Being on the Chief of Surgery's good side had its perks. Bailey had asked Chief Webber to make an announcement over the intercom for all available doctors and nurses to gather in front of the nurses' station at 11:30. That had been a wise decision; at 11:25, the crowd had already formed. Bailey could pick her own interns out of the crowd, as well as Callie, Derek, a bored-looking Mark Sloan, and the Chief himself. The resident climbed up onto the counter so that she was visible to everyone. "Attention!" she called out. "This is an announcement that is crucial for the wellbeing of two of our patients, two FBI agents who were admitted earlier today."
Immediately, whispers began to circulate throughout the crowd. Bailey crossed her arms, waiting for the chatter to die down. "Yes, yes, I know that it's not every day we get FBI agents in our hospital," she said. "But two are here, and this man poses a real threat to them." Bailey waved the photograph at them. "I've photocopied the picture that the agent gave me, and each of you will be taking one with you when I'm finished talking so that you will recognize his face should he decide to show up here." She placed the pile of photocopies on the counter beside her. The crowd of doctors and nurses swarmed it. Just then, Bailey remembered something. "Oh, and one last thing," she added. "If you see this man, do not look him in the eye. This is important, people! Do not make eye contact!"
Alex, who had been standing near Izzie and Cristina, snickered. "Why not?" he asked mockingly. "Something scary will happen?"
Bailey shot him an icy glare. "Why not?" she repeated. "Because I said so, Dr. Karev. And because a member of the Federal Bureau of Investigation said so. According to one of our agents, he caused the deaths of four teenagers. So unless you want to add yourself to that list, I'd suggest listening to what I say."
This shut Alex up, and he shoved one of the photocopies into his pocket before storming away. As he did so, Derek emerged from the throng of people and offered Bailey a hand. "So who exactly is this man?" he inquired.
Bailey took his hand and climbed back down from the countertop. "Someone to avoid," she told him simply, and headed off toward her patients' rooms. Both agents were asleep. Bailey leaned up against the doorframe of room 1402 and pulled the photograph Scully had given her out of her pocket. The man's sinister face looked back at her.
"Don't you dare show your face here," she hissed.
"Can I help you?"
"Yes. I'm looking for two patients that were admitted here earlier today."
Bailey looked up from the files she was leafing through. Across the lobby, she could see Derek having a conversation with another man. The other man was facing away from Bailey, but he turned slightly to look around the lobby, and Bailey caught a quick glimpse of his face. Fear tore through her, cold and harrowing. It was the man from Scully's photograph, and Derek was smiling vapidly at him. Even from far away, she could tell that something was very wrong. Heart pounding in her chest, Bailey put down the files and began to move carefully toward the two men.
"What are their names?" Derek asked the man.
"Fox Mulder and Dana Scully."
"Ah, the FBI agents. They are in rooms 1402 and 1403," Derek told him.
A chilling smile spread across the man's face. "Thank you," he said, and headed off toward the elevator. As soon as he was gone, Bailey raced over and grabbed Derek by the front of his scrubs.
"Shepherd!" she snapped, shaking her colleague. "What were you thinking? That was the man that the FBI agent told us not to let in!"
Derek was still smiling vapidly, but his vision began to focus in on Bailey. "Dr. Bailey," he said finally. "Where did you come from?"
Bailey let go of Derek's scrubs. "What?"
A crease appeared between the neurosurgeon's eyebrows. "What just happened?" he asked. "You look upset."
Bailey's mind was racing. In that moment, Scully's words came back to her, "We did not consciously do this to ourselves. We were coerced, in a way. By this man." Could he have just 'coerced' Derek to tell him where the agents were?
"You looked him in the eye, didn't you?" she said.
Derek went pale. "I didn't mean to."
"Too late for that now. Come with me," Bailey hissed, and broke into a run toward the elevator. Derek ran after her. The man from the photograph smiled sinisterly at them as the elevator doors closed. Derek put out his foot to try and keep them open, but it was too late.
"Damn it," he hissed, and kicked the closed doors. "Damn it!"
"The stairs," Bailey said, and they both turned around. They ran up the stairs together, Bailey taking them two at a time to keep up with Derek's longer legs. Just as they were about to reach Mulder and Scully's rooms, a gunshot rang out. Several people in nearby rooms screamed; one of the screams sounded like Scully. As Bailey and Derek stood in stunned silence, a man in a wheelchair careened out of room 1403. It was Mulder, the male FBI agent with dark hair. "Scully!" he called out, wheeling himself desperately toward his partner's hospital room.
"Come on," hissed Derek, following Mulder. Bailey rushed after him. When they entered room 1402, they were immediately greeted with a horrifying sight; the security guard who had been stationed outside was lying on the floor, copious amounts of blood pooling around his head. His holster was undone, and his gun was on the floor next to his hand. Scully was out of bed, standing beside Mulder in his wheelchair. The man from the photograph was standing over the security guard's body, a smug look on his face.
"My God!" Bailey cried out, dropping to the floor next to the security guard. She took his blood-soaked head in her hands and turned it over. The source of the blood gushing out was from a hole on one temple, on the opposite side as the hand with the gun. Bailey's heart jumped into her throat. It was a self-inflicted gunshot wound, just like the ones Mulder and Scully had. She let go of the security guard's head and looked up at the man from the photograph. What are you capable of? she thought.
"Get that gun out of here before anyone else gets hurt!" Mulder yelled, pointing at the gun beside the security guard's hand. "And don't make eye contact!"
Bailey reached over and picked up the gun. However, the man from the photograph crouched down beside her and put one cold hand under her chin. "Up here," he whispered. Bailey shut her eyes. Immediately, she felt the same cold hand slap her hard across the face. Her cheek stung.
"Hey!" exclaimed Derek, and the man's hand disappeared from under Bailey's chin. Tentatively, she opened her eyes to see that Derek had pushed the man away from her. Taking advantage of the fact that Derek had his eyes shut, the man from the photograph shoved him into the bedside table. As Bailey looked on, he turned toward her, and she immediately began to feel… empty.
Things were hazy. She blinked. Once, twice, three times. Her hands were slippery; she felt them moving, felt her finger toying with something. A hard loop. She could hear voices. A woman's, maybe? And a man's… a familiar sounding man's voice. He said her name, but she couldn't focus on it enough to keep listening. That didn't matter. Things were comfortable. Soft. She raised her arm, finger tugging again at the hard loop.
Just then, something slammed into her, throwing her to the floor. Another gunshot rang out. Bailey's head was spinning; she felt as if she had just woken up from a long sleep. She blinked to focus her vision, and found that she was on the floor with Derek on top of her. The ground was wet under Bailey's back; she looked down to see that they were in the rapidly growing pool of blood around the security guard's body. The gun was lying a few feet away from them, a thin wisp of smoke trailing up from its end. There was a bullet embedded in the ceiling.
"What happened?" Bailey asked breathlessly.
"You tried to shoot one of the FBI agents. I had to take you down," Derek told her. "You were… it was like you were in a trance or something. Is that what happened to me?"
Bailey nodded. Just then, there was a loud thud from behind them. Bailey pushed Derek off of her to see Scully standing up on her bed, eyes shut tightly, holding an empty vase in her hands. The man from the photograph was lying on the floor, beads of blood welling up at his hairline where Scully had hit him over the head. "He's out," she panted. "Cover his eyes with something, just in case."
Derek stood up, and Bailey winced at the security guard's blood that was splattered over the front of his scrubs. He pulled a roll of bandages off of a nearby shelf and wound it around the man's eyes. It was then that Bailey noticed red spots on the front of Scully's hospital gown. "Turn around," she ordered Derek and Mulder as she went over to the redheaded agent. Once they were both looking away, Bailey pulled the gown up to find blood seeping through the bandages covering Scully's scars. "You've torn your stitches," she told her.
"Sorry," said Scully. "But someone had to knock him out."
Bailey nodded. "You're right. Somebody did." She took Scully by the arm and helped her off of the bed. "Now… can you explain to me exactly how that happened? How that man controlled me like that?"
"Through eye contact," Mulder answered, standing up out of his wheelchair and offering it to Scully. "Somehow, he is able to take advantage of the human body's psychological reaction to eye contact, and uses it to control people."
Derek sighed, shaking his head. "I'm a neurosurgeon. I work with the human brain on a daily basis. And I've never heard of anything like this."
"I'm not surprised to hear that," replied Scully, sitting down in the wheelchair. "Before I entered this line of work, I had never heard of anything like this either."
Just then, there was a clatter of footsteps from outside. She turned around to see Chief Webber at the door, with all five of Bailey's interns at his heels. "What in the world happened here?!" shouted the Chief, looking down at the security guard's body surrounded by blood, and the blindfolded man lying beside him.
"Whoa," said George.
"Derek!" cried Meredith.
"Damn it! Why couldn't I have been on this case?" Cristina whined.
"Shut up," snapped Webber, and turned back to Derek and Bailey. "Are you two alright?"
"We're fine, Chief. The blood's not ours," Derek told him, looking down at his scrubs.
Webber breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank God," he whispered. "What happened to this security guard? And… is this the man you warned us about, Dr. Bailey?"
"I think you just answered your own question, sir," Bailey said.
The Chief was silent for a moment.
"Shepherd, Bailey, go get yourselves cleaned up. And you five," he added, looking at Bailey's interns, "I need you to get this security guard down to the O.R. as quickly as you can."
"Sir, if you don't mind, I need one of my interns to redo Ms. Scully's stitches," Bailey said.
Webber nodded. "All right. Stevens, go with Ms. Scully. The rest of you, go. Now."
Scully stood up, offering the interns the wheelchair. Alex and George propped the security guard in it, and the four of them pushed it down the hallway at breakneck speed. Their shoes and the wheels of the wheelchair left bloody tracks behind them.
Izzie offered her arm to Scully for support, but Mulder was already half-carrying her. "I've got this," he told the blonde intern, who smiled and led them out of the room. More bloody footprints.
"What should we do with this man, sir?" Derek asked, pointing at the unconscious, blindfolded man on the ground. "Making eye contact with him is extremely dangerous. He needs to be properly restrained."
"I'll deal with him," Webber told him. "You two go and get out of those bloody scrubs."
Bailey nodded. "Will do, sir." With Derek at her side, she walked out of room 1402, stepping over the puddle of blood as she did so. There were enough bloody footprints in the hallway already.
The two surgeons walked in silence for a minute before Derek cleared his throat and said, "Listen, Miranda, I'm sorry." His shoes squelched as he walked. "I tackled you to the ground. Are you hurt?"
"No," Bailey responded. "But those FBI agents would have been if you hadn't done that. So don't apologize."
All of a sudden, Derek stopped, shaking his head. "I just don't understand how he was able to control us like that," he sighed. "I wouldn't have believed it if it hadn't happened to me… and if I hadn't seen it happen to you."
Bailey nodded slowly. "It was damn crazy, wasn't it," she said. "But then again, crazy things happen in medicine all the time. Sometimes patients live when every sign points to them dying. Sometimes tumours appear or disappear on a whim. And, I suppose, sometimes the brain can mutate to the point of being capable of mind control." She paused for a moment, as Derek blinked back at her, and then they both laughed.
"You're going to have quite the story to tell your son tonight," remarked Derek.
"Oh, no, not until he's at least fourteen," Bailey replied, eyes wide. "He's far too young to be scared every time he looks into someone's eyes."
"Fair enough."
"All right, then. That's all we need from you," Bailey told the FBI agents, taking the discharge papers that they offered her. "Good luck, you two."
"Thank you," responded Scully.
"I feel like I owe you an apology," said Derek, who was standing next to Bailey. "For letting that man in."
"No, no," Mulder responded. "You had no control over that. If anything, we should be sorry. You got involved in all this when you really didn't deserve that."
"I'm just glad you two are safe," said Bailey. She paused for a moment as an image flashed through her head of the two agents when they were first admitted. Lying on stretchers, terrified, and covered in blood. "That man…" she continued tentatively.
"Yes?"
"Will the police really be able to detain him?" Bailey asked. "I mean, with that… ability of his?"
"They'll find a way," Scully told her. "They're aware of the extent of his power, and they will be doing whatever is necessary to keep him locked up. Don't worry, Dr. Bailey. Seattle Grace will be safe, and so will Mulder and I."
Bailey smiled. "Thank you, Ms. Scully."
"Good luck on all of your future cases," Derek said.
"You too," Mulder replied. He looked down at his partner. "Scully, are you ready to go?"
Scully nodded. "All right. Goodbye, doctors." With that, she and Mulder turned around and walked toward the front doors of Seattle Grace. Once they were gone, Derek looked down at Bailey. "I don't think I'd be able to handle that job," he remarked.
"You handle this one just fine," Bailey told him.
"Well, Dr. Bailey, people don't usually use mind control in this job."
Bailey laughed. "No, they don't. I'm glad about that, because I think that'd make surgery a hell of a lot harder."
A grin spread across Derek's face. "Me too, Dr. Bailey. Me too."
end