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| Title: Untitled Rating: PG Copyright: The X-Files and its affiliated characters belong to Chris Carter, 1013 Productions, and the Fox Network Summary: Mulder and Scully finally find true love but they have to work around some obstacles to get there.. The woman looked down at the golden ring that she wore. It was more than just a symbol of one who's going to marry another to her. It was a symbol of love, of friendship that can endure anything, and of an unbreakable promise, a promise that she feared she could keep no longer. She moved her right hand to cover her left when she heard the door to the room being opened. A woman, wearing a white lab coat with a light pink shirt underneath, entered. She looked like your typical doctor, a person who was overworked, underpaid, and yet still madly in love with her job. "Hi Dana." The doctor said. She walked over to the bed and pulled up a small, plastic chair. The doctor took a seat and laid her clipboard on her lap. The other woman smiled in acknowledgement. Her bare legs dangled over the side of the bed, too short to touch the ground. Chills ran down her spine but they weren't present because she was cold. She was scared, more scared than she had ever been. "Dana…" The doctor said, realizing she was quickly losing the woman's attention. "Does Fox know you're here?" "No." Scully answered. "Why not?" "It's just better that he doesn't know." Scully replied. "So what do you think is wrong with you?" The doctor asked her, knowledgeable of Scully's medical background. Scully sighed. "I want to rule out cancer as a possibility." "And what makes you think that it is a possibility? Sam questioned. "For the last week or so I've been having bad migraines, I've been vomiting profusely, I've been tired, sick, and I've woken up with a bloody nose…like before." Scully explained. The doctor jotted down her symptoms quickly before clicking her pen shut. "Well, we'll run some tests and see what we can find." The doctor said. She stood, pushed the chair back into the corner where she had gotten it from, and then began walking out of the room. "Sam…" Scully said. The woman turned around. "Please don't tell him." "I won't." She promised. The woman exited the room. Scully sighed and swung her legs up onto the bed. She curled up under the blankets and sheet that rested on the bed. She put her head on the white pillow below her and she closed her eyes, wishing away the dread that filled her heart. She had asked Sam to tell her what was wrong with her, but inside, she already knew and just didn't want to face it for his sake. She could handle it but she wasn't sure if he could. Three hours later, Scully awoke to the sound of someone entering the room. She had always been a light sleeper and the slightest sound made her wake. Samantha walked in and dragged the chair over to Scully's bed. Scully sat up in bed, trying to straighten her hair as best she could. Sam and her might have been extremely good friends and her future sister-in-law but Scully always tried to keep herself looking neat. Sam stared down at the charts that were on her lap, not making eye contact with Scully. "It's that bad, huh?" Scully commented, trying to make a slight joke. Sam looked up at her with a small smile. "I do have some bad news, Dana, but something is telling me that you already know what I'm about to say." "I had an idea. Now I just have to figure out how to tell him." "I want you to realize how serious this is, Dana, and as your doctor and friend, I have to tell what to expect." "I've been through this before, Sam." "I know, but this is going to be very different. Over the past three years, when you thought it was in remission, it was really spreading." "But I went to the doctors monthly…how could they have missed this?" "Unlike most cancer, it moved very slowly, very discreetly. Unless you had the right x-rays done and the right tests, it would have been impossible to tell up until this point." "So tell me exactly how bad it is." "It's in your brain, Dana. I'm sorry." Scully looked down at her hands as she began wringing them subtly. Her eyes welled with tears but she didn't want to cry. She wasn't afraid for the end of her life in the way that others were, but she was afraid for another reason. "What are my options?" Scully asked, not looking her friend in the eye. "We can start you on rounds of chemo and see how that goes." "And if that doesn’t work?" "There are a number of experimental treatments you could try but…" "How long?" Scully interrupted. "It's hard to tell, Dana. We'll have to see how the chemo goes and…" "How long, Sam?" She repeated. "Six months to two years." Sam answered. Scully nodded and brought her hands to her face to hide the silent tears that fell from her eyes. "I'll call him if you want." Scully looked up immediately, her eyes looking as if they hadn't cried. She was good like that, always able to hide her emotions. "No. I don't want to tell him here." "Dana, we're going to want to admit you starting tonight. We'll have to run a few more tests and start the chemo tomorrow morning." "I don't want to spend the rest of my life in a hospital, Sam. I want to work." "Work? Dana, you can't work in this condition. If you don't take the chemo there will be no chance of you getting better." Scully sighed and thought. "What if I worked in the office and on autopsies and didn't go off on field cases while taking chemo at night?" She suggested. "Dana, that's going to be extremely difficult. I don't have to tell you how hard chemo is." "I know but what's the point of having the last months or years of my life wasted by lying in a hospital bed?" "If the chemo works, though, Dana, you could add a few more years onto your life. Isn't that worth it?" "Chemo doesn't usually work for me, Sam. The first time I found out I had cancer, I tried it and it didn't work." Sam didn't know what to say. She respected Scully and knew that she was the strongest woman she had ever met but what she was proposing was virtually unheard of. No person had ever been able to work and take chemo at the same time, especially a job like the one Scully had. "I can't hold you here, Dana. I kind of wish I could, but I can't. You need to take care of yourself. You need to know your limits." "I do." Scully protested, somewhat angry at Sam for thinking she didn't even know herself. "I believe you, Dana, I really do but show it to me. Tell me or tell him…" "No. We're not bringing Mulder into this." "Am I to take it that you're not going to tell him at all?" Sam asked, kind of taken aback by Scully's reluctance to tell him. "Not until I have to." "Dana, I can understand if you don't want to tell him here…if you want to be in the comfort of your own home but he's your fiancé." Scully sighed, not responding to Sam's comment. "Can I go now?" "Yeah, go ahead." Sam said with a sigh. Scully brushed the blankets off her body. "But don't be afraid to call me if you need me." Scully nodded, slid off the bed, and then disappeared into the connecting bathroom. "Scully…" He said gently. The way he said her name rolled off his tongue in a beautiful way. Ever since she could remember, he had always said her name with love and respect. They were sitting in the place that they had spent most of the last eight years of their life, their office. Although it was not quite up to Scully's standards of clean, it was more comfortable to her than her own apartment. It had been the first place that she had met the man that she loved and it continued to be the place where they learned the most about each other. He repeated her name once again but she was too busy thinking of the past to comprehend what he was saying, no matter be able to respond. She sat behind his desk, staring off into her space. It had been five weeks since she had learned of the dreadful news and she had managed to keep it from Mulder for that long. She had also managed to keep herself going through rounds of chemo, which, up until that point, weren't helping her like she hoped. Mulder stood in the corner of the office, looking over a few pictures of "real" UFO's that he had acquired over the Internet. When he saw Scully's dazed look, he walked over next to her. He squatted down on the floor until he was eye level with her. Again he said her name and again there was no response. Her left hand was lying out on the desk, her right helping to keep her head up. Mulder reached over with his own right hand and covered her left. She jumped slightly with the feel of his touch. She blinked and looked over at him. |
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