III

In medical school, one of the prevailing pieces of wisdom was that doctors made the worst patients. Scully always assumed her professors were joking when they said this. Or, if not joking, then jaded by their years in the field. She told herself that even after she became a doctor, she would remain the best patient a physician could hope to see. She would be pleasant; she would respect the medical professionals in charge of her care; and she would never throw her own skills or experiences up in their faces.

Of course, she'd been one hundred percent wrong about all of that.

It wasn't even just the cancer, either. Over the years, she had been guilty of second-guessing GPs and gynecologists, ER doctors and oral surgeons. It was just something that happened when you got good, she figured. You started having confidence in yourself, and you lost trust in everyone else.

Not that she went out of her way to antagonize the oncologist in charge of her now. She'd always had a healthy respect for specialists, and she tried hard not to compare what he told her to data she found herself in medical journals or online. She tried not judge him too harshly if he fell short. During her appointments, she really did make every effort to act the part of a patient and not a doctor.

But she also knew when she was being bullshitted.

Dr. Donovan would never have classified it as that, of course. To him, it was "bedside manner." Something he learned in Introduction to Humanities, or at the side of a senior physician during his residency. Scully had learned it, too. And so she knew exactly what he was up to when he began cheerfully talking to her about "exploring different avenues of treatment."

"So the current treatment didn't work," she interrupted him.

"I wouldn't necessarily say that." Another line of bullshit, obviously.

"Has the mass responded at all?" she asked.

Donovan relented.

"Not according to what I'm seeing here," he admitted. "Additionally, you're showing signs of lymphocyte infiltration in the area of the mass."

"You mean lymphoepithelioma." She wasn't asking him, and Dr. Donovan knew that. He grimaced.

"I need to schedule some more tests to be sure," he said carefully. "But it would appear so, yes."

Scully pressed her knuckles against her forehead and took a deep breath. Fuck.

"Okay," she said. "Has it metastasized?"

"Not yet. Not that we've found." His tone lifted in an encouraging way that she knew was meant to foster hope in the hopeless. "So that's good news, isn't it?"

"Is it?" She raised her eyebrows. "I've done six weeks of chemotherapy. I've done radiation."

"You've completed one session of each, that's all. There's no reason why you can't do another."

"To what purpose?" she asked, annoyed by his false optimism. His patronizing tone. "If it isn't responding…"

"There's a clinical trial starting in—" he checked his paperwork "—two weeks. I think you would be a good candidate for it."

"Experimental drugs."

"Chemotherapy," he corrected. "Really no different than what you've just finished, except that this combination showed great promise in the lab, particularly with keratinizing squamous cell carcinomas such as yours."

Scully digested this in silence.

"I don't know about that," she said finally.

"Why not?" he pressed.

Because she was afraid, that was why. It was bad enough to subject herself to a known cocktail of poisons; she wasn't sure she wanted to hazard the untried variety. It wasn't just that, either. In a clinical trial, there was always the risk of drawing the short straw and being given standard treatment anyway—and she already knew the standard treatment wouldn't work.

She told the doctor as much.

"Given your line of work...your age…and your medial history…I think we could take measures to ensure that wouldn't happen."

Scully stared at him. "That's rather unethical, don't you think?" she asked. "Why should my line of work have anything to do with a blind trial? Why should I be given preferential treatment over other patients?"

"Now hang on." He held up his hands in a "stop, don't shoot" gesture and shook his head. "I think you misunderstood my intentions. I never once said…"

She knew exactly what he said, and what he'd meant. And it disgusted her.

Still, it seemed like a pretty poor plan to have an argument with her oncologist now, particularly when she knew that he had been, in his own way, trying to help.

Scully thought about what Mulder would say if she told him. He would tell her to enroll in the trial. He would want her to take every unfair advantage the doctor was willing to offer her.

She sighed.

"I need to be able to work," she told Dr. Donovan. "Can you guarantee I'll be well enough to do that while I'm on this trial?"

"Now, Dr. Scully, you know I can't guarantee anything at all. All I can do is offer my opinion as a specialist."

"And that opinion is?"

"I think you should register for the trial," he said. "I think it's the best shot you've got."

He said "best" shot, but Scully was a doctor and she knew what he really meant. He meant her only shot. He meant her last one.

She signed up for the trial.

It took longer than she expected. When she finished it was almost noon, and her stomach was rumbling. She stopped at the machine in the lobby and bought a bottle of water and a jumbo pack of peanut M&Ms, figuring she could have a quick snack in the car on the drive back to work. It was grossly unhealthy, of course, but then again so was she. And she hated wasting even more time getting lunch. Mulder was probably pacing the floor of their office like a caged lion, waiting for her to get back.

That was what she told herself. But sitting in her car a few minutes later, she found her desire for both the chocolate and her partner's company severely lacking. For a long time after she turned the ignition, she just sat there with the car in park and the engine running.

She didn't cry; she wouldn't let herself do that. But, inside, it felt as if her heart was bleeding.

You can't see Mulder like this, she told herself. He would panic. And a panicked Mulder was a miserable thing to have to deal with when she wasn't dying of cancer. Let alone now, when she was.

No, she definitely couldn't face seeing Mulder yet. She couldn't face work. Or lunch. Or anything even approaching her everyday life.

She looked at the package of candy thoughtfully for a minute. Then she reached for the gearshift and put the car in motion.

And she drove to Pendrell's apartment.

A different redhead answered the door this time. A middle-aged man, somewhat taller than Pendrell, who introduced himself as "Colin, the oldest." Scully was sure she had never spoken to him before, but he greeted her as if he knew exactly who she was.

"Back again today," he said cheerfully. "Well, then."

Scully gave him an uncertain smile. "I should have called first. I keep saying that but I…"

"Not at all." He opened the door wider, and now Scully could see the stretch of living room and kitchen behind him. Pendrell was sitting on the sofa playing a harmonica while a pretty, dark-haired woman perched on the corner of his coffee table and watched intently.

Scully shot Colin-the-oldest a questioning look.

"Pulmonary therapy," he explained. "It's his first in-home session."

"I shouldn't bother him then," Scully began. But Colin shook his head.

"They're nearly done," he said. "Come on in."

After half a second of hesitation, she did. Colin led her to the kitchen side of the great room so they could watch the action without interrupting it.

"It shouldn't be much longer," he said. "She's been putting him through his paces for almost half an hour."

"He's good." Scully spoke with some surprise. Of all the skills she might have attributed to Pendrell, playing a musical instrument was not one of them.

His brother smiled.

"It's supposed to be good for his lungs, I guess. Like the breathing exercises that she was having him do earlier. She brought the harmonica with her, but I'm sure she had no idea he would be such a show off about it."

Just as Colin said this, the music ended in an abrupt burst of coughing. The respiratory therapist reached over and patted Pendrell's knee.

"Okay," she said. "That's your stopping place. You lose your breath, you stop; you start coughing, you stop. You don't get points for pushing yourself too hard. Got it?"

He nodded.

"Good." She checked her watch. "That's about it for today anyway. You've done incredibly well. A couple more weeks and you won't need me at all."

"My hook will bring you back."

Scully had no idea what Pendrell meant by that, but the therapist obviously did. She laughed as she got to her feet.

"Day after tomorrow," she told him. "And I want practice until then. Three ten-minute sessions a day."

He pointed the harmonica at her. "On that you can rely."

"Troublemaker." She smiled as she said it. "I knew I couldn't trust that red hair."

Scully could feel Colin's eyes on her as she watched this scene play out. She wondered if her face gave away how uncomfortable she felt. How—well, not jealous. Of course not jealous. She didn't know Pendrell well enough for jealousy. But self-conscious. Like an intruder in his life.

Then Pendrell turned his head and saw her standing there, and the happiness that lit his face made all that uncertainty feel very foolish indeed.

She felt strange, too, in a way. In her experience, intense focus from a man (Mulder excluded) usually meant something negative—sexual obsession, or deceit, or how-about-I wash-your-hair-before-murdering-you-in-the-bathtub-and-taking-your-fingers-for-a-trophy—and she'd come to dislike male scrutiny (Mulder's excluded) as a result. Yet she didn't find anything unsettling about Pendrell's attention. The way he looked at her felt—well—

Good.

"Hi, Dana."

She smiled at the way he said it. The way his whole demeanor changed and became bashful in her presence. It felt like a compliment, somehow. An indication of her own importance in the world.

Scully waited for him to lift his hand in response to the therapist's goodbye, a little amused by his sudden indifference toward her. (Not so interested in teasing the pretty brunette now, are you, Sean?)

Then, once the woman had gone, "I hope it's okay that I stopped by. I was just—"

"Yeah, of course," He trampled over the end of her sentence in his eagerness to reassure her. "It—it's really good to see you."

"—on my lunch break," she finished. "In the neighborhood."

Pendrell didn't question why she would be having lunch alone, or in an area so inconvenient to work.

"Have you eaten?" he asked instead. "Finola and my parents are picking up lunch now. If you'd like to stay, we'd love to have you."

"Thank you, but I can't. I just came by to—"

She stopped, unsure of how to finish the sentence. What, exactly, had she come to do?

Pendrell saved her from having to come up with an answer.

"Sit down for a minute anyway," he said. "Even if you can't stay."

Scully glanced at Colin, who, to her relief, seemed to have lost interest in the situation. He retreated further into the kitchen to pour himself a cup of coffee.

"All right. For a minute." She joined Pendrell on the couch.

While technically dressed today, the baggy sweatpants and faded Bruins shirt he was wearing might as well have been pajamas. He hadn't shaved, either. Scully could tell he felt self-conscious about it by the way he kept running his hand over his jaw.

She felt an absurd urge to reach out and do the same. To stroke him and feel the prickle of stubble and the softness of his skin. To trace her thumb across that full bottom lip and watch it tremble against her. To kiss him the way he'd probably been dreaming of her doing for months now.

But she couldn't do it. He was so sweet. And he looked so young. Nothing about him reminded her of the men she usually found attractive, and somehow, that was the most appealing thing of all. She didn't want to be what ruined him.

"Was that Pachelbel's 'Canon' you were playing just now?" Scully spoke in a false tone, but at least she was saying something. At least her mind was turning to something innocuous.

"Huh?" Pendrell looked at the harmonica in his hand and gave a little laugh. "Well, sort of."

"You're very good."

"I taught myself in college." He saw her questioning look and went on. "I graduated high school two years early, so when I got to college I was younger than everybody else. And, well, I found it hard to make friends."

"So you taught yourself to play harmonica?" Scully wasn't sure she understood the connection.

"I taught myself all kinds of tricks," he explained. "Things to do so I wouldn't just be the young one."

"You'd be the one who played harmonica."

He shrugged. "Or who juggled, or told jokes, or did handstands—" He stopped to think. "Or played 'Somewhere over the Rainbow' on the ukulele."

"Did it work?"

"Having something to do with my hands and my brain helped me to be less nervous around people. That's what worked."

She thought about him in the lab, waxing rhapsodic over computer chips and forensic fibers. That worked, too, she realized. He never stumbled over a word like photopolymerization in her presence, but let her ask him how his day had gone and he'd struggle with a simple "Fine."

He wasn't shy with Mulder, though. Just like he hadn't been shy with his respiratory therapist. In fact, the only person he seemed to be nervous around these days was Scully herself.

She leaned over and nudged his shoulder with her own just to watch him blush.

"I brought you something, Sean."

The corner of his mouth quirked up. "You did?"

She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out the M&Ms with a little flourish.

"Careful though," she said as she handed them to him. "They aren't macro."

"I'll tell Finola a doctor prescribed them so she can't complain."

Scully laughed. "And somewhere my Stanford nutrition professor just got a cold chill down his back."

Pendrell ripped open the bag and tipped a couple of candies into his palm. He handed one to Scully before popping the other into his own mouth.

"The building blocks of life are sugar cubes," he said, chewing. "That's my theory."

Scully was about to joke that she hoped he hadn't written his dissertation on it when her cellphone trilled, startling them both. She looked at the number.

Mulder.

Shit.

"I need to go."

"Aren't you going to answer it?" Pendrell asked.

"No. I just…need to go." She stuffed the phone back into her pocket and stood up. She couldn't look at his face now. She knew what she would see in his eyes if she did.

"Well, thanks for the…" He held up the M&Ms.

Scully nodded and turned. But halfway to his front door, she paused and looked back over her shoulder. Pendrell was still sitting on the sofa with the candy bag clutched in his fist. He looked so fragile, she thought again. Like one wrong move from her would shatter him into pieces.

"I'm probably going out of town," she told him.

Pendrell absorbed this information in silence, although his brow furrowed a little as if he were trying to work out what it meant.

Scully made it easy for him.

"There's a case in Braxton County, West Virginia," she went on. "Some people filed a report about—well, never mind what they filed a report about. But Agent Mulder wants to interview them in person. We'll probably be gone a few days."

"All right."

"Could I come see you when I get back?"

"Sure—I mean—sure."

Scully smiled. She started to go, but the sound of his voice stopped her again at the doorway.

"Dana." He was using that tone she liked. Low and coaxing.

"Yes, Sean?"

"Take care of yourself out there."

"I will," Scully promised.

She didn't have the heart to tell him that there was no point. That the real danger lay in her own sinus cavity, not the West Virginia woods.

When Scully got back to the office half an hour later, she found Mulder still at his desk, studying blurry pictures of what he'd insisted earlier was a recent sighting of the Flatwoods Monster. He threw his magnifying glass down when he saw her come in.

"Damn it, Scully!" His voice was hoarse, and angry in a way she had come to expect. "Where the hell have you been all day?"

"My oncologist appointment." She pulled out her chair and sat down.

"For three and a half hours?"

She looked at her watch, surprised. Had it really been that long?

"I…he wants me to sign up for a clinical trial. It took longer than I thought."

Mulder frowned, the anger draining out of his face as though he'd sprung a leak. "What kind of trial?" he asked.

"Chemotherapy. The other didn't work." She did her best to sound offhanded, but of course, Mulder saw through it. He stood up and walked around the desk to stand next to her.

"When does it start?"

"Two weeks from now, he said. I should still be able to work," she added. "I asked him about that specifically." She didn't tell Mulder that the doctor hadn't actually answered the question.

"I don't care about that," Mulder said shortly.

"I do."

One of his hands dropped to her shoulder and squeezed hard.

"Well, I have a good feeling about this," he said. "Advances in modern medicine happen rapidly and drug trials are closely monitored and—and—"

"What?"

"I think it'll work," he finished lamely.

She looked up at him, marveling at how lost he looked. None of his usual cockiness at all.

"Maybe it will," she said. But suddenly she felt very tired.

I thought you were supposed to be encouraging me, Mulder. Not the other way around.

"I believe it will." He sounded insistent now; his grip on her shoulder hurt. Scully reached down and pried his hand away.

"You believe a lot of things, Mulder. Not all of them are going to be true."