Chapter Six - Waiting and Hoping
Thirty-Six Hour Later
It seemed too incredible to believe but the virologist said that the vaccine was ready barely a day later. Either James hadn't taken the concept of the FDA with him when he built this world, or the hospital was operating on the concept of "desperate times call for desperate measures," but either way it hadn't taken much to be allowed to use the new product on Fox and Dana.
A conversation with James and Samantha, and a few forms signed, and they'd put the vaccine into Scully's hands. It was easier than gaining access to one of the dead victims, because after hemming and hawing the hospital said she could look at a body the next day. She would have rather have gotten it over with first, but she forced herself to be content with the fact that they might be able to spare more people from a one-way trip to the morgue.
"I think you should give the vaccine to Fox first," James commented as they walked to the couple's hospital room. Mulder and Samantha trailed after them, deep in conversation. Ezra was on Samantha's hip, and Mckenna toddled after her. Without even looking back to check, Scully knew that Mulder was keeping an eye on the little girl. It was just the sort of thing he did without having to be asked to.
"Because you think he looks worse too?" Scully guessed, looking up at James. It struck her as hard to believe that this was the same person she'd said goodbye to when he was a ten-year-old boy. Around the eyes, though, she thought she saw something familiar.
"I'm scared," James admitted. "I'm afraid that this isn't going to work, and I'm going to lose my best friend the same way I lost my brother."
"Lost your brother?" Her face creased in confusion. "I thought you made this new world and everything was fine for your family."
"It was. Then. Did Chip or Samantha tell you about Charlie? That he died?"
"Yes, in a car accident. That's very sad."
"Charlie wasn't the only one in the car." James' voice was pitched low, probably so Samantha wouldn't overhear. "Jordon hadn't wanted to go to college after high school, so he got a job. He and Charlie worked on the same shift, and carpooled together. The night of the accident was pretty icy...neither of them made it home safely."
"I'm so sorry."
James nodded vaguely. "I started going through on a regular basis after he died, hoping that I could find the same thing Mulder has."
By that point Mulder and Samantha had caught up to them, so they let the conversation drop. Scully knew what he'd been referring to; all she had to do was look at the joy on Mulder's face as he spoke to Samantha to get the message loud and clear.
"Let's hope for the best," Scully said a little too brightly as they walked into the hospital room. "I'll examine them, and then we'll give the vaccine."
"And then we'll hope," Samantha added softly.
"Then we'll hope," Scully agreed. Looking back at the longing on James' face, she suddenly realized what he would have told her had they continued their conversation in the same vein - unlike Mulder, he hadn't found his other brother yet.
Lying still in his bed, Fox looked frail. Scully stood above him, and studied him, looking for the telltale signs that it was too late - a translucence or a jelly-like consistency of the flesh. She didn't see either of them, but there were other things she didn't see either. There weren't deep worry lines creasing a well-loved brow, and there was no scar on his shoulder from a well-aimed bullet. These things helped to ground her, and remind her that this is not a mere copy of the man she's long been in love with. If he had been able to sit up and talk, there was a chance she might not have even liked Fox.
"Dana? Uh, Scully, that is." James sounded embarrassed, but she didn't turn around to see. "Would it be okay with you if I stole Mulder and Samantha for a couple of hours?"
"Oh, sure. It's going to take me a while to examine them thoroughly, and when I'm done I'll go find Chip."
"Great, I'll send them back there when we're done."
"Bye," Scully said faintly. She wasn't even curious enough to ask what they'd be doing in the interim.
Running her fingers over the still man's hand, she didn't find anything wrong with it that indicated that he was being hollowed out from the inside by some manner of vicious parasite. For a moment she closed her eyes, but that only allowed the screen of her imagination to throw up an image of a cold-eyed creature with razor tipped claws. She opened her eyes with a shuddering sigh. Her hands trembled a little, and she came dangerously close to dropping the syringe.
Steadying herself, she found a likely vein. Fox didn't react when the liquid coursed through him, and that worried her. Scully knew from personal experience that it burned like a cleansing flame. He should at least flinch. Instead his respiration continued at its steady pace, and the heart monitor didn't change a note in its two-note song.
Next she turned her attention to Dana. Despite doing her level best to convince herself that any resemblance between them was superficial, she failed. Dana was Scully dipped in skim milk, with hair grown overlong, with callused fingers. It should have been easier to assess her condition, knowing exactly what she ought to look like in perfect health, but she found it immeasurably harder.
At length she decided that Dana was not quite as ill as Fox, but it was close to a toss up. Maybe the vaccine would help at least one of them, she hoped as she filled a new syringe.
"I can't let you do that, Doctor Scully," a stern voice interrupted Scully, who paused with the syringe an inch above Dana's arm. Until that moment she'd thought she was alone with her two patients.
Meanwhile...
"Here you go, Sport." A small foam ball threw through the air and landed in Ezra's hands. The baby's eyes widened in astonishment, making James chuckle. He looked up at the adults and said, "I used to date a girl who did a lot of babysitting...sometimes I'd sneak over while she did. There was this one kid she looked after whose only toys were balls like that one. I wondered why, until I figured it out when he snagged a glass from me and threw it against a wall. He grew up to play baseball in high school."
They'd been at James' house for almost fifteen minutes, and so far James had done nothing but play polite host. Their drinks were filled, the little ones had things to keep them amused, but Mulder still had no idea why they were there. "So, um, James. How many people live here?"
"The best I can tell, there are about five thousand people," James said casually. "It's a lot, if you think about it."
"Think about it in what way?" Mulder wondered. His old friend's statement didn't make a lot of sense to him.
"You haven't figured it out yet, Mulder? I'm surprised. You were so good with those two minute mysteries when we were boys." James gave him a wry look. "I created this world, even if I didn't do it on purpose. And because of that, all the people are connected to me."
"But not everyone you knew is here," Mulder protested. "Because Chip has no Aunt Missy and Uncle Bill."
"Who?" James looked blank.
"Scully's older brother and sister. Maggie Scully's oldest children were a set of twins."
The other man frowned. "That sounds vaguely familiar, but I never met them."
"So they don't exist in this world?" Mulder gave him an incredulous look. "I didn't realize that you fancied yourself some kind of deity."
"I'm not claiming to have god-like powers, Mulder. I'm just telling you like it is. Everyone here is connected to me. Whatever created this world picked the men, women and children I knew out of my head to people it."
"What do you think created this world, James?" Mulder asked. "You said something once about strong emotions, but that seems pretty fuzzy for you to believe, at least based on what I remember from when we were kids."
James held out his hands. "Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe this is a soap bubble universe like I used to be obsessed with as a kid. Maybe it's something else entirely."
"Maybe aliens created this world," Mulder suggested sourly. "Made their own little rat maze to experiment on you and everyone here."
"There aren't any aliens, Mulder," James snapped. "Don't be ridiculous."
"You're wrong, James. There are aliens, and I've seen them."
"Mulder, it's statistically improbable for life to have sprung up on other planets," Samantha interrupted.
"It's also statically improbable for a whole new world with just five thousand people in it to spring up unbidden too," Mulder retorted. "What do you think that disease is? The one you asked us to cure?"
"I'm not sure what it is. Some sort of advanced pathogen."
"Why us, James? Chip said you knew that we'd dealt with it before. How do you know that?"
A tinge of pink crept into James' cheeks. "The internet. On a visit to your world I went to one of the libraries and tried to see if I could discover if the disease had affected your world too. I found this e-zine online by some people who seemed like nutjobs, but they described exactly what we'd seen."
"An e-zine?" Mulder asked, raising an eyebrow. "Wouldn't have happened to have been The Lone Gunmen, would it?"
"Now that you mention it, I think that's it."
Mulder covered his face with his hands. "It figures."
Meanwhile
"I can't let you do that, Doctor Scully," the voice repeated when Scully made no move to put down the syringe.
"Why not?" Scully demanded to know without even looking up.
"Because there's been no study done to see how this would affect an unborn child," the other doctor said. She thought it looked like than man she had mentally dubbed "doctor one" a couple of days earlier, but she saw that his badge bore the moniker Gil Howard, chief of staff. "You never should have been allowed to administer it to anyone without clearing it with the head of infectious diseases - me."
Ignoring the arrogance in his last statement, she fixated on the reason for the denial and gave him a stricken look. "Dana's pregnant? She doesn't look pregnant," she insisted before realizing how silly that sounded.
"She's only about six weeks along." Doctor Howard gave her a level look. "Being pregnant effectively reduces her chance of survival to nil since she can't have the vaccine."
If the vaccine even works on anyone, she thought grimly. "You've seen other stricken with this condition. Do you think that that she would survive if she wasn't pregnant?" Scully asked softly, not wanting anyone else to hear their conversation.
He shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not. It's impossible to tell since no one has been cured by the vaccine yet. Since she is pregnant, however, that point is moot."
"You could terminate the pregnancy," Scully suggested hesitantly. Abortion wasn't something she liked to think about, but like many others she considered it the less of two evils in some limited circumstances. Circumstances like orphaning two small children.
"Perform an illegal procedure?" Howard gave her a look like he thought that she was both insane and immoral. "I'd lose my medical license."
"Il-" Scully then realized that this world was created in 1972, but the Roe v. Wade decision hadn't been handed down until the first month of 1973. "Is there nothing that can be done, then?"
The doctor gave her a sweeping glance, then looked at Dana. "You and your sister are identical twins, aren't you?"
Scully battled to keep the surprise off her face, and instantly decided in for a penny, in for a pound. "Yes, we are."
"You'd be an ideal candidate for fetal transference, then, because identical DNA would more or less preclude rejection."
"Fetal transference?" Scully asked, puzzled. "I'm afraid that I'm not familiar with that." She gave him a lopsided smile. "I must have missed that class in med school."
Howard didn't look surprised at her ignorance. "It's not an often used procedure. It involves moving a fetus or embryo depending on how early the procedure is done, placenta and all from its mother's womb into another woman's. It's usually is done in infertility cases for women who can't obtain pregnancy, but would be able to maintain one. And occasionally for pregnant women who develop a life threatening illness while pregnant. Would this be something you'd be willing to do?"
Scully thought about Mckenna and Ezra, facing them after their mother died, when there might have been something she could have done to save her. They were only babies now, but someday they'd grow up. Then she thought about carrying a baby, only to hand it over to someone else once it was born. That would be painful and difficult - but it also assumed that Dana would get better. Lying pale as death already come, it was hard to believe.
"And this would involve some sort of surgery? I don't think she's strong enough to survive that," Scully added as the thought occurred to her.
The doctor shook his head. "No surgery is involved."
"Then how is it done?" She failed to keep disbelief out of her voice.
"It's a form of matter transference."
Beam me up, Scotty, Scully thought to herself. "And this is safe?"
"Perfectly. Neither mothers nor babies have ever suffered any ill effects from this."
Scully wasn't as concerned about the baby as Dana and herself, but she didn't think saying so would be of any advantage. "How long until we can do this? I assume that I'll need hormone injections first."
"Actually, we're discovered that it's easier to figure out the correct balance after the procedure is complete. We could do this right now, if you'd like. Just as soon as I can send for some equipment."
Scully nodded, even though she knew that Mulder would be unhappy that she made such a major decision without consulting him, but she was so convinced that it wouldn't really result in her becoming pregnant- she thought that the story was just a cover for performing an illegal abortion, and that she and Dana would be sadly informed that the embryo hadn't survived- that it didn't seem worth the time. "The sooner the better."
Within a matter of minutes, she found herself lying on a hospital bed beside her unconscious double. To speed things along she claimed next-of-kin rights to make medical decisions on her "twin's" behalf.
The machine the doctor wheeled in made her think of Doctor Who; it seemed to mostly be comprised of a box whose insides glowed a sickly green and tubes that ended in funnel-like apparatuses.
When he started an ultrasound to locate the embryo, Scully turned her face away. Given what she thought would happen to it, she didn't think that she couldn't bear to think of it as alive and growing in its mother.
"There he is," Doctor Howard said as he moved the wand across Dana's belly. He carefully placed one of the funnels over the spot he'd pinpointed with the ultrasound. "Not that we can tell the gender so soon, I just know that Dana was hoping to have another boy," he clarified.
He came to Scully's side with the other funnel in his hand, but he paused. "Maybe we should do a pregnancy test on you first."
"I'm not pregnant," Scully said coldly. "I'm barren."
Her thoughts turned to the failed IVF attempt just weeks earlier, so she barely heard the doctor offer of condolence. It had been her only chance, and it was still too painful to believe that she'd never have her own child. Maybe it was the reason that she'd volunteered for this strange duty that had to be a hoax - if it was legitimate it'd be her only opportunity to ever feel life growing within her.
It was all over in a couple of minutes. She only had time to wonder why Dana's feet hadn't been put in stirrups when there was a green flash and out of the corner of her eye she saw the image of the embryo disappear off the monitor.
A moment later the doctor announced that he next wanted to do an ultrasound on her to check the baby's placement; that was the word he used. baby. She had a sneaking suspicion that diehard pro-life proponents in her world would love that.
Scully was enveloped by a sense of surrealism when he squirted the clammy medium onto her bare belly. The doctor's body blocked the monitor, but she did see him frown. "What was this business with you claiming to be barren? You're just lucky that this didn't turn out very badly. They very well could have fused since we did a blind placement on the assumption that your uterus was empty."
"I don't-" Scully sputtered until the doctor side-stepped, giving her full view of the monitor. Two small objects she recognized from her medical books as gestational sacs were on the screen.
"Dana was pregnant with twins?" she asked blankly, as her mind grasp at the first logical explanation - after rejecting the idea that the process had somehow accidentally cloned the embryo.
The doctor pointed at the screen. "This is Dana's unborn baby," He moved his hand until his hand was next to the other shadow. "And apparently, this is yours. It's fortunate, since it seems as though your child is only about a week younger, gestationally."
Although stunned, Scully's mind automatically did the math - and figured out that she must have conceived immediately after her run-in with Daniel Watson...Or had the pregnancy test she'd taken at the fertility clinic provided a false negative?
Terror gripped her with a sudden intensity. "I didn't know I was pregnant, I was told I that I'd never...is my baby going to be okay? If I'd known I wouldn't have risk-"
"Both babies ought to be fine, as long as you take care of yourself like any woman expecting twins would. Of course, being that you and Dana are identical twins, you'll have to do DNA tests against the fathers to sort out which baby is which."
Scully felt very faint when it occurred to her that Mulder and Fox would have identical DNA too. They might never know which baby was theirs, and which was Fox and Dana's.
"Why don't I give Dana the vaccine now?" Howard suggested. "You don't look like you should be doing it yourself."
Scully's eyes never left the silver glint of the needle as he pushed most of it into Dana's arm.
A few minutes later, after the doctor gave her several pieces of supposedly helpful advice and departed, Scully walked unsteadily out into the hallway and leaned against a wall.
It was all some sort of macabre joke. There was no way that a machine with green lights and black tubes had pulled an embryo out of Dana Mulder's womb and put it into hers. The supposed ultrasound proved nothing. It could have been faked. Tapes, maybe a hard drive on the machine -
"Are you okay? You don't look too good." When she looked up she saw Chip's concerned face. It stuck her that for all that he was over a head taller than her, he still looked very young. And worried about her.
"I'm okay," she lied.
"Did you give it to them?"
It? She wondered, then realized that he meant the vaccine. "Yup, they both got it."
"Oh good. I really hope it cures them," he said earnestly.
"Me too, Chip. Me too."
"Do you have any idea where my mom is? She's not at the house."
"She and Mulder went to talk to James. Uh, Chip, do you have a James' phone number? I need to call Mulder."
"Yeah sure." Chip fished a cell phone out of his pocket, and pressed a button. "Here you go."
"Thanks," she told him, then wandered a short distance away to speak to Mulder.
A couple of minutes later she hung up and gave the phone back to Chip. "Chip, Mulder's going to spend the night at James' place so they can discuss things, like setting up a way to vaccinate everyone over the next few days. You were right earlier, I'm feeling less than my best. Do you think you could give me a ride so I can get home? Once I'm...on the other side, I've got keys to Mulder's car."
"I'd be glad to. I'm sorry that you're not feeling well."
That made her feel a little guilty. "It's probably nothing a good night's sleep won't cure," she reassured him.
An Hour Later
Washington DC
"I need to be seen tonight. No, it needs to be tonight!" Scully snapped at the woman on the phone. "I have a dangerous job, and if I'm carrying twins, I need to take much more care than with a singleton pregnancy...I'm a doctor, I know the symptoms," Scully added frostily when the nurse tired to tell her it's hard to figure out that there multiple embryos early in pregnancy. "Excessive exhaustion, more severe than usual nausea-"
The nurse seemed sick of her, but convinced that she knew what she was talking about, because she began to mutter about checking for cancellations. Then she said the magic words, "We can fit you in at five-thirty."
"Thank you so much," Scully told her. "I'm sorry for being such a bitch, but you know, hormones..."
Scully had bought a pregnancy test as soon as she returned to what she'd come to think of as "the real world" and the doctor she'd met on the other side might have been a jerk, but he wasn't a liar. The stick she'd peed on had rewarded her with a plus sign.
"The first thing we need to do is a pregnancy test," another nurse, not the one Scully had abused on the phone, announced as soon as Scully was dressed in a faded blue jonny that left little to the imagination. Scully ruefully guessed that Mulder would like it.
"We'll put a rush job on it, given the hour," the nurse added.
Quicker than Scully thought possible, the result came back. Positive. Even after the store-bought test it still surprised her a little, because she'd half believe that the whole experience in the other world had been some sort of hallucination.
She was still feeling a little stunned when the doctor, Cabbot, came into the room to do the ultrasound. "I hear that you're concerned that you might be carrying twins."
Scully nodded. "I have this strong feeling. From what I remember from medical school, my exaggerated symptoms add up," she invented again.
"Well, let's take a look. Given the date of your last period, there's a chance we might not see anything conclusive yet," he warned.
"That's okay." Scully tried not to shiver as the medium was squirted onto her bare belly for the second time.
"It looks like you're right and it's twins, Ms. Scully. Or should I say, doctor Scully?" Cabbot said with tentative smile a few minutes later when they looked at the monitor and saw two familiar shapes.
She didn't bother to correct his assumption that she was married. "Doctor is fine. How far along do you think I am?" Her eyes were fastened on the screen. Twins.
"Just a few weeks. Somewhere between a month and six weeks. Sorry, we can't tell the sexes yet at this point," he added with an apologetic smile. "We can find out later if you want to know."
"Okay, great." Scully started to get up.
"You mentioned on your form that you conceived through IVF, how many embryos were implanted?"
"Four, why?"
"It's unlikely, but as I said ultrasounds are not really considered conclusive this early into pregnancy, so there's a chance that more than two of the embryos took. We'll do another scan in six weeks, just to be on the safe side."
Scully stared at him, hoping that it was just twins. Given her petite size, triplets or quads would lead to discussions about selective reduction, and she knew that she could never go through with something like that.
"Chilmark, Massachusetts"
It was colder there then in DC, reminding Mulder of how far north Massachusetts was, and presumably this faux Chilmark too. In deference to the chill James had laid a small fire in the grate of the fire place. It was beginning to make Mulder feel nearly as sleepy as the babies Samantha had carted home over an hour before.
He rubbed his eyes then turned to James. "So try to explain to me again what your role is here. How do the five thousand souls you've pulled into this world see you?"
The other man shrugged. "They see me as a clever scientist, nothing more. I told you before, I'm no king. Dictator either."
"Do they know?" Mulder asked.
"Do they know that I make no pretense to rule this little world?"
"Do they know that you created a small world and that there are only five thousand people in it?"
"I used to believe that they didn't," James said slowly. "But I'd be lying if I tried to claim that now."
"What changed your mind?" Mulder asked impatiently.
"The murder case you were working on when I sent Chip to find you," James replied. "That man, North, it's clear that he figured it out. He killed his double, or his double killed him. If the vaccine fails I fear it won't be a singular case."
Mulder shook his head bemusedly. "There's one thing I don't understand about that case. Or two, actually. The first thing is why did North have a double at all? This world was made twenty-eight years ago, and the victim was twenty-seven."
James shrugged. "A twenty-seven-year-old man would have existed nearly twenty-eight years ago."
A light of recognition glowed in Mulder's eyes. "In utero."
"Exactly."
"But wouldn't North be immune anyway? Surely he got the MMR as a baby."
The corner of James' mouth quirked. "You give him too much credit. That connection is hardly common knowledge, and most people wouldn't work it out for themselves."
"Should it be? Common knowledge," Mulder clarified.
"If the vaccine works, it needn't be."
"How are we going to convince medical personnel to give it out?"
"I think I was a bit humble earlier. People view me as a charming, clever scientist. Don't worry, I'll convince who needs convincing."
Mulder gave a weak smile. If James was now compelling and charismatic, he hadn't grown up to be the man Mulder would have expected. The sweet but fumbling boy was gone. Mulder missed him acutely.
Washington, DC
Midnight
Her bed was far too big without Mulder in it. This was something she'd been conscious of every one of the rare nights she'd spent apart from Mulder recently. But no night before was it more noticeable. She wished he was there so she could curl up against his warm back - she slept best that way.
On the other hand, not having him there gave her a chance to think. There were two embryos. The IVF several weeks before had clearly worked. It made her slightly angry that she'd been told before that it hadn't, but her happiness that she was finally going to be a mother occluded most other emotions. Twins. She was having not one, but two children. And they were Mulder's.
Both of them, she thought with a little frown. The whole thing with Dana at the hospital had been too bizarre, too far removed from reality to been anything but some sort of mean-spirited joke. Maybe it was petty revenge for usurping Howard's power by getting permission to administer the vaccine herself. Some doctors were territorial, this man was probably one of them. The trick had been effective, and she couldn't believe how much she'd let it shake her up. It made her feel foolish.
The only thing she wasn't able to nail down in her mind was how he'd guessed that she was pregnant. Shrugging her shoulders, which felt strange to do while lying on her back, she thought of her grandma Ruth. Ruth had driven her aunts crazy by guessing that they were pregnant before they'd even told the uncles. Doctor Howard must also have that skill. It must have filled him with evil glee that he'd not only been right, but that she was expecting twins - he'd been quick enough to create a story to take advantage of it, and lecture her.
Howard was a jerk, but she decided that she wasn't going to waste any more energy thinking about him. Not when there was suddenly so much to be happy about. Scully fell asleep with her hand resting on her still flat belly.