Title: Tonight I've Watched
Author: Emily Todd Carter
Genre: MSR/UST, M Angst
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: It's not like anyone who matters will
read this, much less sue me.
Summary: (see previous)

Chapter Two...A Pause For Redemption

Georgetown Memorial Hospital
Trauma Unit One
7:34 P.M.

The hospital doors burst open before us as Scully
was wheeled into the white-walled hallway. The
three EMTs, clothed neatly in crisp white scrubs
that now sported stains of my partner's spilled
blood, were promptly accompanied by various other
doctors and emergency room personnel.

"Thirty-five year old Caucasian female, status
post sucking gunshot wound to the right flank,
found conscious at the scene; vital signs
stable?," shouted one EMT to the doctor beside
him. His superior glanced quickly at Scully's pale
skin, now slightly turning a shade of blue, and
sweaty brow as she gasped sharply for air and
fought to stay awake.

"Look's like we've got a pneumothorax to the right
lung. I'm gonna need a local anaesthetic and 2
quarts of o-negative. Let's get her to surgery
with a chest x-ray immediately."

An Asian nurse to one side recorded vitals and
treatment commands on a clipboard. She
exasperatingly glanced at me as I clutched
Scully's hand and walked briskly alongside the
gurney.

"Sir, are you the husband?" she asked, pausing
from her work.

"Uh, no," I replied, turning back to Scully. Her
shirt and bra, now sodden with crimson fluid, were
continuing to be soaked as fresh blood drizzled
from her wound. My partner's head rolled back and
forth as her eyes began to flutter.

"Heart rate's dropping! This woman needs a chest
tube right now!" another doctor yelled, turning to
open the door to the trauma room.

"Sir, you're going to have to leave. The doctors
need their space, Sir," the Asian nurse shouted as
she grabbed my arm. I brushed her away and leaned
closer to Scully, avoiding the hands of the
doctors and EMTs.

"We're almost there, Scully. Just hold on," I murmured,
barely audible above the pandemonium in the room. Her
eyes flickered open briefly and met mine with a
strong gaze of determination. She started to speak
and stopped as her eyes widened. Suddenly, she
began to convulse with wracking coughs. I drew
back as vomit gushed from her mouth. I winced and
squeezed her hand as she lay her red-crowned head
back down upon the stretcher.

Scully's eyes closed. The nurse behind me
threatened to call security.

"Hang on, Scully," I said, and released her hand.
The mass of medics wheeled her into the trauma
room, preparing for surgery. The doors swung shut
behind them, leaving me alone in the white-walled
hallway.

I stayed there for a long moment, my gaze not
fluctuating in the least. Nurses and paramedics
dashed past and collided with me, not bothering to
excuse themselves. I'm positive that the sounds of
the hallway were deafening, yet I heard only the
unremitting pounding of my heart inside my chest.
Waiting.

What is waiting but anticipation of the unknown?
To wait is to sit idly by as the future suddenly
becomes the present, and eventually the past. We
watch opportunities pass in the blink of an eye
and gaze back at them with regret and
disappointment, wishing somehow that we had
recognized their significance before it was too
late. And then we wait once again for the next
opportunity to present itself, praying that we
will somehow seize it before it can slip through
our fingers like so many before.

I myself have learned to accept waiting as as much
a part of life as any other daily activity. All
too many years I have spent waiting for the moment
to come when I shall be truly content. When I
shall be able to prove to Scully, as well as
myself, that all of the years we have sent
searching and fighting have not been spent in
vain. When the Truth will be unveiled before her
incredulous eyes and she will be no longer capable
of denying the things she has seen.

And so I waited.

I waited for hours that night, though it seemed
like days or even years. My unwavering eyes were
focused on the clock hanging high above the
hospital waiting room doorway. With each second
that passed, I felt the pain of my suffering
partner only two rooms away.

--Tick-tock, tick-tock.--

All that mattered was time now. The seconds turned
to minutes, and the minutes to hours. It was as if
my life revolved around those three rotating
hands, spinning around and around. Peripheral
vision ceased to exist, and I was only
semiconsciously aware of my surroundings. I remained
with my elbows on my knees and hands clutching my
ruined jacket.

Parts of the jacket now matched my hands, stained
with the scarlet blood of my partner. The jacket
had been used in attempts to stop the bleeding.
But it hadn't stopped, and Scully lay on an
operating table at the hands of doctors hopefully
doing anything and everything possible to help her
hang on to life.

As I waited there for those long hours, I was
forced to trust those doctors treating my partner.
I was not accustomed to placing such faith in
anyone, especially concerning Scully. Would they
be doing everything in their power to save the
life of the only woman I trusted?

The gentle touch of a hand on my shoulder brought
me back into reality. I turned to face the Asian
nurse I had encountered before.

"Hmm?" I asked, placing my face into the palms of
my hands and rubbing my sore eyes. She smiled and
revealed too-white-to-be-natural teeth against her
almond colored skin.

"We're going to need you to fill these out,
please, Sir," she said, presenting a short stack
of forms attached to a clipboard. "Who's the next
of kin?"

I was then struck with a pang of emotion.
Realization, mixed with guilt and fear. Scully's
mother would soon arrive. Would she, could she,
possibly forgive me for the pain I had failed to
keep her daughter from being forced to endure? Did
Maggie Scully have enough compassion inside her
not to blame me for what her daughter was going
through?

"Her mother.... I know where she can be reached,"
I replied. The nurse nodded and drew a notepad
from the pocket of her fuchsia scrubs. She jotted
down the telephone number I recited and left to
call from the front desk.

And so I passed the next hour of waiting by
filling out form after form concerning everything
from medical insurance to allergies. Occupying my
time didn't seem to assist the minutes in passing
any faster, though. No word came from the trauma
room.

Once I had completed the forms, I arose and walked
to the counter to hand the forms in to the nurse.
My feet were lead and it took every ounce of
strength I possessed to will them into moving, but
I eventually reached the counter. She thanked me
and resumed the telephone conversation she had
been previously involved in. I turned and headed
back to my seat.

As I slowly trudged forward, I paused and glanced
ahead at the doors to the trauma room swinging
open.

First to pass through was an EMT, backing into the
door to keep it from closing upon the gurney he
towed behind him. As he passed into the hallway,
the contents of his stretcher were revealed.

A living, breathing, Dana Katherine Scully covered
in her own blood. Her delicate eyelids were closed
and her lips were ashen, almost gray.

Scully had fought death, once again, as it
stared her straight in the eyes, threatening to
swallow her entire body and soul.

And, once again, she had won.
I didn't leave her side once that night. Not for
coffee, not to sleep. Though the doctor had
reassured me of her stable condition following
his explanation of her treatment and prognosis,
I clung to my habitual paranoia. I had come so close to
losing her only hours ago that I felt to leave her would
be risking losing her again. Somehow, I knew that
she needed my presence as much as I needed hers.

The ER doctor that had performed Scully's
operation informed me that she had endured a
pneumothorax to the right lung as a result of the
bullet fired. It was a simple procedure, he had
explained, that included anesthetizing her and
inserting a chest tube to allow the collapsed lung
to reinflate. It would only be a matter of time
before she awoke.

And so the doctors came and went, as did the
nurses, attaching IV's and taking notes on her
vitals and such. I remained seated in a cushioned
chair at her bedside, almost completely oblivious
of my surroundings; therefore, I barely realized
when I was left alone in room number 423 of the
Intensive Care Unit with my partner, who remained
fast asleep.

The monotonous beeping of her heart monitor kept
the rhythm of her steady breathing. Breathing. My
Scully was breathing, and I was somehow thanking a
God I barely believed in. Could He possibly
understand what this woman who lay sleeping before
me meant to me, to my life? Was it some form of
divine intervention that had delivered her
from the shadow of death that loomed so near not too
long before?

I could only contemplate these questions and many
others as I waited those grueling hours for
Scully's eyes to flutter open and for her to ask
me, 'Mulder? Where am I?' But, until that moment, I
simply gazed at her, absorbing her every motion.

She was dressed in a pale blue hospital gown,
resembling the hue of the blouse I had ruined as I
tore it open to reveal her wound. The hospital
sheets and blanket were laid gingerly over her
chest. I watched them slightly rise and fall with
each breath.

I knew that Scully didn't want me to see her like
this, drugged and unconscious, marred and
helpless. Had I ever seen her face so pale? I
couldn't recall. But, somehow, her expression was
not one of fear? It was more of an expression of
satisfaction. Scully had taken the bullet for her
partner, a duty every member of the Bureau was
trained and expected to fulfill.

By then, the tiny thought I had been neglecting
like an old electric bill suddenly struck, sending
chills along my spine. Scully shouldn't be lying
here on this bed.

I should have been the one to take that bullet.

Fox Mulder, Oxford degree in psychology. Was I not
the one renowned for my expertise on infiltrating
the minds of criminals? How many times before had
I realized the notions of the villain at hand and
dealt accordingly, and with haste? Why, God, why
had I allowed Scully to step in and control the
situation?

Scully, my constant, my companion, the only one
that understands. If only I had pushed her back,
had stepped before her and taken that bullet. I
would be lying on this stiff hospital bed. I would
be the one suffering and regurgitating and being
drugged and undergoing operations?

Silence.

Beep…beep...beep..beep…

Dr. Barrows to the ER, Dr. Barrows to the ER

Beep…beep…beep…beep…

Scully's heart monitor kept a steady rhythm.

I became acutely aware of the soft clicking of a
closing door behind me.

"Fox?"

Swiveling my head to face the direction of the
soothing, familiar voice, I offered a gracious
grin to Maggie Scully and slowly stood to greet
her. She crossed the few feet separating us and
wrapped her arms around my chest in a warm
embrace. Her head barely reached my chin, and I
could feel her shivering despite the woolen
sweater she adorned. Maggie's hair smelled of
rosemary and lavender. It smelled like…home.

God, how she reminded me of her daughter in ways I
could never begin to describe.

"Oh, Fox. The doctor said she was going to be
okay. Is she going to be okay, Fox?" she asked,
not bothering to mask her swelled cheeks and moist
eyes as she drew away from me and faced Scully.

I didn't speak. I searched for words, but couldn't
determine the right ones, so silence seemed
sufficient for the moment. Maggie approached the
bedside with trepidation and took in the full
scope of her wounded daughter.

Extending her trembling hand, she reached for
Scully's ashen face and ran a finger along her
cheek. She slowly stroked her only daughter's
smooth skin with a mother's touch. I turned away
as I noticed a stray tear drop to the sheet below.

"Who did this, Fox? Why would someone want to hurt
her?"

She fell with resignation to the chair that I had
occupied not minutes ago, her head bowed. We
mutually understood that neither of these
questions merited answered, at least at the
moment. She did not need answers. She was not
searching to place the blame.

Hence followed a silence during which I came to
realize that she was praying.

I stepped alongside her chair and found her hand
that rested upon her lap. She grasped it with the
strength only a Scully could possess at a time
like this. She did not lift her eyes, although I
felt she could sense mine close.

And so, I began to pray.
END Chapter 2