Meditations on a Life Gone By

By syntax6
syn_tax6@yahoo.com

Category: V, A
Raging: G

Summary: A late night cup of a coffee and a conversation.

Hunger drove Maggie Scully down to the hospital cafeteria in 
the middle of the night.  Her neglected stomach had churned 
for hours before finally letting out a desperate howl and 
clawing her apart at the middle.  

The fluorescent lights lit the drab, beige room, which was 
shaped like a bowling alley with its tables and chairs lined 
up into neat rows. Maggie ordered a bowl of beef vegetable 
soup and a black coffee, which sat steaming in front of her.

It did not seem fair to eat when her daughter could not.

The cellophane-covered crackers kept slipping through her 
fingers, the paper refusing to tear.  She picked up a butter 
knife and taught the Saltines a vicious lesson, crumbs 
scattering across the plastic tabletop as the wrapper 
shredded.

It was turning cold outside as fall set in, good soup 
weather, but bad for a funeral.  They had buried her father 
in the winter, and she still remembered watching from the car 
as the cemetery staff hacked at the frozen ground with their 
shovels.  "It's like the earth doesn't want him," her mother 
had said, tucking young Maggie against her warm wool coat.

But the earth had yielded in the end, giving up a hole just 
big enough to swallow her father.

She chewed the soup without tasting it.  The faster she ate, 
the sooner she could return to Dana's bedside.  She wasn't 
really seeing, either, so he was fully in her field of view 
before she realized he was there -- too late to pretend she 
didn't notice.

"Mrs. Scully?"  Fox Mulder looked like death itself, with his 
pale, drawn face and his great black coat.  He held a paper 
cup of coffee in his hand.  "The charge nurse said you were 
probably down here.  May I join you?"

She said yes because it would be impolite to refuse him.

"I just came from upstairs," he said.  "She's sleeping."

"It's nearly two in the morning."  This was true, but the 
time hardly mattered to Dana now; she slept more and more 
thanks to the drugs meant to deaden the pain.

"Yeah, I was hoping to get here earlier but I just couldn't 
get away."

She met his eyes for the first time.  "Dana wanted to see 
you."

This got to him, she could see, and he looked at his coffee.  
"She said so?"

"She didn't have to."  Her daughter had spent most of the 
evening twisted in bed so that she could see the door.  Every 
time it opened, she'd held her breath, expectant, but Mulder 
had never come through.

Dana never had the chance to tell him what she'd told her 
mother that morning -- if the treatment failed, which it was 
likely to do, she wanted to go home.  No more hospital.  No 
more tests or therapies.  This was her baby's final wish, 
that she would be strong enough to go home to die.

Maggie blinked back sudden tears, thinking on it.  She 
considered telling Mulder herself and forcing him to live 
with the knowledge along with her.

Bill Junior was already angry that Mulder came and went from 
the hospital like a fairy while the rest of the family kept 
watch.  "He comes in here for five minutes, makes her cry and 
then leaves again."

If Bill were in charge, he'd rub Mulder's nose in it like you 
would a dog that had soiled the rug.  Look here, he'd say, at 
what you've done.

Mulder rotated his coffee cup in his hands. "I know my 
methods may seem... unorthodox, but I promise I am doing 
everything in my power to help Scully."

Scully, Maggie thought.  She might have skipped naming her 
children altogether for the good it had done her.  Scully had 
been her husband and the family she was marrying into; his 
friends would come over to drink, smoke and play cards, and 
she'd hear that name echoing through the house -- "Scully, 
you're a bum cheater, is what you are!" -- as Bill won 
another hand.

Then her two boys joined up and they became "Scully" too.  
Her youngest daughter had taken a different route but she'd 
ended up in the same spot, working for a government that 
didn't give a damn what your momma named you.

"We're all just trying the best we can, I guess," she said to 
Mulder, giving him a tight smile.  And Agent Mulder's best 
was chasing ghosts.  Maybe Dana would be easier for him to 
deal with when she was gone and he could look for her among 
the stars.

It would be her third family funeral inside of four years.  
She had lost Bill and Melissa so quickly, with no real chance 
to say good-bye.  Dana had been sick for months but this was 
no easier.  She had to watch her daughter fade away in front 
of her eyes and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

"You just can't be ready for it."

"Excuse me?"

Her head jerked up.  She hadn't realized she'd spoken aloud.  
"It surprises you, what you miss," she told him.

"When Bill died, the house got so quiet.  He used to get up 
first every morning and make the coffee.  I'd wake up to that 
smell and know I'd find him downstairs with his mug and the 
morning paper.  He'd read me different bits while I fixed the 
eggs and we'd talk about what was going on in the world.  Now 
I have an automatic coffee maker and a radio instead."

"Mrs. Scully..."

"Melissa, God, that about ripped my heart out.  She'd been in 
and out of our lives for years so you'd think that might have 
made it easier to bear somehow but it wasn't."

"Of course not."

Maggie had buried a part of herself with Melissa, the part 
that used to pick up frilly, impractical clothes at the flea 
market because her daughter liked to play princess.  The part 
that preferred beads to BB guns and would rather make snow 
angels than snow forts.  The serious, pragmatic side of the 
Scully children came from the military and from Bill.  
Melissa's whimsy was an echo of Maggie's own childhood, a 
place that lived only in her memory now that Missy was gone.

Now days, when Maggie read about women who knit sweaters for 
penguins or some other such silly story in the news, she 
didn't bother to clip the paper; there was no one to whom she 
could send it.

Her youngest daughter had no time or inclination to entertain 
such fluff.

"Dana spent the first six weeks of her life in a hospital, 
did she ever tell you that?"

Mulder shook his head slowly.

"She was born over a month early.  We teased her about it 
later, telling her she was just so impatient she couldn't 
wait to get into the world, but it was a scary thing at the 
time.  She weighed barely four pounds and her lungs weren't 
fully developed -- she was so pink and tiny.  They had her in 
an incubator, hooked up to all these monitors, and no one 
could assure me she would live. Bill fought me, but I had her 
baptized right there in the neonatal intensive care ward.  I 
wanted to make sure she went to heaven.  He thought I was 
giving up, that I was saying it was okay for God to take 
her."

She looked at Mulder, at his shuttered face, and saw he 
thought the same thing.

"I was just trying to protect her."

"So am I."

Right.  He got the easy part.  Clinging to relentless 
optimism and heading out the door every chance he got while 
she sat in the hot, airless room and watched her daughter 
die.

"You do what you have to do," Mulder told her, resting his 
big hands on the table.

Maggie stared at his fingers until they blurred before her, 
until she saw him years ago standing with Dana's headstone 
between them.  She had wanted to give her daughter the only 
thing she had left in her power; she'd wanted to give her 
peace.

Mulder stood up without saying anything and crushed his paper 
cup in one hand.  He turned to go but then faced her again.  
"My sister's been gone so long that sometimes it's like she 
never existed, but then I'll catch someone out of the corner 
of my eye and I'll think it's her, like she could just show 
up one day on the street."

He took a breath.

"The thing is, when I see her, she's still eight years old.  
I'm looking at children when she would turn thirty-two next 
month."

He ducked his head and tapped his fingers lightly on the 
table near her soup bowl.  "Tell Dana I stopped by, okay?"

She could barely find her voice.  "Okay."

She watched the back of his coat as he walked away, until he 
melted into the shadowed hall like a vanishing spirit.  After 
she finished the rest of the cooled soup, she got a refill on 
her coffee and took it back up to Dana's room.

She opened the door quietly, tiptoeing inside the way she had 
done when Dana was just a baby, home for the first time.  
Those first awful nights when she couldn't sleep, creeping up 
to the cradle and resting her hand on her daughter.

Keep breathing, baby girl.

####

Notes: I still find it odd that Maggie Scully was picking out 
her daughter's headstone after just 3 months -- or even 6 
weeks, depending on which timeline you believe.  I also find 
it hard to believe that Maggie harbors lots of warm fuzzy 
feelings about Mulder.  Every time she sees him, a member of 
her family is suffering or dead. 

There are lots of scenes that don't make it into my longer 
stories.  This is one of them. *g*

Thanks as ever to Amanda for the beta!

Feedback always welcome at syn_tax6@yahoo.com