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By dee_ayy
August 13, 2000
Category: S, A, MT, post-ep(ish)
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: My anxiety about what they are doing to them is high, so I wish they didn’t, but they do. Mulder and Scully belong to 1013 Productions and 20th Century Fox Film Corp. Lily is mine, and they can’t have her.
Archive: Fer Sure. Go for it.
Spoilers: Sort of, for the 7th-season episode “Brand X."
Thanks: As always, to Keryn and Peggy. And even though it’s been a while since she bugged me about bringing this character back, Vickie has been relentless about it in the past, so this is for her.
Feedback: Is da bomb (that is good, isn’t it?). dee_ayy@yahoo.com
Note: This story reintroduces a character from my story “First Case,” which can be found here. Knowledge of that story is helpful, but not at all essential.
Summary: An ailing Mulder runs into
an old acquaintance on yet another ER visit. Post-ep for “Brand X.” Sort
of.
________________________________
Sick and Tired
By dee_ayy
Lily Cho rounded the corner with a smile on her face. She always had a smile on her face, and some of the more jaded staff in the Emergency Department teased her about it. “You’ve been here almost a year,” they kept reminding her. “When are you gonna get tired?”
And what did she say in response? Nothing. She just smiled.
She wouldn’t get tired. She loved it. Loved the sprains and fractures, the asthma attacks, the lacerations, the elderly diabetics--all the grunt work she got as a first-year resident. Hell, she even liked the “weak and dizzies” that came in, especially on weekends like this, when people’s personal doctors were unavailable. She reached the desk, the nerve center of the ED machine.
“The broken toe has been taped and sent home. What’s next?” she asked.
“Ummmm,” the clerk said, “there’s another weak and dizzy in two, but if you don’t want another,” Lily cut her off.
“Nope, fine, I’ll take it.” She grabbed the chart and headed toward curtain area two. As she got there she started to speak and read the chart at the same time.
“How do you do, Mr. . . .” then she read the name. “Mulder?!” she asked and exclaimed at the same time.
The man on the gurney was sitting with his legs dangling off the side. Someone had taken off his shirt and put on a gown, but he still wore his sweat pants and running shoes. He was hunched over, tightly hugging his abdomen with both arms. He glanced up at the odd way she had addressed him, but Lily saw no recognition there.
She’d met him over two years ago, when as a third-year med student she’d been doing a rotation in the ER in Baltimore, and he’d come in after a car accident. She’d spent the better part of a day with him, the first trauma case she’d ever worked on. And he’d sent her flowers. No one had sent her flowers before, and no one had sent her flowers since.
“Mr. Mulder, my name’s Dr. Cho. Lily Cho. You probably don’t remember, but I met you when I was a med student at UMD Medical Center. You had a car accident, broke your arm and had a concussion, I think it was. It was over two years ago.” As she was speaking she saw recognition coming to his tired, sickly eyes. He did remember, and she was oddly glad.
“Yeah, yeah, I remember. Can’t believe you do, though. That was one car accident ago for me, but how many for you?” He sounded a little hoarse, and weak.
“You never forget some, Mr. Mulder. I don’t forget the ones who send me flowers.”
Lily saw the woman who was standing by the bed arch her eyebrows at the flowers comment, but say nothing. Lily had met her, too, but for the life of her couldn’t remember her name.
“Then you shouldn’t forget that I told you to drop the ‘Mister.’”
“Right, right. So, Mulder what brings you to Alexandria Memorial on this fine Sunday? You don’t look so good. What’s the trouble?”
“I may have barfed up a lung,” he said simply, and the woman got a sour look on her face. For a second Lily thought she might hit the man.
Instead she settled for an exasperated “Mulder!”
“Okay Scully,” he said tiredly. “Go ahead. You tell it so much better than me, anyway.”
Scully, right, that was her name; and she was a doctor. Now Lily remembered. Normally the young woman bristled at allowing anyone but the patient present his symptoms, but since she was a doctor. . . .
“Mulder has been throwing up for the going on three days now. Virtually unable to keep anything down, so clearly he’s dehydrated. But I wasn’t too concerned until this morning when I talked to him on the phone and heard him wheezing. You see, six or seven weeks ago Mulder was exposed to . . . .” She paused, clearly unsure how to continue; but after a moment she did. “His lungs were infested with the eggs and larvae of tobacco beetles. He went into respiratory arrest several times before the infiltration was stopped and the foreign matter was suctioned from his lungs. As a result he had been using a bronchodilator inhaler--Albuterol--and receiving respiratory therapy to restore his lung volume up until last week. I don’t like the sound of his breathing, and I thought it best to get it checked out.”
Lily had turned her attention to her patient during this implausible tale, but he didn’t react at all. They gave the first-years the stomach flus because they were always easy ones. This one wasn’t going to be so easy. She tried to keep her expression neutral, swallowing her urge to exclaim “You have GOT to be kidding!” and just approached Mulder instead.
“You don’t say,” she said kindly. “That about cover it, Mulder?”
He lifted his head slightly. “Yeah, I think so,” he offered.
“So why don’t you tell me how you feel.”
“Like shit, basically.” She did hear a little wheeze, but nothing too pronounced. And after about 5000 asthma attacks, she felt confident in assessing wheezes.
“Do you feel like you are having trouble breathing?” She picked up the pulse oximeter clip and stuck it on his finger.
He shook his head. “No, not really. But, you know, that’s relative. Can’t remember the last time I managed a good, deep breath.”
Lily was studying the readout. His blood oxygenation was only at 91%. That was low, so she turned to Scully. “Do you know what his pulse ox has been running?”
“Over 95,” the woman responded. “They let him get rid of the supplemental oxygen when it consistently stayed over that.”
Lily pulled the nasal cannula from the holder on the wall. “How long was he on O-2?” she asked Scully.
But Mulder answered. “I wasn’t. Not really. Just needed to keep it near; took a hit once in a while.”
“Mulder…,” The woman admonished.
“Except at night,” he allowed. “I had to keep it on at night for a long time.”
Lily smiled. “That’s not unexpected, I suppose, given what I just heard. And I’m gonna give you a ‘hit’ right now,” she said as she fitted the prongs under his nose and adjusted the flow. He just sighed.
Lily stuck her stethoscope into her ears. “Let’s take a listen.” She went around and first put the drum on Mulder’s back, making him take several deep breaths as she moved it around.
She came back around in front of him and slid the untied gown off his shoulder so she could listen from the front. He lifted his head and looked her directly in the eye, and suddenly she was taken aback for a second. She’d never really seen his face before--in Baltimore it had been bruised and swollen. She hadn’t realized until now that he was a really good-looking guy--and even now he looked pretty bad. What did he look like healthy, she wondered?
“What?” Mulder asked, breaking the momentary spell.
“Nothing,” Lily said too quickly. “I was just realizing that the last time we met you were various shades of black and blue.”
He merely grinned slightly in response to that. “And now I’m green,” he offered.
“The fractures healed well, I take it?” She placed the drum on the front of his chest and instructed him to breathe.
“Yeah, good as new,” he said after he let the breath out.
Lily finished listening. “Well, there’s a slight wheeze, it’s true. But it’s not that pronounced.” She turned to Scully. “I’m surprised you heard it over the phone.”
Mulder let out a loud breath. “I’m not!” he declared.
The young doctor smiled and asked him, “Who’s your pulmonologist?”
“Dr. Levy,” Scully supplied. “He’s here. Do you know him?”
“Of him,” Lily said.
“He’s also gone for the weekend,” Mulder added tiredly.
“Oh. But that does mean your records are here? Without a point of comparison I really don’t know how concerned to be.” She wrapped her stethoscope around her neck. “But first things first. A chest x-ray.”
“Oh, wow, never had one of those before,” Mulder said with a rueful grin.
“But let’s take a look at your abdomen first--I haven’t forgotten about your stomach flu! Can you lie back for me?”
The man flipped his legs up on the gurney and lay down. Lily pushed up the gown and began the gently feel his abdomen as she questioned him.
“How long have you been throwing up?”
“Since Friday.”
“Did it start suddenly, or was the onset gradual?”
“Umm, I’m not really sure. Sort of sudden, I think. It’s hard to remember.”
“Have you been able to keep anything down at all?”
“Uhhh, yesterday. Half a glass of ginger ale and half a dozen crackers.”
Lily arched her eyebrows. “That’s it?”
“Hey, it was a moral victory.”
The young doctor kept palpating his abdomen. “Any of this hurt?” she asked.
“No, not really.”
“Well, tell me if it does.” She continued to press until her hands came across a small scar on his stomach. “Have you had laparoscopic surgery?” she asked, lightly fingering the scar.
“Appendix. Last year,” he offered.
“Well, then, that eliminates one possibility. Have you had a fever?”
“No, not really.” She looked at him quizzically, but he expanded on his answer before she had to ask. “Sometimes around 99.5. It’s higher at night.”
Lily just nodded and stuck her stethoscope back in her ears to listen to his bowel sounds. Her patient lay quietly while she did. When she finished she asked, “Have you been having normal bowel movements? Any diarrhea or constipation?”
“Um, no. Not really. But just about everything’s coming out the top.”
She just smiled at the man. “Okay, here’s the deal. Seems we have two things going on here, the breathing and the vomiting. I’m going to add an abdominal film to the chest x-rays, and order some tests. Have you been taking anything? Over-the-counter remedies?”
“Nah, not really. Tylenol. Which I barfed up.”
Lily grinned in sympathy. “When is the last time you vomited?”
“About ten o’clock,” Mulder offered.
Lily looked at her watch. “About 4 hours ago. How often was it occurring?”
“I really don’t know. I was too busy puking at the time.”
The woman chimed in then. “Basically within the hour whenever he ate something. Or every four to six hours.”
“Oooh, not pleasant,” Lily commiserated. “Well, you just sit tight and let me go write your orders, and we’ll have this figured out in no time.” She sat her patient up and adjusted the back of the gurney so he could sit back.
+ + + + +
Lily wrote her orders all right, but then she couldn’t find a nurse to give them to. Everyone seemed too busy. She knew that some of the other residents just left the orders until a nurse was available, but she hated to do that to her patients. She really had no qualms about drawing blood herself; even if it did mean sheepishly returning to the patient after a confident exit.
But she refused to be coy about it--she returned to him as confidently as she’d left. To her surprise he was alone.
“Where’s your partner?” she asked.
“Went to make a phone call,” he answered quietly. He had curled onto his side. “I think she’s canceling dinner plans, but she’d never tell me that. She’ll be right back.”
“Well, that’s okay, I was just wondering. All the nurses have disappeared on me. I’m going to have to draw your blood work myself. Hope you don’t mind.”
“Depends,” he said. “How good are you with a needle?”
Lily smiled and felt herself blush slightly for some bizarre reason. “After years of grunt work? I’m a pro.” Mulder just silently offered up his arm. Lily wrapped the BP cuff around it and inflated it to bring out his veins. “Aren’t you a policeman?” she asked as she did this. But then she remembered. “No, wait, FBI agent, right?”
“Bingo,” her patient said. He was still on his side, with his eyes closed, and he didn’t bother opening them.
She rubbed the skin in the crook of his elbow to bring up the vein, and saw him squeeze his eyes shut. “Don’t like needles?” she asked kindly.
He opened his eyes. “Should I?” he asked curtly. “I mean, really, who would? Who does? I don’t really care one way or the other, but the anticipation of a needle piercing your skin brings on a perfectly normal level of apprehension, I think,” he snapped.
Lily was slightly taken aback. “You’re right, sorry. Hold still,” she added as she did, indeed, pierce his skin.
“No,” Mulder sighed as he felt the needle go in. “I’m sorry. Out of line.”
“It’s okay. You don’t feel well. Perfectly understandable.”
“That’s just it,” her patient said. “I’m sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.”
Lily was filling the various vials with blood. “I can understand that. Is what she said true? Tobacco beetles? I’ve never heard of that.”
“Yeah, it’s true. Picked it up in North Carolina--tobacco country. I’d never heard of it either. No one had. But they got them out. Took a long time, but I was finally starting to feel up to speed when I got this stomach bug.”
Lily had finished with the vials. “I can see why that would get you down.” She pulled the needle from his skin and put a bandage in place. “Are you feeling lightheaded or dizzy or anything?” she asked.
“No, why?”
“I need a urine sample, too. Do you think you’re up for a walk to the bathroom? It’s right there,” and she pointed to the door against the wall.
Mulder sat all the way up and stood by way of an answer. “No problem,” he said. “Beats the alternative.”
Lily went to the shelf and got him a collection kit. “Just follow the instructions on the package,” she said. “I’ll be right here if you need anything.”
“Uh huh,” her patient said, and he slowly made his way into the bathroom.
This gave Lily a moment to smile. She remembered Fox Mulder well. The staff at UMD Medical center had teased her about him for weeks after the flowers. Told her he was too old for her to have a crush on. She’d taken it in stride, but a little part of her had developed a crush on him, she’d realized then. He’d been personable, interesting, and she’d helped him. Not medically--no she’d done nothing for him in that respect. But she had been able to comfort him, to ease his mind. And he’d been appreciative. She could still remember what a heady feeling it had been.
And here he was again. And this time she was going to be able to help him medically. At least she hoped so. She decided to look up his records while she waited for him, and logged on to the computer terminal in the room. When the x-rays of his lungs from early April popped up on the screen she was shocked. Blotches of white spotted his lungs. She read the case history, and couldn’t help but be astounded. She’d never seen or read anything like it.
“Quite a story,” a female voice behind her said. “Where’s Mulder?”
Lily turned to face Scully. “He’s in the lavatory. It’s like something you’d read in a science fiction novel.”
The woman smiled wistfully. “I wish it was fiction.”
“Clearly you know more about this than I do at this point, but his breath sounds seem pretty good to me--especially given this history.”
Scully crossed her arms. “I felt it best to be . . . cautious. He was critically ill from this.”
“Oh, don’t get me wrong,” Lily assured the woman. “He needs to be here, I think. At the very least he’ll get an IV before I’ll let him go.”
The redheaded woman grinned. “At the very least,” she agreed.
Lily made her way over to the bathroom door and rapped on it quietly. “Mulder, you okay in there?”
“Ummm,” he said through the door, and then he was quiet for a long moment. Lily was about to open the door to check on him when he did it instead. He leaned on it heavily, and showed her the specimen cup. It was empty. “Told you everything was coming out the top,” he explained wearily.
“I was just discussing how dehydrated you are with your partner. Come on, and I’ll get an IV going for you, get those x-rays, and then you can try again.”
“Oh, good,” Mulder said as he allowed the young doctor to lead him back to the gurney. “I was afraid you were gonna go in there and get it.”
Lily chuckled. “We may still have to, so don’t get too complacent.”
“I will dedicate my life to producing exactly what you want,” he promised.
Dr. Cho laughed again. “Get back in bed,” she ordered. He complied and she set herself to starting an IV. The dehydration made his veins hard to catch, and in the end she was forced to put it in the crook of his left elbow.
“That’s the best I can do, sorry,” she told him. “Think you can keep your arm straight, or should I put it on a board for you?”
“I promise to be good,” he said.
“Good,” she said. “Someone will be in to take you to x-ray very soon. I’ll make sure of it.”
+ + + + +
Lily was at the desk working on Mulder’s chart, and again inspecting his old x-rays in the computer, when her attending came up behind her. “Whatcha got?” Dr. Gross asked.
“Umm, 38-year-old male. Presented as a weak-and-dizzy, but there’s more to it. Has had some sort of gastrointestinal distress for the past 48 hours, slight temp, dehydration, the normal. But about 2 months ago he suffered some sort of acute lung infection, and now he has a slight wheeze and a borderline pulse ox.”
“And what’s this?” the older doctor asked, pointing at the computer screen.
“Chest x-ray from 7 weeks ago. Dr. Levy is his primary for the lung infection.”
Dr. Gross studied the image closely. “What is that in his lungs?” he finally asked.
“Beetle larvae,” Lily said, practically ducking in anticipation of the response she was sure was coming.
“WHAT did you say?” Gross asked, not disappointing her.
“You heard me. He inhaled the eggs somehow, and they gestated in his lungs.”
“And he lived to tell the tale?”
“Sure did. They killed them with a massive dose of nicotine, then suctioned them out.”
“Oh, wow, that’s one for the books,” her attending told her. “Let me read his chart from today,” he said.
Lily handed it to him cautiously. She had a feeling she knew where this was going, and she didn’t like it one bit. She felt rather protective, rather territorial about Fox Mulder.
“IV normal saline, 4 liters O-2 by cannula? That’s all you’ve done for him?” the attending asked--but he phrased it accusatorily.
Don’t get defensive, Lily reminded herself.
“I’ve got a slew of blood work running right now. He couldn’t produce a urine sample, so we’ll try again after he’s somewhat rehydrated. I don’t see what else there is to do at this point.”
“A nebulizer treatment for one,” the man said.
“I planned to look at the new x-rays before medicating him. I’m not convinced there is a pulmonary problem here.”
Dr. Gross snorted almost in disgust. “Look at that x-ray, Lily! How can you say there’s no pulmonary problem here?”
“That’s almost two months ago,” she reminded him. “I’ll compare today’s with the set from a week ago that’s in here, then take it from there.”
The attending scratched his chin thoughtfully for a moment. “This can get awfully complicated, Lily. Maybe I should take it from here.”
“No!” Lily protested. “I know him,”
“You know him?” the doctor accused.
“No, not really. I met him once years ago, but that’s not what I meant. I know his symptoms, his case, I’ve built up a rapport with him and his partner.”
“We’re not here to build rapports, Lily! How many times do I have to tell you that? Treat ‘em and street ‘em. That’s the order of the day down here.”
“Well, that may work for you, but it doesn’t for,” Lily didn’t get a chance to finish her sentence. The desk clerk pulled the phone away from her ear and called her name.
“Lily? That weak and dizzy you had in two? Mulder? X-ray’s on the line. He’s in there puking.”
Lily looked at her boss expectantly. He had a dilemma now. Did he really want to claim the interesting case for himself if it involved dealing with annoyed x-ray techs and a vomiting patient? Or would he back off?
“Keep me in the loop,” Gross told her. Lily smiled. She knew he wouldn’t want to deal with it.
“I’ll be in X-ray,” she announced to no one in particular.
+ + + + +
When Lily arrived in Radiology, with a shot of Compazine at-the-ready, she found Mulder sitting on the table dry-heaving into an emesis bowl.
“Hey Kate,” she said to the technologist. “He make a mess?”
“Nah, he gave me plenty of warning. Just thought you’d want to know.”
“Yeah, thanks,” she said as she approached the man. He seemed to be done when she reached his side, and was just breathing heavily with the bowl still at his chin. “Are you done?” she asked him simply.
He lowered the basin. “Yeah, I think so. Fuck.”
Lily looked in the bowl. “You’re not bringing much up, Mulder,” she told him.
“Not much to bring up,” he reminded her.
“True. I’ve got some Compazine here, which should help with the nausea.”
“Do I have to?” he asked.
Lily was taken aback. “But why wouldn’t you?”
“I dunno,” he sighed. “Just sick and tired of the drugs, too.”
“Well, here’s the deal,” she explained. “You are extremely dehydrated, as anyone can see, and that IV isn’t going to be enough. You won’t be properly rehydrated until you can keep something in your stomach. And we’ve got to stop the nausea so that can happen, right?”
The young woman watched as understanding, then resignation spread across his face. “Yeah, okay,” he finally said.
“Excellent,” she told him. “I need a hip, so could you lean to one side for me?”
He did, and she quickly injected the drug. “That’ll take a few minutes to take effect. You tell Kate when you think you’re ready to continue, okay?”
“I’m okay,” he said. “Let’s just get this over with.”
She left as Kate was positioning her patient for one of his chest films.
+ + + + +
Lily had used the time to check up on another patient, and by the time she was done she was sure Mulder was back in his treatment room. She checked for his x-rays, found them, and headed in. As she approached the curtained enclosure she heard a very familiar voice talking to her patient. It was Dr. Gross, her attending. She only caught the tail end of what he was saying.
“. . . very young. I just thought, given the special circumstances of your case and your condition, that you’d be more comfortable with someone more experienced.”
The bastard! The largest part of her wanted to pull the curtain aside and call her superior just that. The smaller, more sensible side of her knew that could be a huge mistake. She didn’t know what to do.
But then, to her amazement, Mulder settled the issue for her. “Well, you thought wrong, doctor,” he said quietly. “I like Lily; Dr. Cho. I’m quite comfortable with her. And I think Dr. Scully is, too. Scully?”
Lily didn’t hear Scully say anything, so the young doctor could only assume that she had nodded her agreement. She couldn’t stop the huge grin that spread across her face at what she was overhearing.
At the same time, though, she knew enough not to burn any bridges--she still had several more years in this Emergency Department working for and with Dr. Gross. She quickly turned and headed back into the hallway. Once there, she merely turned around and walked back into the room as if she’d never been there at all.
“Oh, Dr. Gross!” she said with mock surprise upon seeing him there. Then she turned to Mulder. “I’ve got your x-rays,” she told him, and walked past her superior to the light box on the wall. The first one up was the abdominal film, which showed nothing, just as she knew it would. She pulled it off without comment, and put up the chest films. She heard the steps, and knew Gross was standing behind her--far enough away so that it wasn’t obvious he was looking over her shoulder, but close enough that he could do just that.
Lily studied the x-rays for a long moment, saying nothing. Then she turned back toward her patient and ignored her superior. “I need to compare them a little closer, but these look pretty much the same as the last set in your records. Those were from last week, weren’t they?”
“Uh huh,” Mulder said tiredly. Scully walked over and looked at the x-rays herself. Lily noted that Dr. Gross stayed in his spot and said nothing.
“Well, there is an empirical number we can get. There are spirometry readings in your chart. I can get respiratory in here and get a lung capacity measurement, and then we’ll know for sure, okay?”
“I hate those things, but okay.”
“I bet it hurts,” Lily sympathized.
“Not as much as it used to,” her patient admitted. “But it’s still not fun.”
Finally Dr. Gross couldn’t resist. “A nebulizer treatment wouldn’t hurt,” he offered up.
Lily saw her patient’s eyes go wide. “No way,” he said quickly. “Not unless I absolutely have to.”
“Why not, Mr. Mulder?” her attending approached the bed as he spoke, and Lily seethed as she watched.
“That stuff makes my head spin. I hate it.”
“It’s perfectly safe, and if we can open up your breathing passages some more you’ll be much more comfortable.”
“They’re not closed. Don’t you think I’d know by now if they were? No.”
“Well, you’re not getting sufficient oxygen on room air, Mr. Mulder. There has to be a reason for that.”
“No,” Lily’s patient insisted with a determined look on his face. She looked at Dr. Gross and saw him beginning to flush; he was getting angry. She looked at Dr. Scully, and the look on her face was remarkably placid. She sensed that a battle of wills was in the offing here, and that neither man would back down. It was her job to be her patient’s advocate, and she agreed with him. She didn’t think the treatment was necessary. Not yet, anyway. But at the same time, she didn’t want to cross her boss, the man who would be evaluating her performance and determining her future in just a matter of weeks.
“Tell you what,” she said, stepping slightly in between the two men. “Why don’t we wait until the blood tests come back, and see what they say. And get that lung capacity reading. Okay?” She addressed the question to Mulder, to make it appear to Dr. Gross that she was taking his side. She turned to face the older doctor. “It should only be a few minutes.”
“Okay,” the doctor agreed. “Okay. I’ll see you later,” he told Mulder, and left the room.
“I hope not,” Mulder said under his breath at the retreating man.
Lily chuckled. “Don’t worry about him. He’s okay.”
“He’s an asshole. He tried to take over. Before you got back.”
“I know, I overheard. Thanks for sticking up for me.”
Mulder grinned. “Why didn’t you say something when you came in?”
“Diplomacy,” Scully offered, drawing both doctor and patient’s attention to her. “The one person you don’t want to piss off when you’re a resident is your attending. Right?”
Lily smiled. “Right.” She turned back to Mulder “I’m gonna go find your test results. But you, sir, still need to do something for me.” She picked up a urine collection kit and handed it to him, garnering an exaggerated eye-roll from her patient. But he sat up and took it.
+ + + + +
Lily actually made the walk to the lab to get Mulder’s blood work. She had to wait, but it was worth it. She didn’t want the labs to come back to the desk and let Dr. Gross grab them out from under her.
She found herself wondering why she was being so fierce about this particular patient. It wasn’t as if she was truly intrigued by the medical oddities of the lung condition--she frankly didn’t much care. She felt confident in the level of care she could provide, and didn’t appreciate being second-guessed, it was true. But that wasn’t it, either.
It was him; Mulder. She had to admit to herself that she wouldn’t be this assertive and underhanded about just any patient. But there was something about him. She couldn’t put a finger on it, but there was definitely something about him.
The lab technician handed her the test results, and she headed back to the ER.
+ + + + +
“Hey, I just talked to the respiratory therapist,” Lily told Mulder when she reentered his curtained enclosure.
“And?”
“Lung volume is only slightly decreased over last week’s readings.”
“Meaning?”
“Well, I can’t say for sure--that's for a specialist to say. But I will say that the drop in the numbers isn’t anything beyond what I’d expect from anyone who has had the stomach flu for two days. You’re sick, so you’re not working out your lungs. Makes sense to me.”
“Me, too. So I can go?” Mulder sat up straight in anticipation of the answer he’d been hoping for.
“Not so fast,” Lily admonished. “I’m officially not worried about your lungs, but the rest? It has me very worried.”
Lily saw Scully’s eyebrows arch, and Mulder slump dejectedly back onto the inclined head of the gurney. “What rest?” he said finally.
The doctor walked over to the EKG monitor in the room and pulled it toward the bed. As she did she saw her patient shift uncomfortably. “Your electrolytes are completely screwed up,” she told him. “Undoubtedly from the dehydration. You’re suffering from hypernatremia, but what’s most concerning is the hypokalemia.”
Mulder scrubbed his face with his hand. “English, Lily, please!” he said exasperatedly.
“The sodium concentration in your blood is way too high, and the potassium level is way too low. Clear enough?” She pulled his hospital gown down off his shoulders and started to attach the EKG leads. “One expects these levels to be somewhat off when you have the stomach flu like you do, but not this off. Especially the potassium. Have you felt any twitches in your muscles, or weakness?”
“Some weakness, yeah, but I just thought it was from being sick. No twitches, though. What’s this for?” Mulder asked, motioning toward the heart monitor.
“Well,” Lily started, “abnormal potassium levels can affect the heart rhythm. So we need to do an EKG to make sure everything is okay. And we need to keep you on the monitor while we bring the potassium level back up, because if we do it too quickly it can affect the heart as well.”
“Oh,” Mulder said quietly. “So are you trying to tell me I’m not going home?”
The young woman smiled sympathetically at her patient. “I am. Sorry, Mulder, but we really really need to keep an eye on these things.” The man just nodded. “If you’d waited much longer to come in you really could have been in trouble. You could have had a seizure, or gone into a coma. You’re lucky.”
Mulder let out a breath. “No, I don’t think I am,” he said.
That statement tugged a little at Lily’s heart. Poor guy. Sick and tired of feeling sick and tired, isn’t that what he’d said? “Look, I’m sorry about all this. But we’ll keep you on the anti-nausea medicine through the night, we’ll keep pumping you with fluid to eradicate the dehydration and dilute the sodium, we’ll give you some potassium, and by tomorrow you’ll feel like a new man. Okay?”
Mulder apparently couldn’t help but smile slightly. “Is that a promise, doctor?” he asked.
“Just a figure of speech. I do have good news, though,” she said.
“Oh, what’s that?”
“No nebulizer treatment! Asthma inhalers can adversely affect the body’s absorption of potassium. When did you stop using an inhaler?”
“I was taking prescribed hits off them several times a day up until last week.”
“And that might explain why the potassium level is lower than we’d expect. But I’m not letting that stuff near you until Dr. Levy has had a chance to look things over.”
“Has he been notified?” Scully asked. It was the first time she’d said anything in a while, Lily realized.
“Yes. His office has been notified that Mulder’s being admitted, and he’s been asked to come in to see him first thing tomorrow.” Lily turned her attention back to her patient. “We’ll be keeping you on oxygen until then, too. Sorry.”
“Stop apologizing, Dr. Cho,” the patient advised.
“Sorry…” She realized she’d done it again and blushed. “Oh, um, well, never mind. I just keep thinking about what you said to me earlier about feeling sick and tired.”
“Yeah, well then, my young doctor, make it stop.”
“I’m working on it, I’m working on it.”
+ + + + +
Nine o’clock and her shift was over. Lily checked the computer to find his room number and headed up to Fox Mulder’s room. The lights were off, but the TV was on, and she wasn’t sure what that meant.
“Hey there,” the patient said when he saw her form in the doorway. “Turn on the lights and come on in.”
Lily flipped the switch for the low light at the head of the bed, and the first thing she noticed was that he was alone. “Where’s your friend?” she asked.
“Scully? I sent her home. She hovers.”
“Good thing for you that she does.” Out of habit Lily let her eyes scan the visual evidence of his treatment. The heart monitor showed sinus rhythm; the pulse oximeter showed the oxygen level of his blood was at 99%; There were two bags of solution hanging on his IV pole, one containing potassium chloride, she knew. “How’re you feeling?”
“Better, I suppose. Chicken broth and Jell-O for dinner, but it hasn’t made a reappearance. Sit down.” His voice was devoid of inflection, as if he was giving a report about someone else. He turned on his side to face the vacant chair, and fitted his arm under his head.
Lily did sit, and spent a moment just looking at the patient before her. Though a tall man, he looked oddly small in the bed, hunkered down under the blankets the way he was. He seemed as if he’d resigned himself to being ill.
“What?” he finally said, breaking her reverie. That was the second time he’d done that to her.
“Nothing.” She paused and decided to just ask. “You okay?”
Mulder stared intently at her for a moment, then relaxed and shrugged almost imperceptibly. “Yeah,” he sighed finally. “Just sick and tired.”
“Hey, don’t worry. You’ll probably be out of here tomorrow some time.” Her patient smiled slightly at her.
“That’s not it. I don’t want to be here, hooked to all this crap, sure.” He showed her his hand, with the pulse oximeter clip attached to the index finger. “But the most disheartening part is that I’m used to it. It’s no big deal any more.”
Lily thought about that for a second. In the ER she often encountered chronically ill people, who spent so much time in hospitals she sometimes thought they knew more about how they worked than she did. But this guy was different. He was young, vital, healthy. Hospitals shouldn’t be routine for him, even with an apparently dangerous job. She didn’t know what to say to him in response.
“Were you hospitalized for a long time with the lung . . .” she suddenly didn’t know what to call it. Infestation? Infection? So she settled for the inelegant “. . . thing?”
Mulder laughed once, sort of. “The lung thing,” he repeated to himself quietly. “Yeah, yeah I was,” he answered finally. “Close to three weeks.”
“Well, then, it’s only been about a month since you saw the inside of a hospital. Who can blame you?”
“It’s only been about a week, Lily. I was wandering these halls just last week, as I’ve been doing twice a week since I got released from the hospital in North Carolina. I’m just tired of all of it. You don’t mind that I call you Lily, do you?”
The nonsequitor caught Lily by surprise, and she felt her cheeks begin to flush. “No, I don’t mind,” she said somewhat shyly. “The lung thing--what was it like?” She’d been trying to imagine since she read about it, and while he was being candid she decided to take the opportunity to ask. But she watched Mulder shift in the bed, and immediately regretted it. The question seemed to make him uncomfortable.
He was quiet for a moment, and then he asked, “Have you ever been in a situation where you can’t breathe?”
Lily thought for a minute. “Like when you’re swimming under water too long, and you realize that your lungs are completely out of oxygen so you have to race to the surface or you think they’re gonna burst?”
Mulder nodded. “Yeah, something like that. Just imagine having that feeling, and no matter how hard and fast you swim to the surface, you never make it.” He reached up and pensively touched the nasal cannula still feeding him oxygen.
“Drowning,” he finally said. “Yeah, that’s what it felt like. It felt like drowning. You know it’s happening. You can feel it. But you can’t do anything to make it stop. The more you try to breathe, the worse it becomes.”
Lily shuddered. “It must have been horrifying.”
“I’ve been shot, I’ve been in a coma, I’ve crashed cars.” He said the last with a nod of acknowledgement to her. “But I’ve never felt anything like that. And I’ve never been more scared in my life.” He let that admission sit between them for a moment, before he added, “And if you tell Scully I said that, I’ll deny it.”
“Why?” Lily asked. “You guys seem really close.”
“We are, we are. But she worries too much. She worries enough without me adding to it.”
Lily nodded. “Is that why you make light of it?”
Her patient arched his eyebrows at that. “You noticed. Yeah, I suppose so.”
“She notices too, you know,” Lily informed him.
Mulder sighed. “Yeah, I know. It’s an unspoken thing between us. I know she’s worrying. She knows I’m trying to keep her from worrying. It works for us.”
“If you say so,” Lily said with a smile. She looked at her watch and was surprised to see how long she’d been sitting there. She stood up. “You need to get some sleep. I’m going to tell the nurses to leave you alone. There’s no need to wake you in the middle of the night to check your vitals--not with all this stuff,” she said, motioning toward the EKG and pulse ox readings.
Mulder nodded to her. “Thanks.”
“No problem at all. I’m on tomorrow, so I’ll try to drop in and see how you’re doing.”
“I’d like that,” he said, making the doctor start to blush yet again. She was thankful for the dimness in the room as she turned toward the door. She was almost there when he spoke again. “Lily?”
She turned back to him. “Yeah?”
“You hang on to your bedside manner, okay?”
This time she blushed in earnest, and she knew he could see it. “That’s a promise,” she said. “Good night.”
“Night,” he said, and she could hear the fatigue in his voice. She flipped off the light, but then thought of one more thing.
“Mulder?” she asked tentatively.
“Yeah?”
“Just don’t send me any more flowers, okay? I never lived it down the last time.”
She could hear him laugh in the dark. “That’s
a promise,” he said, and she quietly closed the door.
THE END.