xfc: NEW: Only the Righteous 1 of 2
Vickie Moseley
Title: Only the Righteous
Author: Vickie Moseley
Spoilers: Signs and Wonders (big ones)
Summary: Fill in the blank. Can you guess which one I chose?
Rating: PG
Category: MT, SA
Disclaimer: You really need to spend more time in the South, Chris. It
might improve that nasty case of stereotyping you seem to have developed.
But in the meantime, I did like the snake bites. Here's my homage to the
effort. I'm not infringing, just fleshing out some areas left lacking.
Archives: Shucks, yeah.
Thanks to the following 'naggers' <G> Laurie (first in line), Susan (a
real close second), Kat (another precinct heard from), Ten (you haven't
even seen it yet and you're nagging!), Sally (a gentle nudge kind of nag),
Donna, you were there in spirit . . . If I missed anybody, I apologize. I
love you all. Now, I assume you're all planning on doing one of these
stories yourselves . . . Hmmmmm? <G>
My only defense is my compulsion. Without it, I'm nothing :)
Only the Righteous
By Vickie Moseley
vmos...@fgi.net
I hate snakes.
I hate them now even more than I did when I was seven.
I close my eyes and they're all I see.
Snakes.
I blink my eyes open and the view is no less frightening. Mulder is losing
consciousness, even as I assess the number of snake bites on his body.
Vaguely, as if from a great distance, I hear Enoch O'Connor assuring me
that God will decide.
Decide if my partner will live or die.
But I can't leave this up to God. God helps those who help themselves.
I've already called the ambulance. I know that help is on the way. But I
also know that help will be several minutes in getting here and I've
counted over thirty snake bites on Mulder's upper body. I haven't even
gotten to his legs.
Mulder twitches, and I jump. His hand flails and grasps at the air, and I
know, just as surely as I can feel it in my heart, he's reaching. Reaching
for me.
Such times as these, I really wish I'd never gone to medical school. I
know that sounds ridiculous, but there is nothing I can do for him. His
breathing is labored, but not to the point where CPR would be effective.
His biggest problem at the moment is pain. Excruciating pain. And that's
why I hate my knowledge of his condition. I know exactly how much pain
he's in, times the more than thirty bites that have punctured his skin,
invaded his body.
The swelling has started. The bite on his neck is now a bump the size of a
quarter, the skin turning a blue-black in the wake of the pit viper's
digestive enzymes now systematically destroying the tissue. I check my
watch, and see that it's only been seven minutes since I burst through the
door.
Somewhere in my mind, something snaps. Or maybe it just clicks in place.
I remember what I should have been doing all this time. Carefully, I take
out my pen and as gently as possible, I mark a faint but visible circle
around the swelling on Mulder's neck. I do the same for about a third of
the bitemarks on his upper body. It will serve as a baseline, something
for the doctors at the hospital to compare when we arrive. I mark the time
on his shirt collar, somewhere that can easily be found.
"Scully?"
I thought he'd passed out, or at least I had hoped that was the case. But
Mulder's never that lucky.
"I'm right here, partner. Just take it easy. The ambulance is on the way."
"Mackey?"
"Don't worry about Mackey right now. He won't get far," I tell him. It's
a lie, of course, and we both know it. In theory, I should be chasing
after Mackey.
I still don't understand it all, but I figured it out when I arrived.
Mackey was the killer, all along. Not Enoch. Gracie was right. Her
father was trying to save her.
I should be going after him. But not when Mulder is suffering like this.
I'm not going anywhere.
A tremor runs through him, under my hand. His hand flails again, and this
time I catch it in mid-air. He clenches his fingers tightly around my own,
holding on as if it will stop the pain. I wish I could take his pain,
right now.
He screws up his face, which is already swelling along his jaw. I brush
the hair away from his forehead.
"I know, Mulder," I tell him. "I know it hurts. But the ambulance will be
here soon and they know to expect snake bites."
"Not just hurts," he says, his face a grimace and he looks like he's just
tasted two-week-old milk. "Tastes bad."
I was just reading up on this last night, I should remember. An entire web
page devoted to snake bites and their treatment. Frantically, I search my
mind and it comes to me. "Like metal?" I ask him.
He nods and winces again.
"That's part of it, Mulder. It's caused by the venom. Do you feel sick?
Do you need to throw up?"
He shakes his head and closes his eyes. "Hard . . . to breathe."
"They'll start you on oxygen, first thing," I promise. He nods again and
then seems to drift off. I notice that the small ring of ink around one of
the bites is now a good quarter inch inside the circle of swelling. This
is not good. Where the hell is that ambulance?
"Is he God-fearing?"
The voice startles me and I turn to see O'Connor, sitting up against the
wall, blood-soaked towel still clamped to his shoulder.
"What?" I ask, even though I heard the question.
"Is he a God-fearing man? Does he believe?"
"He's a good man. That's all that matters," I reply, not wanting to be
baited into an argument of 'Saved vs. Unsaved'.
"Then God will attend him," O'Connor says almost casually.
Mulder is still grasping my hand, so I know he's not completely
unconscious. His chest is rising in hitches now, it's getting harder and
harder for him to draw air into his lungs. My own panic is a solid mass,
just where I swallow. There are at least two separate bite marks on his
throat, the swelling could close off his airway if help doesn't arrive
soon. I strain my ears for the sound of the siren.
There is nothing left in the realm of science for me to do. I turn to the
only thing I have left.
I pray.
"The Lord is my Shepherd," O'Connor starts out quiet, almost a whisper,
mimicking my own thoughts.
"There is nothing I shall want," I whisper to myself.
The ambulance arrives just as the three of us walk in the Shadow of the
Valley of Death. I fully intend to follow Mulder wherever he might go.
The attendants are professionals, even in this small, rural county. In
minutes, they have Mulder on the stretcher, oxygen mask running full open,
a large bore IV needle in each arm. They are talking to the hospital on
their radio, I can see by their faces that they're concerned. One of them
notes the scribbles on Mulder's collar and looks up at me, questioning.
"I'm a doctor. I marked that about seven minutes after the attack."
He smiles at me, gives me a wink. "Good work. It might save his life."
I swallow down my urge to break into sobs. I just nod.
I should be used to ambulance rides with Mulder, but some things just never
settle in. This time I'm not in the back, I'm trailing behind. O'Connor
needs medical attention as much as Mulder, although the bleeding from his
shoulder wound has stopped. Two's company, three's over the weight limit.
As they were loading them both into the ambulance, I could still see
Enoch's mouth moving, saying words that I couldn't hear. I know he's still
praying. I wonder if he's praying for Mulder's soul. I wanted to ask that
of him, but one of the EMTs closed the door before I had a chance.
I can just make out the ambulance ahead of me, the cloud of dust from the
road obscuring my vision. It's been a dry fall and winter. I wonder what
that means to snakes.
We hit the paved road and I feel like pushing the pedal to the floor, feel
like passing the ambulance just so that I'm not trailing it any longer.
Like getting there will somehow make the journey end that much faster. Put
an end to the agony of waiting.
I'm going crazy trying not to think of what is happening in the back of the
ambulance. By now, I'm sure they've started O'Connor on an IV, replacing
the blood lost with Ringer's or straight saline. He'll be stable, that I'm
sure of. But it's Mulder's condition that has me terrified.
I read about snake bites, more than I really ever wanted to know. I know
how old Iris died. Twenty-seven bites, mostly from pit vipers and
copperheads. Twenty-seven injection sites for venom so deadly it caused
massive coronary and respiratory failure. Iris was dead before the EMTs
could load her on the stretcher.
Iris had fewer bites than Mulder.
But Iris was an old woman, frail of health, if her medical chart is to be
believed. Not at all like Mulder, who is younger, in good condition. Who
has experienced hypothermic shock on more than one occasion, who just three
months ago was lying catatonic and near comatose in a neurology ward. Who
almost died while I was tearing around, trying to find the answers to
questions first posed in my Baltimore Catechism, some 30 years ago. 'Who
made me? God made me. God made me to love him, honor him and serve him in
this world.' Not aliens from space, Mulder. God. God made the heavens
and the Earth.
Sometimes, it hurts when he says the things he does. The way he so
callously brushes aside the tenents of my faith. There is a hell of a lot
of difference between handling snakes and transubstantiation, but to
Mulder, they are one in the same. The opiate of the masses, forever cast
in doubt by the stars above us.
I know that my own skepticism has caused him equal pain, but I try very
hard not to make it personal. I try to separate my disdain for the belief
system from the man. I may not believe in aliens, but I believe in Fox
Mulder.
I believe him even when he tells me he won't leave me.
We're on the outskirts of town now. Only a few blocks to the hospital.
Same hospital where I performed Iris' autopsy, got to see the damage caused
by the twenty or more snakes up close and personal.
The ambulance skids to a stop in the parking bay and becomes the center of
a hurricane of activity. I'm directed to a parking lot on the other side
of the two story building.
By the time I find the Emergency Department, I'm accosted by the desk
nurse, directing me to Admissions. I pull out Mulder's insurance card, the
copy I finally had Benefits send down to me, and reluctantly take a seat in
front of one of the tiny cubicles resplendent with a three year old PC and
a gum-chomping 'service representative'. It takes a good fifteen minutes
to go through the various hoops and hurtles, assuring the Board of
Directors of Blessing General Hospital that the federal government, through
it's most recent contract with our insurance carrier, will pay in full all
of the charges resulting in Agent Mulder's latest line of duty injury.
Or I will know why.
This time, there is no wiggle room. This time, it was by the book. Mulder
was in the process of apprehending a suspect, caught the subject in the
midst of commiting a capital offense, disarmed said subject, only to be
attacked, with malice, by the intended victim. This report almost writes
itself. Right up to the part where the attacker's weapon turned out to be
50 or so assorted poisonous snakes.
I'll worry about the report later. Much later.
I wander through the rabbit burrow that is a small hospital grown a little
bigger, and find where Mulder was. He's not there any more, I'm informed
by the perky nurse that Agent Mulder has been taken down to X Ray and
should be back shortly.
I sit down in the vacant curtained cubicle. It know it's Mulder's because
his clothes are lying on the counter, dried blood dotting the white shirt,
my own frantic ink scratchings marring the collar. I pick them up, idly
folding the pants so the crease stays, making sure his wallet is in the
back pocket. His gun, the ankle holster, isn't there, but neither is his
ID. I'll have to remember to ask the nurse for them, since I'm sure they
are now secured in the small safe under the desk.
There is nothing to do but wait. I could sit and try to figure out how to
get the bloodstains out of Mulder's good pants, but that's pretty futile.
He'll more than likely tell me to toss them. The man has to spend a small
fortune on clothes. Not that my wardrobe doesn't go through a regular
replacement, and not just when the seasons change. Still, I can't help but
think Mulder must be hiding a secret trust fund somewhere. Or an Uncle who
happens to be a New York tailor.
I hate this part. He's being cared for, he's being supervised, and yet I'm
itching all over, the pain of separation is that tangible. I should be
using this time to my advantage, calling Skinner and the Benefits
department. Making sure the 'out of network' providers are accounted for
and his own physician, who has only seen him for follow-up visits, is
getting started on the necessary referrals.
But I do none of that very important scut work.
I could be putting my thoughts together, organizing what happened today in
some logical manner so that I can dutifully regurgitate it onto the word
processor of my laptop, whenever the hell I get back to the motel. If the
hospital is policy minded, that will be later this evening. If they really
are 'small-town friendly' like their bill board on the way into town
announces, they might let me stay the night in the inevitable easy chair I
always manage to find in the intensive care units of every hospital Mulder
has every patronized.
I don't mind putting off this case. Not for the obvious reasons. I hate
cases where Christianity plays a role. I used to hate the abduction cases,
then it was anything with EBE overtones. But lately, those don't bother me
half as much as when Mulder looks me in the eye and spits on my religion.
Why does it bother me so? He regularly spits on science and I blithefully
turn the other cheek. Why is it when the Faith of My Fathers comes under
attack that I invariably want to run and hide. Or slug him in the jaw.
Maybe it's because I still feel a little unsure. Not in my faith, I've
made my peace with what I saw or didn't see in Africa. But with my
balance. How I manage to walk the line between faith and science and throw
Mulder on top for good measure. He becomes the focus point for my
insecurities and in no small way, when I get angry at his insensitivity,
I'm really angry at myself for letting it get to me. It's a vicious
circle. A snake, devouring itself.
Boy, what a really rotten time for that image to flash in my mind.
Fortunately, my horizontal partner draws my attention away from my own
failings and back onto him, where it belongs. The gurney is pushed noisily
back in the cubicle, with no less than two nurses and a doctor in tow. IV
bags are hung from poles and a blood pressure cuff is connected to the
machine I just noticed sitting against the far curtained wall, a full
oxygen mask is hiding his face from the world. But his breathing seems
better.
"Are you Sally?" Asks the tall gentleman with a lab coat and a stethoscope
hanging haphazardly from his neck.
It takes me a moment to process the question. I'm too busy checking all
the monitors now hooked up and recording my partner's inner workings. And
not so inner workings.
"I'm sorry. What did you say?" I reply stupidly. I hate to sound so
dazed, but the question definitely wasn't one I was expecting.
"He keeps asking for Sally. His wife, maybe?" The man offers, before
turning to accept a clipboard of lab results from a third nurse. The
cubicle is getting a bit crowded now.
"No, there's no one named 'Sally'," I assure him. "My name is Dana Scully.
I'm his partner. And his next of kin," I add, just to show the validity
of my presence in the cubicle. If any body is going to be leaving, I just
want to make sure it's not me.
One of the nurses smiles and elbows the doctor in the ribs. "See, I told
you he wasn't saying 'Sally'," she teases, then gives me a wink.
"How's he doing?" I suspect he's stable, their actions are professional,
but not hurried or frantic.
"Well, the good news is, he escapes surgery. No fangs imbedded in the
derma, no necrosis that I can see at the moment. Of course, it's still
only a little over one and a half hours since onset. But we'll watch him
closely. We're becoming pretty proficient at treating envenomation."
He checks a few of the monitors and realizes that I'm not satisfied with
the report. "We started him on Antivenin, he seems to be tolerating it
well. We also have him on Benedryl IV, but so far, he isn't exhibiting an
allergic reaction to the Antivenin. We're really lucking out in that
regard. And we're starting him on Ceftriaxone, an antibiotic, which should
head off any problems . . ."
"How about the pain?" I blurt out. I know all the rest of the information
is important, and later, I'll want to know the dosages of each and every
medication he's on, but for now, I just see the tight lines around his
closed eyes and the way his fists are still clenched at his sides.
"Duramoph, IV."
He waits, I guess expecting me to interrupt him again, but this time, I
hold my tongue. He's doing his job, he's actually doing a very good job,
and I don't need to start second guessing him.
"We'll move him up to ICU in a few minutes. I'm holding off on a
transfusion for now, but that might change before the night's over."
"In case he starts bleeding," I murmur.
"You seem rather well-informed, for an Fed," the doctor says behind a
smile. "I heard a rumor that you're a doctor."
"I'm a forensic pathologist," I answer.
"I don't think he'll be needing one of those," the doctor says with a wink.
"Why don't you go get some lunch, it's almost 2 now. We'll get him
settled in a room and then you can read the chart for yourself."
I didn't think I was that transparent.
end of part one
Vickie
Come visit my web site brought to you by the fabulous Shirley Smiley!
http://vickiemoseley.freeservers.com
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