After four agonizing minutes the song stopped and Nadia finished her presentation with a triple axel and then long spin that caused her body to look like a spinning top. Mulder was shocked; he would have never expected Nadia to be such a great skater. She looked over at him and smiled.
"Mr. Mulder, your decision about what to do for Ms. Scully is like skating. You can take a jump and hope you land it alright," Nadia began as she raced around the rink and did another axel. "You can take the risk and jump even if you're not sure that you can achieve your goal but you have to try. You need to take a leap into the unknown and see what happens. For you the leap is whether or not to have a procedure done that could either save or kill your partner. It's something that I cannot decide for you but I want you to know that when you do something like that there are two results. The first is you fall and in this case it would mean that you would lose Ms. Scully, but there is the second thing, you can jump, take that leap and land a triple axel without any problems, you could save her Mr. Mulder, all you need to do is decide if you're ready to take off. The sooner you make up your mind the better. If you don't take that jump Ms. Scully is going to die, in less than two months. Those are all the facts I can give you. You can take a chance and be able to spend many more years together or give up now and have less than two months, and even so she may be unconscious for that small amount of time. I'm not going to pressure you Mr. Mulder, it is truly you're decision but I want you to know my opinion. You should take that leap into the unknown, God knows I did when my husband was sick., I knew the risks but I thought about it and realized that I could either live with the knowledge of knowing I did nothing to try and save him or I could take a chance, go out on a limb and even if he died I would have known I had done everything I could to save him. I went out on that limb Mr. Mulder, and now its two years later and my husband is fine and we're expecting a baby in 7 months. If I hadn't taken that chance he would be dead and we wouldn't be having a child. But it's totally you're decision. Are you going to go out onto that limb?" Nadia said as she looked him straight in the eyes before skating off, and out the other door where she had come from.
Mulder put his face in his hands as tears crept from his eyes and tumbled down onto the floor. Nadia was right. After all he had put Scully through the least he could do for her was to try and save her. He couldn't live with the thought that he didn't do everything he could to save her.
"Scully if anything bad happens please, forgive me." Mulder sobbed as his entire body shook from the force of crying.
A while later Mulder stood up, wiping the tears from his face. He turned around and walked back towards the lobby. As he turned the corner he came face to face with Nadia. She looked at him intuitively. "When could you do the procedure?" he asked.
"Tomorrow morning," Nadia replied.
"Alright, let's do it." Mulder replied. Nadia grinned.
"You should go home and get some sleep Mr. Mulder, it's almost nine o'clock." Nadia said as she looked down at her watch. Mulder blinked, he hadn't realized how quickly the day had gone by. He fidgeted nervously. He didn't want to go home and leave Scully by herself at the hospital. "You want to stay with her don't you?" Nadia asked, reading Mulder's mind. He nodded shyly.
"I'd really like to…because if anything bad happens tomorrow I want to know that I spent as much time with her as I could before…" Mulder began trailing off as tears began to form in his eyes again. Nadia placed a hand on his shoulder and stared into his hazel eyes.
"You can stay with her tonight, I'll make sure of it ok?" Nadia smiled as she and Mulder walked back to the hospital. Once there she helped him fill out the paperwork. She then took him upstairs to where Scully was. She had a different room now with a bigger bed so that if she had another seizure she had less of a risk of falling.
"I'm going to tell the nurse that you're staying here ok?" Nadia said as she left the room. Mulder looked at Scully as she slept. He sighed heavily. He couldn't live without her, this procedure had to work, it just had to. Without knowing what he was doing Mulder took his coat and shoes off and crawled onto the bed beside Scully. He lay on his side and held her hand in his. Within a few minutes he had drifted off to sleep.
When Nadia returned to tell Mulder that the nurse had Okayed everything she found him asleep with his arm around his petite red-haired partner. Nadia smiled as she grabbed a spare blanket from the closet in the room and threw it over the two of them.
"Goodnight Mr. Mulder, goodnight Ms. Scully," she whispered as she left the room, turning the lights off as she went.
Scully's eyes blinked open into the darkness. Her headache had woken her up. She suddenly became afraid because she didn't know where she was. After a few seconds of nervous glances she realized she was in a hospital. Scully sigh and managed to roll over onto her side to look up at the heart monitors. Her head was pounding and yet she was too weak to reach out and push the nurse's call button and her voice seemed to be caught in her throat. Tears formed in her eyes.
'I'm so useless! I can't even call for help!' She mentally grimaced. She then noticed a figure in the room.
"Don't worry I'm a doctor…I'm going to give you some medication for your headache," Kita said softly as she injected some medication into the IV tubing. "You'll feel better in about five minutes." Scully nodded gently and then closed her eyes as Kita left the room.
"Everything is going to be ok Scully, just believe it and everything will be fine," Mulder's voice whispered. Scully jumped, she hadn't realized he was in the room but just knowing that he was there calmed her. She allowed herself to relax and was about to roll onto her back again when she felt something stopping her. It was Mulder. He was lying beside her with his chest to her back. She was about to recoil but something in her mind stopped her.
'He really cares about you, that's why he's here! This is the last chance you might get to see him or be with him so don't try and run away! For one night let yourself be completely happy and know that you finally got to know what it would be like to fall asleep beside the man of your dreams!' her mind told her.
Scully decided not to argue and lay back so that she was leaning against Mulder. He kissed the top of her head lightly and then wrapped his arm around her waist. Scully sensed that he wanted to say something but he never did. As she drifted off to sleep she felt him breathing softly onto the back of her neck and she knew that even if this was the end for her she finally got to know what it would be like to fall asleep next to Fox Mulder, the only man she had ever wanted to spend the rest of her life. And even though he didn't say anything she knew that he loved her, and she loved him back with all her heart.
