tampered | Log; ongoing

Log; ongoing

When; Thursday, April 16th, afternoon
Rating; PG/PG-13? Nothing sexual. Possibly cursing. IDK.
Characters; Dana Scully (

specialagentgf), Fox Mulder (

call_me_spooky), and Dr. Wilson (

dr_conscience)
Summary; Scully's cancer takes a turn for the worse.
Log; Scully had never really liked hospitals. It would be a gross simplification to say that was the reason she gave up a career in medicine to become a forensic pathologist for the FBI, but it had been an important factor. There was certainty in death, a finality that was as comforting as it was bleak. Hospitals were a question, an uncomfortable mixture of hope and despair. Will you live or die? When will this be over? Will life ever been the same again?

Since joining the X-Files, she has been in the hospital too many times -- as a patient, as a doctor, and as a visitor. Always with those questions spinning around in her mind. There was no comfort in familiarity, only a stark, constant reminder that her life wasn't normal, that pain and uncertainty were now an inexorable part of her existence. Since developing cancer, they had also become a constant reminder of her eventual death.

These thoughts drifted in her head, although she was barely conscious of them. Her cancer had taken a turn for the worse that morning, and she had barely been able to get herself to the hospital through the pain. She had been kept pretty well drugged ever since.

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He hadn't worked out all the implications of this situation. He'd told Scully that things would turn out all right, that she wouldn't die; and he'd meant it, because it was true.

So far as he knew.

But his knowledge, his determination, did nothing; and in the time she'd spent here he'd watched her condition deteriorate unabated, in spite of the best efforts of the doctors she'd seen. It wasn't exactly a surprise; things hadn't been that different the first time. The location, the type, made it impossible to operate and difficult to treat at all. Here, in the City... there was nothing he could do to help, no one he could rail at or threaten for information (which he had, for all the good it did him;) no last-minute cures or deals with the devil.

He'd wanted to believe that she couldn't die, here; that she'd somehow be frozen in decline as she was frozen in time, in reality. And yet, she was slipping away; and Mulder was powerless to stop it. He waited by her bedside now, chin resting on folded hands, expression characteristically blank.

Wilson hadn't been this distraught over a patient in quite a long time. In oncology, one had to deal with death on far too regular of a basis to get upset over each and every one that was lost. It wasn't that he didn't feel anything for the lives that he watched slip away; quite the opposite, actually. But he knew that, sometimes - far too often, no matter what you did, it wouldn't make a difference in the end.

Death came for everyone, and he had seen it come to too many people to count. He had helped them all, worked diligently to give them as much time as was possible, and been there to comfort them as they made their final decline. Though it was never easy to lose a patient, he took comfort in providing comfort, in knowing that he had been there for them before they succumbed, and in being there for their loved ones after they passed.

But Scully-- maybe it was the peculiarity of treating someone who was a fictional character in his universe, someone he knew was supposed to live. He'd watched her decline despite all his efforts over these past couple of months, and done everything he could think of, pursued every opportunity that the City presented. They'd gone through every treatment, every drug, every trial, and each one had failed.

He took a deep breath and made sure he seemed as collected as possible before entering the room. As he stepped over to the bed and picked up her chart, he offered Mulder one of his most comforting looks.

For the moment, he didn't speak; not yet. At this point, he should be unobtrusive; he should let Mulder have his thoughts and keep them to himself if he wanted to. Of course, he should also be present, and available if Mulder had anything to say, to ask him, to scream at him about, and he'd listen and respond, and take any abuse in stride, knowing that it had to be taken out on someone.

Scully stirred, drifting into consciousness and a dull, throbbing pain as the drugs began wearing off. She opened her eyes and stared at Mulder for a long moment with complete incomprehension. She didn't remember calling him; how did he know she was here? Was he just a wishful figment of her imagination? Or had he somehow sensed that she was in trouble?

Her mind processed everything painfully slowly, but it did finally occur to her that Dr. Wilson probably called Mulder to tell him what was going on. That was standard procedure.

She smiled weakly -- and still a little hazily -- at him and moved her hand, trying to reach for his without really being able to. "Hi."

"Hey," he said softly, mustering a smile for her sake. Catching the movement he reached out to take her hand, trying not to think about what it meant that she was so weak. She looked-- tiny, in the hospital bed. Fragile. This wasn't how the story was supposed to go.

"Feeling any better?" It was a vain hope, but it was all he could think to ask... maintaining the illusion that there might be some chance, yet, that she might rally, though he doubted it.

Well, now was definitely unobtrusive time. Wilson silently went about marking down what he had to on the chart.

He moved over to the side of the bed and changed the bag on the IV drip, going about his tasks as quickly and discreetly as he could. He took a few readings off the machinery and made a few more notes on the chart as he did so.

She chuckled hoarsely. "If by better you mean pumped full of drugs, then yeah, I'm feel a lot better," she said.

She clung to his hand as hard as she could, and felt a thrill of fear because it wasn't hard at all. She was slipping away and they both knew it. Despite his promise, his reassurances, despite every effort they had made, she was going to die. If the guide was right, she'd simply be trapped here forever. Never able to go home, never able to see her mother or her brother or her few remaining friends ever again. If the guide was wrong...

A part of her wanted to scream at him for lying to her, for making her believe it would all be okay. That somehow, she'd get better. But mostly she just wanted to hold onto him, as if his hand could also hold her spirit.

He folded his fingers more tightly around hers, completely oblivious to the oncologist's presence.

"I guess that counts," he murmured, not quite able to keep up the false cheer. He wasn't sure what he was supposed to say. And there was nothing to do. For now he sat, not quite able to meet her eyes, jaw set firmly.

At length he let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. "I know this isn't how it ends," he muttered, stubborn to the last. Not that it helped.

This was how he should be, right now; silent, just in the background doing what was necessary for the moment. He put the chart back on the end of the bed and stepped out of the room.

He didn't go far, though; he was just outside in the hallway, standing at the nurse's station and filling out a few records. It was important that he be available, but they clearly needed some time to themselves at the moment.

"Mulder." She didn't want to say the words, almost couldn't bear to say them, but she knew she had to. She took a shuddering breath. "Mulder, I think we have to accept that this is how it's going to end."

She was going to cry. She couldn't cry, not now, not in front of Mulder. She needed to be strong for him. He was so fragile at heart, in many ways still a lost, lonely child. But tears still glistened in her eyes despite her best intentions. When she spoke, her voice shook.

"No matter how much we might wish otherwise."

"No." As painful as this was to watch-- as hard as it had been, since he'd first realized she wasn't from the same point in time as he was-- he was more angry than upset. He knew what was supposed to happen; hell, half the City did, it seemed-- and it made no difference at all.

"I can't accept that. You can't accept that-- it doesn't make any sense! You can't be stuck here... You don't disappear. You don't die."

He let go, just for a moment; put his face in his hands, trying to keep calm. She didn't need this, now; she needed to fight, needed to keep going, but yelling wasn't going to help her.

"I wish there were some way to just get rid of it. Just... fix it," he muttered, scowling into his palms. "But--"

The thought was cut off by the shrill alarm of every monitor in the room. He leaped to his feet.

Well that was sudden, far too early. Wilson dropped was he was doing, and was back inside the room in a matter of moments.

"Code in room--"

He stopped in his tracks, his shouted request cut off before it was completed. There was not much use in calling a crash cart in for an empty bed, was there? A few nurses arrived behind him to investigate his shouting and the monitors' warnings, only to be dismissed as soon as they had assembled.

Wilson stared at the bed for a few moments, then up at Mulder.

"What... what happened?"

"I'm not sure."

There was no trace of the woman who'd been in the bed; all the tubes and wires hung limp and useless on rumpled sheets. He was taken wholly by surprise.

"She... I think she left. She must have gone home."

"I--"

His brow furrowed in confusion as he shook his head.

"I'm sorry..."

Wilson really wasn't the kind to overtly point out his knowledge of other people's lives based on the fact that they were fictional in his reality, but... this seemed like the sort of situation where it wasn't really a problem to.

"But... if she's home, and her condition reverts to the stage it was in when she left, things could still pan out like they're supposed to..."

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Log; ongoing

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gah sorry i suck at being punctual

haaaaaaaah poor wilson... he's going out of the awkward for a bit.

call Morgana call Morgana /is a brat

Re: call Morgana call Morgana /is a brat

well he MIGHT have but--

drama drama drama

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