“How does one direct bugs?”
“I don’t know, but we’ve been running down a long list of witnesses. A loner who was present at every Dumb Ass stunt and who had a run-in with this kid Winky at school just prior to the lice attacking. We’re going to want to talk to him.”
“And while we’re doing that, why don’t you and Dr. Bronzino see what you can come up with as far as how these bugs might be getting their marching orders,” Doggett says.
Scully raises her eyebrows. “Frankly, I’m not sure how to even begin answering that question.”
“Well, maybe it’s like you said,” Reyes offers. “If the behavior is biological, if unusual concentrations of a hormone or other chemical could theoretically induce the bugs to attack, then it’s possible that whoever’s responsible for the attacks would have that chemical in their possession. Once we know what substances might cause the bugs to act that way, we’ll know what to look for.”
“It’s a place to start, anyway,” Doggett adds. “Take it up with the good doctor, see what his thoughts are.”
An expression flits across Scully’s face so quickly that Reyes would have missed it if she hadn’t been looking right at her, but it’s one she instantly recognizes. As Doggett turns to leave the lab, Reyes reaches for his arm.
“I’ll catch up with you.”
With a nod, Doggett heads for the door; when he’s gone, Reyes turns back to Scully.
“Everything all right?”
Scully looks surprised. “What do you mean?”
“Rocky Bronzino.” Reyes levels a significant look at Scully. “He wasn’t exactly subtle about hitting on you yesterday. If he’s been inappropriate or made you feel uncomfortable--”
“No,” Scully interrupts, shaking her head with the barest hint of a smile. “Doctor Bronzino may be… a little obnoxious, but he’s harmless.” Her smile broadens. “I appreciate your looking out for me, though.”
“It’s not that I don’t think you’re capable of handling things yourself. I have no doubt you could absolutely kick his ass if he tried anything,” Reyes says with a grin. “It’s just, when Agent Doggett mentioned him, for a second there you looked… perturbed.”
“Ah.” Scully gives a quiet chuckle. “Well, you know what it’s like to work with men who are experts in their field and are very eager to remind you of their expertise at every opportunity.”
Reyes nods. “It can be exhausting.”
“Exactly. And as much as I hate to admit it, it’s been a long time since I had to work late on a case in the field and fly home only to grab a few hours of sleep and catch the first shuttle back out in the morning,” Scully says with a rueful smile. “I guess I’ve gotten spoiled working at the Academy.” She shakes her head. “Anyway. It’s nothing a cup of coffee won’t fix. I’ll be better able to tolerate Dr. Bronzino’s… enthusiasm with a little caffeine.”
Relieved there’s nothing more worrying at play, Reyes nods again. “Well, I can certainly relate to that. Though I’m not proud to say it’s usually nicotine for me, in that situation.” She ducks her head with a shrug, and Scully gives her a mock stern eyebrow raise before her expression softens back into a grin. “I know, I know. I’ve ‘quit’ I don’t know how many times. One of these days I’ll kick it for good.”
“Don’t believe anyone who tries to tell you it’s easy,” Scully says, then angles her head toward the door. “You’d better get going. I’ll give you a call if Dr. Bronzino comes up with anything that might help the investigation.”
“Sounds good. We’ll keep you posted after we interview Dylan Lokensgard.”
“Okay. And Monica?” Scully adds when Reyes has her hand on the door to leave. “Thanks again.”
As soon as Agent Reyes handed him the baby, time seemed to slow and stretch. Scully’s breathing got steadier, stronger. Mulder had his entire family in his arms, and despite the continued familiar undercurrent of fear, he felt oddly at peace, too. Felt right, somehow.
But now they’re landing, and as Agent Reyes leans over to take the baby back, time speeds up again like a bad special effect.
Hospital workers in plastic smocks are there at the doors, yanking them open and yelling into the helicopter interior as the pilot powers down. He can’t make out individual words, only the urgency behind them. His heart pounds.
Now Scully’s on the gurney and they start to roll her into the building, and it feels like something physically tears inside him; he has had to choose between her and someone else before, but never like this. He looks helplessly at her, then at his son in Reyes’s arms, then back at her.
Agent Reyes chooses for him, handing him the baby, who has just begun to cry again. “I’ll go with her, Mulder. You take care of him.”
“I--” he starts to say, but she’s already jogging after Scully.
“Are you the father?” someone asks, and he turns to see one of the women from the hospital looking up at him.
“Y-yeah,” he stammers, half his heart and three quarters of his attention still pulled toward the door that just closed behind Scully’s gurney.
“Well, come on then. Let’s get you both inside.”
“Wait!” the helicopter pilot calls from behind him. “Look, buddy, I know you paid in advance, but we just flew an extra 40 miles, and… I mean, I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to ask for some more--”
“Right, yeah, of course. Just, uh, send me a bill, okay? Whatever it is, I’ll… I’ll take care of it.” He cannot even begin to contemplate how much extra the charter company might charge him, but he also couldn’t possibly put a price on Scully’s life.
The baby quiets as they walk, but Mulder's internal monologue of Scully, Scully, Scully continues unabated. Once they get in the building, he’s ushered into a room where a small crowd of medical and administrative staff immediately start lobbing questions at him that he tries, and mostly fails, to answer. (Time of birth? Length of labor? Baby's name? He's almost surprised they don’t declare him an imposter and take the kid away.) They write “Baby Boy Mulder” on the form, but he makes them change it to “Baby Boy Scully,” stammering something about not being married. Someone asks if he wants to cut the cord, which is still mostly intact and tucked in among the blankets; he feels the blood drain from his face, manages to shake his head “no.”
He watches warily as the baby is examined from head to toe, stomach tight with dread that they might find something wrong, abnormal, inhuman. After everything that has transpired over the past few days, what he saw in Parenti’s office, the things that Ms. Gill said, and even Krycek… Oh, he wants to believe what Scully told him, about how this baby came to be, about the tests she’s had done and how everything so far has checked out.
It’s just that he knows all too well that wanting to believe only gets you halfway.
The knot in his stomach loosens fractionally when they prick the baby’s heel and he bleeds red. Of course, Billy Miles didn’t bleed green either, but this still seems like a good sign. The minutes crawl by -- he finds himself compulsively glancing at the clock on the wall about every fifteen seconds -- and though his worries about the baby slowly begin to ease, his worries about Scully do not. Shouldn’t he have heard something by now, about how she’s doing?
Worrying about Scully is like walking a path so familiar that his feet know the way, all of their own accord. He knows every turn, every landmark, has been here far, far too many times before. But though the path is one he knows by heart, that doesn’t make traversing it any easier.
He turns his head sharply at the sound of the door opening, feels his jaw clench at the somber expression on Agent Reyes’s face.
“She’s been taken to surgery,” she says without preamble, and he nods, tightly. Okay, surgery isn’t great, but it’s a damned sight better than gone. “They wouldn’t tell me much, but when you’re finished here, I’ll show you where we can sit and wait for her.”
Mulder looks to the small team surrounding his son, and the white-coated doctor offers a smile. “I’d say we’re just about wrapped up with this little one. He’s doing awfully well for someone who had such an… exciting entrance into the world.”
Reyes and Mulder share a quick “You don’t know the half of it” look before Mulder turns back toward the doctor. “That’s good to hear. So we can go?”
“Just as soon as Nurse Andrews gets back with a bottle and some bracelets for you and the baby, then yes. And if you’d like, we can take your son to the nursery for a while so you can--”
“No!” Reyes interrupts, with an intensity that startles even Mulder. With the attention of everyone in the room immediately on her, she raises her hands slightly. “Sorry. Just… this baby doesn’t leave our sight. For any reason.”
“Okay,” the doctor says slowly. “That’s fine. It was just an option, in case Mr. Mulder wanted to get some rest. I assure you, our nursery staff will take excellent care of him. There’s no need to worry.”
“I’m sure they would,” Mulder says. “But it won’t be necessary. I’ve got him.”
***
The chairs in the surgical waiting area are surprisingly comfortable, and Monica fights the urge to pull her feet up, curl her body into the cushions, and close her eyes.
When they got upstairs, they were informed that Dana had made it through surgery without complication and been moved to recovery. It will still be a little while before they can see her, but for now, they can at least wait without worry. Mulder had seemed to physically deflate with relief at the news, all of the tension that had been coiled so tightly in and around him melting away almost from one breath to the next.
He sits beside her now, leaning back in the chair with the baby dozing on his chest, looking like he might also be struggling to stay awake.
“They’re like cats,” she says, nodding toward the baby. “You know, all warm and soft and sleepy. I can’t even tell you how many times I fell asleep studying in college because my roommate’s cat decided to take a nap on me.”
“I guess I wouldn’t know,” Mulder says through a yawn. “Never had a cat. Never had a baby before, either.” He looks down at the sleeping bundle on his chest and smiles. “This one is pretty warm and soft, though.”
“He’s amazing.” Mulder meets her eyes, and she leans forward, just a little bit, and lowers her voice to a near-whisper. “You feel it too, right? The energy in him?”
Worry flickers across Mulder’s face, and his eyes narrow. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, it’s nothing bad,” she says quickly. “It’s just… well you’ve heard of auras, right? How everyone’s got one, a sort of manifestation of psychic energy, perceivable by some people as colors or vibrations?”
“Yeah,” he answers, warily.
“Well, it’s like that. I don’t see colors, per se, but I’m pretty sensitive to feeling… things. About people and places. And, I don’t know. Maybe it’s just that I haven’t been around a lot of babies, but… I’ve never felt anything quite like what I’m feeling from him. Just like… pure lifeforce radiating off of him. And I guess I thought, given your work and everything you’ve studied and investigated, you’d be sensitive to feeling it too.”
Inexplicably, Mulder chuckles, and she bristles for a moment before realizing he’s not laughing at her. He’s relieved.
“You… thought I meant something different?”
He sighs now, still smiling, and shakes his head. “I think you know some of what I was afraid of. Some of what Scully was afraid of.”
She nods, a chill running through her as she remembers Billy Miles picking himself up after being apparently shot dead. Whatever those people were, whatever they wanted with Dana and the baby, she hopes the fact that they all left after the birth means that he’s not what they thought he was. Not what Mulder and Dana feared he might be. Oh, there is power in him -- of that she is still certain -- but she doesn’t believe it is something to fear.
“Ordinary human energy,” she clarifies. “But a lot of it.” Reaching a hand out, she holds it just above the sleeping baby’s back. “You really don’t feel that? At all?”
Mulder looks at her, thoughtfully. “Has Scully ever told you about her sister?”
Now it’s Monica’s turn to chuckle. “Just yesterday, in fact. I get the feeling she’s someone I would love to have known.”
“Yeah, I think you would’ve liked each other,” Mulder says, gazing off into the middle distance and clearly reliving some memory he doesn’t seem to want to share aloud.
A door opens at the end of the hallway, and they both look up. A nurse comes toward them, asking as she walks, “Is one of you an Agent Reyes?”
Monica stands up. “That’s me.”
“There’s an Agent Doggett on the phone for you at the nurse’s station.”
“Oh. Right, of course.” She can’t believe she forgot to call once everything had settled down. John must be worried sick. He’s probably been calling every hospital in northern Georgia, looking for them.
She follows the nurse back up the hallway and through the doors. When they reach the desk, another nurse hands her a phone.
“John, hi.”
“Damn it, Monica, I’ve been going crazy trying to get ahold of you! What happened, is Scully all right, did you--?”
“We’re fine,” she says, with a glance toward the nurses. They are both looking away, trying to give her as much privacy as possible, but the phone cord is too short for her to have this conversation anywhere but right at the desk. “Everyone’s fine. Mulder found us, and we were able to get to the hospital in time.”
“In time for Scully to have the baby?”
“No, that happened… where we were. But there were some complications, and… anyway, it’s a good thing he got to us when he did. Agent Scully might not be alive right now, otherwise.”
“And the baby?”
“He’s fine, too.” She smiles. “By all appearances, a healthy baby boy.”
“Thank God. That’s… that’s great news.” The relief in his voice is obvious. “And you? You’re okay, too?”
Nice of you to finally ask. “Yes, John. I’m okay. I might sleep for a week when all of this is over, but… I’m just glad everyone is all right.”
“Me too.” She hears him let out a breath. “Listen, I can’t thank you enough for everything you’ve done. A.D. Skinner, too. He, um… he and I have some things we’d like to discuss with you, when you get back.”
She wonders, briefly, about how she’s even going to get back to Democrat Hot Springs, since the car and her cell phone and who knows what else got left behind there.
“Okay. Well, I’ll let you know as soon as I have some idea when that will be. My cell got left behind in the rush, so if you need to reach me again, the hospital is probably your best bet.”
“That would explain why you didn’t answer any of the ninety-five times I called it,” John says.
“That, and we didn’t have any signal out where we were, anyway.” She remembers picking up her phone to call for an ambulance, then setting it down again in dismay at the “No Service” indicator. It felt like a miracle when she heard the helicopter only moments later.
There is an awkward pause; John probably has a million more questions he’d like to ask, but he undoubtedly knows as well as she does that this is not the time for it. They break the silence at the same time.
“Well, I should let--”
“I should probably--”
She shakes her head, smiling again. “I’ll talk to you again soon.”
“Okay. Try and get some rest, if you can. And Monica?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you. I knew I could count on you.”
You knew I would come running from a thousand miles away, in the middle of the night, with no explanation, just because you asked me to.
There is so much more to unpack, there, but again, this is definitely not the time.
“You’re welcome,” she says instead. “Goodbye, John.”
