Thanks to Michelle for another great beta. Author's notes at end of story. Feedback to [email protected].
 

SUBARACHNOID
By: Jennifer Maurer
 

Even before Mulder opens his eyes, he knows he's in a hospital; he recognizes the smells and sounds. He thinks back and tries to remember how he got here. The memories come slowly, and they are hazy at best. This, he thinks, is probably part of the reason in itself.

His attention is caught by voices to his left. One of the voices is Scully's; he doesn't recognize the other one, a deep male voice. They are obviously speaking quietly so as not to disturb him, but he catches a few words here and there: CAT scan, seizures, possible brain damage.

Brain damage? What exactly has happened to him?

Mulder lifts a heavy hand to rub his eyes. The gesture apparently catches the attention of his visitors, because the voices stop and Scully's heels come tapping over to him.

"Mulder?" she asks, "Can you hear me?"

"Mmm. Yeah," he slurs. "Scully?"

"Yes, it's me. How are you feeling?"

"Head hurts."

"I'm not surprised. Do you remember what happened?"

"Not really."

Scully confers quietly for a moment with the male voice, whom Mulder assumes is his doctor. He takes this opportunity to slowly open his eyes.

He doesn't recognize the hospital room, but then again, one looks more or less like another. Scully is standing next to his bed in rumpled clothes with deep shadows under her eyes, and Mulder realizes she's been here with him the whole time, however long that has been. He tries to pick up the thread of her conversation with the doctor, but they're speaking too softly for him to hear over the pounding in his ears.

"Scully?"

She wraps up her conversation with the doctor, who nods and leaves before Mulder can ask him anything. He shifts in the bed and winces at the ache in his muscles.

"What happened to me?"

She looks at him carefully; it makes him nervous. She's trying to figure out what to tell him, he thinks.

"What's the last thing you remember?" she asks.

"I don't know...it's like a lot of little flashes of memory. We're in...Rhode Island?" She nods, and he continues, "Something about Samantha. A woman was shot. And a doctor, not the one you were just talking to. We went to see my mother, and then..."

His eyes widen and the blood drains from his face. He looks at Scully with growing horror.

"You followed me to the house in Quonochontaug. I was trying to remember what happened to Samantha, and then I...I shot at you?"

His voice breaks on the last words. He reaches for Scully's hand, and she lets him take it.

"You went to that other doctor, Dr. Goldstein, for treatments that you hoped would help you recover your memories of what happened to your sister," she says, "You called me for help yesterday morning, so I came up to join you. We've determined the woman, Amy Cassandra, killed her husband, then herself."

"Scully, what did I do? Did I hurt you?" he asks, squeezing her hand so tightly that she has to pry his fingers loose with her other hand.

"No, you didn't hurt me, Mulder," she says, but the way she evades his eyes makes him think otherwise. She dips her chin, making her hair fall like a curtain across her face.

"Something else happened," he insists.

"We don't have to talk about this now," she says gently, starting to turn away, "You need your rest."

"No, tell me," he says, tugging on her arm. Slowly, she turns back to face him, but she still won't meet his eyes.

"You were having flashbacks, accompanied by sudden onset headaches and mild seizures."

"I heard you say something about brain damage."

"There was some cause for concern, but your test results look good so far. We're going to continue to monitor you."

"I know there's more you're not telling me," he says, "When you won't look at me, that's always a bad sign."

Finally, she does raise her eyes to his, and he is astonished to see she is crying.

"Scully," he breathes, overcome at the sight. He can't recall the last time he saw her cry openly.

"Mulder, I'm sorry, but I can't talk about this with you right now," she says, gently disengaging her hand from his grasp. "Please try to get some rest. I'll be back to check on you soon."

Before he can say anything or even catch his breath, she's walking out of the room, wiping away her tears as she goes.

*~*

To his surprise, Mulder falls asleep while waiting for Scully to return. His mind is worn out from going in circles, and his body is incalculably weary from the abuse it has taken this past weekend. He dozes fitfully, coming half-awake at every noise that might be Scully coming back. Fragmented scraps of dreams float through his mind.

Finally, one of the times he opens his eyes, she is there.

She has gone home or back to a hotel at some point, he can tell from her change of clothes, but she still looks exhausted. She's sick, she should be taking care of herself; she's taking care of him instead. His guilt increases tenfold at the thought.

Scully is holding what looks like a medical journal is her lap, but from her unfocused gaze he can tell she's not really reading it.

"Scully?"

She gives a little start and looks up at him with a wan smile.

"Hi," she replies, "How are you feeling?"

"Better. How are *you* feeling?"

"I'm fine."

He frowns at her.

"You look terrible."

"Thank you," she says tartly, "It's been a long weekend."

"What day is it?"

"Tuesday."

Mulder is silent for a moment, trying to work up his nerve to ask her what he really wants to know. As if she can sense this, Scully rises from her chair and stretches her back.

"I'm going to take a little walk, get some coffee," she says, "I talked to your doctor this morning, and he thinks you'll be able to go home in another day or so."

"Scully," he says, catching her sleeve before she can get away, "Tell me what's really going on."

"Mulder," she protests, "Like I said, it's been a long weekend."

She gives him a little look that silently adds "because of you," and while normally that would be enough to make him back off, this time he just tightens his grip on her sleeve and tugs her a step closer to his bed.

"It's more than that," he insists, "It's something else." He knows he's right when her eyes start flicking around the room, looking at anything but him.

"Mulder..."

"My being in the hospital has never made you cry before."

Scully looks at him then, her expression hardening slightly.

"It's always upsetting to see you ill," she says stiffly.

He says nothing, just holds onto her sleeve and looks at her. With a sigh, she sinks back down in the seat next to his bed.

"I was seven years old when my grandfather died," she begins. Her words are so unexpected that he just blinks at her.

"He'd been having headaches for about a year or so," she continues, "Sometimes they were so severe, he said it hurt to comb his hair. He went to the doctor several times. His head x-rays were always clear. They performed an adenoidectomy, thinking his sinuses were the problem, but that didn't help."

Mulder reaches through the bedrails and takes Scully's hand, rubbing his thumb over her knuckles. He keeps very still, afraid the slightest thing will stop her from continuing her story. For once, he realizes, she is being completely open with him.

"One day, he dropped dead," Scully says softly, and Mulder sucks in a breath, stunned.

"We were sitting around the breakfast table, talking -- my grandparents would come to visit us every summer -- and he collapsed. I tried to catch him, but we both ended up on the floor. Everyone started screaming and someone, I think it was my mother, called an ambulance."

The tears have been gathering in her eyes as she speaks, and now they overflow to streak down her cheeks. Mulder swallows a few of his own as he waits for her to continue.

"He was dead before the ambulance left the driveway," she says, "But we didn't know that until later."

She pauses again to let go of his hand and wipe her eyes with her fingertips. The tip of her nose is red from crying.

"The doctors assumed it was a heart attack. My grandmother, who had been a nurse, knew it wasn't, and she was the one who insisted on an autopsy."

"What happened to him?" Mulder whispers.

"The cause of death was a subarachnoid hemorrhage. His headaches were caused by a brain aneurysm, and when it finally burst, it killed him."

A memory suddenly surfaces in Mulder's mind.

Scully had urged him several times to go to the hospital. Cerebral event, viral infection, encephalitis; he hadn't listened very carefully to all the things she thought might be wrong with him.

One thing she said, however, does come back to him now.

<You cannot take something like this lightly. If this is an aneurysm, it could drop you in a second.>

With that, Mulder finally understands the full toll this has taken on Scully. She spent the day chasing him around while he tried to solve a mystery, which was wasn't all that unusual for either of them. The headaches were an inconvenience to him; the flashbacks he actually welcomed in a way.

Scully, however, knew all along that at any moment, something inside his brain might burst, and he would die, right in front of her. He could have actually died; somehow that hadn't really sunk in until now.

Nothing in life is certain, especially not in their line of work, Mulder knows. Anyone can die at any time, but you don't have that thought on your mind constantly.

He knows now that Scully must have been thinking exactly that, the entire day.

Mulder turns his head to look at her.

"'It could drop you in a second,'" he whispers, the only thing he can think of to say, to try and tell her that he understands.

"That's what I told you," she says sadly, "You said it was your risk to take."

He closes his eyes and winces. That was a fine thing for him to say, but of course it wasn't only his risk, was it? He would have just winked out like a candle; it would have been Scully who was left to accept the consequences of that risk.

"Scully, I don't know what to say, except that I am so sorry I put you through this," he says. He reaches for her again, and is reassured when she clasps his hand in both of her own.

"Mulder, I understand that you need answers," she says, "And you know I want you to have them. But I am asking you, no, I'm begging you: please stop trying to find them like this. My fear is that you won't be so lucky next time, and I don't know how much longer I will be able to help you."

She makes the smallest gesture towards her face as she says this; he understands she is talking about her cancer, not leaving him of her own volition. The fact that she is admitting her vulnerability to him, in however subtle a manner, shows him more than anything just how frightened she must have been.

He looks at her carefully; she is on the verge of tears again as she waits for him to respond. Of course there is only one answer he can give her, under the circumstances.

"Okay, Scully," he says, "I won't do anything like this again."

As she smiles at him in relief, he hopes this is a promise he can keep.
 

~*End*~

NOTES: I watched "Demons" again recently, and Mulder still pisses me off just as much as he did the first time I saw the episode. I understand he needed to know what happened, but he should have listened to Scully, damn it. And frankly, I wish Scully had dragged him out of the shower and right to the hospital, whether he wanted to go or not. What happened to Scully's grandfather is exactly what happened to my own grandfather in 1963. Because there were no CAT scans back then (the first one wasn't performed on a patient until 1972), there was no way to know what was wrong with him until he died of it.