Página PrincipalInternal dating: Story takes place December 21 - 25, 1997 in/around the San Diego area.
The episode begins with a shot of a Nativity scene. A pregnant Tara Scully places the baby Jesus in the manger, then caresses the child inside her. We hear Mrs. Scully call out; "Hello! Merry Christmas!" and this is followed by an emotional greeting scene among Mrs. Scully, Tara and Dana where Dana exclaims; "You're huge!" when she gets a look at Tara. Mrs. Scully remarks that; "It won't be long now."
The layout of the house that Bill Jr. and Tara Scully have been assigned is exactly the same as the house Bill Sr. and Margaret Scully had lived in when they had been assigned to San Diego.
Bill Jr. starts to organize the luggage, commenting on the fact that naval base housing hasn't changed (Mrs. Scully is in what would have been her old room, Scully is in the nursery; what would have been her and Melissa's old room). He starts carrying the luggage up the stairs. Dana, carrying her own suitcase, begins to follow but stops when she sees her mother standing in the family room looking reflective.
When Scully asks her mother if she is all right, Mrs. Scully sadly says; "I was just thinking about your dad and Melissa." Scully gets her mother headed up the stairs and is about to follow when the phone rings.
After calling for Bill, Scully answers the telephone herself. She hears a voice that sounds remarkably like Melissa's saying; "Dana".
Scully replies; "Yes, I'm sorry. Who is this?"
The anonymous voice replies; "Dana...she needs your help. She needs you, Dana. Go to her."
Unnerved, Scully asks; "Who...who is this?", but hears only a dial tone. She immediately calls the San Diego FBI field office and after giving her badge number, asks for a Sound Agent to trace the last number that was dialed in to the Scully house. She gives a badge number of 2317616. Note, this is a different number than the one she gave in "Teliko".
Bill Jr. drives Scully to a house, in front of which are parked a number of police cars. Police officers are milling around the front door of the house; a two-story white clapboard with steps leading up to a porch at the front.
Scully shows her identification and is allowed into the house. She goes upstairs, where she is intercepted by a detective just as she is about to enter what looks like a crime scene. Scully again shows her identification, introduces herself and explains that she had received a telephone call from this house and that a woman's voice told her that someone needed help.
When the detective asks her how long ago she had received the telephone call, she tells him twenty minutes. He shakes his head, says that he has been at the house for thirty minutes and that he can guarantee Scully that nobody had placed a call, as the phone had been off the hook for at least three hours. However, he does allow her in to look at the crime scene after she asks "Please, can you tell me what happened here?"
Upon entering the crime scene -- a bathroom with a white tiled floor -- Scully sees that there is a body in the bathtub. The person's right arm is visible, as is a pool of blood on the floor beside the tub. There is a fair-haired, obviously deceased woman lying in the half-filled tub, and at this point Scully seems somewhat taken aback.
Detective Kresge tells her; "This is Mrs. Roberta Sim, age 40...suicide. She's been dead almost three hours. You got a call from her? She must have dialed 1-800-THE- GREAT-BEYOND."
Scully, still shaken, goes back outside where Bill Jr. is waiting for her. He asks Scully what is going on, saying; "they're joking about you getting a call from a dead woman."
Scully answers that she thought it was a dead woman; "just not the one in there." When Bill Jr. asks what she means, she tells him that, although she knows it isn't possible, the voice she heard on the phone sounded just like; "our sister. Melissa."
Bill is obviously shocked to hear this.
The credits roll: The Truth Is Out There.
Still at the crime scene, Scully sees a man holding a little girl who looks to be about 3-4 years old, with blonde hair. A county social worker is standing in the room also.
Detective Kresge approaches her to tell her that while; "Pac-Bell does confirm that there was an incoming call from this address to your brother's house," there is no corresponding record of an outgoing call made *from* the house; also that the telephone company was able to confirm that the phone had, indeed been off the hook for three hours.
In answer to Scully's query as to how that could have happened, he posits a "software glitch" and feels that "weird phone calls aside, this looks like a pretty straightforward case. A lot of people check themselves out around Christmas time."
Confused and obviously not convinced, Scully is forced to accept the detective's suppositions and leaves when the detective tells her he has to finish up and talk to the family about what has happened.
The little girl, who is sitting on a chair, looks directly at Scully just before the detective closes the door.
Later that night, at a family dinner at the Scully house, Scully sits quietly amid the chatter and reminiscing, a non-participant in the Norman Rockwell-esque moment. She then excuses herself and makes a telephone call to Mulder back in Washington.
Scene changes to Mulder's apartment. He comes through his door dressed as if he has been out running, a long-tailed snowboarder's on his head. He picks up the phone and just after he says; "Hello?", the scene changes back to Scully in San Diego.
Scully seems frozen with indecision, not certain whether or not to speak; perhaps not certain what she will say. Though Mulder says "hello" twice more, Scully hangs up without talking to him and rejoins the family at dinner.
Bill Jr. asks her "everything okay?" Of course she says "yes". Tara Scully cries out in shocked delight, placing her hand over her stomach as the baby within gives an especially strong kick. She asks Mrs. Scully if girls or boys kick harder. Mrs. Scully, glancing at Dana, says "Oh, I had some pretty tough little girls."
Tara then goes on to make a little speech about motherhood, saying "You know what; I can't believe I'm about to say this -- as big and fat as I am right now. I can't wait to have more. It's our baby -- our son. Kind of gives everything new meaning. I can't help but think that life before now was somehow...less; just a prelude."
At this point, Scully, struggling valiantly to smile for Tara and Bill and their good fortune, looks absolutely miserable.
After dinner, Scully and Mrs. Scully are doing the dishes. Mrs. Scully asks her what is wrong. Scully says she is very happy for Bill and Tara. Mrs. Scully, not convinced, presses the issue. "You don't seem to be," she says, almost reproachfully.
At first, Scully hesitates and then she looks at her mother and says; "Mom...several months ago, I learned that, as a result of my abduction, of what they did to me, that I cannot conceive a child."
Maggie, stricken, can only hug her daughter and whisper; "I'm so sorry," to which Scully shakily replies that she never realized how much she wanted a baby until she couldn't have one.
Later that night, Scully is sleeping, though restless. A dog can be heard barking outside.
The camera pans around the room, the door flies open and a young, red-headed girl dressed in a blue and white dress with a white Peter Pan collar rushes in, followed closely by a tall, fair-haired teen-age boy. Scully is dreaming or recalling a past memory.
The boy demands to know; "Dana, where *is* it? Where's that rabbit?"
Young Dana defiantly shouts; "I'm not telling!" while she pushes her brother out the door.
As he leaves, he taunts her that he is going to find the rabbit and make rabbit stew out of it. Young Dana shouts that no, he's not, as he takes off down the hall, shouting "rabbit stew, here I go!" Young Dana again shouts that he's not going to find the rabbit. We find out that the teen-age boy is Bill. Nice guy, taunting his baby sister about killing her pet.
In the next scene, young Dana is seen going down some stairs, possibly into the basement of the house while looking around to make sure she hasn't been followed. She drags a tool box over to a workbench and stands upon it to remove some books or papers from a tin Lassie lunch box.
When she opens the box, a small grey rabbit is inside, obviously very dead, with maggots crawling all over it. Horror-stricken, young Dana at first can only stare, and then back away. When she turns, she sees a little girl sitting on the stairs; the same little girl she had seen at the Sim house only hours before; the daughter of Roberta Sim. The two girls look at one another, though neither one speaks.
Scully is wakened by the ringing of a phone. She scrambles out of bed, pulls her ringing cellular phone from her briefcase. Again, she hears the voice that sounds like Melissa. The time is 2:31 am, December 22/97.
The voice tells Scully; "She needs your help." When Scully asks who is on the phone and why the person is doing this, the only reply is; "Go to her", and then dead air. Scully is looking almost afraid at this point.
At 2:54 am, Scully shows up on the door step of the Sim house. She knocks and when Mr. Sim answers the door, she introduces herself, expresses her condolences and apologizes for showing up at such a late hour.
When Mr. Sim asks her why she is there, she explains that she had received a telephone call. "I was addressed by name and told that I needed to help someone; a woman. I traced the call and it came from your house," she tells an increasingly agitated Mr. Sim. Explaining that this is the second time such a thin has happened, she says; "I would really like to get to the bottom of this."
Sim, who is now visibly upset, tells Scully that no one has called her and that he is in the middle of a meeting. In the background, we can see two suit-clad men, one similar in appearance to Mr. Sim, the other one, similar in height and weight, but with a beard. When Scully says she understands, Mr. Sim replies; "Well, if you do understand, then you'll stop coming around upsetting me with this...nonsense." He asks her to leave and closes the door in her face, turning out the porch light to further make his point, and leaving her standing in the dark. Scully leaves. From a second story window, the little girl watches her go.
From the Sim house, Scully proceeds to a precinct of the San Diego police department where Detective Kresge greets her and asks what he can do for her "at such an ungodly hour".
Scully asks to see everything he has on the Roberta Sims case, to which the detective replies that there is no "case", only a "simple suicide". Scully repeats her request and asks for Kresge's cooperation "in the spirit of the season?" The detective agrees and allows Scully access to a file box containing case notes and evidence collected from the Sim house.
A photograph of Roberta Sim's slashed right wrist is the first thing Scully looks at. She discovers that two weeks previously, police had been dispatched to the Sim house on a domestic disturbance call. Kresge tells her that neighbours had been complaining about screaming coming from the Sim house. "Wasn't a happy house," he says rather resignedly. "Happy people don't kill themselves."
The toxicology report shows high levels of a drug called Doratriptan, a migraine remedy of which, according to Detective Kresge; "you take enough of it, you're wearing a cloud for a hat." He speculates that Mrs. Sim had first anaesthetized herself with the drug prior to slashing her wrists and tells Scully that police had found a number of empty drug sample containers in the bathroom trash, as well as some unused ones in Mrs. Sim's purse.
Scully looks in the dead woman's purse, finds the containers of Doratriptan and also a small photograph of the woman's daughter. Her reaction to the photograph is one of surprise, possibly anxiety. Kresge agrees to let her borrow the photograph.
Scully returns home and gets out some family photo albums. Paging through one of them, she finds a picture of Melissa which was taken at the Nagoya Farmer's Market in Japan in 1966. When she places the picture of Emily Sim beside the one of Melissa, the two could be mistaken for twins. Scully is now looking more distressed than ever.
Morning finds Scully conducting an online search for Emily Sim's birth records which, she finds, are sealed as Emily was apparently adopted by the Sims.
Scully calls Danny at FBI headquarters in Washington, DC and after wishing him a Merry Christmas, asks him to gather up all the case files dealing with the murder of Melissa Scully; "crime scene and autopsy along with the PCR's that we ran." She asks Danny to messenger everything to the San Diego FBI field office, thanks him and hangs up, removing her glasses and looking very stressed and anxious.
We see a white cross and a young Dana Scully walking up the centre aisle of a church. She is holding a man's hand and the two are approaching a dark, shiny coffin which is resting on a white cloth-covered bier at the front of the church. Blood is pooled on the floor by the bier and the floor pattern matches the one in the Sims' bathroom. Several arrangements of pure white flowers and wreaths are arranged around the coffin and water appears to be leaking from the coffin itself, spilling down to the floor, diluting the bloodstains.
Young Dana looks down into the coffin which is indeed filled with water, on the surface of which are floating several flower blossoms, possibly chrysanthemums.
Roberta Sim is in the coffin, under the water. As young Dana looks into the coffin, the dead woman opens her eyes, startling the youngster badly. She pulls back and looks up at the man who is holding her hand. It is Mr. Sims. He looks down at her, and we hear Bill Jr.'s voice saying; "Dana?"
Scully wakes with a start, having fallen asleep at the table while working. Bill Jr. asks her if she has slept there all night, tells her she is supposed to be on vacation and asks her what is so important.
Scully tells him; 'it's just some unfinished business."
After an uncomfortable interchange with her brother, wherein he tries to convince her to join the family in whatever activity had been planned, she finally agrees to meet them for lunch and leaves, taking her notebook computer and briefcase with her. It is apparent that Bill does not understand what his sister is doing. It is equally apparent that Scully is unwilling to let him in on what is going on.
Scully returns to Detective Kresge's precinct where he greets her rather ironically. "Agent Scully, it's been...what; four hours? I was getting worried."
Scully requests that an autopsy be performed on Roberta Sim, explaining that she believes there is a possibility that the woman might have been murdered. When an obviously sceptical Detective Kresge asks her if she's received "another phone call", Scully goes on to tell him that she thinks Mr. Sim might have been the perpetrator. Kresge tells her that Sim's alibi is "iron-clad"; that he had spend the whole morning at the doctor with his daughter. "I checked," he tells Scully rather facetiously.
Scully soldiers on, telling the detective that a further look at the police photos revealed; "no hesitation cuts on Roberta Sims' wrists" and that suicide victims rarely inflict fatal wounds on the first attempt.
Detective Kresge points out that though this is generally the case, it is not always the case and asks her if she has anything more. Scully asks why the telephone was off the hook when police got to the house. Kresge replies; "the wife took it off. I'm guessing she didn't want to be interrupted."
Scully then points out that Mr. Sim had used the phone to call police to report his wife's death, positing that it would be very unlikely he would have the presence of mind to remember to replace the phone exactly as he had found it. "Does that make sense to you?" she asks Kresge.
When Kresge asks what she is suggesting, Scully says that there are unanswered questions and firmly repeats her request for an autopsy to be performed on Roberta Sim.
Scully performs the autopsy under the auspices of the police department pathologist. Autopsy results show no medicine tablets in the dead woman's stomach, which appears to contradict the toxicological report. The pathologist takes the position that the medication was absorbed. Scully says quite strongly that not enough time had passed to allow this to happen.
Back in Kresge's office, Scully explains that she has found what looks like a needle puncture in Roberta Sim's right heel. "The puncture was small, easy to miss. It was meant to be overlooked," she says, with a significant glance at the pathologist who has the good grace to look somewhat embarrassed. "I believe that this woman was injected, anaesthetized so she couldn't fight back, then her suicide was staged," Scully concludes.
The police pathologist, while agreeing that such a scenario is possible, says that it's equally possible that; "this woman simply stepped on a tack and the rest is blue-sky conjecture."
Scully replies that she feels there is enough contradictory evidence to justify opening a murder investigation. She gets a speculative look from Detective Kresge.
Back at the Sim house, Mr. Sim walks in to see police officers conducting a search. He spots Scully and Kresge and confronts her, saying; "This is your doing, isn't it? You didn't have the decency to leave me and my daughter alone." He is about to say more, but Kresge steps in, telling him to calm down. Scully asks him the whereabouts of his daughter. He first asks "why?" but under Scully's steely scrutiny, he grudgingly tells her that Emily is at a friend's house. "Thank God she's not here to see this," he finishes bitterly.
A female police officer approaches, having found a used syringe in the trash "out back". When Sim is asked by Kresge if he can provide an explanation, he says that Emily suffers from "a severe form of anemia. She requires daily injections."
An obviously sceptical Scully tells him; "We'll check that out." She takes the female police officer aside and tells her to have the syringe analyzed and also to "get a PCR on the blood. We need to identify whose it is."
Once the police woman has left, Scully notices that a large, grey sedan is parked outside the house. Inside the car are two men who appear to be the same two she had seen at the Sim house the night before. Before she can check, they drive away.
When Scully returns home around 2:00 am December 23, having been working on the Sim case, she sees a brown kraft envelope containing Melissa's file sitting on the dining room table, unopened.
Scully compares the PCR from Melissa's file to the PCR taken of the blood on the used syringe. The results appear to be a perfect match. While Scully is trying to adjust to the shock of this, her mother comes in and asks where she has been all day. "We were expecting you for lunch," she tells her daughter in reproach.
Scully asks her mother to sit down, and then proceeds to explain some of the details of the Sim case; that Emily had been adopted, that she had had Emily's blood tested and of the matching PCR results between Melissa's blood, taken during the course of her murder investigation, and of Emily's blood, taken earlier that day.
When Mrs. Scully asks; "What does it mean, they match?", Scully, fighting tears, replies; "It means...that this little girl; Emily...is Melissa's daughter."
Scully then produces the two photographs; one of Emily on her birthday, the other of Melissa taken in 1966 in Japan. She points out the resemblance between the two, a fact that Mrs. Scully says is not definitive proof of anything. "All kids can look the same at that age," she says.
Scully tells her mother that the reason she had the PCR test conducted on Emily's blood was because she so uncannily resembled Melissa when Melissa was Emily's age. "Because her face may change, but her DNA can't."
Mrs. Scully expresses doubts about the accuracy of the test. Scully tells her that the test shows there is a sixty per cent chance that Melissa is Emily's mother. She goes on to say that she will order a more comprehensive test called an RFLP that will take a couple of days but which will establish Emily's maternity with a greater degree of accuracy than the PCR.
Mrs. Scully continues to deny the likelihood that Emily could be Melissa's daughter, saying that she is positive that Melissa would have told her if she had had a child.
Scully reminds her mother of a time four years previously when; "Melissa took off. She traveled up and down the West coast; we didn't know where she was half the time."
Mrs. Scully asks her daughter; "You're saying she was pregnant, and she didn't want us to know?" Scully replies; "That was 1994. Emily was born that November. She could have given her up for adoption and none of us would have ever known."
At this point, Mrs. Scully tells her daughter; "I know what you're going through." Despite Scully's protests that the situation is not as a result of anything she has gone through, Mrs. Scully continues, telling her daughter that she believes this situation has taken place as a result of Scully's being unable to let go of Melissa. She tells Scully she knows because the same thing had happened to her.
"When your father died, it was a long time before he left me. I saw him in my dreams. The phone would ring and...just for a moment, I was sure that it was his voice," she says sadly.
She tells Scully that Scully is doing the same thing; that she is seeing Melissa in Emily but that that fact does not make Emily her granddaughter. "We're still connected to them, Dana. Even after they're gone."
Scully dreams of a Christmas past. She and Melissa are teen-agers and have stolen downstairs to look at the tree and the presents. A braces-wearing Scully holds up a flat, square package and exclaims; "This has gotta be it. It's gotta be 'Hotel California!'" Melissa hushes her, warning her that she's going to wake someone.
Scully then picks up a long, rectangular package and wonders aloud what it could be. Melissa has received a similar gift. We hear Mrs. Scully's voice saying; "You don't have to shake it, Dana. You can open those now."
The girls open the gifts. Inside jewelers' boxes, each girl finds a gold cross on a long, thin chain. Note; Scully has said in the past that she got her cross from her mother on her fifteenth birthday, so this event appears to contradict canon.
Mrs. Scully tells the girls that; "your grandmother gave me a cross just like that when I was about your age." She then helps Scully to put hers on.
While Scully remarks how pretty the cross is, touching it, Mrs. Scully tells her; "It means God is with you. He'll watch over you wherever you go." She places her hand tenderly against young Dana's head and rises. As Dana looks up, she sees herself as a grown-up, though still dressed in the clothing her mother had been wearing in the dream.
There is the sound of knocking, then Tara Scully opens the bedroom door to tell Scully; "there's a detective here to see you."
Detective Kresge, whom Mrs. Scully is trying to feed when Scully enters the kitchen, tells Scully that he's found out that over the past eighteen months, three bank deposits in the amount of $30,000, made out to Roberta Sim have been made; the last of which had been deposited the day after her death. The cheques had come from a pharmaceutical company in Chula Vista.
Scully and Kresge then go to Transgen Pharmaceuticals. Scully stops a man outside the building, calling him Dr. Calderon and introducing herself and Kresge. The detective tells the doctor that they are investigating Roberta Sim's death. Dr. Calderon appears to be surprised and asks when it happened.
When Scully asks the doctor if he knew Mrs. Sim, he replies that her daughter, Emily, is a patient at one of Transgen's clinics; a subject in a clinical trial and that Transgen is developing gene therapies for "several blood disorders". We find out, via the doctor, that Emily suffers from a rare type of autoimmune hemolytic anemia. "She's a very sick little girl," he says. When Scully asks about Emily's prognosis, the doctor says he can't really say due to the nature of the trials which are double-blind and still ongoing. "It could be years before we have any results," he concludes, not very helpfully.
Kresge then asks the doctor to confirm that Transgen had been paying compensation to the Sim family. Calderon tells him that Emily is a "very special case. We were lucky to find her." When Kresge asks how they did find her, Calderon tells him that Marshall Sim, her father, brought Emily to his attention.
Scully then asks why the cheques were made out to Mrs. Sim. After a slight hesitation, the doctor admits that "these payments are made as a gesture of goodwill towards Mrs. Sim. She wasn't completely convinced that our experimental treatment was the way to go." Scully finds out that Mrs. Sim had actually filed paperwork to have Emily removed from the program, but that Mr. Sim had later withdrawn it. She also finds out that Dr. Calderon had prescribed Doratriptan injections to Marshall Sim because he had been complaining about suffering migraine headaches.
At this point, Scully and Kresge exchange a look. It now appears as if they have enough circumstantial evidence with which to charge Marshall Sim with murder.
Kresge, Scully and several police officers and social services personnel descend upon the Sim house. Kresge places Marshall Sim under arrest for the murder of Roberta Sim. He begins to read Sim his rights over Sim's rising protestations and denials.
Scully finds Emily on the staircase landing, dressed in a heavy cardigan and pants, almost as if she had been waiting for someone to take her outside.
Scully takes Emily's hand and walks with her to a waiting Family and Social Services vehicle, then buckles her quite maternally into a car seat. The little girl spies the cross Scully is wearing and reaches out to touch it.
"You like that, huh?" Scully asks as she unfastens the necklace and refastens it around Emily Sim's neck. She then just looks at the child, appearing to be very sad, until the social worker's touch on her shoulder tells her that it is time for Emily to leave.
"I'll see you soon, okay?" she barely manages as the little girl looks up at her and silently nods. Emily cranes her neck to look back at Scully as she is driven away. Scully looks as if she is thinking something over.
The following day is December 24 and there is a party taking place at the Scully house. Friends, neighbours and some naval personnel all appear to be enjoying themselves.
Scully, dressed in dark colours, sits isolated and alone amidst all the holiday bustle and conversation. She looks desperately unhappy.
Mrs. Scully tells Tara that every year, Bill Sr. insisted on being the person to put the angel at the top of the tree. Bill Jr., strolling by, growls; "Man's work!" in he-man fashion, eliciting chuckles from his wife and his mother. He then notices Scully sitting by herself and asks her to come and help him in the kitchen.
Once brother and sister are alone, Bill demands that Scully tell him what is going on. When Scully asks him what he means, he tells her that she is "a million miles away. I thought you came to see the family." When Scully says that she did, Bill then says he thought that the Sim situation had been resolved with the arrest of Marshall Sim. Scully agrees again.
Bill then accusingly says; "Then, it's about the girl, isn't it? Mom told me. You really think Melissa had a baby?" Scully says that yes, that's what she thinks.
Bill becomes irritated at this point and rather pettily asks; "She called you from beyond the grave to tell you that? Sounds like something that partner of yours would say."
We can now see Scully is fast approaching her boiling point. She tells Bill that regardless of where the phone call came from, there is still a little girl who needs her help. Bill argues that; "This isn't about any little girl, Dana. It's about you. It's about some...some emptiness; some void inside yourself that you're trying to fill."
Scully is now at a rolling boil. She rounds on Bill and begins to give him a little attitude adjustment but Mrs. Scully appears in the kitchen doorway to tell Scully that she has a telephone call, cutting Scully off when she was just getting started. Scully does get in one good, icy glare before she leaves the kitchen, and Mrs. Scully gives her son a rather reproachful look as well.
Detective Kresge is on the phone and he tells Scully that Marshall Sim confessed, and that he has a signed statement on his desk. When Scully wonders aloud about the fact that witnesses placed Marshall Sim at the doctor's office the morning of the murder, Kresge appears to be content to think that the witnesses were mistaken. "Maybe they weren't," Scully says enigmatically. "Where is he now?"
Kresge tells Scully that Marshall Sim is being held at county lock-up. Scully drives to the San Diego County Jail. While she is waiting to be allowed through the gates, she notices the same big, grey sedan and the same two men she had previously seen at Marshall Sim's house on December 22 and again on the 23rd when they were parked outside the house. The car is on its way out of the jail.
Scully cannot back up because there is a half-ton truck behind her, so she exits her car and trots back to watch the sedan leaving, presumably to get the licence plate number -- 2NI4628. She then joins Kresge inside the jail.
A jail guard tells Scully and Kresge that the two men had identified themselves as Marshall Sim's lawyers, and that they had stayed only fifteen minutes or so.
When Scully and Kresge get to Sim's cell, they find him hung/strangled by a bed sheet, which has been tied to the top bunk. He is dead.
Scully returns to an empty house on Christmas Eve. As she goes to walk by the living room, she stops and looks in. A fire is burning in the fireplace; the room is beautifully decorated. It is quiet and serene and the atmosphere is very Christmassy. Scully looks at the Nativity scene, her facial expression one of many conflicted emotions.
Suddenly Bill Jr. comes up behind her and barks; "When did you get back?", startling her. He tells Scully she's just in time and that he was on his way to the neighbours' house which is where Tara and Mrs. Scully are at the moment. When Scully does not reply, he asks her what happened.
Scully tells Bill that Marshall Sim is dead and that; "they made it look like a suicide, just like his wife."
Shocked, Bill asks Scully if she knows who did it. She replies in the negative, but when Bill asks if she thinks it; "has something to do with that little girl?", Scully says that she thinks it might.
Bill looks at his sister very thoughtfully for a moment and then tells her he has something to show her. They go upstairs where Bill gives Scully a picture of Melissa. Confused, Scully looks askance of her brother. He tells her to look at the date. When Scully turns the picture over, the date on the picture is October 7, 1994. Melissa is very obviously not pregnant. Bill points out that the date of the picture is about four weeks before Emily Sim was born. He's driving at the fact that, given the date of the picture, it's unlikely that Melissa could possibly have been Emily's mother.
Hurt and confused, Scully goes into denial mode, saying the picture doesn't prove anything; that Melissa didn't have to get pregnant in order to have a baby. Her voice rising and trembling with emotion, she stutters; "There's...there's in-vitro fertilization, there's...there's surrogate motherhood." She is grasping at straws, feeling betrayed and very hurt and unhappy.
Bill pleads with her to; "listen to yourself. You're creating this whole scenario to fulfill a dream." When Scully demands to know; "what dream?", Bill replies; "To have a child." He tells his sister that he understands the need and desire to have a child. He and Tara had been trying for years to conceive a baby. However, he tells Scully; "Making this girl into Melissa's daugher is not the way. You're only going to end up hurting yourself."
Before Scully can reply, the doorbell chimes. Bill goes to answer it. As Scully is descending the stairs, Bill is ushering in Susan Chambliss from San Diego County Family Services. "It's about the adoption," Susan tells Bill.
Scully thanks Susan for coming out on Christmas Eve and motions for her to go into the living room. Bill and his sister exchange a look fraught with painful meaning before Scully follows Susan into the living room.
Susan has come to tell Scully that her application to be considered Emily's adoptive parent will probably be turned down. Hurt and visibly upset, nonetheless Scully strives valiantly to maintain her self-control as she says; "I don't understand. I mean...I think I have a right to know why you're not accepting my application." She appears to be close to tears.
Susan replies that the application is not hers to accept or reject; that her department only makes recommendations to the judge. Based on her review of Scully's profile, she says that she would advise against Scully becoming an adoptive parent. She is understanding and empathic towards Scully but very clear in her analysis of Scully's situation.
"You're a single woman who's never been married or had a long- term relationship. You're in a high-stress, time-intensive and *dangerous* occuptation; one that I sense you're deeply committed to. And, one which would, overnight, become the secondary priority to the care and well-being of this child. I'm not sure this is a sacrifice you're prepared to make."
Still struggling with her own emotions, Scully's reply is poignant and heart-rending. "Well, it's one that I've given a great deal of thought to. I mean, to be honest, I've started to question my priorities since I was first diagnosed with cancer...and I feel like I've been given a second chance. Ever since I was a child, I've...I've...I've never allowed myself to get too close to people. I've avoided emotional attachments. Perhaps I've been so afraid of death and dying that any connection just seemed like a bad thing; something that wouldn't last. But...but I don't feel that any more." Tears are threatening to spill over at this point and Scully's voice is just above a whisper.
Susan agrees that Scully's being "a trained physician" means that she is aware of the serious nature of Emily's medical condition. "I want to stress to you, Dana, that Emily is a special-needs child. According to her doctors, her condition is incurable. She requires constant care, both medical and emotional. The good news is...you have first-hand experience of grave illness. The bad news is...you'd have to re-live it through the eyes of a child."
"I realize that," is Scully's reply. She gives a tiny nod of her head, a tiny, hopeful, heart-breaking smile and brushes a tear away with the back of her hand. "And I feel like I'm ready."
Susan tells Scully that her final application will be reviewed before any recommendations are made. She wishes Scully luck, and, as they rise, she extends her hand and wishes Scully a Merry Christmas. She shows herself out the door.
Scully, seemingly utterly forsaken, sits down on the couch in a daze.
A hand touches her shoulder. When she turns, Melissa is standing there and suddenly Scully is dressed in a terry-cloth robe. Melissa comments that she didn't know anybody else was up. We're back in the past. Scully tells Melissa she couldn't sleep. Melissa asks her if she's worried about Quantico or; "who gets the most presents this year?" Scully admits to her sister that she is afraid she is making a "big mistake." She comments that; "I could tell Dad sure thinks I am."
Melissa points out that it's not her father's life Scully has to live.
Scully, in a rare moment of reflection, explains that she is doubting her choices because of past experiences. Medical school had, when she had started, seemed like exactly what she wanted, yet by the time she graduated, she knew it was wrong. She worries that her decision to join the FBI might turn out the same way.
Melissa tells her that "Life's just a path. You follow your heart and it'll take you where you're supposed to go."
Slightly exasperated, Scully tells Melissa; "God, you sound like a greeting card. I don't believe in Fate. I think we have to choose our own path."
Melissa abjures her not to forget that the path isn't as important as the people Scully will meet along the way. "You don't know who you're going to meet when you join the FBI. You don't know how your life is going to change or how you are going to change the life of others."
A voice says; "Hey!", and both girls look up. Tara Scully is standing there saying "good morning". Scully, who had fallen asleep on the couch, groggily wakes up. Tara wishes her a Merry Christmas. Bill enters the room asking if Santa came, followed by Mrs. Scully, who sits down on the couch beside her daugher.
Bill hands a gift to Scully saying that it is from Charles. Just then, the doorbell rings. Bill gets up to answer it, admonishing everyone not to open anything until he gets back.
An FBI courier is at the door. Scully signs for the package he is delivering, he wishes her a Merry Christmas and she absently returns the sentiment as she opens the package.
Inside is a blue file folder with an FBI insignia stamped on the cover. As Scully looks through the file, she begins to frown. When Mrs. Scully asks, Scully explains; "It's the DNA test on Emily Sim's blood."
Bill, who has returned to the Christmas tree, stands beside his mother. They are both looking fairly tense as Bill asks what the report says.
Scully goes on to say that the report definitively states that Melissa is not Emily's mother; "but that they found striking genetic similarities between Emily and Melissa, so many that they ran a test against another sample that they already had." Her voice at this point is very shaky, almost breathless.
Mrs. Scully asks; "What sample?"
Bill Scully asks; "What are you trying to say?"
Dana replies; "According to this...*I* am Emily's mother."
Continued in "Emily".
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