TITLE: Genesis: Do Not Go Gentle 01/01
AUTHOR: Radclyffe
EMAIL ADDRESS: rdclyfhall@hotmail.com
ARCHIVE: anywhere, just let me know
RATING: R
CATEGORY: Vignette, Angst
SPOILERS:Tithonus
KEYWORDS: Scully/Other(female); Scully/Slash
SUMMARY: Marsh and Mulder share a dark night.

DISCLAIMERS:The characters of Scully, Mulder, Skinner and
others/events introduced on the X-Files are the sole property of
Chris Carter etc, and are used here without permission for 
entertainment, not for profit.

Verse by Dylan Thomas, respectfully quoted.

Comments welcome.

NOTE SPOILER WARNING ABOVE

**********

"Do not go gentle into that good night...
Rage, rage against the dying of the light"

Memorial Hospital
Washington, DC

"Clamp the chest tube and watch it for an hour to make sure there's
no air leak.  Then get an upright chest x-ray in six hours.  If there's 
no evidence of pneumothorax, and the lung is fully inflated, go ahead 
and pull it."

Marsh moved to the next bed in the intensive care unit, followed by
residents, trauma fellows, and nurses.  She picked up the patient's
chart and began to peruse the vital signs.  Suddenly, her shoulders
stiffened and she carefully replaced the chart on top of the bedside
table.  She turned slowly and looked across the room.  Mulder was
standing just inside the double swinging doors.  Wordlessly, she
threaded her way through the surrounding staff members and went to
face him.  "Is she alive?"

Mulder didn't even stop to wonder how she knew.  Somehow, he
understood.  "Yes, but it's bad."

Her pupils flickered and a faint shudder rippled through her body. 
A cold hand squeezed her heart.  "Let's go up to the heliport.  We'll 
use that to get to my plane."  When they arrived in the downtown 
Manhattan hospital, Scully was already in the operating room.  Marsh 
simply displayed her FBI credentials and asked where the surgeon's 
locker room was.  Ten minutes later she was standing beside the table 
operating table looking down into Scully's open chest.  The operating 
surgeon didn't even bother to look up.

"You the FBI doc?"

"Yes," Marsh replied calmly. *and her lover*

"You want to scrub in? It's a great case. The bullet went between
the sixth and seventh ribs, through the lower lobe of the left lung,
glanced off the descending aorta, and lodged in the posterior
paraspinus muscles. It's amazing she didn't bleed to death - but
then again, she almost did." A bright geyser of arterial blood spurted 
up onto the surgeon's mask. "Shit -- she still might."

Marsh watched the surgeon's hands moving inside Dana's chest. 
Gently lifting the lung out of the way, applying fine clamps to bleeding 
vessels, cutting away the blast-damaged tissues. "You seem to have 
things under control."  She paused for a moment. "It looks like you 
might have of bleeder up there behind the hilum," she said politely. 
Very calmly. The calm that comes from holding back terror with both 
hands.

The surgeon grunted softly and advanced the suction cannula deeper
into the chest cavity, removing old clots and fresh blood from around 
the root of the lung.  "Oh yeah, I see it now.  I've been wondering 
where that damn oozing was coming from.  Thanks."

Marsh studied the wound.  The aorta was already controlled with
clamps above and below the area of the puncture site.  The surgeon was 
now placing a non-crushing clamp around the edges of the bullet wound in 
the lung.  Fortunately, the projectile had missed the left ventricle and 
the heart was beating steadily.  Dana's heart.

Dana's heart.

For the first time in hours, Marsh was aware of her own body.  Her
legs were trembling faintly, and her hands were shaking despite her
clenched fists.  For an instant, her vision blurred. That had never
happened in the operating room.  This was her arena.  This was where
she did battle, and had never been defeated. In this place, nothing
was permitted to penetrate her consciousness, other than the body
before her and the instruments in her hands.  The world outside the
four walls of the operating room receded into nothingness.  Time
stopped. Personal worries -  personal pain -  personal fears,
disappeared.  In this theater, at this table, she was invincible. 
But not now.  She was lost.

"I'll be in the lounge," she murmured.  "If something changes, if
you start to lose her --" She couldn't continue, she couldn't even
put words to the deepest fear in her life.

How exactly would she continue?  What would be the point?  Was there
something that she hadn't already accomplished that she would
possibly care to live for?  She had achieved every goal she had ever 
desired -- she had honed her skills to the highest level, she had 
practiced her profession with integrity and honor, and she had paid her 
dues to her country.  She had even finally forgiven herself for Karen 
and made her own personal peace.  For what other reason could she 
possibly get up in the morning other than to love this woman?  How would 
she find a reason? Where would she find the desire?  To envision a 
future without Dana was as impossible for Marsh as to envision not 
loving her.  She supposed she could continue, perhaps even _ would _ 
continue, but the emptiness within would never abate. And if the pain 
that accompanied that desolation did not lessen, she would not survive.

She looked once more into the open thorax of her lover, and willed
the fragile tissues to heal.  Then she slowly turned and softly left the 
room.

****

Mulder found her leaning against the window, staring out into the
night.  It had been three hours since Dana was taken into the
operating room.  He had spent most of that time pacing in front of
the double doors with the large red sign warning him not to enter. 
Beyond those doors was a world he could not experience.  He was not 
allowed to see, he was not allowed to touch, he was not allowed to act; 
there was nothing he could do. He experienced a helplessness he had not 
known since those frozen moments when he watched Samantha drift away. It 
was hard enough accepting his own impotence.  It was almost more than he 
could bear to watch Marsh's agony.

He couldn't tell her it would be all right, because he didn't know
that was true.  He couldn't tell her that she would survive the
loss, because he couldn't imagine how.  To him, the thought of losing 
Scully was a pain that struck so deep, he was choking on it.  What must 
it be like for Marsh, to lose someone she had touched and loved and 
admitted into her body.  He didn't know.  He wasn't sure he wanted to 
know. Perhaps that was why there was no one for him like Marsh.

They had exchanged few words when Marsh piloted them from
Memorial's rooftop to the air strip where her plane awaited them.
When they lifted off, Mulder tried to say he was sorry.

"I was too late.  I tried to warn her --"

Marsh stared straight ahead into the night sky.  It was perfectly
clear, and the horizon was littered with twinkling stars. "I believe
you."

"She was working with a guy she didn't know.  They split us up--"

"I know."

Mulder shifted in the seat, wanting so much to comfort her, and not
knowing the first thing to say.  "She's strong, Marsh."

"She's flesh and blood, Mulder.  You have no idea how fragile the
body is.  It betrays our spirits. We can struggle to overcome our
weaknesses, but in the end we are mortal.  She's strong; she's the
strongest person I've ever known.  But her strength is in her heart,
and in her will.  Her body is as vulnerable as a petal in a rain
storm.  It can be broken; it can be destroyed."

"I've seen her win before," Mulder persisted, needing her to believe
as much as he needed to.  "I've seen her dying, and I've seen her
fight it.  I've seen her come back when no one should have."

"How many times, Mulder? How many times can she do it?"

Mulder took a deep breath, and spoke from his heart.  "She'll do it
for you, Marsh.  She'll do it because she loves you, and because she
needs you, and because she wants to be with you more than anything
in the world.  She's never had quite that reason before, and no matter 
what has happened to her, I believe that she'll live for you."

Marsh's hands tightened on the rudder, and she willed her arms not
tremble. *Please God, let that be true.  Let that be true, and I
swear, I will love her with every breath, every moment  - for the
rest of my life*

*****

They gave them as much privacy as possible.  At one end of the long
rectangle which comprised the intensive care unit, there was a
single isolation room.  Granted, it had a large window which allowed
the nurses and other personnel passing by to see the patient from
almost anywhere in the room, but at least they were separated from
the never-ending noise, bright lights, and sounds of the barely
living.  The overhead fluorescents had been turned off, and most of the 
illumination came from the glow of the many monitors.  The
endotracheal tube which had exited from between Dana's lips,
connected by a long flexible tube to the portable ventilator, had
been removed shortly after surgery.  Intravenous bags ran nutrient
fluid into her veins, and chest tubes and catheters removed the
ravages of trauma and injury. If anyone found it odd that the tall
trauma surgeon from Washington D.C. sat silently by the bedside,
both hands clasped around the patient's motionless fingers, no one
had time to comment on it.

Touch and go, they had said. She should have been dead at the scene,
but for some reason she hung on. Morning was a lifetime away.  

Marsh was unaware of conscious thought.  Her mind registered the
flickering of dials in the background, the steady rhythmic bleeping
of the electrocardiogram machine, and the comforting rise and fall
of the compression devices on Dana's extremities. She watched Dana's
eyelids flicker slightly as her body struggled. If she just looked at 
her face she could almost forget what was happening.

*She's so beautiful when she's sleeping.  But she's not sleeping, is
she?  She might be though - her face is flawless, without that
little crease that forms between her eyebrows when she's thinking,
or angry.  She's not making those soft little murmurs that she
usually makes when she sleeps, but she seems very peaceful.  I
wonder if that's good?  Is she so peaceful because she can see a
better place than here? Is she so still, so quiet, because she
doesn't need to fight anymore?  Is this what my patients are like
just before they die?*

Marsh saw death every day.  She had lived with it; she had held it
in her hands; she had watched life slipping through her fingers. 
She had watched in agony as a lover died in her arms, but she had
never seen death come so gently, so quietly, so respectfully.  She
wanted to shout, to make her stay.  She wanted to grasp her fragile
shoulders and shake her until the breath raged through her lungs,
and blood pounded through her body.  She wanted to scream, "Don't
leave me.  I can't live without you."  But she did not.  Because if
this is how death came, it did not seem to be the enemy.  And if
Dana chose to go this way, to go quietly in the night, she would not
deny her that choice.

She hadn't realized she had slipped to her knees by the bedside, her
forehead pressed against Dana's abdomen.  With one arm, she reached
around Dana's still form to hold her close.  She hadn't meant to
beg, she meant to say goodbye, but in the end, she was no hero. *I
love you with all my heart.  I cannot imagine spending one day
without you.  I need you more than I need breath in my body. 
Please, Dana please --if you can hear me, please stay.  I need you
so much*

It might have been minutes, it could have been hours.  Marsh felt a
soft hand brush her cheek.  She turned her face, her eyes bruised,
her skin salty with long ago tears.  Dana watched her with clear
blue eyes.

"Are you really here?"  Marsh whispered.

The faintest of smiles twitched at Scully's lips.  "Yes, darling. 
And I intend to stay."

"That would be good," Marsh managed as she struggled to contain
fresh tears.  "That would be so very good."

Scully squeezed her hand, then closed her eyes, and returned to the
battlefield yet again.

End Genesis: Do Not Go Gentle