Date: Thu, 01 Oct 1998
From: Vickie Moseley <vmoseley@fgi.net>

***************************

Title: By Her Side 2: The Awakening
Summary: Continuation of By Her Side. Bill takes up watch over
an injured Mulder and tries to reconcile some old feelings.
Category: V, A, Muldertorture
Rating: PG-13 (crisis is over, civility resumes)
Disclaimer: No infringement intended, but I had a great time. I put
everybody back where I found them, too.
Archive: Yes
Author notes: Thanks to Susan and Kathy for beta these two. And
thanks to all of you who have written me during this election. I
love you all :)
ALL US CITIZENS OF VOTING AGE: Don't forget to VOTE
on Nov. 3. YES it does make a difference.

By Her Side 2: The Awakening

I've been in this elevator so much in these last three days that I
know the grooves on the buttons and the graffiti scratched in the
paint by heart.

It's been hell, no doubt about it. But I'm not complaining. I get up
in the morning, go to work at the base all day, then drive straight to
the hospital. I take up watch, Dana runs back to our house to grab
a bite with Tara, play with Matty, take a shower and lay down, if
Tara can bully her into it. And then by 11 she's back here, looking
a little better than when she left. I give her a kiss and I'm off to
find my way home again.

While Dana's joining the living, I sit here communing with the
comatose. Mulder and I have had a lot to talk about. So far, it's
been the kind of conversation I've always wanted to have with Fox
Mulder - one sided and me doing all the talking. Just what my
heart needed.

But I've been good. Well, maybe not 'good' but at least I haven't
called him a 'sorry son of a bitch' in the last three days. I've done
my best to give him a piece of my mind for worrying Dana like he
is. The docs all said he would wake up as the blood volume was
improved. That was two days ago. Then they said it was the pain
factor. They've had him on some really good shit, from what the
nurses tell me. So that shouldn't be a problem now. To tell the
truth, I don't think they know their asses from a hole in the ground,
but there's no way I'm saying that while Dana is around. I say it
plenty to my bud, Mulder.

The doctors are hopeful. Sure they are. We avoided a lot of
complications, apparently. He hasn't developed an infection or
pneumonia. The respirator has been turned down a couple of times
and I wouldn't be surprised if they've removed it by now. He's
breathing on his own.

But he 'died' twice. His heart stopped pumping. I didn't go to
medical school, but I know that when the heart stops pumping, the
blood stops carrying oxygen to the cells in the body. Skin cells,
bone cells, . . . brain cells. And he'd lost so much blood by the time
they got to him, that sort of starved the cells a little, too.

No body's saying it out loud, but I know why they're all tiptoeing
around Dana. The fact that he's in a coma right now is as good as
shouting from the rooftops. Brain damage. There is a chance he
might never wake up and it's getting stronger every day.

Dana told me the other night that she wanted me to get to know
him better. Well, I'm getting to know Mulder more than I bet
either of us ever wanted. Like his current 'best' blood pressure is
115 over 90. And his heart rate stays at a steady 61 beats a minute,
which, with the right tone on the machine, is just perfect to drive a
person stark raving crazy, when listened to for four solid hours.
His 'resps', in nurses short hand, seem to be holding at 12 a minute,
which is pretty much where they were when the tube was doing the
work for him. I could go into his 'output' volume, but there are
some things even _guys_ don't discuss in public. Catch me in the
locker room sometime, why don't ya.

He's a pretty quiet guy in a coma. He doesn't move, he doesn't
skip a breath, he doesn't even sigh. He leaves that up to Dana.
Sometimes, like tonight, I get up here and just stand in the doorway
a minute, watching her watching him. Six breaths, then a sigh.
Light caress down the left hand, around the IV needle. Another
sigh. If the light is right I can see the tear tracks running along her
right cheekbone.

"Hey, sunshine." I have to break the morbid feeling in this room,
it's bad enough with the silence.

She looks up and for a moment, the old Danie, my baby sister, is
smiling up at me. "Hey, Billy? How was your day?"

"Boring. I need a ship," I answer back, tossing my jacket over the
tray table.

Another sigh.

"How's the man here?"

Silence. She's cataloging. Trying to decide what would be
significant enough to tell me. Knowing that I probably won't
understand all the medicalese and really don't care for in depth
explanations. "A little better. They extubated him this afternoon.
I'm glad, that way he won't wake up fighting the tube. And I think
he's getting some color back."

Sure, sis. Whatever keeps you going. "Yeah, I think I see that too.
Not that I'm that much of an expert on the 'before' model." I'm
trying to agree, really I am. And I am glad about that damned
respirator tube. It was giving _me_ a sore throat just thinking
about it. "Hey, Tara put a lasagna in the oven. You get first dibs,
but there better be some left when I get home or I'm coming after
you tomorrow."

She gets up, but not without a quick kiss to the silent man's
forehead. "There'll be plenty. Unless Matty goes through it like he
did the tuna casserole last night. That child is going to eat you out
of house and home, Billy."

Thank you, God. She's taking an interest in something outside of
these four walls! It makes me giddy. I chuckle. "Then I _really_
need a boat."

"Or get yourself a farm." She's smiling again, but not at me. She
leans over and whispers something in his ear. I can't hear and right
now, I don't know that I want to. I can tell it's just between the
two of them. I just hope he's going to listen to her.

Another quick kiss to his temple and then she's standing and
reaches up to give me a quick peck on the cheek. "I appreciate this
a lot, you know. But make sure you call me as soon as there's any
change. I mean, if he wakes up while you're here . . ."

She's trying to be diplomatic, but I catch on. "He'll think he's gone
straight to hell, right?"

She gives me a smirk, straight out of her teen age years.
"Something like that, yeah."

"I could sit here in a red cape and horns. See what reaction that
might get me," I fire back. It's fun to joke with her again like this.
It's been too long.

"No, please, he's had too many cardiac episodes already," she grins
back. "I'll be back at 9."

"You'll be back at 11, and no arguments. Us 'guys' have things to
talk about."

She's reluctant to leave, like always. I know she's afraid that he'll
wake up when she's not here. But she more afraid that she'll go
and come back and he'll still not be awake. A rock and a hard
place. I wish I could do more.

I wait until her footsteps are receding down the hall before I sit
down. This is her chair. It's where she's slept the last three nights,
it's where she eats all of her meals save the one Tara can force
down her, it's where she _exists_ for the 20 hours a day that she's
by his side.

I would really like to punch his lights out for doing this to her.

Oh, I know. It's not his fault. Intellectually, I know that.
Emotionally, I just see the hell he's putting her through. But then,
when it's just the two of us, I can see the hell he's going through
and I feel like a number one asshole.

"Hey, Mulder. It's me. Bill. Tara says 'Hi'. Boy, I tell you, I
heard a good one today."

I ramble. I know he's not really listening, so I tell him the latest
jokes from the commissary, what the top brass are doing to screw
the rest of us, the latest on the pennant races. Oh, and where we
are in the home run derby. During our first night here, Dana told me
he was a sports fan, has been watching the McGwire/Sosa race, has
been rooting for Sosa even though he's a Red Sox fan. Guess she
knows as much about him as Tara knows about me.

I've been thinking about that, too. I've had time to think of it
plenty. During the day, sometimes it's all I can think about. I
always knew my baby sister would find somebody someday. I
never cared for the creeps she dated in high school. They were all
too immature for her, anyway. And in medical school, boy, for a
while there, I was scared she might be 'swinging the other way.'
She _never_ dated. At least, not that any of us knew of. Then she
ran off to the FBI. She wasn't even out of the Academy when she
moved in with that Willis jerk. I met him once, hated him on sight.

She got rid of him, finally. Took up with that lobbyist, Minette, for
a while. That almost looked serious. And he was an OK guy. Had
a good job, treated her like a queen. And she dropped him like a
rock the day she got paired with her 'new' partner.

Minette called me one night. We'd gone out for beers a couple of
times, not like we were best buds, but we talked about Dana and
what she needed in her life. Anyway, he calls and wanted to go
out, grab some beers. I hadn't heard about the break up, and he
didn't volunteer the information on the phone, so I said yes.

He wasn't there to beg for my intervention. He asked me out to
warn me. Seems he had some friends in the State Department and
then knew all about Fox Mulder, FBI. He was a nut case, according
to Minette. Couldn't work with a partner, they all ended up getting
transferred or . . . something. Slept his way through the clerical
staff pretty quickly. And then, he went off the deep end.

Well, I learned early on that the best way to get a black eye in my
family was to try and tell my sisters who they should and shouldn't
date. So if Dana broke up with Minette, well, that was her
business. But this Mulder character . . .

But, as I said before, I didn't go into this thing hating him.

Now, I've seen them together. Oh, this isn't the first time. He
came charging out like a knight on a crusade when she found that
kid. Emily. Her name was Emily. Gotta remember that. Anyway,
out of nowhere, he's on our doorstep. Tara, big hearted, very
pregnant Tara, makes up the couch for him. Like a member of the
family. Pissed me off royally, but when your wife is two weeks
overdue, you don't pick fights.

I was a little too mad to give them much consideration at the time.
I remember bits and pieces. Seeing them on the couch, watching
the Christmas tree. His arm around her shoulders, and I'm pretty
sure she was crying, but probably not. And at the funeral. I knew
he wanted to stay right by her side, but he left her, went to 'get the
car' he said. At the time I thought he was being a jerk, but now
that I've had the luxury of time to pick that moment apart, I can see
that he was giving her a gift. He was giving her space to grieve.

Pretty sensitive thing to do for a guy who's a consummate asshole.

Speaking of which, I guess I've redeemed myself after that scene
with Dana the other night. Mom called me at work today. She said
Dana's been calling every day with updates, but she wanted to
thank me personally. Dana told her that I was really helping, that
both of us, Tara and I were Godsends right now.

A Godsend? A little dramatic for my no nonsense little sister, but
hey, I'm not complaining. It's one of the nicer things she's ever
called me. Maybe the nicest.

I admit it, I was a jerk as a kid. But then, who wants a little sister
tagging along all the time. Missy used to for a while, then we made
her cry one time and she decided she didn't want anything to do
with us. But not Dana. We'd make Dana cry and she run under
the porch or behind the garage and cry it out, then come right back
for more. And after a while, she stopped crying. No matter what
we did. That's why I was so scared the other night when she cried
in front of me. I hadn't seen her do that since she was 7 or 8. But
to this day, it wasn't me who made her cry the other night.

Mulder made her cry, Mom. Mulder made Dana cry.

This circular logic is starting to get me dizzy. One minute, I'm
thinking he ain't such a bad guy and the next minute I want strangle
the asshole myself!

If he'd just wake up, I think it would be all right. But until he does,
I'm here for the evening. Even brought some work to catch up on.

Paperwork. You get some stripes on your sleeve and suddenly,
they drown you in paperwork. I once thought learning to tie and
untie knots was just as waste of time. We're the Nuclear Navy! If
it doesn't have a computer chip somewhere in it, we _don't_ use it!
But now I know what they were preparing us for. We were
learning to untangle paperwork.

I've been sitting here, trying to catch up on this shit while Sleepy,
the sixth dwarf, takes up space on that hospital bed. Somehow, I
get the feeling that he's hiding under all those machines. Dana says
they have paperwork, out the yahay, it would seem. And he's
always ducking out of it, making her do it. OK, I can't really fault
the guy for that. Women are better suited for sitting in front piles
of forms and computer screens. It's their center of gravity, the
reason they can pick up chairs from a bent over position and we
can't.

Or something like that.

I glance over at Mulder from my little 'tower' of bureaucracy and
stop.

He moved.

Nah, it has to be my imagination. The guy has been laying in
whatever position the nurses put him in and I've gotten lazy. I
didn't notice the nurse come in and move him. That's all. It would
be great, but it's not time to call out the troops . . .

Shit! Damn! He moved again!

No, I swear to God, he moved this time. I was looking right at him
and he sort of turned his head and I know I saw him swallow. Plus,
his face looks animated, not still. Not dead, like it did look.

I hit the nurse's button, and a voice come over the intercom. "Yes,
Mr. Scully. Can I help you?"

It's Patsy. I really like her, she's very gentle. Tammy is younger
and tends to be more rough with him. It amazes me that stuff like
that is bothering me, considering who we're dealing with here. But
I brush all that aside. "Mulder's . . . ah, geez . . . he moved! Get
the doctor, I'll call Dana, he moved! He's waking up!"

Boy, that was a real 'command' voice there. My voice hasn't
cracked like that since high school. But I look down and shit, I'm
looking at eyes looking back at me.

And he moans.

It sounds almost like a word. I lean forward a little and listen
harder.

He says it again.

"Hell?"

I can't help it. I burst out laughing. Just like Dana thought, he
thinks he's died and gone to hell when he sees me in the room with
him. When I finally get hold of myself, I can see that he's still
giving me this look, like he's waiting to be told if this is eternity or
not. I can't do it to the guy. I have to fess up.

"No, Mulder, but I bet this could be a new definition of hell for
you, huh? You're in the hospital. Mission Hospital in San Diego."

He swallows and looks relieved. Then he jerks his head to look
around the room. "Scully?"

At first I assume he's asking me a question. "What?"

He clears his throat. All sounds are coming out a whisper and I can
tell it's hurting him a lot to talk. "Dana?"

There's fear in his eyes. Then it dawns on me. Doh! He doesn't
know that she's all right. He's wondering where she is. He doesn't
know that he took the bullet and kept her safe.

"She's all right, Mulder. She's fine. She's at home with Tara and
Matty. I'm going to call her now. She'll be here in ten, twenty
minutes, tops. If you're good, she might even sneak you up some
of Tara's lasagna."

He relaxes back into the pillows, tries to swallow again, and
grimaces.

"No . . . tomatoes. Not . . . right now."

The door flies open and Patsy comes in with Dr. Nelson quick on
her heels. I met Nelson two nights ago, when he stopped by for
late rounds. He did the surgery on Mulder and has been keeping
tabs on him since then. A nice guy, a bit young, but he's doing a
good job.

"Hi, Bill, isn't? Now, what have we here? Well, well, well, hello
Agent Mulder. Welcome back to the land of the living!"

Mulder gives the guy a look that I can well relate to. He'd love to
jam his fist down the asshole's throat at this moment. That much
perky, nobody needs when they just woke up thinking they're in
hell, and their throat feels like some body used a sand blaster on it.
The rest of him probably hurts, too, but the throat seems to be
getting the best of him.

"His throat seems to be hurting him a lot. Is there something you
can do for that?"

Three pairs of eyes turn to me, and one pair of hazel eyes looks
totally amazed. Nelson nods to Patsy, Patsy goes out the door and
Mulder is still looking at me like I've grown a second head. Which
would probably be easier for him to believe than that I've just done
something nice for him.

It embarrasses the hell out of me and I grab for the phone. "I
almost forgot to call Danie. She's gonna kill me for waiting this
long."

The phone rings three times before Tara picks up. "Hello?"

"Baby cakes, get Danie, quick. There's somebody here who wants
to hear from her." I didn't think I could get breathless just standing
and talking on the phone.

"Oh, God! Oh, please! Billy, is he awake? Ohmigod, I'll get
Dana. She's up giving Matty a bath." I hear a muffled scream for
Dana. Thank God, Tara put her hand to the receiver. Her voice
gets kinda shrill sometimes. Not that I mind it, most of the time.
Sometimes I have to work for that scream. But over the phone,
well, it would have deafened me.

Tromping down the steps, I can hear every footfall.

"Bill! What is it?"

"He's awake, Danie. He's awake and he sure seems OK to me.
Nelson's here, but Mulder wanted to make sure you're all right.
Hang on, I'll put him on."

I hold the phone over to his ear and Mulder's eyes get really bright
and a smile replaces all the pain lines I've seen on his face.
"Scully?"

I can't really hear what she's saying, but I take it that it's all good
stuff from the look on his face. He nods once or twice. Then he
closes his eyes. He looks wiped out. Nelson touches my hand and
I take the receiver back.

"Danie, I think we just wore him out. He's asleep again. Why
don't you take your time, don't kill yourself getting here. Here,
talk to the Doc for a minute." I hand phone to Nelson.

"Dr. Scully? Yes, I just examined him. Neuros look great,
considering the pain factor."

I would have listened in better, but Patsy came back with a good
sized needle and I was watching her real close until she stuck it in
the IV instead of his backside. I mean, the guy just got to sleep, for
Pete's sakes. Patsy looks up at me and winks.

"Dr. Scully was right. He does have 'to die for eyes'."

"I never really noticed." Well, it's the truth. I never noticed that
she seemed to think like that, either. Nelson hands the phone back
to me.

"Billy, I'm going to change real quick and be right back up there.
He should sleep for a while, they just gave him a dose of Demerol.
But I can take it from here."

"Did you get a chance to sleep? Danie, you don't need to rush
back, he's not going anywhere. Stay there, rest up. I'll watch
him."

There was a long silence on the phone. "Well, he is more of a
handful when he's awake," she admits with a chuckle. "OK, here's
the deal. I'll lay down for a few minutes on the couch, but I doubt
I'll be able to sleep. Then I'll come up. You need some time with
Tara, you know. We can't go neglecting the ones we love."

I smile at that. "No, you're absolutely right, Danie. We can't go
on doing that. I'll see you in a few hours, then?"

"Yeah, about nine or so. And Bill, thank you. You don't know
how much this has meant to me."

"Hey, what are big brothers for?" I hang up on her goodbye. I
don't really trust my voice at this moment.

I look over at the guy in the bed. He's just sleeping now. I can tell
because I see his eyes shift under his lids. His face looks more
alive, too, even though the medicine seems to be keeping the pain
at bay.

He's a sorry son of a bitch, that's still true. But if he can give me
my little sister back, can he really be all that bad?

the end.

Next up: Mulder gets released from the hospital and he and Bill
finally get to have 'that talk'.

Vickie

"Politics is a character flaw."

George Brown, politician and former mayor.