Chapter nine: The Night Pat Murphy Died

Mulder stood separated from Skinner by glass windows, and watched as his lover was slid into a long dark tube for the MRI—the equipment seemed somehow coffinish, and far too narrow for Skinner’s wide shoulders.

For a moment, Mulder allowed himself to remember an old Appalachian curse and how that woman in the scanner had fried up like—like—

Scully touched his arm and he gave a startled squeak.

“He’s going to be fine. This procedure is perfectly safe.” She could feel his muscles humming like guitar strings tightened to the point of snapping.

Her words didn’t reassure him. But rather than reminding her of that old case, which would have brought up old disagreements with it, he accepted her physical comfort and shook his head sadly.

“He didn’t know where we were this morning, Scully,” he said quietly.

She found his hand with hers and gave it a squeeze, saying, “I’m not surprised. How often do you two overnight here, anyway?”

“Not often,” he had to admit. “Although there was that one night with the tequila shooters…” That memory brought a smile to his face and nearly triggered his gag reflex at the same time.

“There you go. Don’t borrow trouble, Mulder.”

“I don’t think I have to borrow any, Scully—seems I have plenty already.”

The scanner had wound down now, the sounds fading away, the lights blinking at a slower pace, and Mulder tightened his grip on his friend’s hand as Skinner was drawn slowly from the machine.

Until Skinner was sitting up with the aid of a nurse, Mulder didn’t even realize that he was holding his breath.

Scully let go of Mulder’s hand and brushed his shoulder.

“I’m going to get started on the new test results. Give him a few minutes in the recovery room before you go barging in there—he’s going to be a little disoriented, okay?”

“Define a few, Scully,” Mulder replied, his gaze never leaving the room, never leaving Skinner.

“Grab a coffee or something. I’ll come up as soon as I’ve got some answers.” A last reassuring pat and she was gone.

Mulder thought about coffee and something in his stomach rebelled at the concept. He supposed he could at least buy a cup, even if he couldn’t actually drink it. That would satisfy Scully’s ‘few minutes’ and not keep him away too long.

***
Skinner glanced over at the window on the other side of the room as an orderly helped him into a wheelchair. Without his glasses, he couldn't focus clearly on the figure on the other side of the glass, but he was sure it was Mulder. He lifted his hand and saw a blur of movement in response. It was enough, and he closed his eyes with a smile as he was wheeled out of the room.

***
Mulder watched until Skinner was gone from the room, his hand still raised from returning Walter’s wave. He pressed his fingers against the cool glass and wondered for just a moment if Scully’s God was watching, and if He was, what He might be making of all this.

‘I must be tired,’ he thought. A last glance at the empty room and then he turned away to pursue his quest for bad coffee and a good man.

***
Skinner muttered darkly under his breath as the orderly arranged a blanket over him in the recovery room.

“I’m not an invalid, you know,” he told her.

“I can see that, Mr. Skinner”, she replied, and something in her tone gave him a momentary pause.

She handed him a paper cup with pills in it, and another one full of water. “You may experience some pain—this will help,” she told him. “The doctor will be with you shortly.”

Skinner stared hard at her, but without his glasses her features were too soft, too indistinct, and then she was gone, the door closing softly behind her. Skinner continued focusing on the space she had been occupying just a moment ago, that niggling feeling of familiarity tugging at him almost painfully. After a minute or two, though, he gave it up. His memory couldn’t find whatever it was it was searching for, and his head was starting to ache.

He closed his eyes and hoped Scully would be along soon.

***
Mulder had made his way as far as the cafeteria, mostly on autopilot, the majority of his thoughts on the man in the room upstairs. He shuffled through a line up with a coffee in one hand and a sealed plastic cup of orange juice in the other, and only realized what he was doing when a small woman with a moustache and gray hair jammed into a net asked him for money.

He grinned apologetically at her, threw another sheepish smile at the people behind him and fumbled some change out of the pocket of his jeans.  Drinks paid for, he steered himself over to a table, sat and stared bleakly at his purchases, and then leaned back with his head tipped back and a hand over his eyes, and started counting seconds. He figured when he reached three hundred, that would be good enough for Scully.

“Mulder.”

He was startled enough to almost tip his chair over.  Scully didn’t seem to notice. She pulled another uncomfortable chair up to his table, pushed his unopened juice aside, picked up his coffee and set a file folder down in front of him. Mulder recoiled a moment, suddenly terrified of the documents in the innocent beige folder and what they might reveal.

“Something strange here,” Scully said, adding cream to his coffee and sipping it herself.

“You’re not being helpful, Scully,” Again, his actions seemed out of his own control. He opened the folder and was greeted by the sight of his lover’s brain, in glorious Technicolor.

He was suddenly very glad he wasn’t drinking that coffee.

“Pretty much the same as the last batch, Mulder. See, here?” She pointed. “That gray mass? That’s the nanocytes. They’re in the same place and approximately the same size. No change.”

“Is that supposed to be encouraging?” Mulder asked bleakly.

“Well, as long as the mass doesn’t expand, then there won’t be any additional pressure on the brain and that is encouraging.” Scully pulled the picture away and Mulder looked at the next one.

This was a sheet of x-rays. Scully had definitely gone through all the motions, and Mulder knew he should be more grateful. He felt it, for sure, but too much of his heart was wrapped up in Walter Skinner to give Scully more than a fleeting ghost of a leer.

“Ooh, now these are dead sexy!” he told her.

“Sexy, maybe, but confusing, definitely. Look at these two.” She pointed at two shots of Skinner’s left side and arm. “Do you see those?”

‘Of course I see them,’ he thought with sick dread.

Two more dark masses; one in Walter’s arm, near the shoulder, one in his thigh.

Mulder closed his eyes, but the pictures remained burned into his brain, and shutting out the actual images in front of him just allowed the ones in his mind to grow worse.

He remembered the way Skinner had looked when—when—

He groaned aloud, opened his eyes and stood up.

“What can be done, Scully?”

“Well, we had looked at some pretty extreme courses of action last time, Mulder, although the carbon was much more wide-spread then.” Scully touched the dark spots on the x-rays as she spoke.

“Amputation,” Mulder remembered. He could suddenly feel the ghost of Skinner’s arms around him. “Not an option,” he declared coldly.

“I didn’t allow it last time, Mulder,” Scully reminded him a little shortly. He held up a hand defensively.

“I know, Scully, and I know you’re doing everything you can here. It’s just like that last time, though. Time’s running out and I feel like I’m ten steps behind. I’m sitting here staring at Walter’s death sentence with nothing more powerful than a juice box in front of me! I need to be out there, Scully, finding the son of a bitch who’s doing this!”

“Mulder, we’re covering that. John said he’d call as soon as he and the Gunmen have anything, and your friend Mitch promised to let you know if anyone else started asking about you two—“

“I know that. But Scully, that’s all reactive, not pro-active. And when have you ever known me to just sit around and wait?”

She almost smiled at that.

“Why don’t we go see how the patient is doing?” she said. “I can explain courses of treatment to you both then, and maybe between the three of us, we can figure out how you can be more ‘proactive’” Unexpectedly, Scully arched a brown suggestively on the word proactive, and it startled a smile out of Mulder.

She scooped up the file folder, drained his coffee cup and then let him lead her out of the room.

***
Skinner opened his eyes at the sound of the door opening. His relieved smile became a frown when he realized it wasn’t Mulder approaching the bed but another nurse, this one male.

The man wore industrial green scrubs and heavy shoes. His gray hair was crew cut short, and while the muscles in his arms bulged the sleeves of his shirt, his waist was thick, bordering on flab.

‘Regular Army’, thought Skinner, and something familiar registered in his mind. Hadn’t he just heard something like that somewhere? Someone describing…who? Himself?

The orderly smiled at Skinner and held up a needle.

“What’s this now?” Suddenly nervous, Skinner pushed himself up to a sitting position.

“Just something to help ya sleep, big guy,” replied the orderly.

“I think I’ll hold off on the nap until my doctor gets here.” More internal alarms started clamoring as the man made no move to stop what he was doing.

“Whaddya, afraid of a little needle? Not a tough guy like you.” The man smirked and reached for Skinner’s arm.

Skinner pushed the hand with the needle in it away. “I said no,” he growled.

“Don’t make this difficult,” the orderly growled back.

Skinner raised an arm to deflect another attempt with the needle, and then something in his head felt like it was exploding, and he clapped both hands to his skull with a wounded cry.

The orderly plunged the needle into the taut muscle of Skinner’s bicep. The twinge of pain could barely register past the throbbing of his brain, but Skinner felt it just the same, and he uttered a hoarse shout. “NO!”

“Just shut up and let us do our work, buddy,” sneered the orderly. “It’ll all be over soon, anyway.”

“What the hell is going on here?”

Skinner tried to focus on the blessedly familiar voice, but couldn’t even manage to open his eyes.  The pain in his skull was lessening slowly—at least it didn’t feel like rabid gerbils were gnawing at his frontal lobe anymore—but that just made the pain in his arm from the needle more vivid, thin heat burning its way through his arm and into his body. And he was starting to feel a little sick, a little dizzy. There was a weight on him suddenly, and his ribs fairly groaned in protest. There was more shouting, Mulder and someone else, and then the weight was gone and the voices seemed far away. He could hear the beat of his own heart over them, and feel blood trickling down his arm, warm and wet.

“Sir!” A woman’s voice, loud in his ear. “Walter! Can you hear me?”

He struggled to open eyes gummed shut by what felt like super glue. He heard something break with a loud cracking sound, and a sudden yelp of pain that he recognized as Mulder.

“Fox!” he cried out, forcing his eyes to open.

Scully was inches away from his face, frowning worriedly.

“Stay with us, sir,” she demanded, and then she disappeared off to his right somewhere. He failed to turn his head enough to see what was happening, but he noticed a dark shadow loom over him, obscuring the lights for a moment, and then a crash, and a thud, and someone was groaning and his eyes slipped shut again.

“Walter! Walter!”

“Sir! Walter!”

The glue on his eyelids had been replaced with wet sandbags apparently; the effort of opening his eyes almost didn’t seem worth it.

“Please, Walter!”

The voice sounded terrified and he worried about that for a moment, had one second of crystal clear thought and realized he’d been drugged, and he opened his eyes.

The man was close enough for Skinner to see the rapidly shifting colour of his eyes, the full shape of his mouth, and the bleeding gash on his forehead.

As he lost consciousness, Skinner wondered who the man was…

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