by Kel
ckelll@hotmail.com
 

Website: http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Realm/9374/

Rated: No sex, but PG-13 for some bad words and icky stuff.

Set during Season Four. Told from the POV of a veteran FBI agent
working
with other agents whom you might recognize.

An undercover assignment lands Agent Jerry Luskin and his colleagues in
a "cursed" hospital. Can Dr. Scully handle an emergency without calling
for the paramedics? Just watch.

Sincere thanks to Trelawney, for holding my hand while I wrote,
electronically speaking, and for being ever-ready to discuss any of the
eternal questions. Don't worry, I won't divulge the questions.

And look what she made me:
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Realm/9374/FailureToDie.html

Thanks to Maria Nicole for her fine-toothed beta reading.

Thanks to Linda and Erin, who did the "rough-read."

Disclaimer: Did Homer own Ulysses? Did Shakespeare own Macbeth? Did
Jerry Garcia own Casey Jones? Draw your own conclusions.
 
 

Failure to Die
1/8
 

The FBI has three missions. Hunt down lowlifes. Play ball with the big
boys. Generate paperwork. Myself, I'm a paperwork kind of guy.

I've done my time in the street. I did good work, too. But the day
comes when you know you're finished. You put your ass on the line
catching some mutt, and nine times out of ten there's a weasel deal down
the line that puts him back on the outside with a big smile on his face.

I learned I could be perfectly happy without getting shot at. I'm still
a Special Agent, but everything I do is electric now. Phone calls and
data searches. I'm the king of the background check.

When I got the call that AD Skinner wanted to see me, I could only think
of one reason.

Had to be my weight. Every year I manage to starve and sweat my way
past the physical, but it keeps getting harder. They were sending me
to Skinner so he could chew my fat ass.

I've never been in Skinner's office, but all AD's offices look the
same. All ADs look the same, too. I mean, they come in different sizes
and colors, and some of them are women, but they all look constipated.

"Agent Luskin." Skinner didn't sound friendly or unfriendly.

"What's up, boss?" I asked. I can't call these guys "sir."

"You've been with the Bureau since 1978. Have you given any thought to
retirement?" he asked.

Yeah, boss, I wanted to tell him. I think about it every single day.
It's my supreme ambition. But I'd be darned if I'd let him
weasel me out of my benefits, and I knew I haven't put in my full time
yet.

If this guy wanted my resignation, he'd have to fight me for it. And
then he could battle it out with my wife.

"I'm not ready to retire, boss," I said. "I'm good at my job and I have
a lot more to contribute."

I managed not to gag, and, to his credit, Skinner managed not to laugh.

"Good," he said, "because the Bureau needs your contribution. But this
operation is strictly voluntary."

"I'm listening," I said. He was a weasel, wrapping a voluntary
assignment into a threat.

"Undercover. You're going to 'retire' in Savant, New York," he said.

He even pronounced it right, with the accent on the first syllable. I
should know. It's my hometown.

"What's in Savant?" I asked. "Other than the obvious."

The obvious is the prison. And then there's the old Rolling Hills State
Psychiatric Hospital. Involuntary hospitality was the big industry in
Savant.

"The University Cardio-Thoracic Center," Skinner told me. "And their
star patient, Johnny Cardell."

He paused in case I had any questions, but I just nodded. Everyone
knew about Johnny Cardell. Like most mutts, he was vain, stupid, lazy,
and greedy. What distinguished him from the rest of the dregs was his
sadism. The guy was an artist. Not to mention a snappy dresser.

We would have never got this guy locked up if his brothers in the mob
hadn't decided he was too scary even for them. I don't know why they
didn't just whack him themselves. When Johnny decided to flip for us,
in exchange for some nicer accommodations, the other mutts finally sent
somebody to take him out. But they blew it.

"You retire from the FBI and you move back home to Savant," Skinner
explained. "And just to keep active, you accept a position as the chief
of security for the Cardio-Thoracic Center."

I got the picture. Keep Cardell alive so that he could roll over on his
friends. There was only one reason I could think of that Skinner wanted
this job done undercover: he expected the hit to be an inside job,
someone at the hospital.

"You'll be working with three other agents," Skinner said. "Jim
Givens. Sharp kid. He was just transferred from the Detroit office."

God save me from sharp kids, I thought, those are the guys who get
themselves killed. Maybe Jim Givens was a good agent, but he was going
to be mighty conspicuous in Savant, New York. I'm not saying there are
no blacks in Savant, but most of them are guests in the Pen.

I nodded again.

"Dana Scully," Skinner added.

My wife is not going to like this, I thought, squirming.

"And Fox Mulder."

I remember when Fox Mulder was a sharp kid. I didn't know much about
him except he had managed to stay alive, and I gave him points for
that. This wasn't the team I would have picked for myself, but they'd
watch my back.

"Okay," I said.

But I was wondering about something. See, Scully was a doctor, and I
think Givens was a medic in the service. And I'm from Savant. But why
Mulder? Were we looking for mobsters or monsters? But I didn't ask
Skinner.

= = = = =

I expected our first session to be a lot of blah-blah-blah, but it was
an eye opener. It's one thing to have some general idea about Cardell
and his kind, the things they've done. It's different to hear the
details, see the pictures and the autopsy reports. Mobster, monster...
not really much of a difference, sometimes.

You know what else I learned? I wasn't the only one who'd been weaseled
into this job. Mulder was griping under his breath like a kid in
detention and Scully was playing the martyr. Givens hardly spoke. He
was damn lucky to be here, assigned to DC after only a year in a field
office. I figured he was a little intimidated.

The second briefing was about the Cardio-Thoracic Center. There was no
Cardio-Thoracic Center in Savant when I was a kid. What we had was
Savant General Hospital. Savant General made legal history one year,
highest award ever in a malpractice suit. Then they changed their name
to Valley Medical Center, but the local people still wouldn't go there.

The place did a booming business anyway, thanks to the prison and the
psych hospital. Didn't need voluntary customers.

Last I heard it was saved from bankruptcy when the Diocese bought it and
renamed it St. Andrew's.

But that didn't last either, according to the file, and it was acquired
by University Medical Center, over in Schuyler. The old hellhole had
been gutted and renovated, and now it offered world-class medicine and
surgery. That's what their brochure said, only it didn't use the word
"hellhole."

The third time they got us together, it was down to business.

We met around the big conference table in Skinner's office. The meeting
was at eight in the morning, and like a clown I showed up with my brown
bag from the deli. Nobody else brought their breakfast. Nobody even
had a coffee.

"Agent Luskin," Skinner told me, "you will be working under your own
name. Your bio has you retired from the Bureau and taking over security
for the Cardio-Thoracic Center."

"No sweat, boss," I said, pulling my Danish from the bag. "I think I
can pull it off."

Jim Givens had been an x-ray technician in the Navy. They got him fixed
up with a job in the radiology department.

Dana Scully was going to play a doctor. Excuse me, be a doctor. They
were going to put her in charge of the ward where Cardell was being
kept.

Scully looked at Skinner as if she'd spent the last hour trying to teach
him to multiply but he still insisted four times four was forty.

"Your objections have been noted," Skinner said tartly.

"Nevertheless, I would like to restate them for the benefit of my
teammates," Scully said, still staring him down. "Number one, I am not
a practicing physician. Number two, even if I were a practicing
physician, I would not be able to perform the full-time task of managing
patient care while also providing security and conducting an
investigation."

"Number three," Mulder interrupted dryly, "if she was a practicing
physician, she wouldn't accept a full-time position paying under fifty
grand a year."

Scully shifted her glare from Skinner to Mulder.

"Scully, you know you'll draw your regular salary, plus expenses,"
Skinner said in surprise. Apparently this was one concern she hadn't
shared with him previously.

"It's the principle," she said defensively. "The Cardio-Thoracic Center
was intended to be a cash cow. Perform lucrative procedures and
transfer the patients out in a day or two. Instead they've filled up
with patients that can't be transferred because they are too unstable to
move or impossible to place."

"Gorks," Mulder said.

"I don't use that word!" Scully protested to Mulder, before continuing
her explanation to Skinner. "Anyway, now that the CTC is overloaded with
a population of chronics, they're looking for cheap labor. It's not
just the money, sir. I'd work for less if it was a fellowship or
educational opportunity."

"Oh, chill out, Scully," Mulder said. "I'm sure they're paying the
staff psychologist even less."

"Mulder," Skinner said, as if he'd suddenly remembered, "that 'staff
psychologist' thing didn't work out. We've arranged a different cover
for you."

"Luskin, give me a piece of your Danish," Mulder told me with a grin.
"Looks like I'll be working security with you."

"Not security. We wanted you where you could remain close to the
patient," Skinner explained.

"You'll look cute in candy stripes, Mulder," I ribbed him.

Mulder laughed, but Givens scowled at me. Poor kid; it was his first
taste of real action, and he was stuck with a bunch of malcontents and
cutups.

"Nursing assistant," Skinner said. "An orderly."

Mulder cringed with mock horror. Nope, make that real horror.

"I'm not good with that kind of stuff," he said. "And I don't have any
experience."

"You are Prescott Harrington the third, and he doesn't have any
experience either," Skinner said. He sounded smug. He was trying to
hide it, but you could tell.

"Prescott Harrington must have had one hell of a midlife crisis," Scully
observed, poker-faced. I had to guess she was enjoying Mulder's
discomfort as much as he'd enjoyed her indignation about her salary.

"Prescott Harrington just spent a year on vacation at Club Fed," Skinner
explained. "Courtesy of the Securities and Exchange Commission. When
Prescott's cocaine habit became too expensive for him to support on his
own, he turned to his clients for help. He is banned from working in the
financial arena."

"Do I get a new identity too?" Givens asked hopefully.

"It's not indicated, Agent Givens," Skinner told him gently. "Your own
name and background will serve."

"It's better to keep it simple. We're not getting new names either," I
said, gesturing toward Scully.

Givens nodded seriously.

"As a condition of his parole, Harrington has to keep himself clean and
work at something of benefit to society," Skinner related.

Mulder looked miserable. He looked like he'd prefer to go back to his
minimum-security country club.

Skinner moved on to cover the rest of the details. Organized Crime had
handled most of the set-up, and I couldn't find anything to complain
about. I knew damn well that if they were placing their own agents
undercover in a hole like Savant they would have found a way to add a
few luxuries, but we were only on loan to OC.

They put the kid and me in a couple of apartments near the hospital.
They stuck Mulder in a cottage by the lake. I had to admit that was
brilliant--it was exactly the kind of place that some family friend
would make available for a blue-blooded stockbroker getting out of the
joint. It wasn't exactly convenient, though.

Scully was going to live in the old egg-processing factory. I used to
work there after school when I was a kid. You had to crack eggs into a
basin and then sort them according to how rotten they were. Now it was
called the DeWitt Garden Condominiums, but Scully would figure it out as
soon as she got a whiff of the place.

"What about cars, boss?" I asked Skinner. I hoped they weren't planning
to have the four of us breeze into town with matching Tauruses.

Mulder came back to life.

"Harrington's not going to drive a Ford," he noted.

"OC made the arrangements with motor pool," Skinner said. "Agent Givens,
Luskin--you will use your personal vehicles."

Givens nodded. With the cover stories they'd set up for Givens and me,
our own cars would make the most sense.

"Harrington's not going to drive anything American," Mulder said, and I
had to agree with him.

"Agent Scully, you've been matched with a Volvo," Skinner continued.

"On my salary?" Scully asked. "That better be a ten-year-old Volvo."

She had nothing to worry about.

"Come on, boss, I'm sure Prescott the second bought something nice for
Prescott Three to drive," Mulder said. He'd picked up the "boss" habit
from me.

Skinner grimaced. "Beemer. Okay? And you'd better take care of it," he
said.

The four of us were scheduled for another two days of training, but then
word came that one of Johnny Cardell's correction officers tried to
finish the job right there in the hospital, and the Bureau decided to
hurry things along.

= = = = =

I don't do well with driving ten hours straight. I headed out that
evening and drove as long as I could keep the car in the lane. Then I
spent my first night away from my wife in fifteen years and hit the road
early the next morning. The motel's complimentary continental breakfast
was piss-poor and they didn't provide lids for the Styrofoam cups, so an
hour later I had to stop for more coffee.

It was late afternoon when I reached Savant. The countryside hadn't
changed, but the town itself--big difference. I had to follow the map
to find my new home.

When I was a kid, Savant Heights was the classy part of town, but now
the big old homes had been split into apartments or converted for
business. It seemed that every other house was selling beepers or
renting videotapes.

My landlady lived in the same building. I was expecting an older woman,
some down-on-her-luck aristocrat now forced to take in lodgers. Ms.
Kohl turned out to be younger than me. She gave me two sets of keys and
warned me that the far end of the graveled parking area flooded when it
rained.

I was prepared to chat her up, tell her how I was semi-retired, looking
to buy a little place of my own, retreating to the country,
blah-blah-blah, but she didn't seem the least bit interested. God bless
her.

I also figured she'd tell me how her other new tenant worked at the
Cardio-Thoracic Center, same as me. Jim Givens beat me into town, as I
had expected. But Ms. Kohl didn't say a word, and I didn't get to
"meet" him until the next day.

= = = = =

I showed up at the Cardio-Thoracic Center nine the next morning. The
administrator was supposed to be ready for me, but he was tied up with a
phone call to Albany.

"Go get a cup of coffee," he said, cupping his hand over the receiver.
"The Department of Health is trying to tell me it'll be a month before
my new doctor gets her license to practice in New York."

Instead of the cafeteria, I headed for the security office. I wasn't
officially on board yet, but I could still go greet my men.

My crew received me with indifference and wariness, and they didn't
impress me either. For starters, let's just say this was a group that
made me feel young and svelte.

I turned on the charm, commiserated over their underpaid, overworked
existences, and then I asked them if they saw any problems with security
at the hospital.

None of them did.

"Well, what about your star patient?" I asked. "I understand there was
an attempted murder."

They didn't know what I was talking about until I prodded them, then
finally one of them answered me.

Kirby Collins was the brightest star in my dim little galaxy. I guess
the good thing about Kirby was he was too dumb to lie.

"See, Jerry, I don't think there was no murder," he explained. "Change
of shift, ya know? These things happen."

"Kirby, you do know that Johnny Cardell is a convicted mobster, don't
you? And the officer who was supposed to be guarding him turned off his
respirator," I said.

"Yeah, I know. But we get a lot of prisoners here. And whatever he
used to be, now he's just another patient. I mean, he can't talk or
nothing. It don't make sense that someone would want to waste him,"
Kirby said earnestly.

"Okay, Kirby, I hear you. But if that's true, why did someone turn off
his breathing machine?" I asked.

I could tell by the way my guys were looking at me that this was a
stupid question. Finally Kirby explained it, since I was too dumb to
figure it out on my own.

"I'm thinking, Jerry, that probably the alarm was ringing, and it was
change of shift. He probably made a mistake when he was trying to turn
off the alarm. Anyway, Johnny was okay, so what difference does it
make?"

Kirby's theory was the conventional wisdom on the matter. The police
had questioned the corrections officer without charging him, and the
Prison had him out on paid leave while they conducted their own
investigation.

That officer was our best lead so far. When I could get some privacy, I
would call our Syracuse office and have them do a little gentle coaxing
to put him back on his post. That way we could watch him and maybe find
out who was pulling his strings.

At noon the hospital served a free lunch for the new employees.
Unfortunately it was accompanied by a presentation about fire safety.
After a while the instructor shoved a cassette in the player, cut the
lights, and left us alone to watch it.

"Hey. Anyone free this Friday? I'm having a housewarming party."

Scully pulled it off. New in town, just trying to be friendly. There
were a couple of people in the class who did not work for the FBI, and I
wanted to make sure they didn't accept the invitation.

"Great. Where do you live?" I asked.

Sure enough, once they understood that her condo was in the egg
processing plant, the two locals declined to attend.

Givens told Scully he'd come. Prescott Harrington III ignored her.

= = = = =

Chief of Security was not the cushy spot that Skinner thought it would
be. It was a pain in the ass.

It's difficult to secure a hospital. The public is supposed to have
access, and the staff is accustomed to the presence of strangers. Punks
and junkies love hospitals because they're open all night and they have
narcotics.

The nurses, doctors, and patients see the security team as their
personal servants and mechanics. "Fix my flat." "Drive me home."
"Carry my bag."

Other than Kirby, very few of my men were bright enough to perform these
functions.

Listen to this.

A call came in to my office from one of the nurses: A patient's son had
telephoned threatening to bring his shotgun and kill his mother, her
doctor, and himself.

My officer listened intently, taking notes on the details. And when the
nurse was all done, he gave his reply.

"Okay, ma'am, just give us a call when he gets there."

So even if I was only the chief of security, and not working for the
FBI, I would have had to take a personal interest in keeping Johnny
alive.

I made an appointment with the doctor who was making the day-to-day
decisions regarding his care. Hey, what do you know? Turned out it was
the same doctor I'd met earlier that week at the fire safety course. I
asked if she could spare a few minutes to talk to me.

I rarely closed my office door because I needed to keep an ear on the
geniuses in the outer room. So I heard when Scully arrived.

She introduced herself to the boys and told them she was there for an
appointment with "Chief Luskin." She made a good impression, by the
way. Later Kirby told me he wasn't sure about the whole idea of women
as physicians, but Dr. Scully was "a real sweetheart."

She was a real sweetheart. She came into my office with a big smile and
shook my hand. Then she closed the door behind her.

"No one's trying to kill Johnny Cardell. They're trying to kill me,"
she moaned.

"Do you want some coffee?" I asked.

"I am up to my eyeballs in coffee, Jerry. I am living on caffeine and
sugar. I have been on duty for forty-eight hours straight!"

"Is that legal?" I asked.

"No, it's not legal, but if I go home now that will leave my *intern* in
charge." She flopped down in a chair and put her feet up on my desk.
She made "intern" sound like a synonym for turkey.

"Do you mind?" she asked. "Just till the throbbing stops."

"Not a problem," I assured her. "So, you don't think Cardell's in
danger?" I poured myself a cup of coffee.

"Cardell's on a banana peel, but no one's trying to kill him other than
my clueless intern," she said. Then she reached for my cup of coffee.

"He's on a banana peel?" I asked, pouring out another cup.

"Oh, yeah. Big time. Playing hardball," she said.

Took me a while to catch on, but the gist was this: Johnny Cardell was
in critical, unstable condition. He'd been dead, technically speaking,
a couple of times, but medical intervention had brought him back.

"He's never going to die," she groaned. "He's going to live forever and
I'm going to spend the rest of eternity keeping him alive."

"When do you think he'll be able to testify?" I asked her. That would
wrap up our chore here.

"Testify? Never," she said. Suddenly she yanked her feet off my desk
as if it was on fire.

"What's the matter?" I asked.

"My feet stink, don't they? I haven't had a shower in two days. Damn
it all."

She started pacing the room, and I could see she'd progressed to that
point where exhaustion makes you restless.

"When can you get some sleep?" I asked her.

"My third-year is back on call at five. If things look quiet I'll go
home for the night," she said.

"How about an affidavit, then?" I asked.

"Huh?" She was raking her hand through her hair, like when you're trying
to get the sand out, after the beach.

"When do you think we'll be able to get a statement from Cardell?" I
guess I'll always be a cop at heart; I want to see the bad guys in jail.
If Johnny was too sick to go to court, the judge would probably accept
his sworn testimony.

"I told you. Never. He can't talk, God knows if he can hear.
He seems to make eye contact now and then, but that's about it." She
sat down again.

"This is bad," I said.

"Very bad," Scully agreed. "And Mulder doesn't use bleach."

Huh? She was starting to scare me.

"Dana, I have an idea," I suggested. "Why don't you take a little nap
right now? I'll wake you in an hour."

"He did my laundry, but he doesn't use bleach," she explained. "Thanks,
Jerry."

She closed her eyes and she was asleep.

= = = = =

After I woke Scully, I headed for the cafeteria. Thursday: vegetable
lasagna. I carried my tray past Mulder's table, but he called me over:

"Hey, security guy! We want to report a crime."

He was eating lunch with a skinny guy who looked to be even younger than
Givens. I decided to join them.

"Ignore him," the other guy told me. "He's having a bad day."

"Jerry Luskin," I introduced myself. "I just took over as chief of
security."

"Rolando Espinosa," he said, shaking my hand. "I'm trying to keep him
out of trouble."

"Good luck," I said. "That's his middle name."

"I've paid my dues," Mulder whined. "You're wasting your time waiting
for me to screw up while someone else is robbing the store."

"If you think Patty's giving you a hard time, talk to her," Rolando
said. "Don't get security involved."

"She's a thief," Mulder said. "Why do you think we're out of Tylenol?"

"She took *all* the Tylenol?" Rolando asked indignantly.

"I think she left some suppositories," Mulder said. "Why, you got a
headache?"

"Is that a come-on?" Rolando fluttered his lashes.

"Look, fellows, frankly I'm not that interested in petty pilfering. And
Harrington, you should have plenty to do just keeping your own nose
clean," I said.

"Officer, she takes the ice creams off the meal trays," he said. "And
the little packages of Fig Newtons."

I have to tell you, that got to me. I mean, when you're laid up in the
hospital feeling lousy with nothing to do, you care about things like
that. I'd be mad as hell if someone took my Fig Newtons.

"I'll send one of my men over to investigate," I said. There was no
point in making a federal case out of it, but I hoped that Mulder's
suspect would back off, once she knew she was being watched.

"Thank you, sir," Mulder said. "I think we'd all feel a lot safer."

= = = = =

That Friday was Scully's housewarming party. After work I stopped off
at my apartment to call home, and then I drove to Scully's place with
Givens. I showed him some of Savant's points of interest along the way.

Mickey's Market was a 7-Eleven now. I used to love Mickey's. He sold
something I've never seen anywhere else--frozen chocolate-covered
bananas. And at the far end of his long magazine rack, at the back of
the store, he had magazines I've never seen anywhere else.

The old fairgrounds had been paved over for a K-Mart, but the street was
still called Fairgrounds Road.

"The Clark County Fair. Same acts every year," I told Givens. "Now, up
there on the right. You see that crumbling fortress?" In the dark, the
abandoned monstrosity loomed at us like something from Hitchcock.

"Is that the prison?" he asked as we approached.

"Rolling Hills Psychiatric Hospital," I said. "It's more than twenty
years since they shut it down, but they still can't agree on what to do
with it."

"That's interesting." He yawned.

I had a yen to drive past the high school, but I figured Givens had
suffered enough.

"Jerry," he said sharply, snapping me back from memory lane, "do you see
that?"

"Where?" I asked.

My kids drive me nuts with that. Can't get it through their heads that
if I'm watching the road, they have to give me some hint what they want
me to look at.

"Ahead, by the loony bin. Better pull over."

"Okay, okay," I said, flipping on my turn signal as I pushed on the
brake. "But do you mind telling me what's going on?" I still couldn't
see what he was looking at, but he sounded antsy as hell.

"A hitchhiker. Something strange about him," Givens intoned.

A chill went through me even as I heard him start to snicker.

"You son of a bitch," I swore, as Givens started to howl.

"Gotcha!" he crowed.

"That's not funny," I said angrily. He was lucky I didn't run us off
the road.

Givens was out of control, wheezing with laughter.

"Are you ready to apologize?" I meant to sound stern, but his laugh was
infectious. So the quiet, serious kid from Detroit turned out to be a
comic. I could handle it.

"Yeah, man, I'm sorry," he gasped. "I didn't realize you local boys
took your legends so seriously."

"Jimmy, it's not a legend," I said.

"Course not, old man," he taunted me. "Mysterious hitchhiker, pick him
up by the local nuthouse, he tells you to drive up to suicide hill. . ."

I guess every town has a legend like that. In our story, the ghostly
passenger directs the driver to take him to Leyden's Ridge. It's the
highest point in town, with a radio transmission tower on top.

At this point, the versions differ. Maybe the hitchhiker starts to
climb the transmitter and the driver follows. Sometimes the driver
feels compelled to make the climb on his own.

It's a good story when somebody knows how to tell it right. The trouble
is that every summer we get a slew of kids climbing up the transmitter
tower for real.

So the part about the ghost hitchhiking out of the mental hospital may
be a legend. But the boys who get bored and drunk and dare each other
to make that climb, that part is real.

I don't know how many kids managed to kill themselves over the years.
The boy who would have been valedictorian the year I graduated ended up
as a paraplegic. But that wasn't the worst that happened.

"You want to hear something really frightening, kid? I'm going to tell
you about Scott Ellison."

Scott Ellison was very real, and he wasn't a ghost story. Scott Ellison
was the guy who first taught me that there are worse things than dying.

"Come on, Jerry, get over it," Givens said. "I was just playing with
you a little."

He'd been a good sport, listening to all my nostalgic drivel.

"Yeah, I know. I was just playing along," I said.

"So who's Scott Ellison?" he asked.

I was sorry I had brought it up, but I gave him the condensed version.
Scott was the kid next door, about ten years older than me.

Plenty of kids climb the tower to the top without incident, but Scott
must have touched the wrong thing. I don't know how many volts went
through him. Enough to blow him off that tower and burn his arms off.

Not literally. But burned him bad enough that they had to be
amputated. Yeah. Both.

When he came home from the hospital he used to stay in his room all
day. He seemed a little better after he got his prostheses. He worked
hard with those things. Practiced.

When he thought he was good enough, he tried to commit suicide. He
should have practiced more. He screwed it up.

His mother visited every day. Not his dad, though. He couldn't take
it. I don't think Scott knew the difference anyway.

We arrived at Scully's building in silence.

Like I said, the old egg processing plant had been converted for
residential use, but the architect had succeeded in preserving the
original character of the structure. The prison was charming, by
comparison.

I parked next to Mulder's BMW. There was an intercom panel by the main
entrance. I rang the bell for Scully's place, and she buzzed us in.

Scully opened the door, and we entered directly into a small living room
with a kitchenette tucked into one corner. She must have gotten some
sleep because she looked a lot better.

Mulder lounged on the couch in the center of the room, squinting at a
small TV. He raised his palm in greeting.

Two large cylindrical candles burned on the coffee table and a
mushroom-shaped candle flickered on the kitchen counter. The odors of
pine and citrus and wax mingled with the smell of rotten eggs.

I felt weird for a minute, like I should have brought a gift. Like
Mulder was going to get up and offer to show me his new chainsaw.

"Three minutes. One point lead," Mulder said, and Givens and I crowded
onto the couch with him. The clatter of dishes as Scully set the table
made Mulder reach for the remote to turn up the volume.

"I'll do that, Agent Scully," Givens offered, but he didn't actually get
up until the first time-out.

"Nice threads, Mulder," I said. I haven't known a lot of guys like
Prescott Harrington III. Maybe they do wear cashmere sweaters and
Savane pants.

"I had a meeting with my parole officer," Mulder explained. "Otherwise
I could have worn Levis and my FBI T-shirt."

"Damn, this is nice," Givens said as he moved Mulder's jacket from the
table. "Lamb leather, right? Damn. Do you get to keep it?"

Mulder started to answer, looked around the room, looked to Scully, and
smiled sheepishly.

"The occasional item does find its way into the permanent collection,
yes," Scully answered crisply.

They exchanged glances--a whole conversation without words.

"Can I help with anything else?" Givens asked Scully.

"No, thank you. Go ahead and watch the end of the game," she said.

Allan Houston sank a totally improbable three-pointer--hell, he wasn't
even facing the hoop--and the back of the couch jolted into me as Givens
gave it a smack of frustration.

"Damn," he muttered.

"Yes!" Mulder exulted.

The intercom buzzed, and Scully opened the door.

"Domino's," Mulder noted. "They won't deliver to my place. One of the
disadvantages of living on a private road."

"Why don't you hire a cook?" Scully asked sourly. "Get yourself a whole
domestic staff."

"That's a good idea," Mulder said. "It's a long walk from the hot tub
to the kitchen."

Some agents say they wouldn't want a woman partner, but in my experience
the male-female partnerships work the best. See, two men hanging out
together requires an explanation. Givens and I might as well drive
around in a cruiser with the lights flashing. But a man and a woman,
especially once they get to know each other, they just seem like they're
married.

"Is there any place to get good pizza in DC?" Givens asked. "Because I
haven't found it."

"No," said Mulder and I together.

"What's wrong with the pizza in DC?" Scully asked. She and Mulder
locked glances again. It was kind of like watching two mimes play
tennis.

"Nothing," said Mulder at last. "It's delicious."

"I'm always eager to hear your opinions, Mulder, I'd just appreciate
some concrete facts to back them up," she said.

"You may believe that, Scully, but the truth is you dismiss all my facts
as fabrications. If I said these pizzas were round, you'd ask me how I
knew that," he said.

"I'm a scientist," Scully said. "And as a scientist--"

"As every scientist knows, pie are square," Givens said, very pleased
with himself.

"Good one, Jim. Let's have some pizza," I said.

Scully had ordered two large pies, one with olives and mushrooms, one
with sausage and pepperoni. Givens and I were very, very careful to
consume equal amounts of each.

It occurred to me that if Givens and I weren't there, Mulder and Scully
would have wrangled out their differences by now. This was a team
accustomed to presenting a united front.

"Do you two argue a lot?" I asked. "Or just about pizza?"

"We don't argue," Mulder said. "I propose a theory and she dismisses
it. Argument implies an intellectual process."

"Oh for heaven's sake!" Scully snapped. "Go ahead and propose your
theory, Mulder. Givens and Luskin and I are busy trying to catch an
assassin, but you go right ahead and make up ghost stories."

Mulder began to present his case:

"Fact: Johnny Cardell ought to be dead. Fact: You can't explain
either why he's so sick or why he's still alive. Fact: The
ultrasound," he said. "You can't tell me what I saw or didn't see
unless you're willing to look at it yourself."

"Mulder, I saw the ultrasound," Scully said.

"You did?" he asked in surprise. "You said I was a naïve and unreliable
observer."

"And I stand by that. But I reviewed the recording anyway." She took a
large bite.

"And? What did you see, Scully?"

"What did I see?" she echoed, her mouth full.

It wasn't clear to me if either of them remembered that Givens and I
were in the room.

"I saw exactly what I expected. Liver, gall bladder, common bile duct.
All roughly normal," Scully said.

"And what else, Scully?" he prodded.

"Kidney," she said.

"Damn it, Scully, I was there when that ultrasound was taken," Mulder
said. "You saw something else, too, didn't you?"

"Mulder," she said, shifting her eyes over my way. She was warning him
not to embarrass himself in front of outsiders.

"You must have seen it," he implored her. "The image varied and it
wasn't always visible, but you must have seen it."

"Mulder, please," she said quietly.

"In the middle of the screen. A dark figure, vaguely humanoid in form.
Evil and foreign. Leering at us," he said.

"You know, I could never make head or tails of those ultrasounds," I
said. It was true. I'd seen a number of them, now that expecting
parents were getting them as souvenirs from the obstetrician, but they
always looked like moonscapes to me.

"You saw it, Scully, you had to," Mulder begged her.

"Mulder, I did not see a demon, leering or otherwise," she said.
Her voice was low, as if she didn't want Givens or me to hear her
disagreeing with her partner. "What I saw was the portal vein."

"The portal vein? The portal vein?" He sounded incredulous. "Are you
sure of that, Scully? Are you sure it wasn't the planet Venus?"

I'd like to say I admired his confidence or his honesty. But what I was
really thinking was that he was a little long in the tooth to be playing
the angry young man. I took back some of those points I'd given him for
not getting himself killed, and I awarded them to Scully.

"How many abdominal ultrasounds have you examined, Agent Mulder?" Givens
asked.

Mulder didn't have a snappy comeback, but he made a pretty respectable
recovery.

"Okay. I stand corrected regarding the ultrasound. But the fact
remains that Cardell's condition defies conventional explanation and
that this whole area demonstrates unusual levels of negative psychic
energy," Mulder said.

"Lay it on us, Yappi," I said, and Scully's ice-blue glare told me I
might want to stick to calling him Mulder.

"Let's examine the evidence," Mulder said. "Exhibit A--the aroma in
this apartment. How would you describe it?"

"Sulfur," said Scully. "And thanks so much for bringing it up."

"Sulfur, exactly," said Mulder. "You know, sulfur was known to the
ancients. The word itself is from the Sanskrit, *sulvere*, or, in
Latin, *sulpur*. Or course there are numerous biblical citations; in
Genesis, it is referred to as brimstone."

"Is this going to be on the test?" It was kind of fun hearing Givens rag
on somebody else. Mulder gave him a hurt look, but he continued to
lecture.

"Sulfur is found in the vicinity of volcanoes, which may explain its
long association with the fires of hell. You grew up here, Jerry. Any
volcanoes in the area?"

I didn't want to mess with him too much, not with Scully ready to smack
me down, but he was making it so easy.

"Why, no, Mulder, none that I know of," I said.

"Meteors contain sulfur. I take it they're not common here either?"
Mulder looked at me, eyebrows raised, waiting for my confirmation.

He reminded me of Mark, my oldest. When he was little, he'd get all
serious and wide-eyed, trying to talk me into something preposterous. "I
promise, Daddy, I'll clean the stable and I'll pay for his food from my
allowance." Mark didn't convince me either.

"Ben Stein," Givens said, snapping his fingers triumphantly. "That's
who you sound like. It was driving me nuts, couldn't think of his
name."

"Mulder, are you saying that in the absence of meteors and volcanoes,
the smell of sulfur indicates the presence of evil?" Scully said. Once
again she was practically whispering.

"Scully, it sounds so stupid when you phrase it like that," Mulder
complained.

"You know, Mulder, I really don't recall any volcanoes or meteors
falling here. Not on this exact spot, anyway," I said.

"And yet the odor is intense here, wouldn't you agree?" Mulder asked.

"Goddamn it," said Scully. "I've used sprays and plug-ins and that
stuff you vacuum out of the carpet. I bought some plants, but I
couldn't get home all week and they died. And don't know what else I
can do, Mulder, but I don't even care because I'm never here anyway!"

"I think you missed the point," Mulder said.

"Eggs for Industry," I said.

"What?" Scully snapped.

"Before this was a condo, it was a factory. Eggs for Industry. They
bought outdated eggs and sold them for commercial use," I said.

"Hence the smell," said Scully. "I'm living in a rotten egg factory."

She didn't sound happy about it but she was taking it in stride. I
suppose it was better than finding out you lived on the outskirts of
hell.

"That was my next question," Mulder said, tipping back in his chair.
"After I eliminated volcanoes and meteors, I was going to ask if there
had ever been a rotten egg factory on this site."

"Listen and learn, Mulder-san," I said, "for the most complex question
may have the simplest answer." I brought my hands together and bowed my
head, a gesture he returned.

"Teach me, old learned one. For your land is dark and full of mystery,"
Mulder said.

"Just don't ask him about the ghostly hitchhiker," Givens said. "You'll
be sorry."

"I heard that one, Givens," Mulder answered. "And even I know you can't
hitchhike without arms."

= = = = =

I was on my own for most of the weekend. Givens was getting
claustrophobic living in a town where everyone knew your business, and
he decided to give himself a day in the big city--Syracuse. Mulder was
scheduled to work. And Scully, well, it goes without saying. She was
working too.

I poked around town awhile, even did the dutiful nephew bit with my Aunt
June. By Sunday I was homesick enough that I was starting to miss those
tag sales and flea markets. I sat through Forrest Gump, with the help
of a jumbo popcorn and a giant Tootsie Roll, and then I went home to
bed, where I had bizarre tie-dyed dreams about the sixties. I was at
the Monterey Pop Festival, but I couldn't see the band because Scully
was in the row ahead of me, dancing on her seat. I asked her nicely to
get down, but a red-eyed Mulder growled, "Peace, man," and I decided to
drop it.

I was reflecting that Givens wasn't in the dream because he hadn't been
born yet, when I realized he was on the stage, his paisley tie trying to
ease the transition from his pinstriped suit to his bushy Afro. He set
his guitar ablaze, and as it whined its swan song, he told us about
class C fire extinguishers, the only type you should use on electrical
fires.

But even without my bizarre dream, I would have been awake when the
phone rang at four A.M., because a man my age does not drink a
thirty-two ounce Pepsi and sleep through the night.

I had to rush back to the hospital, where some smart-ass punks had
mistaken the emergency room for a self-service all-night pharmacy.

Fortunately, no one got hurt. I went over the course of events with the
city police and the ER staff.

"Course I gave them the drugs," the charge nurse said. "Fine by me if
they kill themselves."

She sounded tough, but her eagerness to repeat the story told me she was
more scared than she let on. She had plenty to say about my lard-ass
officer who did nothing about the situation except for dialing 911, but
I didn't fault him for that.

"Hey, you don't pay me enough to get myself killed," he said staunchly,
and basically, I agreed. At least he didn't make things worse.

The city cops had their routine down, and I was pretty sure they'd catch
the perps. It's not that hard in a town where everyone knows your
business.

I was in my office writing up the report when the phone rang. The ID
showed the number for the surgical ICU so I grabbed the call myself,
thinking it might be Scully.

"Jerry? I don't know if you remember me."

She was talking low, as if she didn't want to be overheard.

"Nancy Benton," she said. "Used to be Nancy Engels."

"Nancy, sure," I said. "You played the guitar."

"So did you," she answered. I'd forgotten about that.

"What can I do for you?" I asked. I didn't think she'd call me at six
in the morning just to see if we could have lunch some time.

"I must be getting soft in my old age," she said. "I let Mr. Ivankov's
mother sit in his room all night. But now I can't get her to go home,
and my head nurse is going to have a cow when she gets in."

"I'm on my way," I said.

My officer was doubly relieved, I think, when I left to handle the
call. He didn't have to go himself, and he wouldn't feel me looking
over his shoulder any more.

Working in a hospital is entirely different from being a patient or
visiting someone in a hospital. I walked right through the doors to the
ICU, ignoring all those signs that make you feel like you must be doing
something wrong.

Nancy was waiting for me. Luckily she was wearing a name tag.

"Jerry," she greeted me with a tired smile. Hell, she'd been up all
night. "Ivankov is one of our long-term patients. It's a strain on the
family, coming in every day, hoping to see some improvement."

"So you felt bad for the guy's mother," I said. "Let her visit at
night."

"It's really easier for everyone," Nancy explained. "The mother and the
wife have been fighting. So we'd have the mother come in at night so
she could see him without all that tension."

"That was nice of you," I said. I understood perfectly. My
mother-in-law tolerates me only because I'm related to her
grandchildren.

"She usually leaves around midnight, but not last night. Just now I
offered to drive her home, and she says she's not going to leave him
alone," Nancy said.

"I'll talk to her," I said. I knew how I'd play this one: Jerry
Luskin, authority figure.

"She doesn't speak much English," Nancy warned me. "Good luck with
her."

"Hopefully I won't have to wrestle her to the ground," I said with a
reassuring grin.

Well, one look at Mrs. Ivankov, and I knew I couldn't wrestle her to the
ground. She was almost as tall as me, with a neck like a linebacker and
a bust like that woman in the Marx Brothers movies.

"Mrs. Ivankov, I'm Jerome Luskin, chief of security," I said in my
deepest voice. "I must insist that you leave the premises."

"Please. Please," she said. She sounded intimidated, all right, but
she wasn't going to fold.

"Ma'am, I understand your concern for your son, but I'm absolutely sure
he's getting the best possible care," I said.

Yeah. Like I would know.

"Yes, yes," she agreed. "Wonderful care. Wonderful people who work
here. But very bad place."

"You need to go home and let the people here take care of him," I said.
"Help him get better so he can get out of this bad place."

"I protect him so he can get better. So demon cannot steal his
strength."

Her thick accent made me question if I understood her correctly.

"Who told you about a demon?" I asked, ratcheting my tone down from
tough guy to sympathetic ear.

"Nobody told me," she said indignantly. "A secret. Nobody talk."

"Then why do you think there is a demon?" I asked gently.

"I see him! I see myself," she said. "You will tell me also there is
no such thing, but I see it, over him, not let him wake up."

"You see it now?" I asked, offering her my handkerchief.

She shook her head. She was doing that silent sob thing, with her great
bosom heaving up and down, but she didn't make a sound until she honked
loudly into her own hanky.

"I keep it away," she said at last. "But before, I see it. On him, on
top of my son. Very bad thing, trying to hurt him, trying to suck up
his strength."

"You saw it yourself?" I asked, waiting for her to explain that while
she hadn't actually seen it, she knew it was there, and someone else had
seen it.

"Somebody must stay with him," she said. "If somebody stay with him, I
will go."

I had a nagging suspicion, despite her denial, that someone had been
giving her ideas, and I decided to go with it.

"Would you like Prescott to stay with him?" I asked.

"Yes, yes, very good," she agreed. "Very nice man. He drive me home
last week."

Bingo, I thought. Clumsy questioning by Mulder was the source of this
woman's delusion.

"I'll find somebody to stay with him," I promised, and I went out to
tell Nancy she was off the hook.

Nancy was talking to a heavyset blond woman, and both of them agreed
that "her majesty the boss" would be a raging bitch if she found
visitors around this early.

"I know it's crazy," I said, "but Mrs. Ivankov swears there's a demon
trying to suck the life out of her son. She's afraid to leave him
alone."

I thought Nancy would be relieved, but instead she turned pale.

"I'll sit with him," the other woman said. "We'll take turns until
visiting hours."

"You'll get in trouble, Beth," Nancy said. "The secretary has to be out
at the desk."

The blonde looked at me.

"Can you stay in the room until we work something out? His wife will be
here at eleven, and she's never late."

The two women exchanged glances, and I would have loved to hear what
else they had to say, but they weren't going to talk in front of me. I
know they sighed with relief when I agreed to help out.

I went back to Ivankov's room and told his mother that I would watch
him.

"Why do you think the demon wants to hurt him?" I asked her.

She gathered up her purse, coat, glasses, and shopping bags, and it was
a moment before she answered.

"You do not understand," she said. "A man can eat bread and a plant can
eat sunshine, but a demon must eat pain and fear."

She yawned as she left the room and I settled down in the chair she had
vacated.

Mr. Ivankov, I have to tell you, did not look like ICU material. He was
around my age, but tan and muscled, and his breathing was quiet and
comfortable. He looked like he should be taking a snooze on a chaise
longue by a swimming pool.

About five minutes later Nancy came back to the room.

"Thanks, Jerry, I'll watch him," she said.

"You've been up all night, Nancy. Go home and get some sleep," I told
her.

"I'm just staying until Beth can take over. Brenda from housekeeping
will watch until Prescott's ready to do his AM care, and if the wife
isn't in by then, Beth will take her break here."

I had given Mrs. Ivankov my word that I wouldn't leave her son
unguarded, and I like to keep my promises. But why was Nancy so serious
about keeping up the vigil?

"You've seen it too," I said. I made it sound like a statement, because
I wanted her to feel comfortable talking about it, but I was careful not
to lead her.

"No. But I've felt it many times, and I've seen its image," she said.

"Its image? Where?" I asked.

"Sometimes it shows up in x-rays. They used to take the machines out of
service and run diagnostics, but now they just toss out the films and
repeat the x-ray," she said.

"Toss them out," I repeated. "In other words, you can't show me one of
these pictures."

"Everyone knows about the x-rays," she said.

"Same old Savant," I said. We were having this chat as if there was no
one else in the room, and for all practical purposes, there wasn't.
"Nothing to do but gossip and pass around urban legends."

"When you work nights in a hospital, you realize that there are lots of
things you can't see," she said. "Believe me, Jerry, evil is very
real."

"There are evil men, and evil women, and unfortunately, evil children,"
I said. "That doesn't mean there are evil demons."

"I'm not saying it's a demon. But pain can be stronger than death," she
said.

"You're tired," I said. "Go home and get some sleep."

"Tired? I'm delirious, or I wouldn't be talking to you like this. But
there's been a lot of suffering here in this building, for going on a
hundred years. At some point it took on a life of its own, and a
shape."

"Have you been talking to Prescott Harrington?" I asked. He'd have to
watch what he said, because he had everyone going on this demon stuff.

"The new orderly? Yeah, all the time," she sighed wistfully. "In my
dreams."

= = = = =

By afternoon I was beat. I was tired of chasing my tail about stuff
that had nothing to do with the case. I was fed up with Mulder's
growing circle of believers.

Add to that, the stuffed peppers from the cafeteria were hitting me
exactly the way my wife's always do, and I was tired of running everyone
out of the bathroom. I decided to go home early.

I stepped out, squinting at the light of day, and as I crossed the
parking lot I noticed a dark sedan pulling in.

My spider senses started tingling.

I got in my car and waited. Hoods aren't the only ones who drive dark
sedans, after all. Hell, half of Washington drives dark sedans.

But this dark sedan smelled like hoods. And when four men got out, with
their nice suits and pinky rings, well, I didn't need the BSU to tell me
that these guys might fit the profile.

I watched them as they walked to the door. One guy took the lead, it
seemed to me. He was older than the others, a little meatier, too. I
thought I recognized him, but then I wondered if I was being like
Mulder, seeing wiseguys all over the way he sees demons. Then the big
guy turned to say something to one of his goons, and I knew for sure.

Nicky "the Bear" Postino.

What the fuck was he doing here? It just didn't fit. I followed in
after them, keeping my distance. I had to figure Nicky's fuzz sensor
was at least as sharp as my mutt sensor.

See, Nicky Postino was not someone that should be trying to take out
Cardell. It didn't make any sense. But you never know with these guys,
they're all related, all into each other's business. Maybe something
else was going down that we didn't know about. Maybe Postino owed a
favor to the Sartore family, after that fiasco in Newark.

I lost them when they took the elevator and I raced back to the desk,
startling the receptionist.

"I want you to page Dr. Scully for me," I said.

"Do you know his beeper number?" she asked.

"Don't use the beeper. I want you to page her overhead, on the
loudspeaker," I said.

That was our plan, so Mulder and Givens would hear it too.

"We're not supposed to do that without authorization," she simpered at
me.

If I had known how to use the system I would have done it myself.

"Very good," I said as patiently as I could, taking out my ID badge.

"Oh," she said with a little gasp of respect.

"Now. Page Dr. Scully for a Code G in the lobby," I said.

Code G meant "gangster." Tricky, huh? Mulder had promised he'd page me
for a Code D if the demon showed up.

Scully rang me on my cell phone right away.

"Nick Postino is in the house," I told Scully.

"Nicky the Bear?" She was as surprised as I was.

I heard Mulder's voice behind me.

"I'm on it," he said over his shoulder as he raced away. He'd run down
the stairs while I was watching for the elevators, and I hadn't even
realized he was there.

I made a quick call to the Syracuse office and then I raced up after
Mulder. Except I took the elevator.

Scully didn't exactly jump when I dodged into the ICU, but I could see
she'd been watching the door.

"Nothing here," she said in a harsh whisper. "Nothing." And then she
looked at me and asked, "Where's Mulder?"

Like I was hiding him in my pocket or something.

"He's not armed," she reminded me. Well, neither was she or Givens.
And Givens hadn't even made an appearance.

Next thing you know the overhead loudspeaker was squawking at us:

"Code G in Pediatrics."

Scully almost knocked me over running for the door. I caught up with
her and followed her to the stairwell and down to Pediatrics.

There was enough of a commotion down there that no one even noticed when
Scully and I ran into the unit.

Nicky the Bear had Mulder by the shirt, and he was shaking his beefy
finger at him.

"What the hell's the matter with you?" he was screaming. "You stupid or
something?"

A chubby child in Jurassic Park pj's was screaming at him too:

"Don't hurt my grandpa!"

The other three thugs were enjoying it all. Finally they noticed Scully
and me.

"Hey, Nick, look who ain't dead yet," one of them announced. "It's
Jerry the Feeb."

Nick released Mulder with a dismissive shove.

"Jerry, what are you doing here?" he asked warmly. We had one of those
awkward moments when you don't know if you're going to hug each other or
not.

"I retired from the FBI. I'm in charge of security," I said after we'd
released each other from our clumsy embrace.

"Perfect. That's what I need. This crazy guy is in my face, I don't
know what his problem is." Nicky pointed at Mulder with the greatest
annoyance. The little kid was stomping on Mulder's feet now.

"I've had trouble with him before," I said. "What are you doing here,
Nicky?"

"It's my grandson, Little Nick. He needs another operation. But he's
going to be just fine, aren't you, Nicky?" He beamed at the child.
"Hey, Nicky. Don't kick. It isn't nice."

Before I took Mulder away, I asked Nick to drop by and see me if he had
time, and a little later he was kind enough to comply.

We chewed the fat a bit, and he showed me pictures of the rest of his
brood.

"I heard about Johnny Cardell," he told me. "They say he'd be better
off dead."

"Heard anything else?" I asked him. "Anyone planning to do the job?"

"Whack Johnny?" he asked incredulously. "What the hell for?"

= = = = =

Finding a way for the four of us to meet turned out to be a major
headache on this case. Luckily Givens and I had no problem, since we
were practically roommates, and Mulder and Scully were together all the
time, both of them working in the Post-Surgical ICU.

No question, it was Scully who had it the roughest on this
investigation, and the rotten eggs turned out to be the least of her
troubles. Keeping her patients alive was no picnic. It didn't leave
much time for anything else.

I used to call up to the post-surgical ICU every couple of days and
summon Prescott Harrington to my office. I made sure everyone knew he
was an ex-con and that I was keeping my eye on him. Usually Mulder
would saunter into my office and say something snotty and I'd holler at
him to close the door and shut his mouth.

Of course Mulder loved it when I called him in to meet with me. He
spent forty-plus hours a week up to his elbows in blood and shit, so our
little visits were a real treat.

He was working a double-shift one Wednesday, a couple of weeks into the
assignment, so I figured I should give him a break. I called up to the
nurse in charge and told her I needed to see my felon again.

"Just make sure he doesn't get lost on the way back," she said. "I've
got a full unit and I'm short-staffed as it is."

Mulder was at my door five minutes later. It was too bad Mr.
Andover-Choate hadn't learned any manners in the pen.

"Jerry, baby! You're going to have to do something about security in
the parking lot, my good man. I found an Herbalife leaflet on my
windshield."

"Can it, Snowbird," I barked at him. "I just talked to your PO and he
thinks you've got a spoon up your big nose again."

Mulder closed the door behind him and we dropped the charade.

"Hey, Luskin, do you know the technical term for Johnny Cardell's
current condition?" he asked me. "They call it T.F. Bundy syndrome."

"Bundy? Like Ted Bundy?" I had learned a lot from Mulder about life and
death in the ICU. For one thing, he thought it was highly plausible
that the corrections officer really had turned off the respirator by
accident when he only meant to silence the alarm.

"Totally fucked, but unfortunately not dead yet," Mulder explained.

"Couldn't happen to a nicer guy," I reminded him. "The question is, do
you still believe he's being targeted?"

"Well, just this morning someone stuck a knife in his back." He said it
very casually, but he was eyeing me, waiting for my reaction.

I sat up.

"With two corrections officers on duty? They had to be in on it. We're
going to squeeze them until they tell us who did it," I said.

"I know who did it. It was Scully," he said.

"Har-de-har-har," I said. Mulder loved to give me all the gory details.
Every time Scully rammed a lamp up somebody's butt or a snake down their
throat, he had to tell me about it because he knew it made me want to
puke.

He described how Scully had poked a big needle between Cardell's ribs,
and then cut a slit, and he had me going until he told me she had stuck
her finger in there too.

"Sure, Mulder. And then I bet she pulled out a plum," I said.

"You know what, Luskin? You have to get out of this office more," he
said.

I realized he was right. I had my doubts by this time, but with nowhere
else to start, I'd have to spend some time hanging out with Prescott and
Johnny.

= = = = =

Givens was out on the front porch when I got home, sitting on the steps
and smoking a cigarette.

It's twenty years since I quit, but at that moment I wanted a smoke so
much I could taste it. I sat down next to Jimmy to share the sunset
with him and catch a precious whiff of second-hand smoke.

"Don't start, man," Givens said. "I'll quit when I'm good and ready."

I kept my mouth shut and let him enjoy the rest of his cigarette.
Finally he pitched the butt onto the sidewalk.

"That Dana Scully is a major ball-buster," he said with a sigh.

That took me by surprise. I never found Scully to be a problem.

"Is she nagging you about your smoking?" I asked him. Givens had missed
out entirely on the incident with Nicky the Bear because he'd been
outside sneaking a cigarette. He never heard the overhead announcement.

Givens didn't answer.

"Sometimes it's different, working with a woman," I offered.

"It's not about that," he snorted as he rose to his feet. "Oh, just
forget it. Come on. I'll make you dinner."

Givens and I were eating most of our meals at the Boulevard Diner, which
had expanded since I was a kid but still made the best home-fries in the
world. It wasn't a good place to talk, though

Givens's apartment was small, but it was a nice set-up. I only used two
of my rooms anyway.

We sat at his wood-tone Formica table and ate Rice-a-Roni with crescent
rolls. That kid could really cook.

"You don't know me very well, Jerry," Givens said at last.

"I know you've got a good record," I said. "Four years in the Navy, top
of your class at Lehigh, CPA, lots of commendations in Detroit. Come
on, Jimmy, they wouldn't have brought you to Washington if you weren't
on the ball."

I figured he was beating himself up because he'd missed out on making a
fool of himself in front of Nick Postino. Maybe he was asking himself
why he'd been teamed up with a burn-out like me or a flake like Mulder.

"I'm not looking for a pep-talk," he said softly. "I just want you to
know that I'm a normal guy, not a weirdo or a mystic, nothing like
that. And I know I was kidding with you about that hitchhiker, but I
don't do practical jokes, especially not where it involves patients."

I nodded, waiting for him to bring the threads together.

"Dr. Scully asked me to shoot an x-ray," he continued.

I nodded again.

"Cardell. She wanted to confirm the placement of his nasoduodenal tube
and rule out aspiration," he said.

"Uh, Jim? Does it matter whether or not I know what you're talking
about?" I asked him.

"She wanted to make sure that he was being fed into his stomach and not
his lungs," he explained. "And no, it doesn't really matter."

Every time he paused, I gave him a little nod so he'd go on.

"I was careful taking the x-ray," he said. "I knew I was rusty and I
didn't want to screw it up. And she had told me exactly what she was
looking for--I knew she needed to see the lungs and below the
diaphragm."

"What happened?" I asked.

"I developed the x-ray. But the image. . . it was like, I don't know,
like a cave painting or something. Ugly. A hideous little face on a
long, twisting neck." Givens looked at me with narrowed eyes, waiting
for my reaction.

"A demon, perhaps?" I asked, reminding him of how Mulder had
misinterpreted something he saw on the ultrasound. Of course I was also
thinking of what Nancy had told me.

"Maybe it was somebody's idea of a joke," Givens said. "You know,
Jerry, it's really not funny. I had to go back with the portable
machine and take another x-ray."

"Pain in the ass," I sympathized.

"Mulder complained the whole time 'cause he'd just made the bed and I
was wrinkling his sheets," Givens said.

"Screw 'im," I said. "A bum like Snowbird can stand to do a little
honest work."

Givens smiled.

"Yeah. Funny," he said. "I took another x-ray. Doubly careful this
time. I developed it right away."

"This one came out?" I asked.

"Yeah. I checked. Lungs, diaphragm, feeding tube. I'm no radiologist,
but I looked it over and it was okay. Normal. I walked it back to the
ICU myself. Stuck it on the light box. Walked away."

I took another crescent roll. They get greasy if you try to save them
for later.

"Then I got paged back to the ICU. Stat. Of course, everything you do
for Dr. Scully is stat," he complained. "She's standing by the light
box, hands on her hips, tight little frown."

"Dr. Scully can be very exacting," I said.

"Jerry, I can't blame Scully for this. And I can't even begin to
explain it. She had the x-ray there. And it was definitely the one I
just took, or at least it was labeled exactly the same. And there are
the lungs, and the diaphragm, the feeding tube. But the guy, the
patient in the x-ray, he's got his hands on his throat. It's like he's
trying to choke himself."

"You didn't notice that when you took the picture?" I asked him.

"He wasn't doing it when I took the picture!" Givens protested. "I'm
not an amateur! Anyway, Mulder was right there, I think one of us would
have seen it."

"What was Scully's explanation?" I asked.

"Dr. Scully thinks Agent Mulder and I are playing around when we should
be getting our work done, because God knows she's doing two jobs without
any help from anyone," Givens said.

"Well, if it's not you. . ." I said.

Givens shook his head.

"It's not Mulder," he said. "Yeah, I know, I've heard all about his
demon that feeds on suffering. But I don't believe he would falsify
evidence, and there is no way he could have done this right under my
nose."

"Okay, Jimmy, take it easy," I said. "Tomorrow I'll spend some time in
the ICU. See what I can figure out."

"Thanks, Jerry. Thanks a lot. Cause the worst part is, you listen to
how Mulder says it, and you start to believe it yourself."

= = = = =

I brought a box of doughnuts the next morning when I went to visit the
ICU.

Mulder started to show me around, but after the third time someone asked
him for his help, he gave up the guided tour and went back to work.

The only people who weren't busy were the two corrections officers
guarding Johnny Cardell. They sat outside his room on a couple of
swivel chairs drinking coffee. I pulled up a chair of my own and
offered them my doughnuts.

One of the loafers turned out to be the guy who had turned off Johnny's
respirator. I figured he owed me, since I'd help get him back on the
job. I asked him about the incident.

"Oh, that again. Jeez!" he said, wiping some Bavarian cream out of his
moustache with the back of his hand. "I pushed the wrong button, and
it's like I'm never gonna hear the end of it."

"What do you mean?" I asked, reaching for a plain cruller.

The guard told me his version: That big machine next to the bed, which
was a ventilator, not a respirator, made a lot of noise. Sometimes it
rang like a telephone, and sometimes it put out this steady high-pitched
whine. Sometimes the noise stopped by itself and sometimes it didn't.

There was a button on the machine to make the ringing noise stop and
another button to make it stop whining. Usually someone would come in,
look the ventilator over, and do something to make it shut up. But this
time it was change of shift and all anybody seemed to care about was
getting out the door.

Fred was getting a headache, listening to that thing. He'd seen the
staff take care of this hundreds of times and he decided to take matters
into his own hands. He went over to the machine and pushed a button.
It worked great. Everything got quiet.

"Sound like a perfectly honest mistake," I said. I could see now why
the cops and even Mulder believed this guy. He was telling the truth.
I offered him another doughnut.

"You must get a good view of what goes on in this hospital," I said.
"Notice anything fishy?"

"Oh, yeah. The new doc. Very fishy," Fred said. "Tell him what you
saw, Al."

The other guard snorted.

"Drugs. Her and the prep-boy orderly."

"They're using drugs together?" I asked.

"Not using. Selling," Al said knowingly.

"We know you're keeping your eye on him," Fred added. "We know the
mutt's done time."

"One day I saw him," Al explained. "That door over there--that's her
room."

"The doc's?" I asked.

"Yeah. That's her little room for sleeping in," he said.

Scully was asleep about ten feet away from us, with her head down on a
desk. I guess she didn't like her little room.

"What did you see?" I asked.

"I saw the mutt go into her room with a bag. And then he came out with
a different bag," Al said.

"Wow," I said. "I'm going to get on this right away."

"I bet she's stealing drugs from the hospital, and he's getting them out
on the street," Fred speculated.

"Okay, boys, like I said, I'm on it. What I need you to do, though, is
keep a real good eye on Johnny." I was hoping I could cut some slack
for my partners.

"Hell, Jerry, I know it's a rule that a prisoner gets a couple of
guards, but do you really think Johnny's going to make a run for it?"
Fred asked.

Johnny Boy had that big hose leading into his mouth, and one tube in
each nostril, and hoses creeping out from under the sheet {don't want to
know what those went to) and IV's all over, so I laughed along with
them.

"Humor me, okay?" I said.

I sat and watched for a while. Mulder must have raced past me three or
four times, but he hardly acknowledged me.

The ICU was a noisy place. People spoke in loud tones to be heard over
the beeps and hisses. The phones rang continually. Every five minutes
someone would actually shout about something.

Everyone who worked in this ICU wore scrub suits, which made it
impossible for me to tell who was who. I mean, not just the doctors and
the nurses, even the secretary and the cleaning guy.

Anyway, the guy who came over and helped himself to a doughnut was
Mulder's lunch buddy, Rolando, who turned out to be a nurse.

"You brought these?" he asked me. "Thanks. And thank you too, boys.
Thanks for leaving a few for the rest of us."

He gave a sarcastic smile to the corrections officers, who answered him
with their stony sneers.

"You can toss out the rest of the box," Fred told me as the nurse
hurried off. "That's Rolando. He's one of them."

"Queer," Al explained.

"You fellows don't miss a thing, do you?" I asked them.

"Nope," Fred said.

Rolando was back in under a minute. Even I can't eat a doughnut that
fast.

"Move aside," he said. He gave Fred's chair a kick as he pushed his way
through the doorway.

I watched Rolando move around the room, making notes on a clipboard as
he walked around the bed.

He came back to the doorway, looking a little perplexed.

"Prescott? Anybody see Prescott?" he called.

"I'll find him," I offered, pushing my chair out of the way.

This ICU had eight rooms for the patients. Mulder might have been in
any of the other seven, or he might have been in a storage room or
something, or even in Scully's little sleeping room. I just kind of
roamed the unit, yelling Harrington's name derisively.

Mulder stepped out of one of the rooms, holding a load of bloody sheets
that bothered me a lot more than they seemed to bother him.

"This is harassment, flatfoot. I'm just trying to do my job," he said.

"What is your job, exactly?" I challenged him.

"I'm at the beck and call of everyone I see," he explained. "Plus I
empty containers of piss, shit, blood, and bile. Do you want a
demonstration?"

"Rolando's looking for you," I told him.

"Which patient, Cardell?" he asked as he dumped his disgusting bundle
into a plastic bag. At my nod, he headed in that direction, pulling off
his gloves with a snap.

The corrections officers were still parked like lumps outside of
Cardell's room, and Mulder gave Fred's chair a shove as he pushed his
way in.

"What's up, muchacho?" he asked Rolando.

The nurse was playing with some bleeping piece of equipment. I'm not
editorializing, you understand. The thing was bleeping.

"Prescott, did you empty the urine bag here?" he asked.

"No. It was only a few cc's," Mulder answered.

"Damn. Do we have a doctor around?"

"Scully's here, but"-- he kind of shrugged-- "she's sleeping."

"All right. As long as she's on the unit."

Someone else started calling for Mulder, but I decided to hang out with
my friends from the corrections department. They were such fine
observers and all.

A little while later Rolando addressed me.

"Would you mind getting Dana--Dr. Scully--for me?" he asked.

I felt bad waking her. It was amazing she could sleep through this
racket to begin with.

"Dana," I said, touching her shoulder, "one of the nurses needs you."

She was easy to wake up. That's a good trait in an agent. I guess in a
doctor too.

She looked like dog shit. Not ugly, not by a long shot. Just
puffy-eyed and disheveled. Hey, who am I to talk? I look like that all
the time.

She conferred with Rolando. It sounded like he'd already done most of
what she wanted him to do, and the only thing that made a difference to
me was when she asked for an x-ray, cause that meant Jim would make an
appearance.

Scully left the room, and I tagged along with her.

"How's it going, Jerry?" she asked.

"I'm great, Dana," I said. "How have you been?"

I hadn't talked to her directly since the pizza party after our fire
safety class.

I wasn't worried about how it would look, Scully and I strolling through
the ICU together. Most everyone was too busy to care, and the CO's
would think I was investigating their accusations.

"I'm exhausted," she said quietly. "I've never seen a group of patients
try so hard to die."

"As long as they're not getting any help from the mob," I said. But I
didn't think they were.

"Let's round," she said.

Mulder and Scully had been partners longer than Baskin and Robbins, and
one reason they worked so well together was that they were opposites.
Mulder was kind of a stream-of-conscious theorizer, but Scully was so
damn cautious she couldn't help hedging on everything.

See, Scully wasn't one to say, "Here's what I think, Jerry." It was
more her style to lay on the evidence, one patient at a time, and see if
I would read the facts the same as she did.

As I've said, the surgical ICU had room for eight patients.

She walked me past the four patients at the far end of the unit. They'd
all had surgery that day or the day before, and she expected them to get
better so she could have them transferred out of the ICU.

"But you can never tell," she warned me. "Stuff happens. Especially
here."

Then we got back to Johnny's neighborhood. Scully called this the
chronic side.

The acute patients were the ones who would progress. They would be
dependent on ventilators or drugs for a day or so, and then they'd be
well enough to move on. The chronics were the patients like Johnny.
They got better for a while, and then worse, and then maybe better
again. But they never got better enough to survive without the
technology of the ICU.

This is one of my wife's nightmares, by the way. She doesn't want
machines to keep her alive. I always tell her I don't want to talk
about it.

Scully's grand tour was disturbing, even though she tried to be
scientific and clinical.

Johnny's story started out simply enough--stabbed in the heart at the
prison and rushed to the Cardio-Thoracic Center.

"A knife doesn't always do much damage," Scully said.

"Yeah. Doesn't spread like a bullet," I agreed.

So Lucky Johnny survived the ambulance ride and got his heart stitched
up in the OR.

"He will never get out of here," she said.

"But you made it sound so simple. Take him into surgery, repair the
damage . . ." She was trying to get me to connect the dots, but I didn't
have the background to catch where she was going.

"There were multiple complications. He excannulated in the OR, he
nearly exsanguinated post-op, he was re-explored without uncovering the
source of the bleed, and he tamponaded after the second surgery." Her
voice was hoarse and her pitch was rising and falling.

"Oo-kaay," I intoned, stretching out the syllables as I waited for her
to clarify.

"I'm sorry, Jerry," she said. "He bled. Many separate incidents."

"I guess I'm dense," I admitted. "He's not bleeding now, is he? Why
doesn't he get better? What's wrong with him?"

I knew Scully didn't suspect foul play here, and I trusted her
judgment. I just wanted to understand.

"Failure to wean," she said, and then she saw my impatience. "He's on
life support, right? The ventilator, those heavy-duty drugs to maintain
his blood pressure, and the pacemaker that keeps his heart beating."

"Yeah." I was with her so far.

"The goal is to 'wean' that support, to turn it down gradually so that
his own body can resume those functions by itself," she said.

I didn't know that. I guess I thought they would just shut off the
machines and wait to see what happened.

"But when we try to wean the support, he fails," she continued. "We
lowered the rate on the ventilator, but his system couldn't tolerate
it. When we turned down the medications, he dropped his blood
pressure."

"So he's okay as long as the machines keep going, but he can't do
without them," I concluded.

"Exactly. Failure to wean," she said. "Which is also the situation for
Mrs. Klein."

She droned on for a while about the next patient. From what I could
see, this lady was a victim of alphabet soup: CAD, CHF, CRF, CVA, PVD,
COPD.

At first I thought Scully was trying to impress me, prove she was a real
doctor, but that wasn't it. She was exhausted and frustrated and she
just needed to talk. So I listened and nodded.

"Can you give it to me in layman's terms?" I asked when she was
finished. Mulder must be a quick study if he can follow this kind of
talk.

"She's a sick old lady," Scully said.

"I got that part," I told her.

"She's a sick old lady who barely survived the surgery. She's close to
death. She's been close to death for months." Scully was rubbing her
temples hard with her fingertips.

"And you can't figure out what to do for her?" I asked.

"Jerry, I can't figure out why she's alive," Scully said.

"Kind of like Johnny?" I asked her. I had to wonder if she was coming
around to Mulder's way of thinking, that something evil and supernatural
was keeping these wretches on the brink of death but not letting them
slip away.

"A lot like Johnny. Too sick to live, but doesn't die."

There was one patient left. Mr. Ivankov.

"How about this last guy?" I asked. "Another failure to wean?"

"No, he's different, she said. "Ivankov's fifty years old, active, no
previous medical history. His doctor picked up on some EKG changes
during a routine physical, and after some tests, he was referred for
surgery. Triple bypass was performed uneventfully. But he never woke
up."

"That's a glitch," I said.

"Jerry, there's nothing wrong with him. Every test is negative. He
just doesn't wake up," she said.

"So Ivankov should sit up and go home. . .and Mrs. Klein should go to
heaven. . .and Johnny Cardell should go to hell," I said.

"He's trying," Scully said. "If Givens would shoot that chest film for
us, I might have some idea what was going on."

She headed back to check on her hell-bound patient, and as I followed
her into Johnny's room I heard Mulder calling her name with ragged
urgency.

"Scully, get in here--oh, that was quick," he said.

You have to picture this. Mulder had Johnny by the ankles, and he was
holding his feet up in the air. At least three separate machines were
squawking at us.

Rolando was up by the head of the bed, and he and Scully conferred in
hurried gibberish.

Something I noticed about the argot here--it was a mixed bag of Latin,
acronyms, and baby talk. People spoke of "pee" and "poops" as well as
"vasovagal response" and "PE."

Rolando was saying that Cardell couldn't be dry, and Scully was saying
well, he could be dry intravascularly, but if that was it, the
Trendelenberg should help. They talked about calcium and albumen and
pressors, and where the hell was x-ray anyway?

Mulder's jaw was clenched. Cardell was a big boy, and hanging him
halfway upside down could not have been easy.

Rolando attached a glass syringe to one of the IV lines. It seemed to
help. Mulder lowered Cardell's legs back onto the bed. He and Rolando
were both looking at Scully, waiting for her to tell them what to do
next.

"We still need that x-ray," she said, looking out the door. From
outside the room, someone was calling for Prescott in the same tone of
voice you'd use to tell Rover that dinner was served.

"It's your girlfriend," Rolando snickered.

"I'm going to kill her," Mulder muttered.

"Do it," Rolando said. "We'll swear you never left this room."

A scrawny-armed woman with a head of auburn frizz stuck her head through
the door.

"I'm busy, Patty, helping Rolando," Mulder said sullenly.

Patty sighed impatiently, but she brightened when she noticed Scully.

"Dana, did you have time to look through that catalog?" she asked.

"No, I didn't. I don't have the money now anyway," Scully said.

"But you can start with something small," Patty said. "The Hawthorn
Collection offers a variety of exquisite figurines. The little choir
boy is only forty dollars."

"How did Mr. Scaglione do when you got him out of bed? Do we need to
order physical therapy?" Scully asked.

"He hasn't been out of bed. And the baby elephant is only ten," Patty
said.

"Maybe she should skip lunch for a week. Then she'd have money to buy
the baby elephant and time to get your patients out of bed for you,"
Mulder said.

"Pres-cott," she whined in protest. "And if you're finished helping
Rolando, I need you to shave Mr. Scaglione. I've been too busy."

"You had plenty of time to plan Trevor's birthday party," Rolando said
pleasantly.

"I'm a working mom!" Patty retorted.

"Mr. Scaglione doesn't want a shave," Mulder said. "He said he hasn't
shaved since he retired. He likes his beard."

"But it looks so scruffy," Patty complained. "Don't give me a hard
time, Prescott."

"Ma'am, I served many years in the FBI," I said, stepping forward and
treating her to my Jack Webb impersonation. "I would have to arrest Mr.
Harrington on charges of assault and battery if he were to shave a
patient without consent."

"Did you hear that, Patty? The new security man is from the FBI,"
Rolando said, grinning wickedly. "Maybe he'll finally solve the mystery
of the missing slipper-socks."

"Or those disappearing tea bags," Mulder said. "Or the pillowcases."

"What are you talking about?" Patty asked defensively. "Rolando, I know
someone's been spreading rumors about me. Is it you?"

"Never, Patty. I can't tell you how many times I've defended you."

Even Patty realized she was being ridiculed, but Rolando managed to say
it without malice, and she was forced to smile along with him.

"Oh, shit," said Scully, staring at the monitor. "Push an amp of
calcium."

Rolando opened a drawer near the bed and slammed it shut.

"I don't have any more. Patty, get us a couple."

She hurried off, hampered considerably by Fred and Al, who had gathered
in the doorway to enjoy the action.

"Move it," I said. "You're in the way." Then I backed myself into a
corner of the room, so I could watch without making people climb over
me.

"Epi?" Orlando asked, holding up a gray box.

Scully nodded, and he tore it open.

There was a rumbling noise outside the room, and then I heard Givens
telling the two corrections officers to move their butts.

He carried something into the room, a flat rectangle. That was the
plate for the x-ray.

His eyes scanned the room, from the patient to Scully and Rolando and
then to the monitors.

"You still want that x-ray?" Givens asked.

"He's de-satting. I need someone to bag him," Scully said.

Givens leaned the x-ray plate against a wall and walked around the bed.
Rolando passed something to him, about the size of a football. I
couldn't see what he was doing, with Scully and the nurse in my way, but
he seemed to know what to do with it.

"Jerry, get us more help," Scully said. "Patty or someone else. We
need that calcium. Prescott, get the crash cart."

She was cool as a Creamsicle, by the way. Even remembered to call him
Prescott.

"What's going on?" I asked Mulder outside the room.

"He's crashing," Mulder explained.

"What does that mean?" I asked, trying not to sound flustered.

"How the fuck should I know?"

I looked for Patty in Mr. Scaglione's room without success, but then I
found her complaining about something to Beth. The secretary was
half-listening as she cradled a phone against her shoulder and entered
something on a computer.

"They need you in Cardell's room," I told Patty. "They need the
calcium."

"Oh my God. I completely forgot." She rolled her eyes. "Can you
believe it? I came out to get it, and then I remembered something I had
to tell Beth--"

"Go," said Beth, replacing the phone. "Now, Patty."

Patty caught on at last and I was going to go back with her, but the
other woman stopped me.

"I'll show you where to get the calcium," she said.

"Thanks," I said, but before she could move there was a crash, a really
loud crash, even amid the dull roar of background noise.

It was Mulder, staring down at the floor where a big, red mechanic's
box, the kind with wheels and drawers, was lying on its side. I
couldn't see any broken glass but I'd heard it. The corrections
officers were braying their amusement, but Mulder looked more
exasperated than embarrassed.

"Get the other crash cart," Beth said. "And unplug the defibrillator
this time."

Beth got me a handful of stuff to take back in the room, and I left her
to deal with the wreckage.

Patty had taken over my corner, and she leaned against the wall, writing
on a clipboard. I handed my little boxes to Rolando.

Everyone had their own job to do. Givens was "bagging," Rolando was
giving the drugs, and Patty was writing it all down. Scully called the
plays.

Mulder rolled in a red cart like the one he'd destroyed.

"Bring it over here and plug it in," Scully said. "Rolando, another amp
of epinephrine. And start a drip."

"Tell Beth," Rolando said to Mulder. "She'll get it for us."

"Wait," Scully called. "I need a wire cutter."

"Shit," said Patty.

"Tell Beth," Rolando said again. "Tell her 'open chest emergency''
She'll know what we need."

Mulder was halfway out the door when Scully called him back.

"Up here, Prescott," she said very quietly. "I need you up here.
Jerry, you talk to Beth."

I ran out to Beth's desk, and she nodded without answering. It was nice
to know that everyone else knew what to do, even if I didn't.

I ended up with my own little role in the drama. I stood in the
doorway, yelling for people to bring things that I'd never heard of and
then passing them inside. Mulder was doing CPR, leaning over the bed
and compressing the guy's chest.

The room was filling up with equipment and people, too. A woman took
over the "bagging," and Givens moved down to my end, taking the stuff
people gave me and distributing it or setting it up on a table.

Then Givens started putting people in blue paper gowns. Well, Scully
put hers on herself, although he tied it for her. But Mulder, who was
doing those compressions, and the woman who was bagging, Givens
practically dressed them.

Then face masks, and finally goggles.

"Jerry--four units packed cells, two FFP. I want it replaced as we use
it," Scully said. I relayed her message to Beth.

"I'll send for it," Beth said. "And tell her Dr. Bolton is on the way,
and OR two will be ready in twenty minutes."

Scully nodded absently when I told her.

"Pleurevac's full," Givens said. "We need another one."

"And a new ambu," the bag-woman said.

I should say here that the bag-woman's name turned out to be Francine,
and she was a respiratory therapist, but I didn't know that at the
time. I didn't know what a pleurevac was, or an ambu, but I hollered
for them and they showed up.

If you're eating, you probably want to skip the rest of this part.
Don't say I didn't warn you.

The ambu was the name for the football-shaped thing you use to squeeze
air into someone who isn't breathing, and the reason that Francine
wanted another one was because hers was filling up with foamy red
blood. And when she made the switch, to change over to the clean one, a
big blob of that stuff flew up in the air smack into Scully's face.
Right onto her goggles. And it hung there.

She took off the goggles, rinsed them in the sink, dried them with some
white gauze, and put them on again.

"Francine, would you be able to run a blood gas, if Jerry could bag for
you?" Scully asked.

"Sure," Francine said.

Givens was handing me a gown, but then he gave me a funny look and he
changed his mind.

"I'll do it, Jerry. Go sit down," he said.

"I'm fine," I said, but luckily he ignored me.

"You okay, Prescott?" Rolando asked. "That's a long time to do
compressions."

"Yeah," Mulder grunted. "I'm okay."

"I need an OR and a surgeon," Scully said. "Someone check on that for
me."

That was a job I could handle. Besides, it had to be ninety degrees in
that room and I needed to get out.

"The OR's ready now. Bolton, I don't know. I'll try him on his cell
phone," Beth said.

"Okay." I braced myself to go back in the room and give Scully the
latest, and Beth slapped something cold into my hands.

"Packed cells for Cardell," she said.

Two bags of blood. Two plastic bags full of cold, red blood. Believe
me, I've seen blood before, and sometimes my own. It's just that she
took me by surprise.

I took a deep breath and carried my offering back to Scully.

"Hang it," she ordered Rolando. It was hard to hear her because she
didn't turn to face him and her voice was muffled by the mask.

"Come on, Patty, check it with me," he said. Then, I swear, Patty came
over and the two of them chanted over the blood together.

Rolando stuck some tubing into one of the bags.

"Prescott, pump it in," he said, and that's when I realized that Mulder
wasn't doing CPR anymore. Rolando and Scully were jammed together on
one side of the bed, and Mulder wedged himself next to Francine, on the
other side, and took the bag of blood from Rolando.

I was trying to take in the whole scene, but for a minute I didn't
understand what I was looking at. They'd covered the bed up with
dishtowels, and I couldn't see Johnny at all until I looked closer and
saw some metal thing, like a C-clamp, only shiny.

And under the clamp, on the left and the right, it looked like something
from a butcher shop. And right down the center, I knew what that was
because I knew what it had to be.

Givens squeezed the ambu bag while Mulder pumped the blood. Rolando was
unplugging machines and rearranging the IV poles. Scully was up by the
head of the bed, with her hand inside that gaping hole, like she was
holding that heart in her hand.

My stomach tried to turn inside out, lurching up toward my throat.

"What happened?" asked a voice from the heart of Brooklyn.

Distracted from my misery, I looked up and saw a broad, short man with
black-framed glasses.

"Must be bad," he joked. "Everyone's glad to see me."

It clicked. This was Dr. Bolton, the surgeon.

"Sherman, I wanted to get the name of your landscaper," Patty said.
"After you showed us the pictures, I was telling Bob about that walk you
have in front. Is that real railroad ties? Or the reproductions?"

Scully didn't wait for her to stop talking.

"Remains hypotensive on phenylephrine and dopa, de-satting on a hundred
percent," she reported.

"Transfusing to maintain a crit of thirty," Rolando said. "Four bags
since midnight, four more on the way. Coags are normal."

"Dropped down to a systolic in the sixties. We started compressions and
he dumped a liter in less than half an hour. I opened his chest and
found about five hundred cc's of clot and a bleed off the aorta," Scully
said. "I've got my finger on it."

"Don't press too hard," Bolton said with a whistle, "and don't let go.
Are you all packed up and ready to roll?"

"We're good to go," said Rolando.

"Meet you there," Bolton said.

I helped them push the bed as far as the door to the OR. Mulder was
pulling from the other end, and I think Rolando helped too, but mostly
he was herding along the IV poles, making sure that nothing got pulled
out. Givens gave us a hand with the steering, but he never stopped
squeezing the ambu bag.

Scully sidestepped along, keeping up with the bed, her finger on that
hole in the heart, not pressing too hard and not letting go.

All that adrenalin, all that puckering up and fighting the heaves, and
then it was over. Cardell was the OR's problem now, and Bolton's. I
had about a hundred questions I wanted to ask, but no one to ask them.
Givens's pager was backed up with calls, Rolando was deep into the
paperwork, and Scully had to refloat a swan.

Which brought it up to a hundred and one questions.

"Refloat a swan?" I asked her.

"It doesn't wedge," she explained.

Mulder offered to answer everything if I'd help him get through the rest
of the shift.

I told him that wasn't much of a bargain, since he didn't know shit
either.

"Wrong, flatfoot. I do know shit. Shit is my life," he said.

I left Mulder to his happy tasks and went back to my office to call AD
Skinner and lay it on the line for him:

There was no reason for us to stay in Savant.

No hit, no hitman, no testimony. Johnny Cardell was stuck between life
and death and his cronies were content to let him stay there.

"I will take your assessment under advisement," Skinner said.

I wondered if Mulder had given him a different report, something to buy
himself more time for his demon-hunt.

But Mulder stopped by my office at the end of his day and groaned as he
lowered himself into a chair.

"I think it's time to cut our losses," he said.

"Skinner wants us to stay on the case," I informed him.

"Another week of this and I'm going to be out on comp," Mulder
complained. "I may start snorting coke for real."

"Givens and I are heading for the diner after work. Want to come?" I
asked him.

"I'll pass. I'm going to swallow a bottle of Advil and go to bed," he
said.

I tried to get hold of Scully, see if she'd join us, but someone told me
she couldn't come to the phone because she was holding a groin. So it
was just Jim and me that evening.

He stared in horror from across the table as he contemplated my dinner.

"Keep it up, man, and you'll be ready for some heart surgery of your
own," he said.

I was treating myself to the specialty of the Boulevard Diner, the
boburger. I'd gone all week without ordering one, but one way or
another, we'd be wrapping up soon. This might be my last chance.

A boburger is a cheeseburger with a fried egg on top.

"Hey, have I said one word about your smoking?" I countered.

"I'm going to quit," he said. "Soon as we're done here."

"Jimmy, we are done," I said. "Cardell is in no position to flip and
the gang knows it. There's not going to be a hit."

I was the last to come around. Scully and Givens had been saying it
from the start and by the middle of the week, Mulder agreed with them.

"I still don't feel good about this," Givens said, taking one of my
fries and dipping it in the sauce from his gyro.

"Me neither. It's been a long time since I got a hoodlum off the
street. I guess I was hoping to get one more," I admitted.

"Do you know what happens when you get a hoodlum put away? Nothing.
Nothing at all, because there's a steady supply of new hoods to take his
place," Givens said. He was turning out to be quite the philosopher.

"I noticed that," I said.

"But this was different. At first because we were going after someone
bigger than a street punk." He took another fry.

"And then?" I asked. I dunked a fry in his yogurt sauce and it dribbled
a white trail across the table on its way to my mouth.

"Forget it," he said. "I'm beginning to sound like the Snowbird." I
wondered if that name would follow Mulder back to the bureau. Spooky
the Snowbird. With a corncob crack pipe.

"Mulder's very convincing," I said. "Look, Scully's a damn scientist,
and he's got her believing."

"You think that's what it is, I've just let Mulder talk me into
something?" He sighed. "Maybe you're right. I don't know any more."

"You're tired, Jim. We all are," I said.

"Yeah. But we've got to sit here until Mr. Skinner gets tired too," he
said.

The waitress came over and refilled my cup. Givens stifled a yawn.

"How much of that do you drink, anyway?" he asked.

"All I can get, buddy. Helps keep me sharp," I said. "Want to split a
turnover?"

"I don't know, Jerry, will half be enough for you?" Givens was trying
to play it straight, but he couldn't help smiling as he ragged on me.
"I wouldn't want to hear later on that you had to hijack a bakery
truck," Givens said.

"Couldn't help it, man," I said in a husky, theatrical sob. "Big
picture of a Twinkie on the side. Why'd they have to make is so easy?"

"Damn. That's it," Givens said, suddenly wide awake. "Jerry, this just
might work."

I guess I just stared at him, because he said it again:

"It just might work."

"We're going to hijack a truck?" I asked him.

"Call Mulder to meet us at your place," he said. "We can pick Scully up
at the hospital."

"Are you going to tell me what this is about?" I asked, signaling for
the check.

"Not here, man. Just make the call."

He was busy with his own phone, and he placed several calls before
concluding that Scully had finally left the hospital.

Meanwhile, I got Mulder on the line and told him he had to get over to
my place.

"Why?" he asked.

"We have to talk," I said.

"Tomorrow," he said firmly.

"It's important," I said.

"Give me a break, Luskin, my neck hurts down to my feet," he groaned.
"I don't think I could get out of this hot tub if I tried."

"We'll meet at your place," I said. I was dying to see it anyway.

"Great. Tomorrow," he said.

"Sounds like Prescott Harrington got himself a hottie," Givens said.

I snapped the mute button.

"That'll be the day," I said. Then I turned off the mute and told
Mulder we'd be there in an hour.

Givens insisted on driving. I think he was afraid I'd take him
sightseeing again. We climbed into his pick-up and I gave him
directions while he told me his idea.

"We have to stay here until some wiseguy comes to whack Johnny. So what
we have to do is provide the opportunity and the motivation," he said.

"I like it," I said. "We'll get Harrington to bankroll the contract."
I was kidding him, because I had a pretty good idea what he was really
suggesting.

"We have to spread the word that Cardell is recovering. And then we
have to find a way to make him more vulnerable," Givens explained.

"This is good," I said. "Plus, win or lose, it brings this operation to
a close. Hey, turn here. You can catch the Route Five extension."

Route Five was your basic "scenic route" for most of its length, two
lanes of blacktop cutting through undeveloped woodlands and past rolling
dairy farms. Mulder's cottage was off the main road by a couple of
miles, on the shores of Lake Atakatua.

In the summer season, and especially when the speedway was open, people
got good and sick of crawling along on two lanes of blacktop, and a lot
of them supported the idea of replacing Route Five with a real highway.

Like everything else around Savant, the job was only done halfway. The
Route Five Extension is about five miles of superhighway connected at
either end to the old two-lane blacktop. The original plan was to
replace the old road, but it ran into a ton of opposition and ground to
a halt.

If they'd completed the project, we could have been at Mulder's door in
half an hour. The little stump they'd built would only shave a few
minutes off the trip.

The road was empty and Givens picked up speed.

"Next exit," I told him. "Coming up after the overpass."

That exit sneaks up on you and Givens was still sailing down the center
lane.

"Come on, Jim, you have to move over," I said.

Well, I'm old and stupid, so of course he didn't listen and he missed
the off-ramp.

"Sorry. I'll take the next one," he said.

"Hey, Speed Racer," I said. "There is no next exit." That's how they
built it. If you don't turn off in time, you come to the end of the
road.

"Yeah? We just have to keep driving till we hit Toronto?" he asked.

"No, smart guy, you have to slow it down and drive it over the median,"
I said.

"You're putting me on," he said. "Is it really that far until the next
exit?"

"The road ends in about five hundred feet. Really."

He flipped on his brights.

"Don't make me shoot you, Givens, because I will shoot you in the
chest," I said, bracing myself against the dash. I could feel the blood
draining from my face.

That got his attention and he applied the brakes. The truck came to a
smooth stop about an inch from the "No Dumping" sign at the end of the
road.

"That's cold, Luskin," he said. "I'm your partner. Shoot me in the
head."

He had to back it up to make the U-turn across the road, and by the time
we reached the exit and Old Route Five, we'd lost any advantage the
shortcut would have given us.

It's a scenic drive in the daylight but we were in a hurry and we
couldn't see it anyway. Traffic was light, but the headlights of the
occasional southbound driver were blinding in the darkness.

"No wonder Domino's won't deliver," Givens said.

We left Route Five for a turn marked by a weathered wooded sign
illuminated with a spotlight.

"Fox Trot Village: Cabins, Campgrounds, All Facilities, Weekly or
Seasonal," read the faded paint.

A mile further we passed rows of identical bungalows, some with RVs or
boats on trailers in the driveways.

"This is it?" Givens asked, clearly disappointed.

"Almost," I said.

The gateway to Mulder's private road was a symbolic barrier. Two brick
pillars marked the spot but did not block access.

We turned onto a road that was well lit, although the source of the
lighting was tastefully concealed. Signs along the way reminded us not
to hunt or fish.

I'd like to think that if Jim hadn't thought of his scheme to flush out
the hitman, I would have dreamed up something similar. We were stuck,
and even though Skinner wasn't breathing down our necks yet, it was time
to shake things up.

I wondered how far we could get tonight without Scully. The scam
depended on leaking the news that Johnny Cardell was on the mend. She
would know the right medical-sounding bullshit to spread around.

The road took a turn and brought us to Mulder's cottage. I use the term
ironically here. But you probably got that.

I'm not sure what you call this kind of house. Modern, contemporary, I
know that much. Huge, asymmetrical, and you know it's going to have one
of those two-story living rooms with heavy wooden beams. Usually they
make them out of that unpainted wood that turns gray, but this one was,
I don't know, maybe teak. Some orangey color.

Huge floodlights came on as the truck got closer. The drive seemed to
wrap around the house, but Givens came to a sudden stop right in front.

Mulder opened the door for us wearing a white bathrobe, with "Watergate"
embroidered on the front in blue. What a guy.

"In the back," he said, leading us from the marble-tiled entryway onto
an expanse of bare wood floor.

"Hey," said Givens to Mulder's back. "Aren't you going to show us
around?"

Mulder looked sore and exhausted, but he gave it a half-hearted try.

"Sure. Living room, uh, another room, entertainment center . . . " He
kind of pointed out each area with a wave of his hand or a jerk of the
head. "Up there, bedrooms, I guess, and some little area, I don't know,
kind of like a lobby. . . . dining room's behind that door, breakfast
nook, kitchen. . . You want a beer or something?"

As we passed through, it looked as though he had only been living in one
room. His stuff was scattered about the entertainment center and the
couch had a pillow and blanket tossed casually on it. I noticed that
Givens was eyeing the Hitachi big screen television.

"I'll take a soda if you've got one," Givens said. "And I'm sure Jerry
wants to see how the other half makes coffee."

Mulder gave me a tired smile.

"Is this going to be a long night? Coffee might be a good idea," he
said.

"Man, you old white guys and your coffee," Givens said.

"Remember how quiet he used to be?" I asked Mulder.

"Yeah. Respectful, even," Mulder said.

Let me tell you, if nothing else, that kitchen was worth the drive. I
guess it was just your simple, basic professional kitchen. Two huge,
industrial-looking stoves, a big flat griddle, two long islands of
stainless steel, one of those black refrigerators that go right into the
wall, and big, deep sinks. Coffee makers like they have behind the
counter in a diner.

That did intrigue me, a whole urn of coffee all my own. But Mulder
opened a cabinet to reveal a collection of normal-size coffee makers.

I chose an electric percolator and got it going. I wanted to nose
around the kitchen while the coffee perked, but Givens had his soda and
he was anxious to get started on our strategy session.

"You know, Prescott, you just blew your cover," I told Mulder. The real
Harrington would have never served Shasta cola or expected his guest to
drink it right from the can.

"Come on," he said, herding us out of the kitchen. "Let's get this show
on the road."

He walked us past the mudroom, where a clothes dryer tossed around a
loose tangle of laundry.

We arrived at our destination.

"Rec room, I guess," he said. "Or solarium. Gym, maybe?"

This room was full of surprises. There was every piece of exercise
equipment I've ever heard of plus a hot tub the size of a small swimming
pool. A "conversation pit," if they still call them that. Also a bar,
to make sure you wouldn't get too healthy.

Also a pool table. And also Scully.

"Hey, Dana," I greeted her with surprise. She was using the pool table
to fold her laundry.

"Hi," she said. She had on navy sweat pants and a white t-shirt that
seem to swallow her (Mulder's, maybe?) and a towel over her hair. Like
Mulder, she was barefoot.

"I told you he was with a woman," Givens said,

"Doesn't count," I answered.

"This is some set-up," Givens said, making himself at home. He left his
soda on the bar and began to admire the apparatuses. "Look at this. The
screen gives you a choice of scenery, and the little icon shows how far
you've gone, and the graph here displays your heart rate."

"They didn't really come to work," Mulder told Scully. "Luskin just
wanted to drool over the kitchen while Givens lusted after the
treadmill."

"I came to do laundry," Scully said. "Because in the condo, you can't
run the machines after eight o'clock."

"You can use ours," I offered. We lived a lot closer.

"Mulder, you dog," Givens said, his voice choked with admiration. He
was standing by the hot tub, but that wasn't the target of his envy.
"This is Waterford crystal."

He was holding a large, cut-glass tumbler in one hand and a can of
Genessee in the other.

Do you know that old joke about Genessee beer? A guy sends some to a
lab for analysis, and he gets back a report that says, "Your horse has
diabetes." I mean, it's the kind of beer you drink out of the can, if
you're going to drink it at all. I had to laugh, picturing Mulder
living his version of the high life, drinking horse-piss beer out of a
crystal glass.

"Talk about pearls before swine," Givens groaned. "Million dollar
house, and you're sitting in the hot tub drinking toxic waste out of
Waterford crystal."

Scully grabbed the glass out of his hand.

"That's mine," she said. "Genessee Cream Ale."

Smart girl, I thought. Genny Cream isn't half bad.

"Feel better, Givens? I drank my toxic waste out of the can," Mulder
said.

Scully opened a panel on the outside of the hot tub and tossed in the
beer can. She carried her glass over to the conversation pit.

"Let's get started," she said.

Givens was eager to prove himself and he began to present his plan.

"Johnny Cardell is our bait, and nobody's biting," he said.

Mulder's furniture wasn't as comfortable as it looked. I felt like I
was wallowing in the too-soft cushions, and Givens was perched on the
edge of his chair.

"Mutts are dumb, but they're not that dumb," I said. "He's no threat to
them and they know it."

"Exactly. But what if we start up the buzz that Johnny's getting
better?" Givens said.

"Easiest place in the world to start a rumor," Mulder commented. He
looked at Scully. "Or the second easiest, after the Hoover Building."

Scully had a look of perplexed concentration, and I thought she was
going to start shooting holes in Jim's plan. She surprised me.

"Suppose they discovered something in the OR today, something that was
keeping Cardell from recovering," she said thoughtfully. "A narrowing
or a blockage, something that interfered with cerebral perfusion."

I didn't know what she was talking about, but if it was good enough for
Scully, I was sold.

"Dr. Bolton performed an endarterectomy," she decided. "Johnny woke
up."

"But if Johnny woke up. . ." Mulder started.

"Johnny woke up, but we're keeping him under heavy sedation," Scully
said.

"Okay," I said. "That'll explain why he still acts like he's in a
coma."

"Johnny's going back to the Pen. He's going to be transported to the
infirmary in the prison as soon as possible," Givens said.

Now I got my inspiration.

"Going back to the prison, where he will be locked up tighter than a
cat's ass. In fact, once he's back in the Pen, he's going to be
untouchable," I said.

I was relying on the corrections officers that guarded Cardell to spread
the word for me. They loved being in the know, and if I planted the
idea with them they'd be unable to keep it to themselves.

"So the mutts decide to whack him in transit," Mulder said. "I've got a
map somewhere. . ." He had stacks of papers on the floor by the couch,
and he started to dig.

"I'm going home to get some sleep. I have to be back at work in six
hours," Scully said, putting her shoes on. "You know where to reach
me."

Our plan was far from finalized, but Scully had given us what we
needed. I was glad to see she'd left most of her beer in the glass.

"Night," Mulder said, barely looking up. He was excited about the
plan. I think, like the rest of us, he'd begun to think he'd spend the
rest of his life here. Nice house and all, but I don't think he was
enjoying his work these days.

"Let me help you," I said. She'd slipped her long coat on over the
sweatpants and T-shirt, and she seemed to be struggling a bit with the
laundry bag.

"Luskin, we need you to plan a route from the hospital to the prison,"
Mulder complained as I hoisted the sack

"I'll be right back," I said.

Scully had parked behind the house, and we used the side door by the
mudroom.

"Drive carefully," I said, settling the laundry into the back seat
behind her. She looked beat, and I had to rap on the window to tell her
she'd slammed her coat in the door.

Mulder and Givens had a map spread out on the floor when I got back
inside.

"You cover the details, Jerry," Givens said. "We have to coordinate
with the Department of Corrections as if it was a real transfer."

"We need some escorts," Mulder said. "One car, maybe two. No more than
that."

"Bureau guys," Givens said. Both of them were giving me instructions
now. "The Marshals screw up too often."

"And then they have to shoot the survivors," Mulder said.

Givens and I didn't leave until after two. We had our plan in place,
and one way or another this assignment was going to end.

Monday was the big day. Jimmy was disappointed that he wouldn't get to
drive the ambulance. I told him I needed someone with some medical
training to work the radio and send out some realistic chatter about the
"patient."

The real reason, though, was this: it would be bad enough with me
slamming the big bus through the traffic in the grim winter twilight,
even without the icy roads and the possibility of a high-speed chase.
If I had to sit in the ambulance while someone else did the driving, I
would shit my pants.

Doing nothing can be the hardest thing. That's why Mulder's job was the
hardest.

Givens tucked him in on the stretcher and fastened a couple of the
straps. Mulder must have felt like a sitting duck, but he looked like
the bionic FBI agent. Givens had slapped some monitoring stuff on him
so that the screens would bleep, but his gun hand was free. His gun was
under the gray blanket.

"How'm I doing, doc?" Mulder asked.

Givens glanced at the monitors.

"You're hyperdynamic," he said.

"Thanks," said Mulder, sounding rather pleased.

"That means your heart rate and blood pressure are elevated," Givens
explained.

"You pansy," I said. "You're chicken, aren't you?"

"Listen, Luskin, I'm a certified expert ass-wiper. But if you crap your
pants, you're on your own," Mulder said.

"We're going live, boys," Givens warned us as he turned on the radio.
Our conversation and Mulder's vital signs would be beamed out for anyone
who wanted to catch them. I revved the engine a little--don't ask me
why--and turned on our flashing beacon.

"Come on, Johnny, you're going back to the big house," I said.

"Transport one, underway," Givens announced into the microphone.

We had four special agents to escort us, in two unmarked cars. The
first car pulled out ahead of us and I had to put on the juice to keep
up with him.

FBI agents come from all parts of the country, but without even seeing
him I knew that the guy I was following had to be one of those flat-top,
square-jaw Midwesterners. That's how he drove, anyway. Like he'd never
seen traffic before.

I was trying to get some speed from the clumsy bus, because I didn't
want to let another car between me and Kansas City Slim, when Givens let
out a whistle and a shout.

"Look out, Jerry!"

Out of nowhere a kid in a green parka tore in front of me on her bike.
I slammed the brakes and the rear of the ambulance fishtailed to the
right. There was a thump from the back and a bit of a grunt from
Mulder, and then a creak and a rumble as stuff tumbled out from one of
the storage bins.

I missed the kid. She kept right on pedaling and never looked back.
She looked so much like my daughter she could have been a twin. That
shook me up as much as anything.

"What happened?" Mulder asked. He wasn't supposed to talk, but it was
only two words.

"Little boy on a skateboard," Givens said, scrambling from the passenger
seat to the back of the ambulance to check out the damage.

"Shut your trap, Johnny," I reminded him, wondering why Givens had lied
to him.

The traffic was sluggish and stubborn, and I had to use the siren as
well as the lights to force my way into the flow.

"Jerry, it's freezing back here," Givens said. I turned the heater on
high, even though I was starting to sweat.

Givens was muttering to himself, either for Mulder's benefit or whoever
was monitoring our broadcast. I couldn't make out what he was saying,
and I tried to ignore him so I could concentrate on the traffic.

"Something's wrong," Givens said. "I can't wake him up."

I figured Mulder was playing possum. He had a reputation as a
smart-ass, and I was starting to put the pieces together. First he had
rigged something with Jim's x-ray, and now he was trying to give the kid
another good scare.

I hate hazing anyway, and I was on edge. I turned around to tell Mulder
to give it a rest, only I wasn't going to be so polite about it.

I turned around and I got a good look at the two of them.

Givens was bug-eyed with fear. Every breath he took was rattling
through his throat, and I could see his shoulders rise and fall with the
effort.

But Mulder. He was blowing up like a balloon. His face, anyway, which
was all I could see. His lips, his eyelids, even his eyeballs. Like he
was filling with air.

What the fuck was going on? All I knew was I had to get him back to the
hospital.

"Jim," I managed to croak out, "I forgot my hat."

It's very important, when you're in law enforcement, that you never let
yourself sound panicked. I knew that and Givens knew it too.

"Better go back for it," Givens said very slowly.

"Yeah," I agreed.

Now, it's not that easy to make a U-turn in an ambulance. This thing
was bigger than a van, more like a small truck. It even had a camera
mounted in back, in case you ever had to put it in reverse without
somebody there to help back you up.

I looked on the TV screen, hoping like hell that the unmarked cruiser
was right behind us. I'll tell you what I saw.

I'll tell you what I saw, even though it isn't possible.

That girl in the green parka, the one who cut me off on her bike? She
was hanging off the back of the ambulance.

She didn't look anything like my daughter now. She didn't look like
anything I'd ever seen before. Her head was little, real little. No
bigger than her neck, but her neck was like an eel.

Just a wicked little face on the end of her neck, and her neck was
twisting and her evil lips were spread wide in a snarl or a grin.

I couldn't look any more, and I couldn't turn around. I just wanted to
run.

"Don't go back," Givens shouted. "Floor it, Jerry!"

I couldn't exactly floor it, but I put on the siren and rode a little
closer to the bumper ahead.

The whole ambulance began to shake. At first it was like a vibration
but it grew more and more violent until we were bouncing up and down on
the pavement like a hammer against a board.

"Don't stop, Jerry," Givens said in a strained roar.

I had a route planned out to the prison, but that didn't matter now. I
had my siren going and I cut across the lanes to make a left against the
light. I could see the other motorists slam on their brakes, skid on
the slush, and they must have been honking their horns and cursing me
out, but I couldn't hear them. Only the squeal of my shocks as the
ambulance bounced against the road, and a sound like someone was
stomping on the roof.

I suppose I could have forced myself to turn around, but instead I kind
of called over my shoulder: "Jim? Talk to me, buddy."

"Oh, man. Oh man, oh man."

"Come on, Jimmy, what's happening?" I hoped I didn't sound as scared as
he did.

"It wants me, man. It wants to get me. Get us out of here, man!"

"Yeah," I said. "That's what I'll do."

The road ahead of me was clear, and the old Route Five extension was
coming up.

I knew I'd have clear sailing there. Hardly anyone took that road
because it didn't go anywhere. If I had had somewhere to go, I wouldn't
have taken it either. But I didn't. I just wanted to go.

The speedometer was showing ninety miles an hour, but I don't think that
was possible. I eased up on the accelerator, but that needle just kept
climbing.

"Jimmy?" I called. "Jimmy! Mulder? Damn it!"

I wasn't thinking about Johnny Cardell or the mob hit anymore. I just
wanted to know I wasn't the only one alive in this runaway wagon.

"Pull over, man! It's got him!" Givens's voice was a sob. "It's right
on top of him."

I heard a snap. a hiss, and a metallic clunk and the engine went dead.
Suddenly it was very quiet. No engine noises, no hammering, no
stomping. I pushed on the brakes, but we weren't slowing down.

"Oh, shit." Givens didn't sound scared any more. He sounded like he
was going to puke. Me, I was scared. I couldn't get the fucking bus to
stop.

I pulled the lever for the parking brake and I tried to shift into
reverse, and then I pumped on the brake pedal some more. We were just
sort of coasting, doing maybe twenty when we went through the barrier
and into the garbage heap at the end of the road. It doesn't sound
fast, but it was enough to throw Givens up front with me when a pile of
construction debris brought our speed down to zero.

The windshield was shattered into a network of cracks and the floor was
covered with glass and metal. I was dimly aware of something shoving me
back, and I had a second to realize it was the airbag before the dust
from the propellant sent me into a coughing fit. There was a blob of
something dripping down my neck and onto my shirt. Not warm and sticky
like blood. Something cold and tingling with that sulfur stink. Givens
was scrambling over the wreckage, fighting his way to the back of the
ambulance.

"Mulder!" he yelled. "Jerry, give me a hand!"

Still hacking, I got my seatbelt off and stumbled after Givens.

"Help me, Jerry!"

Givens was digging, tunneling through a mound of amber foam, rubbery tan
stuff that smelled like rotten eggs. I nearly slipped on something as I
reached his side. I tried to push the foamy stuff out of the way, and
it made my hands tingle unpleasantly.

"What the hell is this?" I asked.

"That fuckin' demon exploded all over the ambulance," Givens explained.

"Is Mulder in there?" Now I wanted to puke too.

"Okay, okay, okay," Givens chanted to himself as he swept the sludge
aside. "It's Mulder. He's breathing."

'Cause there he was, stretched out on the stretcher. And he wasn't just
breathing. He was snoring.

"Wake up, you son of a bitch!" I screamed. Somehow, in the back of my
mind, I still had the idea that Mulder had started all this by trying to
scare the crap out of Givens.

Mulder scrunched up his face and dragged his arm across his eyes.

"Scully?" he said groggily.

"He's awake," Givens said.

Mulder opened his eyes and pushed the blanket aside, grimacing as he
touched the foamy amber sludge.

"Hey!" he complained. "What did you guys do to me?"

"It's gone," I said. I was sure of that. "It's quiet now."

"Yeah," Givens agreed. "No shaking. No banging. Can't see it."

I couldn't see it or hear it and I didn't have that feeling of dread.

"What happened?" Mulder asked, fumbling to release the safety straps.

"I'm not going to drive this thing," I said. "I don't think I can."

"Get it to the lab. Flatbed," Givens said numbly.

"Yeah," I said. There had to be a few answers hidden in the ambulance.

"The camcorder. Videotape?" Givens asked.

Good question. Maybe we had captured the demon on tape. Something else
to check out. Also that amber foam all over Mulder.

"You wrecked the ambulance? Where's our back-up?" Mulder asked,
swinging his legs over the edge of the stretcher and flipping the sudsy
sludge out of his way. "What is this, meringue?"

"Do you think we killed it?" I asked Givens. "By luring it away from
the hospital?"

"Maybe the demon fell for our scam," Givens suggested uncertainly.

Mulder was fiddling with his cell phone and he snapped it shut in
frustration.

"No one's answering," he said.

"I'll try the radio," I said. See, I figured Mulder was trying to get
the Bureau guys on the line, or maybe the city police, to get us a ride
out of here. But he was trying to call Scully.

"We left her alone," he said.

I couldn't raise our escorting agents on the radio, but I finally got
the local cops to send a car for us. By the time we got our ride,
Mulder had managed to place a call to the hospital.

"She can't come to the phone, and I need this line clear. Everyone's
crashing," someone snapped at him.

It was the voice of Beth, the unit secretary. I could hear her clearly
although Mulder held the phone against his ear.

The Savant patrolman who picked us up in his cruiser offered to take us
to the regional hospital, since the Cardio-Thoracic Center was a
specialized facility that didn't even have an emergency room. I told
him the Cardiac-Thoracic Center would be fine.

The cop's name was Barry Ochs, by the way. There was a Jay Ochs on the
debate team with me in high school, and this guy turned out to be his
son. Wild, huh?

Anyway, he told us what had happened with the two FBI cars that were
supposed to be escorting us.

You know why I couldn't get a response from them? Because Kansas City
Slim and Salt Lake Sam were busy apprehending Markie Lemonte and Darryl
"Dusty" Rhoades.

Markie and Darryl had ignored the decoy ambulance and gone after the
speeding black sedan. The second Bureau car, the one that was supposed
to stay right on our tailpipe, stuck to the original route and arrived
in time to help with the arrest.

I turned around to slap Givens a high five. We had flushed out the hit
men *and* vanquished Mulder's demon.

Mulder sat in the back next to him, pondering the phone in his hand. It
started to ring, as if on command.

"Scully?" he said. He was quiet for a while, and then:

"I'm on my way."

Another pause.

"Absolutely."

Pause.

"I'll tell him. And Scully, we got them. A couple of hoods took the
bait. Okay. Five minutes."

He was scowling to himself as he put the phone away.

"Mu