TITLE: Ersatz Promises (8/8)
AUTHORS: Susanne Barringer and Suzanne Schramm
EMAIL: [email protected]; [email protected]
Info and disclaimers in part 1.
Missing chapters available at http://www.geocities.com/s_barringer/ersatz.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~
CHAPTER 8
I lean hard against the heavy weight of the oak door, and it opens under my push. Stepping out of the cold and into the warm alcove, I shake off the snow that has fallen onto my shoulders and hair. I enter the sanctuary and stop just inside the door, allowing myself to absorb the magnificence. Although I have been inside this church many times over the years, it looks different to me at night. The stained-glass windows are lit from the inside only, and the candlelight throws shadows across the high vaulted ceiling. I always find churches peaceful, but at night that peacefulness takes on a new intensity as the darkness is shut outside and the light is welcomed within.
I am alone in the sanctuary except for a woman sitting in a pew near the front. By the hunched curve of her back, I suspect she is an older woman, though it is impossible to tell with the scarf she wears over her head. I'm not sure if she is deep in thought or deep in sleep, but I decide to choose a pew on the opposite side so that I do not disturb her.
Once seated, I close my eyes for a moment to allow all the feelings to settle over me. Although I have felt on the verge of tears for the last few weeks, I have not cried since I told Mulder the news. I wait now, thinking the tears will come in this haven from the outside world, but they do not. I cannot seem to find the release I need.
I open my eyes and study my surroundings, feeling the constant pounding that has been haunting me all evening begin to wane. The vial Mulder gave me waits in my pocket, beckoning me with harsh reality inside this sanctuary.
I think back to Mulder tonight, as he had to break the news to me. It was nearly unbearable to put him in the position of bringing this choice to me. I could see in his eyes how much he didn't want to tell me, how much he didn't want to make me decide between myself and the child.
I try to weigh the options objectively. Even if I can live long enough to carry this baby close to term, which seems unlikely given the early deaths of the other women, could it survive a premature birth? And if it did, what about the blood abnormality I saw in the Turner baby? Would there be medical abnormalities following it through childhood and maybe even into adulthood?
Then, even if there weren't the medical concerns, what kind of life will the child have? Surely the men who created it will come back to claim their prize. Will Mulder be able to protect it? Can I ask him to give up everything to save a child that isn't even technically mine?
Should the child be born, only to be seized and used as a medical experiment? Like Emily? Or Gibson? Gibson's words come back to haunt me. "I'm a very special lab rat."
There's one thing I haven't told Mulder, one thing that weighs on my conscience. The initial blood test results that I got back from the Gunmen's doctor friend - they were not at all what I expected. They were almost normal. I tried not to allow that to raise my hopes. The other tests, the ones that will paint a more accurate picture of what is going on in my body, will take time. But when I saw those blood results, for one brief moment, my heart soared. Could it be possible? Could the condition be reversing itself?
Maybe with more time I could figure it out. I could find a treatment for the blood abnormality, I could find a way to protect the child. It's a fatal deadline - at most I have only a few months left - and then Mulder is left to shoulder the burden.
This child sucks up my own life, yet it has in many ways renewed my life. Carrying it, feeling it move, loving it. In some ways it is the most joy I have ever felt, the most alive I have ever been. I'm not sure I can give that up, even at the price of my life.
The thought brings the tears kicking at the back of my throat again, but they still refuse to fall. I sigh heavily and then reach forward to pull out a Bible from the rack in front of me. I hold the book on my lap, just staring at the words embossed in gold on the front cover. Holy Bible. I long for the days when my faith was stronger than my doubt, when this book could bring me comfort for almost anything I had to face. Now, I'm not sure where I can find the strength. As much as I may wish for it, I cannot find it here. I'm not sure it's even possible for me to find it at all. Where do I look when what I'm experiencing goes beyond the realm of science and beyond the extremes of faith? There is nothing in either of those places, science or religion, that can explain this, that can help me understand what is happening.
What kind of suffering awaits this child, half human, half something I can neither know nor understand? Am I to make the decision to save the child by killing it? The paradox is a bitter one, the benefits of life and death reversed, confused, indistinguishable from each other. There is no way to know what is right.
I am, however, not alone in this decision. For better or worse, Mulder has a stake in it too. He sat beside me, trying to help me weigh the options, although I am well aware that he supports only the one, the one that will guarantee my own life and, at the same time, make inevitable the death of my child which he, also, has come to love. "You have to save yourself," he told me, his hand tracing light circles on my leg as if trying to draw a picture for me of what is necessary.
Why? It is a question I have been asking myself for weeks now, months, years in fact. Why? Why me?
Although I feel calmed from my sojourn in the church, my blood not racing, my emotions under control for the moment, I don't feel any more sure of my decision than I did when I entered. Sleepiness is blurring my mind, and I know I should go home and try to get some rest. I replace the still unopened Bible in the rack and stand to leave. As I walk down the pew, I notice that the old woman has also gotten up and is walking up the aisle toward me. We reach the end of my pew at the same moment.
"When are you due?" she asks, her voice sounding as old as she looks. Surprised, I look her in the face. Her eyes, set deep within her chiseled face, are dark in color but bright with life, despite her age.
"What?"
"Your baby. When is she due?" Confused, I look down at my stomach, then back up at her. I'm not showing yet. How could she know?
Not sure what to say, and flustered by the whole exchange, I answer with the first thing that pops into my head. "I'm not sure."
The woman nods slightly, then reaches out a hand. I notice her fingers are cramped with arthritis, contracted into grotesque shapes. She stops just short of my belly. "May I?" she asks, not breaking my gaze. I nod, oddly unsure if I have a choice in the matter.
She presses her hand flat against my stomach, closing her eyes at the same time. It is only a matter of seconds before I see her brow crease and a sharp grimace pass over her face. Shocked by the change in her visage, I step back and the contact between us is lost.
She opens her eyes again and I see sorrow reflected in them, the previous brightness dimmed by a shadowy gloom. "Sometimes, we have to find the strength to let them go," she says in a tone that is remarkably soothing. I can do nothing but stare at her. "Sometimes, that is the best way to love them."
And then she is gone, halfway up the aisle before I have even taken a breath. While I'm trying to unravel the intent of her words, she reaches the door of the church and exits into the cold. She leaves me standing in the middle of the church alone, tears streaming down my face in the first flood of relief I have felt in what seems like forever.
***
As I walk home from the church, the snow falls faster. The old woman's words sink into me, calming the ceaseless flurries of my thoughts. The world outside me is a mass of whiteness and gray shadow, lit by a full moon which cannot reach the darkness lingering in the corners. My decision lurks in my mind the same way, just a murky shadow wrapped in a blanket of numb ice and darkness. All the snowy words of the past few weeks gather in tall drifts pressed against my soul. I finger the vial in my pocket, its green color an aberration in this gray world. A single splash of vibrant color, like the future in an otherwise miserable present. The decision made, I walk with purpose, the wind and cold at last destroying all lingering doubt.
X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X
*EPILOGUE*
I roll down the window to let in some fresh air. The monotony of the highway is making me drowsy. Scully doesn't stir. I look over to check on her again. Her head is angled awkwardly against the passenger-side window, but I don't want to risk waking her by trying to right it. She's only been asleep for a couple of hours, probably the longest sustained sleep she's had in days.
We shouldn't be here. It's only been three weeks since the "procedure" - neither of us has ever used one of the other, more accurate, terms for what happened - and she's still weak.
I glance at her again, reassuring myself that she's still with me. I had thought that she would call me when she had made her decision. I had thought that she wouldn't want to be alone.
I was wrong.
I waited by the phone for her to call. All that night and into the next morning I waited. She never called.
By mid-morning I was growing worried, so I tried her phone. No answer. I had watched her the night before, distantly witnessing her late night sojourn to the church and back. Once she was safely home, I went to my apartment and started waiting. The fact that she wasn't answering shouldn't have been alarming; she might have gone to the church again. Or to the store. Or anywhere.
I knew, though. I knew what I would find inside her apartment. I pictured it all the way over. Scully, in a pool of blood, barely hanging on to life. What I found was almost as devastating.
She didn't answer when I knocked, didn't call out when I said her name. Her apartment was neat, and just as I had left it the night before. I went down the hallway to her room and pushed the half-closed door open. The bed had been stripped, all its blankets were in a heap on the floor. In the center of her mattress there was a dark stain. It wasn't very large, but my heart stopped anyway.
"Scully?"
Turning towards her bathroom, I saw a bedsheet trailed across the floor. Inside the door, curled up in front of the toilet, was Scully. A stained sheet covered her. Towels, some of them soiled, were strewn all over the floor. The tub was filled with silent pink water.
"Scully?"
Her skin felt cold when I touched her. I crouched next to her, uncertain whether I should move her or not.
"Mulder?" Her eyes half-opened, then closed again when they found me. "I let her go. I had to."
I pulled her into my arms, cradling her there awkwardly. "You should have called me."
And now, three weeks later, she's still reliving that night. She doesn't talk about it, and I'm not sure if she's reticent because it's her personal pain or because she's trying to spare me. She tries to hide it from me, but I see the grief etched around the corners of her eyes. What she has lost she can never get back, and there are no promises I can make to even begin to compensate.
She has become too thin, too pale, too gaunt. I worry that she might not ever fully recover physically from what's been done to her. Still, there wasn't a thing I could do to stop her from coming on this trip. As soon as the Gunmen called to report that they'd found an unusually high number of deaths of pregnant women from a clinic in Wyoming, Scully packed her bags and insisted we go look into it.
"This is what you said you needed me for," she argued when I told her it could wait. I didn't have an answer for that. I know that she needs this, something to put her back up against, something to do to make sure it wasn't all in vain. We know they are out there, other women carrying other Samanthas - ersatz promises that should never have been made.
I traded Scanlon his freedom for Scully's cure, and it has cost me, though I would pay that price again a thousand times over. The lab where he took me was stripped of all evidence that it was ever used for anything other than pharmaceutical experiments. What Scanlon told me, however, hints that this was bigger than Scully, that it was bigger than the women in Doylestown and Allentown.
Now we have a lead again - just the smallest of leads, but maybe a beginning.
*****
THE END
**********
EP Stats:
Idea proposed by Susanne: e-mail dated January 12, 1999, 23:16
Original posting deadline set for EP: Before 1999 spring mytharc
Next posting deadline: Before 6th season finale
Next posting deadline: Before 7th season premiere
Next posting deadline: Before 7th season finale
Thoughts when Scully announced pregnancy in 7th season finale: SHIT!
Next posting deadline: Before 8th season premiere
Absolute, final, must get our butts in gear deadline: Before 8th season finale
Last line finally agreed upon: May 16, 2001, 23:23
Time elapsed: 2 years, 5 months, 4 days and 7 minutes
Why did it take so long?
Bedtime stories read to Sue's son: 251
Bedtime stories read to Susanne's niece: 24
Required road trips for Sue's job: 33
Term papers graded by Susanne: 3000
Number of times Sue moved: 2
Hours spent fixing Sue's new house: 284
Hours spent working on Susanne's dissertation: 73
Vacations taken by Sue: 8
Vacations taken by Susanne: 7
Vacations taken by Sue & Susanne together where they brought EP to work on it: 3
Total vacation time spent working on EP: 15 minutes (generous estimate)
Stories posted 1/99 - 5/1 by Sue: 13
Stories posted 1/99 - 5/1 by Susanne: 25
Hours spent discussing EP on IM: 763 (approximately)
Average interval when we'd say "we should really work on EP": Once a week
Average interval when we'd actually work on EP: Once a month
Number of words in EP: 17,652
Average amount of time spent on each word: 23 hours (approximately)
Hey, we have lives! When you look at it this way, a word a day isn't too bad. :)
Please direct any comments on our inherent laziness to:
[email protected]; [email protected]
AUTHORS: Susanne Barringer and Suzanne Schramm
EMAIL: [email protected]; [email protected]
Info and disclaimers in part 1.
Missing chapters available at http://www.geocities.com/s_barringer/ersatz.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~
CHAPTER 8
I lean hard against the heavy weight of the oak door, and it opens under my push. Stepping out of the cold and into the warm alcove, I shake off the snow that has fallen onto my shoulders and hair. I enter the sanctuary and stop just inside the door, allowing myself to absorb the magnificence. Although I have been inside this church many times over the years, it looks different to me at night. The stained-glass windows are lit from the inside only, and the candlelight throws shadows across the high vaulted ceiling. I always find churches peaceful, but at night that peacefulness takes on a new intensity as the darkness is shut outside and the light is welcomed within.
I am alone in the sanctuary except for a woman sitting in a pew near the front. By the hunched curve of her back, I suspect she is an older woman, though it is impossible to tell with the scarf she wears over her head. I'm not sure if she is deep in thought or deep in sleep, but I decide to choose a pew on the opposite side so that I do not disturb her.
Once seated, I close my eyes for a moment to allow all the feelings to settle over me. Although I have felt on the verge of tears for the last few weeks, I have not cried since I told Mulder the news. I wait now, thinking the tears will come in this haven from the outside world, but they do not. I cannot seem to find the release I need.
I open my eyes and study my surroundings, feeling the constant pounding that has been haunting me all evening begin to wane. The vial Mulder gave me waits in my pocket, beckoning me with harsh reality inside this sanctuary.
I think back to Mulder tonight, as he had to break the news to me. It was nearly unbearable to put him in the position of bringing this choice to me. I could see in his eyes how much he didn't want to tell me, how much he didn't want to make me decide between myself and the child.
I try to weigh the options objectively. Even if I can live long enough to carry this baby close to term, which seems unlikely given the early deaths of the other women, could it survive a premature birth? And if it did, what about the blood abnormality I saw in the Turner baby? Would there be medical abnormalities following it through childhood and maybe even into adulthood?
Then, even if there weren't the medical concerns, what kind of life will the child have? Surely the men who created it will come back to claim their prize. Will Mulder be able to protect it? Can I ask him to give up everything to save a child that isn't even technically mine?
Should the child be born, only to be seized and used as a medical experiment? Like Emily? Or Gibson? Gibson's words come back to haunt me. "I'm a very special lab rat."
There's one thing I haven't told Mulder, one thing that weighs on my conscience. The initial blood test results that I got back from the Gunmen's doctor friend - they were not at all what I expected. They were almost normal. I tried not to allow that to raise my hopes. The other tests, the ones that will paint a more accurate picture of what is going on in my body, will take time. But when I saw those blood results, for one brief moment, my heart soared. Could it be possible? Could the condition be reversing itself?
Maybe with more time I could figure it out. I could find a treatment for the blood abnormality, I could find a way to protect the child. It's a fatal deadline - at most I have only a few months left - and then Mulder is left to shoulder the burden.
This child sucks up my own life, yet it has in many ways renewed my life. Carrying it, feeling it move, loving it. In some ways it is the most joy I have ever felt, the most alive I have ever been. I'm not sure I can give that up, even at the price of my life.
The thought brings the tears kicking at the back of my throat again, but they still refuse to fall. I sigh heavily and then reach forward to pull out a Bible from the rack in front of me. I hold the book on my lap, just staring at the words embossed in gold on the front cover. Holy Bible. I long for the days when my faith was stronger than my doubt, when this book could bring me comfort for almost anything I had to face. Now, I'm not sure where I can find the strength. As much as I may wish for it, I cannot find it here. I'm not sure it's even possible for me to find it at all. Where do I look when what I'm experiencing goes beyond the realm of science and beyond the extremes of faith? There is nothing in either of those places, science or religion, that can explain this, that can help me understand what is happening.
What kind of suffering awaits this child, half human, half something I can neither know nor understand? Am I to make the decision to save the child by killing it? The paradox is a bitter one, the benefits of life and death reversed, confused, indistinguishable from each other. There is no way to know what is right.
I am, however, not alone in this decision. For better or worse, Mulder has a stake in it too. He sat beside me, trying to help me weigh the options, although I am well aware that he supports only the one, the one that will guarantee my own life and, at the same time, make inevitable the death of my child which he, also, has come to love. "You have to save yourself," he told me, his hand tracing light circles on my leg as if trying to draw a picture for me of what is necessary.
Why? It is a question I have been asking myself for weeks now, months, years in fact. Why? Why me?
Although I feel calmed from my sojourn in the church, my blood not racing, my emotions under control for the moment, I don't feel any more sure of my decision than I did when I entered. Sleepiness is blurring my mind, and I know I should go home and try to get some rest. I replace the still unopened Bible in the rack and stand to leave. As I walk down the pew, I notice that the old woman has also gotten up and is walking up the aisle toward me. We reach the end of my pew at the same moment.
"When are you due?" she asks, her voice sounding as old as she looks. Surprised, I look her in the face. Her eyes, set deep within her chiseled face, are dark in color but bright with life, despite her age.
"What?"
"Your baby. When is she due?" Confused, I look down at my stomach, then back up at her. I'm not showing yet. How could she know?
Not sure what to say, and flustered by the whole exchange, I answer with the first thing that pops into my head. "I'm not sure."
The woman nods slightly, then reaches out a hand. I notice her fingers are cramped with arthritis, contracted into grotesque shapes. She stops just short of my belly. "May I?" she asks, not breaking my gaze. I nod, oddly unsure if I have a choice in the matter.
She presses her hand flat against my stomach, closing her eyes at the same time. It is only a matter of seconds before I see her brow crease and a sharp grimace pass over her face. Shocked by the change in her visage, I step back and the contact between us is lost.
She opens her eyes again and I see sorrow reflected in them, the previous brightness dimmed by a shadowy gloom. "Sometimes, we have to find the strength to let them go," she says in a tone that is remarkably soothing. I can do nothing but stare at her. "Sometimes, that is the best way to love them."
And then she is gone, halfway up the aisle before I have even taken a breath. While I'm trying to unravel the intent of her words, she reaches the door of the church and exits into the cold. She leaves me standing in the middle of the church alone, tears streaming down my face in the first flood of relief I have felt in what seems like forever.
***
As I walk home from the church, the snow falls faster. The old woman's words sink into me, calming the ceaseless flurries of my thoughts. The world outside me is a mass of whiteness and gray shadow, lit by a full moon which cannot reach the darkness lingering in the corners. My decision lurks in my mind the same way, just a murky shadow wrapped in a blanket of numb ice and darkness. All the snowy words of the past few weeks gather in tall drifts pressed against my soul. I finger the vial in my pocket, its green color an aberration in this gray world. A single splash of vibrant color, like the future in an otherwise miserable present. The decision made, I walk with purpose, the wind and cold at last destroying all lingering doubt.
X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X
*EPILOGUE*
I roll down the window to let in some fresh air. The monotony of the highway is making me drowsy. Scully doesn't stir. I look over to check on her again. Her head is angled awkwardly against the passenger-side window, but I don't want to risk waking her by trying to right it. She's only been asleep for a couple of hours, probably the longest sustained sleep she's had in days.
We shouldn't be here. It's only been three weeks since the "procedure" - neither of us has ever used one of the other, more accurate, terms for what happened - and she's still weak.
I glance at her again, reassuring myself that she's still with me. I had thought that she would call me when she had made her decision. I had thought that she wouldn't want to be alone.
I was wrong.
I waited by the phone for her to call. All that night and into the next morning I waited. She never called.
By mid-morning I was growing worried, so I tried her phone. No answer. I had watched her the night before, distantly witnessing her late night sojourn to the church and back. Once she was safely home, I went to my apartment and started waiting. The fact that she wasn't answering shouldn't have been alarming; she might have gone to the church again. Or to the store. Or anywhere.
I knew, though. I knew what I would find inside her apartment. I pictured it all the way over. Scully, in a pool of blood, barely hanging on to life. What I found was almost as devastating.
She didn't answer when I knocked, didn't call out when I said her name. Her apartment was neat, and just as I had left it the night before. I went down the hallway to her room and pushed the half-closed door open. The bed had been stripped, all its blankets were in a heap on the floor. In the center of her mattress there was a dark stain. It wasn't very large, but my heart stopped anyway.
"Scully?"
Turning towards her bathroom, I saw a bedsheet trailed across the floor. Inside the door, curled up in front of the toilet, was Scully. A stained sheet covered her. Towels, some of them soiled, were strewn all over the floor. The tub was filled with silent pink water.
"Scully?"
Her skin felt cold when I touched her. I crouched next to her, uncertain whether I should move her or not.
"Mulder?" Her eyes half-opened, then closed again when they found me. "I let her go. I had to."
I pulled her into my arms, cradling her there awkwardly. "You should have called me."
And now, three weeks later, she's still reliving that night. She doesn't talk about it, and I'm not sure if she's reticent because it's her personal pain or because she's trying to spare me. She tries to hide it from me, but I see the grief etched around the corners of her eyes. What she has lost she can never get back, and there are no promises I can make to even begin to compensate.
She has become too thin, too pale, too gaunt. I worry that she might not ever fully recover physically from what's been done to her. Still, there wasn't a thing I could do to stop her from coming on this trip. As soon as the Gunmen called to report that they'd found an unusually high number of deaths of pregnant women from a clinic in Wyoming, Scully packed her bags and insisted we go look into it.
"This is what you said you needed me for," she argued when I told her it could wait. I didn't have an answer for that. I know that she needs this, something to put her back up against, something to do to make sure it wasn't all in vain. We know they are out there, other women carrying other Samanthas - ersatz promises that should never have been made.
I traded Scanlon his freedom for Scully's cure, and it has cost me, though I would pay that price again a thousand times over. The lab where he took me was stripped of all evidence that it was ever used for anything other than pharmaceutical experiments. What Scanlon told me, however, hints that this was bigger than Scully, that it was bigger than the women in Doylestown and Allentown.
Now we have a lead again - just the smallest of leads, but maybe a beginning.
*****
THE END
**********
EP Stats:
Idea proposed by Susanne: e-mail dated January 12, 1999, 23:16
Original posting deadline set for EP: Before 1999 spring mytharc
Next posting deadline: Before 6th season finale
Next posting deadline: Before 7th season premiere
Next posting deadline: Before 7th season finale
Thoughts when Scully announced pregnancy in 7th season finale: SHIT!
Next posting deadline: Before 8th season premiere
Absolute, final, must get our butts in gear deadline: Before 8th season finale
Last line finally agreed upon: May 16, 2001, 23:23
Time elapsed: 2 years, 5 months, 4 days and 7 minutes
Why did it take so long?
Bedtime stories read to Sue's son: 251
Bedtime stories read to Susanne's niece: 24
Required road trips for Sue's job: 33
Term papers graded by Susanne: 3000
Number of times Sue moved: 2
Hours spent fixing Sue's new house: 284
Hours spent working on Susanne's dissertation: 73
Vacations taken by Sue: 8
Vacations taken by Susanne: 7
Vacations taken by Sue & Susanne together where they brought EP to work on it: 3
Total vacation time spent working on EP: 15 minutes (generous estimate)
Stories posted 1/99 - 5/1 by Sue: 13
Stories posted 1/99 - 5/1 by Susanne: 25
Hours spent discussing EP on IM: 763 (approximately)
Average interval when we'd say "we should really work on EP": Once a week
Average interval when we'd actually work on EP: Once a month
Number of words in EP: 17,652
Average amount of time spent on each word: 23 hours (approximately)
Hey, we have lives! When you look at it this way, a word a day isn't too bad. :)
Please direct any comments on our inherent laziness to:
[email protected]; [email protected]