Tumor
When she says she's at the hospital, he's not overly concerned. After all, she just survived an attack from a disturbed man who'd slept with her, then suffered a psychotic episode and tried to throw her in a furnace. Mulder brings her flowers to cheer her up.
When he finds her, she's looking at the board with a face he's come to recognize well. Controlled, and fearless. She's examining the x-rays pinned to a light board. He can't understand them, but knows she can. Her eyes light up, just for a second when she sees the flowers. But right afterwards he sees the light die in her eyes and he gains a gruesome sense of foreboding. Something's wrong.
"What exactly am I looking at?"
When she describes the small blob near her "cerebrum" he starts to connect the dots. She's saying there's a growth, a lump inside her head. And all of a sudden, he feels as if he was hit in the stomach.
"When you say growth-"
"Tumor. I have cancer."
Those words bash into him with the force of a speeding race car. But he forces the next words out of his mouth, even though he knows what her reply will be. Her face is too grim, her eyes too resigned to give him an answer in the positive.
"Is it operable?" He knows the answer even before he responds, and he desperately wants to take the words and shove them back down his throat, because he doesn't want to hear her reply.
She says it's inoperable. It's not even treatable. "If it seeps into my brain, statistically there is about zero chance of survival."
And with those words his world stops. Denial slams into him and he refuses to accept it. She can't be dying. She can't be. He can't be losing his partner, and one of his best friends to a tumor. After everything they've been through, she can't be dying. He feels like someone is crushing his heart. The air is too thick, he can't breathe, and everything is blurry. He doesn't realize now, but tears are filling his eyes. Forcing himself to inhale, he tries to drag himself out of the dark place his mind is trying to retreat to.
"I don't accept that. There must be some people who have received treatment for this who we can-"He stops mid sentence because her little sigh is slowly breaking his heart. The look of defeat in her eyes makes him want to crawl under a rock and scream. He wants to hold her tight and pretend this is all a nightmare. Because it has to be.
This has to be a nightmare, he can and will wake up from. And when he does, he'll tell Scully and she'll laugh at him over coffee just like every morning. This can't be real. It's a dream. It's all a dream. He's just spent too much time looking over case files; his brain can't give him a happy dream so he suffers this instead.
Somewhere, in a dark corner of his mind, he knows that this isn't a dream. Dana Scully, his partner, best friend, and confidant is dying. And there is absolutely nothing he can do.
