Guardian Angel
By Shoshana

I wake up in a private room, wrist and leg restraints constricting
me. I have a headache worse than the worse hangover I ever had at
Oxford, which is saying a lot. The din of noise seems to have abated
some, maybe because there's only one other person in the room with me
now, and that person is Maggie Scully.

She reads a magazine, unaware that I am fully conscious, attempting
to blink the gunk out of my eyes, unable to reach up with my captured
hands and wipe them. I finally scratch out a pathetic attempt at her
name, my vocal cords shot to hell by all that screaming I vaguely
remember. Her head snaps up and she smiles at me beatifically, an
oasis in this nightmare of white walls and fluorescent lighting.

Scully went to the Ivory Coast, she'll be back tonight she tells me.
She used her power as my next of kin to supervise my medical
treatment before she left. And she left her 'real' next of kin as
the person responsible for all decisions in her absence. She's been
calling twice a day to check in with the doctor, her mom, and the
Lone Gunmen. They divide the day up into six hour shifts, guarding
me from unauthorized treatment, medication, or visitors.

My ranting and raving apparently diminished after Scully saw me in
the padded cell. They moved me to a private room at her request and
prohibited Diana from the premises. She couldn't keep Skinner away,
but he was only there briefly, to assess my condition and leave his
cell phone number with Maggie. I had been asleep most of the last
forty-eight hours, finally knocked out by the barbiturates in my
system.

They had found no signs of a tumor, just signs of extremely abnormal
brain function, as yet unexplained. I am blown away by the grasp
Mrs. Scully has of the situation; she is rattling off every detail
with an authoritative poise that I have only seen in her daughter's
demeanor. I make no attempt to speak, just nodding my head
occasionally to show that I am indeed listening and comprehending
every word of her monologue.

I want her to keep talking, keep talking so that I will not be privy
to any of her private thoughts. I probably could hack listening to
the Gunmen's mental ramblings, but I don't want to invade the mind of
Maggie Scully. God knows what she is thinking about Fox Mulder,
locked up in the nuthouse because of some damn African artifact. I'm
not even sure how much she knows about that. She just knows that her
daughter desperately needs her to do watchdog duty, to keep the
vultures from picking at my brain.

She is running out of steam, apparently out of information to convey
or the energy to express it. She says, "Fox, we just all want to see
you get better," grasping my hand in a motherly way for a few
seconds. She smiles and settles back in her chair as I sigh and try
to doze back to sleep. Except now I can hear her thoughts, and I
unwillingly and guiltily eavesdrop, unable to prevent the intrusion,
unable to tell her why she should leave the room NOW.

I can hear her clearly, it's nothing like the cacophony at the
university, it's as clear as a bell. She's musing that Dana must
love me so much to be finagling all these arrangements, from the
private room, to the treatment, to the flight to Africa in search of
God knows what. She wishes that everything could be easy for us,
that we could just be normal people with normal occupations and a
normal life. I lie still as a corpse, feigning sleep, praying that
she won't observe tears that exit my eyes and roll down my cheeks. I
feel so powerless. I can barely utter two words in a row. I can't
disguise my grief after hearing her poignant thoughts. Thoughts I
shouldn't be at liberty to know.

Her mind is quieter now, I can hear her reading a short story from
the back pages of a woman's magazine. As I drift off to sleep, I
hear just a few more of her reflections: 'Get some sleep Fox, Dana
will be back for you soon. Very soon. And then she'll take you home,
home where you belong. God bless Dana for her kind and loving heart.
I wish her Dad could see her now.' I finally fall asleep, my
surrogate angel at my side.

fin

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