After medical school and her time with the FBI, it was rare for Dana Scully to lose her composure even under the greatest pressure. The soft whistling sound coming from her partner's chest had her so rattled she could hardly keep her hands steady.
It had all happened so quickly. The man they had been chasing rounded like a cornered animal and attacked just as ferociously. Three shots were fired, and all three would have hit their marks if it were not for agent Mulder's quick actions. In the swift movement of pushing his partner to the floor, did not have time to dodge the final bullet that was now lodged in his chest. By the time Scully got to her feet, the assailant had vanished down the fire escape of the four story office building. She would be reprimanded for not pursuing the suspect, but that thought never crossed the agent's mind as she called for an ambulance on her cellular phone hoping that the cell phone towers were not affected by the city-wide blackout.
"Dammit Fox!"
"How many times do I have to tell you not to call me that?" Even with a bullet hole in his chest, he still had his sense of humor. Scully couldn't decide whether that was a good or bad sign. At least he could still talk, she thought to herself, even if his breathing was labored.
He had been injured before; they both had. It was an assumed risk of the job that an agent might be kidnapped, shot, stabbed, or worse. In the past however there were always resources; other agents to call for assistance, medical supplies readily available, or at least the option to call the paramedics to bring necessary supplies and deliver the injured to a hospital. This time, agents Mulder and Scully had been completely alone in chasing the suspect through a dark and emptied office building.
It would be at least five minutes before paramedics would arrive, and at least another two more for them to climb the stairs to the fourth floor of the office building. That was seven minutes Mulder did not have. If the sucking wound in his chest was not patched immediately, his lung would collapse and there was a good chance Scully would lose her partner either to infection, shock, or suffocation.
She tore off the blood stained shirt with surprising vigor for a woman of her size, and pressed the crumpled up fabric firmly against the wound.
"Keep pressure on this, and don't move."
"I'm not going anywhere, Doc."
Tearing herself from her partner's side, Scully rummaged through the nearest cubicle praying for even the smallest of first aid kits. When her prayers went unanswered, she reached for the next best thing.
Working quickly, Scully fashioned a patch for the wound to restore the negative pressure to the chest cavity, duct taping three of the four side of a sandwich bag over the hole. The whistling sound stopped, but Mulder was not out of the woods yet. He was still losing a considerable amount of blood by the minute, much of it now covering the sleeves of his impromptu physician.
When the paramedics arrived twenty minutes after the shooting, agent Scully had lost her composure. She was barely able to contain tears of frustration and panic as she pumped all her weight rhythmically onto the fallen agent's chest, stopping only to give him every breath of air she had in her lungs.
When Mulder woke up, he was blissfully unaware of how serious the past five hours had been. By the time the paramedics had fought their way through the clogged roadways Agent Mulder had been dead for nearly two minutes, his lung having collapsed under the weight of the blood that had filled his chest cavity, in spite of the make-shift occlusion patch his partner had applied.
No one in the hospital doubted that agent Scully's quick thinking and persistence in the office building had saved her partner's life. Fox Mulder should have been pronounced dead minutes after receiving such a severe injury. Fortunately the hospital's backup generator had not been affected by the blackout, and the surgery went about as smoothly as it could have gone considering the condition the patient was in by the time he had been admitted nearly forty minutes after being shot in the chest.
It took a few minutes for Mulder's eyes to adjust to the brightness of the recovery room as he looked around in a feeble attempt get his bearings. It was bland and sterile, a hospital no doubt. The most prominent feature of the room was the petite redheaded woman dressed in surgical scrubs, curled up in a chair staring at a case file more than reading it.
When she noticed movement from the hospital bed, Scully nearly threw the case file aside in her haste to be at Mulder's side. "Keep still, you'll tear your stitches. The anesthetics are wearing off, how do you feel?"
"Like I was hit by a truck," Well that explained the growing headache and chest pain. "What happened? The last thing I remember was running Jackson into a corner,"
"He had a gun. I was in front of you, but you pushed me to the ground and caught a bullet yourself. It took almost twenty minutes for the ambulance to get to you in the blackout, I had to use duct tape and a ziplock bag to cover the wound…" She ran a hand over her hair, clearly stressed just recalling the incident.
"Duct tape really does fix everything. Did you catch him? Do we know yet what caused the blackout?"
If he weren't lying in a hospital bed she would have hit him. "No, I was too busy trying to keep you alive. The power is returning to a few blocks at a time, but the power companies still have no explanation as to why they went down in the first place."
"What side of the city is the power up in?"
Scully consulted her charts. "The northern portions, more so in the north west. Why?"
"Our guy is moving south east. The further away he gets the less effect he can have on the power grids," He coughed heavily, and flecks of blood appeared on the bandages on his chest.
"Mulder, stop this. You've still got a ways to go before we can start chasing after anyone. I'm passing the case on to local officials until you recover. Sit still," Slipping on a pair of gloves, Scully moved to check the stitches and stop the minor bleeding her partner had induced in his enthusiasm.
"We're the only ones who have Jackson listed as a suspect, locals officials think it's just a random power - ow! Hey, would you at least numb me up first?"
Scully tied off the extra suture she had added to prevent further bleeding and sighed, ignoring his protest. "What if it was just a random power outage? We can't prove Jackson's responsible for anything except evading and shooting a federal agent. There's no trace evidence indicating he's responsible for the robberies during the blackout, and there's even less evidence that he caused the power outage,"
"He'll move, change his name, pick up another job at another power company and do the same thing all over again. There are hundreds of reported Sliders in the files, causing everything from street lamp interference, to broken credit card machines, to power outages. Most of them don't even realize they're capable of it, this guy does. This is the biggest Slider anomaly I've ever seen - Forget robbery, he could be extremely dangerous if he moves near a major airport or nuclear power plant,"
"Oliver Jackson is the least of your worries if you don't stop talking and get some rest," Scully glared at him hard, and Mulder sighed in defeat. She immediately regretted taking such a harsh tone with him, and pulled up her chair by his bedside.
There was quiet for a few minutes before Mulder spoke again. "You know, Scrubs are a good look for you, Scully."
"Hospital gowns are a good look for you, Mulder."
"I always knew you liked me for my ass," he chuckled when she rolled her eyes. "Where are your clothes?"
"They're ruined; I haven't had time to make it back to the motel and change. Which reminds me, you owe me a new outfit."
Mulder inspected the expertly bandaged wound, "By the look of things I owe you more than that."
"Don't start, I stopped keeping score a long time ago," she promised, angling the chair adjacent to the bed, she propped up her feet on the bedside and leaned back, closing her eyes. "Hey Mulder?"
"Yeah?"
She hesitated briefly, wondering if she should say what was really on her mind or to make it brief. "I'm glad you're okay."
"Me too."