'William,' Mulder called.
Tomorrow their son would turn three. Scully had planned a small party with Stephen, his wife, their three children as well as Father Michael. The little boy should be awake from his midday sleep by now. Calling again, Mulder became worried when he still didn't get a response.
We've become lax in our security, he realised when his weapon remained locked in the safe beneath his and Scully's bed at the other end of the house. Running towards the little bedroom housing their son, Mulder pushed open the door with trepidation in his heart. He expected to see a replicant leaning over the child's bed. What he saw drove fear into his heart.
Scooping his son into his arms, he rushed out the door. Placing William on the back seat, Mulder jumped into the driver's seat. Gunning the engine before buckling himself in, he fishtailed down the gravel drive. Cursing the lack of a cell phone, he just hoped he'd be in time.
'Scully,' Mulder screamed, carrying the limp child in his arms.
Spherion appeared immediately, taking him through to the treatment room. She disappeared. Mulder knew she'd gone to find both doctors.
'Just hang in there little man, Mommy will be here soon and fix you up, just like she'd fixed me up over the years,' he pleaded with his son, tears streaming down his face.
Over the last few weeks, he noticed small changes in William. An intermittent limp he denied, or a flash of pain crossing his little face, devoid of explanation and the occasional stumble over a word. Not enough to arouse suspicion in Scully, not enough to seek further medical advice. Yet Mulder knew his son, cared for him every day and intuitively knew something to be wrong.
'What happened?' Scully demanded as she rushed into the small room.
'I went in to wake Will from his sleep and he wouldn't respond,' Mulder looked stricken.
After checking his pupils, pulse, blood pressure and glucose, Stephen couldn't find a reason for William's continued moribund state. 'But he is responding,' Mulder indicated his son's eyelids. A very faint tremor, as though the child attempted to open his eyes but couldn't.
'Let's get him prepped to go,' Stephen ordered.
Two hours later, Mulder and Scully sat in a waiting room of Denver Children's Hospital while William underwent a CT, then on to an MRI to investigate a neurological cause for his current condition. He'd regained some motor control and co-ordination, but had been left with slurred speech and the inability to walk. The paediatric doctors hoped for a complete recovery in time, using the working opinion of vacant seizures. However the worried parents just wanted answers in the form of a diagnosis.
'Mr and Mrs Scully,' an older gentleman approached them quietly.
'Dr Scully,' Dana stepped forward somewhat aggressively.
'I'm David Winterbourne, the head of Paediatrics' here. We'd like to transfer William to a major teaching hospital in New York or D.C.,' he stated in a soft voice. The look on his face the same one Scully wore when delivering bad news to a patient.
'What do you thinks wrong with my son,' she demanded.
'Have you ever heard of Sandoff's disease, Dr Scully?' David asked.
'Oh God,' Scully moaned, falling into the seat she'd just vacated. Her eye's communicated her horror to Mulder. 'It's a progressive neurological disease without a cure. The best we could hope for, to slow the progression of the disease with treatment.'
'Usually, I'd agree with you Dr Scully,' David tried to deliver the blow swiftly, 'but your son's brain appears to be unique on CT. His blood chemistry is unusual to say the least. Given how fast this episode has progressed, I'd like someone with experience in the area to treat your son. I believe it might be his only chance.'
Mulder stayed, packed up their home, said their goodbyes in the understanding they'd never return to his peaceful haven. Whatever William needed, wherever he needed to be, they'd be by his side. Father Michael contacted a priest he'd attended seminary with. Father Ybarra agreed to take on Dr Scully under the very trying circumstances.
Two years living on a rural property, it didn't take Mulder long to find a house halfway between Richmond and D.C. Close enough to travel to William's hospital bed each day and easy enough for Scully once she started work at Our Lady of Sorrows. The later came sooner than either Mulder or Scully expected. One month after his third birthday, William slipped into a coma. His mother, father and grandmother continued their bedside vigil for twelve days before he slid away in the middle of the night.
Fired with determination to find a cure for the disease, Scully threw herself into Paediatric Neurology. She became an attending in short order. Several years later she came across a case of Sandoffs' in a seven year old boy by the name of Christian Fearon.
In her dilemma, she lay away one night, Mulder slumbering beside her. Sensing her restlessness, he woke.
'Why bring a kid into the world just to make him suffer?' she asked sadly, 'I don't know, Mulder, I've got such a connection to this boy.'
'How old is he?' he asked with a furrowed brow.
Turning to look at her husband in name only, Scully asked the thought at the forefront of her mind, 'you think it because of William?'
'I think our son left us both with an emptiness that can't be filled,' he suggested, saddened she should have to go through this a second time. William's death still haunted both of them. Rarely did they ever talk about the devastation it caused. 'Just go to sleep. Let me curse God for a while,' he offered in consolation.
I always wondered about these lines of dialog. I felt William to be dead and needed an explanation as to why Scully would become a paediatric Neurologist. Sorry but I wanted a clarification and had to write this story around the scene.