Summary: The quarantine that was imposed following the outbreak
of F. Emasculata and what happened to our favorite FBI agents.
Rating: G, despite the questionable title <VEG>
Category: X A UST
Spoiler: F. Emasculata
Disclaimer: How do I love thee? Let me count the ways: 10 - 13.
They own 'em. I wish I did. But I always put them back nicely,
and I never take any money for this, so let's all enjoy the sandbox
together, shall we?
Archive: Yes, please. Post to all archives and the newsgroup.
I finished this on October 31, 1997.
Comments to me: Vickie Moseley

Emasculated
by Vickie Moseley

An Army Installation Somewhere In
Virginia

11:45 pm

"QUARANTINE! Scully, you can't be serious! Why are they
putting _me_ in quarantine?" Fox Mulder demanded from his little
white glass enclosed cubicle. "Now you, I can see their point. You
were exposed to all those men, and the bodies. But I wasn't close
enough to this guy to get the disease. I don't need to be
quarantined!"

His partner, Dana Scully, regarded him closely for a moment. He
was a mess. Sure, his suit was intact--for a change. A little dirty,
but not ripped anywhere. No blood that she could decern, no
bruises on any exposed body parts. If someone didn't know him,
they might think he was perfectly healthy--fine in every way. "Very
fine," Scully muttered to herself appreciatively.

But that would be to discount the 36 plus hours of stubble on his
jutting chin or the deep, dark circles that spoke of far too little sleep
and far too many cups of coffee. And the leaning way he stood, his
weight conveniently off his left leg, which still tended to bother him
when he was very tired. Dana Scully knew her partner, and at that
very moment, he was on the verge of collapse.

That said, she could see his point. It really was unnecessary to
quarantine him. He had not been near the infected convict long
enough to contract the disease, nor had he been present when one
of the diseased man's pustules had erupted. She thanked her lucky
stars a hundred times that in truth, Fox Mulder had come out of this
manhunt unscathed. But there was more to consider here than just
luck. Before her was an opportunity. An opportunity to force her
partner to take it easy for a while.

Scully knew the stats. To date, her partner had taken exactly three
vacation days in the last three years. And that was not to mention
the forty days of compensatory time that the Bureau owed him for
Saturdays and Sundays that he worked while on various cases. In
short--if he didn't get some time off, he was gonna go postal on her
and she simply could not let that happen.

He'd had time off, that wasn't the problem. But medical leave was
not what it was cracked up to be, especially when it was time spent
in intensive care or a coma. So the quarantine being enforced by
the United States Army Research Institute of Infectious Diseases
was just the ticket to give Fox Mulder a well deserved rest. Or so
his partner had decided.

And besides--if she was going to be stuck in a 10 by 12 foot
hospital room with no TV and nothing to read--well, she sure as
hell wasn't going to go through that alone. He could just sit it out
in an identical room next to her.

"Mulder, look. This one isn't up to me. CDC and USAMRIID
both are requiring a quarantine of all the passengers of that bus, and
since you were the lone 'cowboy' to enter the interior without
benefit of protective clothing--" she said with a pointed glare, "you
have won yourself two weeks all expenses paid at the resort of their
choice. Let's just pretend it's a vacation."

"Scully, you have to get me out of this! C'mon, make 'em take
some blood, poke me in the butt a couple of times, and we'll call it
even--just get me out of here!" he pleaded.

"Mulder, don't you think that if I could get _anyone_ out of this,
I'd be getting myself out? And contrary to your most cherished
beliefs, I don't enjoy watching them hook you up to heart monitors
and IV pumps--anymore than I enjoy when it happens to me,"
Scully retorted acidly. "And if I could get us out of this, I would.
But it's not up to me. It's up to them--" she jerked a thumb in the
direction of two doctors, both in blue biohazard suits, currently
preparing syringes and attaching air hoses to their gear. "And from
the looks of it, I won't have to ask them to stick you, they already
thought of that."

Mulder sighed heavily. "I suppose they want me to change," he
muttered.

She almost laughed at his change of tone. Then she looked down
at the pale green hospital gown she was currently sporting and all
humor left the situation--almost.

"That is why they gave you the gown. Look, it's got little airplanes
on it," Scully said brightly. The look he shot her would have turned
a lesser heart to stone, but not Scully. Her smile grew a hundred
fold. "Go on, Mulder, I can't wait for you to model it for me."

"You should get so lucky," he growled and ripped off his jacket and
tie, unfastened the cuff buttons on his shirt before flashing her a
'not in this life time' smile and retreating into the small bathroom of
the quarantine cubicle. When he returned, some five minutes later,
he had a second gown covering him as a robe and he grinned
happily as he slid between the sheets of the bed. "Bring on the
Inquisition," he intoned and she couldn't resist the giggle that
welled up in her throat.

The USAMRIID doctors were efficient, but conscious of their
patients mental well being, so the curtain between the two
quarantine cubicles was closed. At first, that upset her, but she
quickly changed her mind. Not that she didn't appreciate seeing
blue suited beings swarming over her partner's not quite completely
covered body, but she knew that he'd be watching her watching
him and that was something she wanted to avoid. When Mulder
was unconscious, she stared at him a lot. She stared at him all the
times the ER doctors determined if he'd caused himself permanent
brain damage with the latest blow to the head, or if nerve or heart
damage would result from his most recent dance with death. But
never when he was awake, and aware that she was looking. Never
then.

She made herself as comfortable as she could on the narrow
hospital bed and decided to catch a few winks.

1:00 am

"Agent Scully, if I could have a word with you?" the blue suited
gentleman at her bedside said evenly. Scully woke slowly and
looked around, rubbing her eyes. Then she looked up and
remembered his name as Coughlin, he was a Major and the head of
the medical team assigned to the quarantine patients.

"Don't tell me he's causing you trouble already?" Scully said with a
sigh. "Usually, it takes him at least half a day to make a
monumental pain of himself."

Major Coughlin nodded, but didn't return Scully's smile. "We
found something a little troubling. But it wasn't your partner's
attitude, I'm afraid."

Scully's blood turned to ice in her veins. Oh God, could he have
become infected? There had been that risk, the risk that the disease
that they'd found running rampant in a small Virginia prison could
have become airborne. Previous victims had to come into contact
with the larvae from the species F. Emasculata to become infected,
but once infected, the fatality rate rivaled that of the Ebola virus.
All the infected men at the prison were dead within 36 hours. That
included one of the doctors who had been treating the men. And
Mulder had been there--and exposed-- as the convict named Paul
had died at 10:13 pm.

"What's wrong," Scully asked, when she finally trusted herself to
speak.

Dr. Coughlin consulted his chart. "His white count is elevated.
And his temp is up. Only 99.4 at this point, but enough to cause
concern. Then, there is the presence of an antigen in his
bloodwork--frankly, I've never seen anything like it before."

Scully breathed deeply. She should have expected the doctors to be
confused by Mulder's bloodwork. The evidence of his exposure to
the still undetermined retrovirus was there for the world to find.
But the rest of the report, while unsettling, wasn't that bad.

"Dr. Coughlin, his medical chart should explain the antigen. He
was exposed to a retrovirus about 6 months ago. And for the other
symptoms, he's just coming off a 36 hour manhunt. He's had no
sleep during that time and we hadn't really had time to catch up
from our last case. Naturally, he's dead on his feet. Knowing
Mulder, when his brain shuts down enough for him to fall asleep,
he'll be out like a light and won't rouse for a full day--maybe a day
and a half. I've never bothered to take his temp, but I'm certain his
exhaustion could cause the elevation."

"And the white count, Agent Scully?" Coughlin asked, still
suspicious of the results of his tests. "In any case, you are right on
one account. He is exhausted. But I decided to order a mild
sedative to help him get to sleep. He said he was too wired and
wanted us to bring in a television for him to 'fall asleep to'. I tried
to explain that the quarantine cubicles aren't set up for Direct TV,
but he seemed to think that was a problem that could be solved
rather easily, and to his satisfaction. If you wouldn't mind letting
him know that this is a medical installation and not a home
entertainment center, when you speak to him."

"I thought he was asleep," Scully said, ignoring the biting
comments for the moment.

"Not yet. He wants to talk to you, before he drops off." She
looked over at the glass wall dividing them and saw that the curtain
had been opened. She saw Mulder playing with the blankets, heart
monitor beeping quietly next to his bed. At least Dr. Coughlin had
decided to forego the IV for the time being. Mulder probably
talked him out of it. Her partner was leaning back against the
pillow, a slightly unfocused gaze to his eyes. She got up and
tapped on the glass and he smiled in her direction. After a couple
of tries, he hit a call button laying on his bed to activate the
intercom.

"You're back," he grinned and his voice sounded tinny through the
overhead speaker.

"You're drunk," she smiled back and almost laughed as he nodded
happily.

"Close as I'm likely to get for two weeks. I wanted to talk to you.
We can't talk to Skinner about the report yet. I want to go over
some things--get more of a line of Pinck if I could. If they'd let me
have a stupid phone--"

"Mulder, you just worry about resting. You're dead on your feet.
It's got your temp up and Coughlin is about to blow a gasket."

"I told him he'd find funny stuff in my blood, Scully. It's his fault if
he didn't believe me," Mulder yawned.

"The 'funny stuff' as you call it wouldn't account for the increase in
temp or white blood cells, Dr. Watson," she said with a teasing
tone. "You are probably catching the cold from hell and it's just
now showing up. I told you that your resistance would be low for
sometime, and you needed to make sure you got enough rest."

"I told them that, Scully, really I did. I said, hey, you, US Marshall
What's-your-ass--my partner wants me tucked in every night by 10
o'clock. But he just kept driving," he waved a hand weakly at
some distant point. "Couldn't exactly walk home, now could I?"

Scully was working hard to retain her composure. "No, Mulder I
guess not. But you don't have an excuse now. So go to sleep."
She turned and started to close the curtain on her side of the
window.

"Scully?" he said and the tone of his voice stopped her movements.
"Don't close it--OK? And if I promise not to snore, could we leave
the speakers on?" His eyes held a worried look and she suddenly
realized that he really didn't want to be cut off from her like that.

"Sure, Mulder. I'll just turn off my light. Good night," she said
softly.

"G'night," he shot back, and by the time she'd crawled back into
her own bed, she could hear his even breathing over the intercom.
It lulled her to sleep.

5:45 am

At first, Scully thought the screams were coming from her own
nightmare. She could see Dr. Osborne, his face pressed against the
glass in the door of the blazing incinerator, screaming at her to let
him out. Then, when she opened her eyes and willed her breathing
to slow down, she realized the sound was coming from the room
next door, over the intercom. Mulder was having a doozy of a
nightmare himself.

Two blue suits were already in the room, but she pressed her own
face against the glass separating her from her partner and tried to
talk to him. "Mulder. Mulder, it's OK. Hey, look at me, partner,"
she pleaded. "Come on, Mulder--it's just a dream."

"Temp's 101," said one of the suits, a woman whose voice Scully
couldn't recognize and whose face was obscured by the mask on
the bio suit.

"Respiration and heart are rapid," chimed in the other--a male
voice.

"He's having a nightmare," Scully said tersely. "If you'd just let me
talk to him--"

"Dr. Scully, please! We're handling this. Try to go back to sleep,"
the male voice directed and promptly the curtain between the two
rooms was closed. Scully stood there, too shocked to move. They
had shut her off, they wouldn't listen.

"Eyes dilated," said the female voice.

They had forgotten to turn off the intercom.

"Mr. Mulder? Mr. Mulder, can you hear me?" asked the male.
There was no response in a familiar voice. Scully almost called out
again, but was afraid to alert the doctor and nurse of her ability to
hear what was going on next door. She kept her silence and sat
trembling on her bed.

"Not responsive. When was the last blood drawn?"

There was the snap of a clip board. "12:45. Do you think it would
show up this soon?"

"According to the records we received from the prison, the
infestation should show in the blood work once symptoms have
developed. Oh God, look at this!"

"That purple rash. We better start an IV. How long till the others
crashed and bled out?"

Scully wasn't even breathing anymore. They'd found the purple
rash on Mulder. She remembered Dr. Osborne nervously opening
the collar of his shirt to reveal the same purple nodules that
indicated the presence of the disease. How long had it been
between that moment and the moment when she found his body in
the makeshift morgue in the basement of the prison? Oh God, how
long did Mulder have?

"Anywhere from 12 to 24 hours, depending on the patient. But
they did have some success with aggressive antibiotics. Bought a
little time."

"How much?"

"No more than 24 hours, but we might be able to get a better
handle on it here. Face it, they had no facilities and they were flying
blind."

The male voice chuckled. "And we're not?" he said sarcastically.
"Start with Keflex. Push it, we want as much in his system as he
can tolerate. His breathing appears labored--we better start O2
while we're at it."

"What about his partner? She's gonna want to know what's going
on."

"She'll figure it out soon enough."

Scully closed her eyes and felt the tears fall down her cheeks.

She awoke to coughing, but not her own. It was coming over the
intercom. She cringed, and stared at the curtain shutting her off
from her partner. She listened closely, trying to determine if he was
alone in the room. After a few moments, she decided it was safe to
try and talk to him.

"Mulder? Mulder, can you hear me?" She had a mixture of relief
and dread flood her when she didn't receive a response. Obviously,
he was alone or the medical personnel would have turned off the
intercom. She could hear her own voice echo off his glass cubicle
walls from where she sat. But if he was alone, his lack of response
meant he couldn't hear her. More coughing prompted her to try
again.

"Mulder?" she said, a little louder. "Mulder, it's me. Scully. Can
you hear me? Answer me, Mulder, please?"

There was silence, then more coughing. Finally, she heard it.
"Scully," he said weakly.

"Yes, it's me, Mulder. Are you all right?" she asked anxiously.

"Don't think so, Scully," he said and punctuated the sentence with
a coughing fit. "Feel like a piece of shit . . ."

She smiled sadly at that. "I'm sure you do. Look, Mulder, it's
going to be all right. I promise, OK. You just have to hang in
there."

" . . . it's so cold here, Scully . . ."

"I know, I know. It's cold because you have a fever. You have the
chills. But it's all right. I'll call the nurse, have her bring in another
blanket. That should warm you up. Just hang on, Mulder. Will
you promise me that? Will you hang on?"

Only silence met her request. She pressed the nurses call button
and waited for the response. The answering yes sounded muffled
to her ears. "Could you please bring a blanket into Agent Mulder.
He's got the chills."

Scully waited for the nurse to say something. After what seemed
like a long time, she replied with a hesitant "I guess we could."
Scully laid there in the dark, and sure enough, in a few minutes she
heard someone moving around in the room next to her. Since she
couldn't hear anyone talking and because she was exhausted
herself, she soon fell back to sleep.

"Scully?"

The voice, coming from the ceiling, startled her awake, even
though it was barely a whisper.

"Yes, Mulder," she said, wiping sleep from her eyes.

"I'm so thirsty, Scully," came the gritty voice of her partner.

"Didn't they leave you any water?" she asked, pulling on her own
bedside light and noticing the full pitcher of water on her own
bedtray.

"I can't reach it," came the plaintive reply.

Scully bit her lip. He was probably too sick to reach over and get
the water cup. If she were allowed in the room, she would have
gotten it for him, but as it was, she felt helpless and frustrated. She
pushed the call button for the nurse again.

"Could you please help Agent Mulder get a drink of water. He's
very thirsty," she said tersely into the speaker on the rail of her bed.

Again, her request was met with a prolonged pause. "Agent Scully,
if you're having trouble sleeping--"

"I'm not having any trouble sleeping! My partner is sick and he
can't reach the water. Please, it's bad enough that he's dying, don't
do this to him," she pleaded. "Would you please just get him the
water?" She was choking back tears as she spoke.

"Certainly, Agent Scully. We'll take care of him. Just go back to
sleep. It will be better in the morning."

At that, the tears really did begin to fall. In the morning, at the rate
this disease progressed, in all likelihood, Fox Mulder would be
dead.

The next sound she heard confused the hell out of her. It was a
chiming sound, almost like a bell, but electronic. It was familiar,
but in her sleep heavy state, she couldn't place it. Finally, when she
remembered where she was, she recognized it. It was the IV pump
in Mulder's room. It was chiming over the intercom. He was out
of either IV fluid or antibiotics.

She waited, expecting the nurse to come in and turn off the chime,
change the bags and check on her partner. But after several
moments, she realized that maybe no one was coming.

"They've given up on him," she growled to the silent room around
her. She sat up in bed and this time when she hit the call button,
she all but knocked it off the bed rail.

"Yes, Agent Scully," came a voice that sounded just a slight bit
impatient.

"Can't you hear that damned pump?! It's been sounding for 10
minutes. He needs more keflex or saline or both. What the hell are
you doing out there? Break up the bridge game and take care of
that patient!" Scully hadn't spoken to a nurse like that in her life,
but this was an entirely different matter. This was Mulder and if
she couldn't be with him, she was still going to make sure he was
taken care of in his last hours.

"Agent Scully," a voice growled through the speaker. "Ah, what
the hell. OK, we'll get him an IV. But please, _Ms._ Scully, go to
sleep and let us do our jobs?"

"If you would do your job, I wouldn't keep having to call you,"
Scully shot back, but she'd figured that the nurse had already
turned off the intercom.

Her dreams left her little rest. The next few hours were spent
tossing and turning, caught in webs of images that she couldn't
escape. Mulder, laying in one of the plastic bags at the prison. His
face as his body was thrown into the makeshift crematorium. His
screams as his body started to burn. She couldn't do that do him.
She couldn't let them burn his body. Even knowing as she did that
he would be long dead by that time, she couldn't stomach the
thought when she knew his fear of fire.

She had no idea what time it was when the dreams released her and
she finally fell into a deep sleep.

12:05 pm

She felt like someone was staring at her. Her eyes were closed and
she was still so tired. All she wanted to do was fall back asleep.
But the creepy feeling of being watched--under close scrutiny,
would not leave her.

A flash of dread hit her like a brick. Mulder was dead, and one of
the 'fine young doctors' at the installation was probably waiting for
her to wake up on her own before telling her. If that was the case,
she'd just as soon sleep forever. Resolutely, she clamped shut her
eyes and refused to open them to the horror she knew she would be
facing.

"Scully. I hope you didn't try that with your mom. She'd probably
tan your hide for pretending to sleep. Bet you tried it a lot on
Sunday mornings."

The voice--her partner's voice. Oh, God, how cruel! She could
almost hear him talking to her. What if? Oh, no, it couldn't be
true? Could Mulder have stayed around, in spirit, to haunt her the
rest of her life? She started to cry at the thought that her partner
would be trapped on the earth forever.

"Hey, Scully, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to tease you!" came the
quick reply to her tears. "Come on, I'm sorry. Open up your eyes.
Hey, if you open your eyes, I'll get the nurse to bring your lunch
tray back. You gotta wake up for this, Scully. I've never had
better chicken salad! And I don't even LIKE chicken salad! This
stuff is fabulous. They should open a restaurant. Uncle Sam's Cafe
and Infectious Disease Quarantine. It rings, doesn't it?"

At that, her eyes flew open and she stared into the eyes of her
partner. Her very much alive and very healthy looking partner.

"Mulder! You're alive!" she croaked, the tears still swelling her
throat.

"Wasn't I supposed to be?" he asked, a little taken aback. "Good
grief, Scully, what a way to say 'Good Morning'!" he added with a
lop sided grin.

"I thought--I m-mean, I must have d-dreamed--" she stammered.
"Mulder, I was sure I heard the doctors say that they were putting
you on keflex. That you had 24 hours before you crashed and bled
out." She was still amazed that he was sitting up on the hospital
bed, talking to her. "You were unresponsive. You're eyes were
dilated. You needed oxygen--"

"My nose was stuffed up," he offered apologetically. "I asked the
nurse if they had any Vick's vaporub. That stuff always works on
my head colds. But they said they don't stock it, so I had to settle
for Dimetapp. Stuff dried me up all right, I'm so thirsty I could
drink a lake."

"You were thirsty in my dream. And you had the chills. And your
IV needed to be changed--" she continued, absently cataloguing her
dream.

"That might explain why the nurses kept waking me up. They
brought me an extra blanket, brought me two pitchers of water and
then woke me up and said that you wanted me to have an IV. I
nixed that one real fast!" he said triumphantly. "Told them you talk
alot in your sleep and to just start ignoring you--especially if it
meant waking me up again. I was dead tired, Scully. All I wanted
to do was sleep and once I could breath through my nose, I was out
for the count."

"The dream seemed so real--" she kept repeating.

"Well, I was kinda cold. So thanks for the blanket and the water.
But when they tried to stick me with that IV, I was ready to come
over to your cubicle and give you a piece of my mind. You
shouldn't be allowed to practice medicine in your sleep, Scully.
Even if you were right two times out of three," he grinned at her.

"You're OK. You don't have the disease?" she asked, finally
realizing that she was no longer in a dream, but was experiencing
reality.

"I'm fine. No sign of symptoms. And so are you. Fine, that is. I
talked to Coughlin and he said that he might see if we could get one
of the larger rooms--a semi-private. They can move a TV/VCR in
one of those. And the nurses thought that having us both in the
same room might give them a hand. They seem to think that I
might be able to keep you from driving them crazy," he said with a
truly evil twinkle to his eyes.

"You keep ME from driving them crazy?" Scully exclaimed loudly.
"Mulder, its ME that has to keep YOU from getting killed by the
nurses!"

"Not this time, apparently," he grinned back. "This time, _I'm_ the
'good patient' and you're the 'difficult' one. And I think that's just
peachy."

"You would," she said sourly.

"Ah, forget it, Scully. Two more days and the nurses will have it
figured out. But for now, you gotta try this chicken salad--"

"Uh, Mulder," she replied a bit sheepishly. "Maybe you could call
the nurse and ask her to bring my tray back. If want you're telling
me is the truth, I think they might respond faster if you requested
it."

"Sure thing," he laughed. "And you were right, Scully. This is
almost like a vacation. But you really need to learn how to relax.
Your dreamscape is a mess!"

"Mulder, you have NO idea."

the end
Feedback to:Vickie Moseley

"Poems, prays and promises,
Things that we believe in.
How sweet it is to love someone.
How right it is to care.
How long it's been since yesterday,
And what about tomorrow,
And what about our dreams and
All the memories we share."

Goodbye John.

John Denver, 1944-1997
Singer, songwriter, poet