You take your shower in the morning!" Hannah accused Mulder, with a child's unerring sense of fairness coupled with innocent egotism. "So, why should I take my shower at night?"
An exasperated Mulder was momentarily floored by Hannah's question, and Scully thought his next words were going to be 'because I said so, young lady', so she intervened.
"Hannah," she said quietly, "we all have to take showers tonight. Sometimes when it snows, the electricity gets shut off, and it'll be very dark and hard to see in the bathroom if that happens."
She could see that Hannah immediately became worried by such a notion. "No TV?" she asked.
"If the electricity goes off," Scully said, "so it would be a good idea to take a shower now." She could see Hannah working up to an objection, so she continued on, "and after you take a shower, then you can watch some TV." Her voice was quiet, but firm. Hannah opened her mouth to argue, but Scully deftly blocked the argument with logic. "The person who goes to bed first is the first person in the shower."
"OK," Hannah said begrudgingly. She collected her things and went into the bathroom, while Mulder threw up his hands.
Scully snickered and made him trudge outside to throw the garbage from their dinner in the dumpster where it wouldn't stink up their too small living space.
*~*
Later, while Mulder showered and Hannah slept, she stood next to the window and watched the snow relentlessly piling up outside. If she had to guess, she'd think that they weren't going to be able to go anywhere tomorrow, and the thought made her feel trapped and helpless. They were a little over 200 miles from some potential answers about Hannah … and maybe about herself. It was hard to imagine that after all of the years of assiduously not thinking about things she was suddenly desperate for answers, but it was true nonetheless. She wanted to know what had been done to her, needed more confirmation than a sixteen digit code on a file drawer to believe that this child, no matter who she reminded her of, was hers.
Hannah tossed and turned, kicking her covers off; Scully moved to her side after she quieted down. Even with so little experience observing her, Scully felt that Hannah was unusually restless. She reached down tentatively and laid her fingers against Hannah's brow. She seemed warm to the touch. Scully swept the hair off Hannah's forehead and moved her fingers behind her ears, and then lower to the maxillary pulse point and listened, counting. She confirmed her observations by checking the carotid and then the radial pulses, placing Hannah's hand gently back under the covers, and smoothing them up over her.
"Scully?" She could hear the anxiety in his voice, and drew in a breath to calm her own nerves. She'd heard the door open while she was checking on Hannah, but had hoped that she was just being overly cautious and wouldn't have anything to report.
"I think I know why she was so grumpy earlier," she began, "her pulse is strong and quick, and she feels warm to me," she said.
Mulder came over to her side and put his hand on Hannah's forehead, then moved it to the back of her neck. He was wearing long pajama pants and a white t-shirt, his hair still damp from the shower. "Scully," he said again, staring at her.
"She has a fever, Mulder." Her voice trembled, and she pressed her fingers to her lips as if that motion could stop what was happening, but her words tumbled out faster and faster. "And I don't have any pediatric drugs, or even a thermometer. I can't get her to take a pill, and what if she's allergic to something? She could have a serious reaction to anything I give her, because we don't know a thing about her, really." Her voice was rising, and she could see that she was alarming Mulder, but all she could think of was that this was how Emily's death had begun. Mulder wrapped her up in his arms and held on to her as she continued to spill out her fears. "What if she's been altered in some way we don't understand when she was created? And it's snowing and we're too far away from Rochester and what if I can't help her …"
He kept saying her name, but it took her a while to hear him over the sound of the blood pounding in her head. He finally took her face in his hands, forcing her to look him in the eye.
"I'm going back to the store," he said.
"Mulder, it's snowing so hard," she protested weakly, her habit of arguing with him too ingrained to stop even now.
"I don't care," he answered. "I'm going. Tell me what you need."
When she nodded but remained silent, he pulled her in tight again and just held onto her for a few more seconds. She stood with her head resting over his heart, listening to its strong, rapid beat and trying to relax. She didn't know if she was grateful or resentful that he hadn't tried to reassure her that everything would be all right.
Finally, knowing that she was wasting precious time, she broke out of Mulder's embrace and turned to the table, looking for paper and a pen. When she turned back, he'd already shucked his pajama pants and was rummaging through his suitcase, wearing only his boxer briefs.
"Mulder," she said and then stopped, unsure of where to begin.
He looked up from the end of the bed, pulling out the black jeans he'd been wearing the night she followed him. "Just make a list, Scully. Try to think of every possibility. Assume we're going to be here for the next couple of days."
She was terrified by the mere idea, but she sat down and began to write, meticulously running through a mental checklist of all the differential diagnoses for pediatric illnesses that she could recall. She made sure he had his new phone, and then he was gone in a swirl of wind and snow, tires protesting the lack of traction. She closed the door and made herself boot up her computer to reacquaint herself with common pediatric illnesses.
She feared that anything she could do for Hannah would be less than adequate. Mulder had always been her most challenging (and only living) patient, but he had the advantage of being formed in the usual manner. There was not enough time for her to unbundle the years of experimentation on the disks that Mulder had stolen when he found Hannah. She needed to be logical and to treat for the most probable source of the problem. If the electricity held out and the snow kept on falling, she'd have plenty of time to search for the improbable. The only sound in the room was that of Hannah's too loud breathing. She had shut the TV off so that she could concentrate, but when the windows rattled ominously and Hannah muttered in her sleep, she shot up out of her chair and got her gun, laying it on the table next to her while she waited. Hannah had her tiger for security; Dana Scully preferred her SIG Sauer. She grimly continued with her reading, willing herself to focus on the words.
*~*
There had been plenty of time in her life where she had simply endured, but having had such extensive experience with such undertakings didn't make the hour and a half that Mulder was away from their motel room go any faster. When he returned, she shoved her feet into her boots and went outside to take the first of the bags from his hands, not caring that she was outside in the pelting snow in just her robe and pajamas. He didn't even make an attempt at a smart remark, just handed her one bag while he grabbed another and kicked the car door shut, ushering her through the piles of snow with an arm around her back, another heavy bag banging against her shin as it dangled from his hand.
Mulder dumped his two bags next to the table and bent down, pulling her boot clad foot toward him. Caught off balance, she braced a hand on his shoulder but continued digging through the bag she'd put on the table. "I'm going to try the Motrin first," she said, shifting to get to the second bag as Mulder pulled at her other boot. He thumped over to the door and toed off his own boots, dropping them all in a heap next to the door. "Did you get some?" He nodded, stripping off his overcoat and hanging it off the door hinge, making sure the door was latched tight.
"I got the eyedropper and the one with the cup," he answered. "I figured you might need the eyedropper to give it to her if she was asleep." He crossed the room to Hannah's side in three long steps, crouching down beside her. "I got three different kinds of thermometers, too," he said, putting his large hand on Hannah's forehead. "How is she?"
"I don't know," Scully answered quietly. "How much do you think she weighs?"
"Thirty-six pounds," Mulder said immediately. He looked up at Scully, who knew that her expression reflected her surprise. "Car seats have weight requirements on them," he said, shrugging, "so I weighed her before I bought one. Even if it was off a few pounds, she wasn't heavy enough for the next size up seat."
She shook her head in bemusement.
"I know," he said with mock modesty, "I'm good."
She smiled at him for the first time in weeks, tossing him the ear bulb thermometer. "Open that up, big guy."
He grinned at her, and tore the package open with his teeth. She ignored him and double-checked the dose she'd measured into the cup.
She took the alcohol swabs over to Hannah's bedside and wiped down the thermometer before placing it in Hannah's ear canal. Hannah murmured in protest, but settled down. "Hold this," Scully said, and Mulder placed his hand on the bulb. While they waited for her temperature to register, Scully sucked the dose up into the eyedropper, carefully getting each drop.
"102.1," Mulder said quietly, when the ear bulb beeped. "That's not too bad."
"No," Scully answered, "but I don't want it to go any higher."
"When is it …"
She interrupted Mulder before he could finish, "107 or higher is dangerous, but a sustained temperature of 104 or higher indicates a serious infection, usually bacterial."
Mulder's shoulders relaxed.
Scully slipped the eyedropper between Hannah's parted lips, and was relieved when the child sipped the medication without rousing. It was probably habitual. Hannah most likely had no idea how often she'd been given medication over the course of her short life. She sighed.
"Now we wait?" Mulder asked.
"Now, we wait," she answered.
He nodded and smoothed the hair back from Hannah's brow, kissing her before tucking the covers up around her.
~*~
Part 10
Author:
comice aka Anjou (Anjou@rocketmail.com)Posting Date: December 2007/January 2008
Rating: R for language and sexuality; M for Mature readers
Classification: Mulder/Scully, UST/MSR, AU
Archive: No archival until the story is completed, please. I'll be submitting to Ephemeral and Gossamer myself.
Spoilers: Through Two Fathers/One Son (S6), then AU. In other words, no Arcadia and beyond. Mytharc-y.
Disclaimer: All X-Files personnel belong to 1013 and Fox. All other elements are mine.
Author's Note: It's starting to look like this story will be 23 or 24 parts. I'm hoping to get it off to final beta by New Year's Day, and will have a better idea by then.
Daily posts can be read on my fic journal:
anjoufic, as well as Ephemeral and other XF fic sites. The whole tale will be archived at my website, No Other … , maintained by the generous dtg, when it is completed.As always, thanks to my sister and editrix, Suzanne, for her support.
Summary: Cast your memory back to the dark days of Season 6, to the period immediately following the confrontation between Mulder and Scully in the Gunmen's Office. It is late winter, dark and cold, the landscape obscured and transformed by snow and ice. One must step carefully, for the very ground can be treacherous. This is a lesson Mulder and Scully have already learned when the pristine snow in Antartica yielded a long-buried secret. But the winter can hold many secrets, and could tell many tales, if it so chose.
This is but one.
~*~
After breakfast and a stop at the mall to buy Hannah a new hat and some snow boots, they finally got on the road. Mulder was anxious to get going, and positively rushed them through the mall, even putting the kibosh on stopping to get Hannah some new pajamas. Exasperating as he could be, Scully understood. The drive to Rochester should have taken one day, but there was a distinct possibility that they were in for some rough weather. A huge snowstorm was expected to blanket the area in the next few hours, although how far north it was going to reach varied from forecast to forecast. All the meteorologists agreed, however, that the storm was going to be the prevailing weather for the next couple of days. Although they'd decided to push through the storm as much as possible, they both were concerned about driving in horrendous weather with Hannah in the car.
For her part, Hannah was excited about the possibility of actually being outside in the snow, as opposed to only seeing it from her window or on TV. She'd asked a million questions about why it had to be cold to snow, and how snow felt. Mulder had spent most of the morning listening to Scully's patient explanations to the child, smiling distractedly while he kept the radio tuned to an all-news AM band, looking for information about the snowstorm. She couldn't really blame him for his anxiety –- tramping through snowfields had permanently lost its luster for her after their sojourn to the Antarctic. After a couple of hours on the road, Hannah had finally run out of questions, and fallen asleep in the back seat. Scully saw this as evidence that Hannah was still tired from the night before and was just about to make that observation when Mulder spoke.
"I think that we should let her sleep for about an hour or so, then stop and get some lunch," he said. "If we stop at one of those McDonald's that has a playground, then she can get some exercise before we get back on the road. I'd like to get as close as we can to Rochester today."
"You don't think we're going to make it?" she asked, staring at the ominous sky.
"I have no idea," Mulder said. "But the closer we get, the better off we'll be if we can't get there today."
"Obviously," she answered.
"Sorry," Mulder said, "I guess I'm just worried. You know these rental cars have horrible tires."
Scully shivered, remembering more than a few dicey drives in their past. She changed the subject. "Where'd that number come from, Mulder?" She watched his hands tighten around the wheel at her question, knuckles whitening.
"Do you remember when I broke into Dr. Scanlon's office, and met the Kurt Crawford clones in Allentown?" he asked.
She stifled the sharp remark that rose to her lips. "When you found some of my ova?" She paused. "I'm not really sure how I could forget that."
Mulder sighed and shifted in his seat, then cleared his throat and answered in his most 'just the facts' monotone. "When I first met the Kurt Crawfords in Allentown, and they showed me the DNA storage chamber they had for abductees' ova, that sixteen-digit code was on the drawer with your name on it."
Well, she thought. That certainly was an answer.
"Scully," he said. "What are you thinking?
She breathed in and out for a few minutes, trying to gather her whirling thoughts. "Was that code only on the drawer with my name?"
"Yes," Mulder answered. "Other drawers had different codes."
"Was there anything else on the label?"
"A date," Mulder answered. "Your name, that sixteen-digit code and the date October 28, 1994."
She nodded, "Just before I was returned."
"Yes," he said, looking from the road to her. She had been staring straight ahead for this whole exchange, but could see his head swiveling back and forth in her peripheral vision.
"And you think that the date is when my ova were harvested," she stated.
"Yes," he answered.
"So, you're sure that she …" she turned now, to look at Hannah sleeping in the back seat and pointed at herself, just in case Hannah was only dozing.
Mulder took his hand off of the wheel and covered hers, looking her in the eye. "Yes."
"But she's not like …" Scully protested.
"I don't think she is," Mulder answered. "I think she's different."
"For what purpose was she created?" she whispered, and the tears were thick in her throat.
"I don't know, Scully," Mulder said. "I promise you, I don't know, but I'm hoping that we can get some answers where we're going."
"Where are we going, Mulder?" she asked pointedly, fighting back the wave of tears with a burst of irritation. She felt that she'd been more than patient in waiting for an explanation.
"I'm pretty sure that I've tracked down some other Crawfords," he answered succinctly. "I know that they were at this location a while ago, and I thought that if anyone had answers," he pointed with his chin toward Hannah in his rearview mirror. "They would."
*~*
They made it to Iowa City before the snow got really serious, and outside of Waterloo, Mulder made a bad joke about disastrous decisions and then decided to head west on Route 20. She'd argued that point with him. Mulder, of course, was consulting nothing other than the atlas in his brain, but she worried that heading deeper into the storm was a risky strategy.
"I don't want to go west, Scully," he answered, "but I don't want to go on a secondary road, either, and that's our choice if we continue north from here. You know the plowing is better on the interstates. If we go west about 50 miles, we can hook up with 35 and go north again on a bigger road."
She sighed and consented to the change in plan, turning around to check on Hannah who was quiet in the back seat. "Are you OK, Hannah?" she asked. The child looked terribly bored, and seemed lethargic.
"It's not as nice as I thought it would be," Hannah answered, looking out at the snow.
"Let's play a game," Mulder said. "How 'bout … 'I Spy'?"
"What's that?" Hannah asked, and Scully listened as Mulder explained the rudiments of the game.
It was enough to keep them occupied for a while, but the truth was that it was difficult to focus on the game when there was so little to see other than snow falling. Mulder finally gave up the ghost on driving somewhere outside of Mason City, and Scully was relieved to get out of the snow. It wasn't windy or excessively stormy, but it was snowing hard, and the sky was low and white as far as the eye could see. There was close to a foot of snow on the ground when they stopped, and the weather reports that they'd heard were predicting more of the same until the early hours of the next day. They found a large supermarket and got enough food and supplies to keep them fed and occupied for the next 24 to 48 hours.
Hannah had been tired and grumpy by the time they'd checked into the motel room and eaten, and had been unusually stubborn about taking a shower. She wanted to lie on her bed and watch TV instead, and Scully'd found herself hiding a smile as she watched Mulder trying to be an authority figure to a crabby child who'd never had a parent.
"You take your shower in the morning!" Hannah accused Mulder, with a child's unerring sense of fairness coupled with innocent egotism. "So, why should I take my shower at night?"
An exasperated Mulder was momentarily floored by Hannah's question, and Scully thought his next words were going to be 'because I said so, young lady', so she intervened.
"Hannah," she said quietly, "we all have to take showers tonight. Sometimes when it snows, the electricity gets shut off, and it'll be very dark and hard to see in the bathroom if that happens."
She could see that Hannah immediately became worried by such a notion. "No TV?" she asked.
"If the electricity goes off," Scully said, "so it would be a good idea to take a shower now." She could see Hannah working up to an objection, so she continued on, "and after you take a shower, then you can watch some TV." Her voice was quiet, but firm. Hannah opened her mouth to argue, but Scully deftly blocked the argument with logic. "The person who goes to bed first is the first person in the shower."
"OK," Hannah said begrudgingly. She collected her things and went into the bathroom, while Mulder threw up his hands.
Scully snickered and made him trudge outside to throw the garbage from their dinner in the dumpster where it wouldn't stink up their too small living space.
*~*
Later, while Mulder showered and Hannah slept, she stood next to the window and watched the snow relentlessly piling up outside. If she had to guess, she'd think that they weren't going to be able to go anywhere tomorrow, and the thought made her feel trapped and helpless. They were a little over 200 miles from some potential answers about Hannah … and maybe about herself. It was hard to imagine that after all of the years of assiduously not thinking about things she was suddenly desperate for answers, but it was true nonetheless. She wanted to know what had been done to her, needed more confirmation than a sixteen digit code on a file drawer to believe that this child, no matter who she reminded her of, was hers.
Hannah tossed and turned, kicking her covers off; Scully moved to her side after she quieted down. Even with so little experience observing her, Scully felt that Hannah was unusually restless. She reached down tentatively and laid her fingers against Hannah's brow. She seemed warm to the touch. Scully swept the hair off Hannah's forehead and moved her fingers behind her ears, and then lower to the maxillary pulse point and listened, counting. She confirmed her observations by checking the carotid and then the radial pulses, placing Hannah's hand gently back under the covers, and smoothing them up over her.
"Scully?" She could hear the anxiety in his voice, and drew in a breath to calm her own nerves. She'd heard the door open while she was checking on Hannah, but had hoped that she was just being overly cautious and wouldn't have anything to report.
"I think I know why she was so grumpy earlier," she began, "her pulse is strong and quick, and she feels warm to me," she said.
Mulder came over to her side and put his hand on Hannah's forehead, then moved it to the back of her neck. He was wearing long pajama pants and a white t-shirt, his hair still damp from the shower. "Scully," he said again, staring at her.
"She has a fever, Mulder." Her voice trembled, and she pressed her fingers to her lips as if that motion could stop what was happening, but her words tumbled out faster and faster. "And I don't have any pediatric drugs, or even a thermometer. I can't get her to take a pill, and what if she's allergic to something? She could have a serious reaction to anything I give her, because we don't know a thing about her, really." Her voice was rising, and she could see that she was alarming Mulder, but all she could think of was that this was how Emily's death had begun. Mulder wrapped her up in his arms and held on to her as she continued to spill out her fears. "What if she's been altered in some way we don't understand when she was created? And it's snowing and we're too far away from Rochester and what if I can't help her …"
He kept saying her name, but it took her a while to hear him over the sound of the blood pounding in her head. He finally took her face in his hands, forcing her to look him in the eye.
"I'm going back to the store," he said.
"Mulder, it's snowing so hard," she protested weakly, her habit of arguing with him too ingrained to stop even now.
"I don't care," he answered. "I'm going. Tell me what you need."
When she nodded but remained silent, he pulled her in tight again and just held onto her for a few more seconds. She stood with her head resting over his heart, listening to its strong, rapid beat and trying to relax. She didn't know if she was grateful or resentful that he hadn't tried to reassure her that everything would be all right.
Finally, knowing that she was wasting precious time, she broke out of Mulder's embrace and turned to the table, looking for paper and a pen. When she turned back, he'd already shucked his pajama pants and was rummaging through his suitcase, wearing only his boxer briefs.
"Mulder," she said and then stopped, unsure of where to begin.
He looked up from the end of the bed, pulling out the black jeans he'd been wearing the night she followed him. "Just make a list, Scully. Try to think of every possibility. Assume we're going to be here for the next couple of days."
She was terrified by the mere idea, but she sat down and began to write, meticulously running through a mental checklist of all the differential diagnoses for pediatric illnesses that she could recall. She made sure he had his new phone, and then he was gone in a swirl of wind and snow, tires protesting the lack of traction. She closed the door and made herself boot up her computer to reacquaint herself with common pediatric illnesses.
She feared that anything she could do for Hannah would be less than adequate. Mulder had always been her most challenging (and only living) patient, but he had the advantage of being formed in the usual manner. There was not enough time for her to unbundle the years of experimentation on the disks that Mulder had stolen when he found Hannah. She needed to be logical and to treat for the most probable source of the problem. If the electricity held out and the snow kept on falling, she'd have plenty of time to search for the improbable. The only sound in the room was that of Hannah's too loud breathing. She had shut the TV off so that she could concentrate, but when the windows rattled ominously and Hannah muttered in her sleep, she shot up out of her chair and got her gun, laying it on the table next to her while she waited. Hannah had her tiger for security; Dana Scully preferred her SIG Sauer. She grimly continued with her reading, willing herself to focus on the words.
*~*
There had been plenty of time in her life where she had simply endured, but having had such extensive experience with such undertakings didn't make the hour and a half that Mulder was away from their motel room go any faster. When he returned, she shoved her feet into her boots and went outside to take the first of the bags from his hands, not caring that she was outside in the pelting snow in just her robe and pajamas. He didn't even make an attempt at a smart remark, just handed her one bag while he grabbed another and kicked the car door shut, ushering her through the piles of snow with an arm around her back, another heavy bag banging against her shin as it dangled from his hand.
Mulder dumped his two bags next to the table and bent down, pulling her boot clad foot toward him. Caught off balance, she braced a hand on his shoulder but continued digging through the bag she'd put on the table. "I'm going to try the Motrin first," she said, shifting to get to the second bag as Mulder pulled at her other boot. He thumped over to the door and toed off his own boots, dropping them all in a heap next to the door. "Did you get some?" He nodded, stripping off his overcoat and hanging it off the door hinge, making sure the door was latched tight.
"I got the eyedropper and the one with the cup," he answered. "I figured you might need the eyedropper to give it to her if she was asleep." He crossed the room to Hannah's side in three long steps, crouching down beside her. "I got three different kinds of thermometers, too," he said, putting his large hand on Hannah's forehead. "How is she?"
"I don't know," Scully answered quietly. "How much do you think she weighs?"
"Thirty-six pounds," Mulder said immediately. He looked up at Scully, who knew that her expression reflected her surprise. "Car seats have weight requirements on them," he said, shrugging, "so I weighed her before I bought one. Even if it was off a few pounds, she wasn't heavy enough for the next size up seat."
She shook her head in bemusement.
"I know," he said with mock modesty, "I'm good."
She smiled at him for the first time in weeks, tossing him the ear bulb thermometer. "Open that up, big guy."
He grinned at her, and tore the package open with his teeth. She ignored him and double-checked the dose she'd measured into the cup.
She took the alcohol swabs over to Hannah's bedside and wiped down the thermometer before placing it in Hannah's ear canal. Hannah murmured in protest, but settled down. "Hold this," Scully said, and Mulder placed his hand on the bulb. While they waited for her temperature to register, Scully sucked the dose up into the eyedropper, carefully getting each drop.
"102.1," Mulder said quietly, when the ear bulb beeped. "That's not too bad."
"No," Scully answered, "but I don't want it to go any higher."
"When is it …"
She interrupted Mulder before he could finish, "107 or higher is dangerous, but a sustained temperature of 104 or higher indicates a serious infection, usually bacterial."
Mulder's shoulders relaxed.
Scully slipped the eyedropper between Hannah's parted lips, and was relieved when the child sipped the medication without rousing. It was probably habitual. Hannah most likely had no idea how often she'd been given medication over the course of her short life. She sighed.
"Now we wait?" Mulder asked.
"Now, we wait," she answered.
He nodded and smoothed the hair back from Hannah's brow, kissing her before tucking the covers up around her.
~*~
Part 10
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Date: 2007-12-31 01:32 am (UTC)Lol, and good job on the number!
Thanks, Wendy!
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Date: 2007-12-31 06:19 am (UTC)I am waiting anxiously alongside Scully as she wonders/worries about exactly what they've done to her. You've done a nice job of sharing her anxiety with us without it becoming overbearing or overwhelmingly pathetic.
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Date: 2007-12-31 07:14 pm (UTC)You have just described my ideal life. Unfortunately, I also have to work for a living, and starting January 2nd, it's back to work for me.
:: sighs ::
Why didn't I win the lottery?
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Date: 2007-12-31 09:25 am (UTC)Parenting!Mulder and Scully is still sweet and hilarious.
And Scully needs a whiteboard. And a team. *g*
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Date: 2007-12-31 07:15 pm (UTC)I've only watched a couple of episodes of House and now I'm trying to imagine what would happen if House met Mulder and Scully.
Now, that would be funny!