WIP: "Much Madness is Divinest Sense" (XF, 1/?)
Inspired by wendelah1, I've decided to share an unfinished story of my own. I started writing it over a year ago, and I still hold out hope of finishing it one day--because I think it's one of my better works--but I can't say when that will be. So, until then, I may as well post the two parts that are complete.
The story was inspired by the events of "Grotesque" and "Wetwired." It seemed to me in watching season three that both Mulder and Scully were cracking up, and that no one was calling them on it. I mean, drugs in the drinking water leading to a fistfight in the FBI hallways? The whole gargoyle thing? Scully shooting at Mulder after being prompted by subliminal television messages? Am I the only one who's thinking schizophrenia here?
Originally I was going to title the story "Folie A Deux." It kind of annoyed me to discover that the show's writers had gotten to the title before I did. Still, I like my version better. More character-driven.
Title: "Much Madness is Divinest Sense"
Author: Naraht
Rating: R (for detailed depiction of mental illness, including suicidal ideation and attempts)
Pairing: Sort of pre-MSR, if you want to look at it that way
Spoilers: Though "Wetwired"
Authors notes: Thanks to my parents for expert advice, and especially to my father for an inside look at the mental health system. shanith beta-read this last Christmas Eve, which was above and beyond the call of duty. dr_biscuit gave me some medical advice too, but I think I ignored most of it. Needless to say, all errors remaining are purely my own and are probably there for dramatic effect.
"Much madness is divinest sense
To a discerning eye;
Much sense the starkest madness.
It is the majority
In this, as all, prevails.
Assent, and you are sane;
Demur, you’re straightaway dangerous,
And handled with a chain."
--Emily Dickinson
"You've got to help me, Scully," he says, reaching towards me across the dull metal table. He says the same thing every time. His hand is shaking, a side effect of the medications that they've dosed him with. "You're the only one who knows. You know what they did. If you can get to the Lone Gunmen..."
I understand what happened as soon as I see him in the visiting room at the mental hospital, as soon as I see the bandages at the back of his neck. He tried, by himself in a dirty bathroom, without anesthesia or sterile instruments, to cut out the alien implant that he was sure lay just beneath the skin at the base of his skull. Somehow he got hold of a razor blade, found it in the bedding of the shrubs during one of his walks on the grounds. The psychiatrists tell me that it was a suicide attempt, but I know better. Mulder would have known better. He's just lucky that the angle meant he wasn't able to cut very deeply. There's nothing there, of course, nothing but stitches and the beginnings of a network of scar tissue.
"The people here are helping you," I say patiently. I reach out, gently curling his outstretched hand closed and guiding it down towards the tabletop. "More than I can. Mulder, you've got to let them. They helped me."
"No, don't you see?" His hand hardens into a fist and he jerks it away from my touch. "That's what they *want* you to believe, Scully. They've brainwashed you, made you think exactly what they want you to think. And now they want to do it to me."
He jumps to his feet, the chair clattering loudly against the floor, and begins to pace. Through the frosted glass pane of the door, I can see the orderly pausing outside. They still consider him a danger to himself and to others. I've heard the litany of reports: escape attempts, attacks on staff and other patients, incidents of self-harm. Mulder is not supposed to get agitated, but his mind runs to only one thing when he is with me. I'm not allowed to stay very long.
When I speak, it's in my most calming and most reasonable tones. "Mulder, don't be afraid. It's going to be all right. They'll take care of you."
"You bet they will," he says fiercely, still pacing, unable to stand still now that he's been catalyzed into motion. "I won't let them."
"I have to go now," I say, rising from my seat. "I'll be back next week. Same as always."
"Do you know what they do to me when you're not here?" he shouts after me as I leave. "Do they tell you that? Did you realize that they still practice electroshock therapy?"
This is, of course, a part of his disordered thinking. They have never treated Mulder with electroconvulsive therapy. It can't be delivered without consent unless under extreme circumstances, and even then it has to be approved by a judicial order. There isn't even a machine at the hospital.
But I can hear him shouting even through the closed door. "Scully! Scully, don't leave me here!"
***
It all began when I pulled a gun on my partner. If there is a sin more heinous, more mortal, in the FBI's long catalog, then I don't know what it is. In my mother's home in Baltimore, I leveled a gun at Fox Mulder, unrolling a string of wild and baseless accusations that included his complicity in the government conspiracy that we had spent the past three years attempting to combat. With my mother listening wide-eyed by my side, and almost unable to hold my gun steady, I accused him of having killed my sister Melissa, of having conspired against me from the start, of having come to the house in order to kill me. If it hadn't been for my mother's intervention, I would have shot him dead and considered it a narrow escape.
We concluded that the cause of my paranoia was a mind-control experiment secretly being conducted by a government agency. Transmitter devices had been planted in telephone exchanges across the greater D.C. area, sending coded messages to television sets, and via them into the minds of their viewers. At the time this seemed to be a perfectly reasonable conclusion, even supported by the evidence. Needless to say, it was actually a sign of the psychosis into which we both were falling.
If I had gotten help then, it would have been better for both of us. Instead, they covered up for me, Mulder and my mother. I still don't know whether she believed the stories he spun, or whether she just wanted to save me from institutionalization. Whatever the reason, I ended up with no treatment other than a week of bed rest, and with an ambiguous diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder in my file. The doctors said that they could find nothing physically wrong with me. No one told them about the gun.
Even so, there was still the issue of the four shots that I had fired at Mulder while fleeing my motel room. And the resulting manhunt, with an APB put out for an armed and dangerous FBI agent on the run. Everything ended well, or at least as well as could be expected, and no criminal charges were brought against me. Still, it wasn't the sort of thing that could be swept under the carpet. Skinner hadn't forgotten Mulder's statement that I was suffering from some form of paranoid psychosis. Other, more shadowy figures within the government quickly realized what a convenient explanation this could provide for the events of the past few months. As a result, as soon as I recovered from the immediate effects of my ordeal, I found myself before an FBI disciplinary board which had the power to bring my career to a premature end.
Mulder went to the wall for me. He really did. Unfortunately, under the circumstances it would have been much better for both of us if he'd stayed silent. The disciplinary board heard about the government conspiracy, they heard about the shadowy figures who were trying to discredit us, and they heard that I might still be suffering the aftereffects of the paranoia brought on by a secret government mind-control experiment. None of them could have forgotten that they were hearing this from the man who, a few months earlier, had punched Assistant Director Skinner in a public hallway at the FBI and claimed afterwards that he was under the influence of a mysterious psychotropic drug which had been administered by figures unknown via his drinking water. This didn't look like the usual eccentricity of "Spooky" Mulder and his increasingly gullible partner. This looked like insanity, pure and simple.
We were both suspended without pay, indefinitely, told to go downstairs to clean out our desks and then to report for a full psychiatric evaluation. It was the last time that we saw our office. We sat there in the obscure half-illumination of a cloudy day filtering down through the light wells. We sat there and looked at each other, and did nothing whatsoever to clean out our desks. I didn't even have one. As for Mulder, if he'd had to clean out all the crap that he'd "temporarily" stashed in the disused utility room next door, it would have taken a couple of days and a U-Haul.
"They're going to get us out of the way permanently," he said, perching on the edge of his desk. "They're going to send us to the funny farm, Scully."
"They're going to--?" I stopped and stared at him. "Now Mulder, that *is* crazy."
"We know too much. The digital tape, the black oil, the hybrid experiments, the mind-control machine. We know that the FBI is compromised. And they know that we know." He ran a hand through his already disheveled hair. "What better way to discredit us for good, to punish us, to put us in a position where we can't do anything to stop them? They've been waiting for this chance for a long time. Think about it."
"Psychiatric treatment doesn't work that way anymore, Mulder. They don't just lock the door and throw away the key. And besides..."
"You tell the psychiatrist what we just told the board. Do you think she'll believe you? For years you didn't even believe *me*."
"And besides," I continued firmly, "even if we are removed permanently, we can still pursue our investigations through other channels..."
At the thought of being forced to leave the FBI, where I'd spent my entire adult life, my spirit quailed. But I was determined to put on a brave face for Mulder.
"You don't think that they're going to just let us walk free, do you, Scully? Are you really that naive?" His voice was bitter, haunted. "Haven't you noticed that we're both being followed? Don't you know that they're tapping your phone, searching your house when you're out, talking to your relatives? Haven't you noticed? You're not the only one in danger."
In that moment, it all crystallized for me. The odd static on the line that I'd put down to the effects of telecom deregulation; the distracted voice of my mother on the phone; the way that nothing at home ever seemed to be where I'd left it. As much as I hated to admit it, he was right. It all fit together.
"What do you suggest we do?"
"We have to get out of the country, now. Go somewhere they can't trace us."
"South America?"
"I was thinking England."
I shrugged and made no comment. Mulder grabbed his desk chair and rolled it over to one of the skylights. "They'll be watching the exits. We have to get out by the back way."
"I didn't know there *was* a back way."
"I've been preparing for this day, Scully."
Mulder got up onto the chair and started trying to lever the skylight open with a pen knife. I began to throw things into my shoulder bag--Mulder's packet of sunflower seeds; my bag of muesli; the fake passports that we got when helping out with an INS sting, the ones that Mulder somehow "forgot" to hand in. The two thousand dollars in used bills that he keeps for cases where he doesn't want to be traced.
The door swung open. No warning, no chance to take cover, and for a moment I didn't recognize the dark figure backlit by the hall lights. I would have gone for my gun, but they'd already taken it away. Not that we could have hoped to shoot our way out.
Skinner stepped into the office and looked around in confusion. "What the hell is going on here?"
"I could ask you the same question," said Mulder, only reluctantly turning away from the window. "Assistant Director," he added, his voice thick with disdain.
"I'm here to make sure that you get to your psychiatric evaluation. And it looks like I didn't arrive a moment too soon."
I dropped the fake passports into my bag and went quietly. I can't say the same for Mulder.
***
Our diagnosis is the same. DSM 295.30, Schizophrenia, Paranoid Type. The secondary diagnosis is DSM 297.3, Shared psychotic disorder, formerly known as Folie a deux. Even in insanity, we're still partners.
I spend most of my time at home now--my mother's home, that is. I lost my own home, along with my job, my medical license, my best friend, the respect of my colleagues, and a few other things along the way. Still, it could be much worse. I spent only three days in the mental hospital after my psychiatric evaluation, having been assessed as cooperative and responsive to drug treatment. Mulder, on the other hand, is still institutionalized and it's likely that he'll remain so for some time. That's quite a feat in these days of HMOs and out-patient treatment.
I'm lucky that they allow me to see him at all. The line between sanity and madness is a tenuous one, easily blurred, and despite the complex pharmacopeia that keeps me anchored to reality, I still find myself too readily drawn back into his patterns of thinking. Sometimes, when I make the trip home from the hospital, the paranoia starts to return and I think I see things, a shadow in the parking garage where I get on the shuttle bus or an extra pair of headlights on the highway. I wonder why the orderly happened to stop outside the room just at that moment in the conversation, why the bus driver looks at me so strangely, and where I have seen them both before. I lean my forehead against the cold glass of the bus window, hoping to calm my racing thoughts, but it never works. They're following you, warns Mulder.
At West Falls Church I transfer to the Metro. I take a seat, pull my trenchcoat closer around me, and close my eyes against the fluorescent glare of the lighting, listening intently to the rhythm of the tracks passing under the wheels of the train. I wonder whether I could decipher it if I tried, if it was the only way for my allies to contact me. For allies in this world I must have, beyond one gaunt man in a Virginia mental hospital whose sanity hangs by a thread.
When I get to Union Station it is well after dark. I wait on the platform, watching my breath in the frosty air, pacing back and forth to keep warm. That's what I tell myself, anyway. In fact I'm too agitated to stand still. I start at every shadow, every bystander in the slowly emptying station seeming to be a potential enemy.
"Calm down, Dana," I say to myself under my breath. "It's all right. You're fine, everything's fine, just get ahold of yourself."
But Mulder feels differently. Watch out, Scully, says the voice in my head. Watchoutwatchoutwatchout.
By the time the train arrives, I am wound so tightly that my nerves are strung to snapping point. The roar of the diesel engines drowns out my panicked thoughts, but sometimes even that isn't enough, until I am willing to do almost anything to calm the voices in my head. Maybe even something that I might regret.
I arrive back in Baltimore late at night, almost dead on my feet, mind clouded by fatigue even more than by any mental instability. Yet as soon as I turn my key in the lock and step inside, normality returns to me with a strength that is almost palpable. Around me are the ordinary things of domestic life, the overstuffed sofa, the cup of tea on the coffee table, the sound of the television in the background. I know now that there are no hidden messages, and there is nothing speaking to me. Mom is always waiting for me when I get back. She gets to her feet as soon I come into the room, putting down her tea.
"Dana," she says. "How is he? How was the trip?"
"The same," I say. "The psychiatrists are thinking of trying a new regimen, but they can't predict how he'll react. His psychosis is very deep-seated..."
"Dinner is in the oven," she interrupts, more concerned with my own well being than that of my partner. "It'll be ready in twenty minutes. And I've put out your--"
"Yes, mom," I say, and instantly regret my sharpness, the dismissive way that I turn away as she gestures towards the dining room table. Short-term memory loss *is* one of the side effects, and having forgotten my evening round of pills once or twice, I'm in no hurry to repeat the experience. Sitting down at the table, I pour myself a glass of water from the pitcher and carefully line up the brightly colored capsules on my napkin. The best that medical science can offer.
Don't do it, says Mulder's voice faintly in my head. I drown it with a sip of water, and a hard swallow. And another. And another.
***
I see a psychiatrist twice a week. It was one of the conditions of my release from the ward, but it only gets more difficult as time goes by, not easier. It's difficult to let down my guard, to reveal myself to be anything other than the faultlessly rational person that I imagine myself to be. But I know that I have to do this if I want to get well.
"Have you suffered from paranoia or hallucinations in the past three days?" he asks, steepling his fingers.
"Yesterday," I say sheepishly. It seems so ridiculous in the cold and clinical light of day. "I went to visit Mulder. And while I was there, I... wondered whether the orderly might be employed by an organization other than the hospital."
He writes down something in pencil on my chart. Briefly, I wonder who reads it, who he reports to, but that isn't my business and I don't say anything about it to him.
"And I did wonder," I continue, "on the way home, I did wonder whether anyone was following me..."
Another mark on my chart. This one, viewed from upside down, seems more malevolent somehow. It could mean something bad for Mulder. I might have said too much.
I quickly backtrack. "But that's not so odd, really. I mean, I was trained to ask myself that. I've been doing it for the past eight years. And I didn't actually see anyone."
"Good," he says. He always says "good" at this stage, in such a way as to leave it unclear whether he approves of my delusions, the fact that I'm reporting them to him, or the fact that my pursuers have managed to stay out of sight. He taps his pencil on the chart. "Any problems with the meds?"
"No," I say, failing to mention the weight gain and the extreme fatigue, merely the inevitable byproducts of the massive doses of anti-psychotics that they've poured into me. There is a pause. "Is there anything else?"
He sighs. "I think it would be best for the time being if you discontinued your visits to Mr. Mulder."
"Why?"
"On the whole, Dana, you're responding well to treatment. You've been cooperative, and you're starting to respond to the medication. You're learning to guide your thoughts along different lines. But whenever you see Mr. Mulder, you find yourself relapsing into the old patterns."
"But," I begin, helplessly, "but he doesn't have anyone else to visit him. His father is dead; his sister is gone; his mother is elderly and lives up on Martha's Vineyard. I'm all he's got."
"Dana," says my psychiatrist, putting on his most fatherly, caring tone, "Fox Mulder isn't my patient. You are. And I have to tell you that your contact with him is jeopardizing your recovery."
***
"This is the Hour of Lead -
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow-
First - Chill - then Stupor - then the letting go -"
--Emily Dickinson
On the morning that I should be preparing to make the trip to Falls Church, I can't even bring myself to get out of bed. I lie there, watching the sun trace its way across the ceiling and listening to my voice echoing emptily in my head. I'm fine, I'm fine.
If I were going to see him, I would have left by now. The long round trip from Baltimore takes most of the day by public transport, three hours each way. I would have left, and I would be on the train to D.C., reading a magazine and looking to the casual observer just like the professional woman that I once was. My visit to Mulder is the one event of my week, the one task that keeps me going. Without it I have no particular reason to get out of bed.
He will await me steadfastly, believing none of the glib assurances that are given to him by the staff, accepting no apology that is offered by another voice or by another hand. The hours will stretch past him, transmuted into minutes by the alchemical power of his belief in me. Yet even Mulder's faith will fail eventually. He will pace, and as he paces he will wonder, small doubts forming a tracery in his mind that eventually becomes solid, blocking out the light. Have I returned to work, reopened the X-Files and continued my work without him? Have I been admitted to another hospital, confined somewhere beyond his reach? Have I gone underground, escaping and abandoning him to a ceaseless regimen that is, in his mind, just short of legalized torture? Am I dead? Or have I simply forgotten him?
Either way, he will realize the truth--that I have finally abandoned him, as he always knew I would. I can hear him as clearly as if he is here in the room with me. You were the only one I ever trusted, Scully. And now you've betrayed me. How can you live with yourself?
I am not well, I know I am not well. My eyes prickle with hot, shamed tears and I press my face against my crumpled pillow. I can't face the pretense any longer, can't keep telling my mother--telling myself--that I'm fine. I can't keep living the lie that one day I will be normal again, that one day everything will turn out all right. It will not, not for Mulder and not for me.
I have lost his trust. He has lost my loyalty. Our project has failed. What else is there for either of us? I'm no use to anyone anymore, a burden even to my own mother. I even failed my dog.
Calmly, I get out of bed and walk into the hall, the carpet soft under my bare feet. My mother is downstairs, making lunch and singing to herself as she does. The soft sound of her voice filters up the stairs, echoed by the birdsong outside. For a moment I pause on the landing and listen, leaning against the top of the banister. Then I turn and go into the bathroom, locking the door behind me.
I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror as I open the medicine cabinet. My face is puffy, the skin around my eyes dusky and shadowed. My lips are chapped and colorless, and even the unruly halo of my hair seems dulled. Despite my twelve hours of sleep last night, I look exhausted, both soul and body utterly spent, the discarded shell that a living, breathing woman once called home.
The razor blades are on the second shelf, half hidden behind a package of cotton wool. I put them to one side. The bottle of aspirin is nearly full. I find myself fumbling hopelessly with the childproof cap, the lid uselessly turning as it slides past the catch again and again. In the silence of the bathroom, the rattling of the pills inside sounds loud. Finally, I put the bottle on the countertop so that I can press down with my whole weight; the raised letters on the plastic cap bite almost painfully into my hand, leaving themselves embossed in reverse into the soft flesh of my palm.
Into that palm I shake the tablets, and swallow them down with a steady, dull efficiency born of the weeks that I have spent compliantly taking my medication morning and night. While the aspirin may not be necessary, I am determined to leave nothing to chance. I will do a better job of it than Mulder did, clutching hold of my dignity in the small things that are left to me. They didn't think to put me on suicide watch.
The bathtub is filling now, steam spiralling upwards and clouding the mirror. Out of habit, I tip a capful of bubble bath into the slowly rising water before slipping out of my nightgown and climbing in. The water is hot against my skin, but I can hardly feel it.
As I reach for the razor blade, lying on the side of the bathtub by the soap, my hand is trembling. Tardive diskinesia from the anti-psychotics, or so I tell myself. I steady my right hand with my left, grasping the blade as carefully as I once held my gun. But my mind wanders--all I can think of is the whiteness of the bathmat, new last year, and the bloody aftermath of all the suicides that I saw while training as a pathologist.
I hear my mother's steps on the stairs. "Dana? Dana, are you all right up there?"
You have to do it quickly, says Mulder's voice in my head. She'll try to stop you.
So I slide down in the bath until the water is up to my chin, high enough to stop the blood from spraying. And I position the blade against the carotid artery, and make the incision. It's like the first stage in an autopsy, only the body is still alive, and it's my own.
***
"You kicked in the door," I say weakly, accusingly. The green of a hospital curtain hangs in the corner of my vision.
"I didn't have an FBI agent for a daughter without learning a thing or two," replies my mother, her voice steady but edged with tears.
"How did you know?"
"I just knew," she says firmly.
I try to lift my head off the pillow, but even an inch makes me feel dizzy, still weak from blood loss despite all the transfusions. I can feel the sharp pull of the stitches across my throat, and my esophagus feels raw. They must have pumped my stomach.
"I'm going back to the state hospital, aren't I?"
"It's for the best, Dana," she says, and squeezes my hand.
***
To be continued...
The story was inspired by the events of "Grotesque" and "Wetwired." It seemed to me in watching season three that both Mulder and Scully were cracking up, and that no one was calling them on it. I mean, drugs in the drinking water leading to a fistfight in the FBI hallways? The whole gargoyle thing? Scully shooting at Mulder after being prompted by subliminal television messages? Am I the only one who's thinking schizophrenia here?
Originally I was going to title the story "Folie A Deux." It kind of annoyed me to discover that the show's writers had gotten to the title before I did. Still, I like my version better. More character-driven.
Title: "Much Madness is Divinest Sense"
Author: Naraht
Rating: R (for detailed depiction of mental illness, including suicidal ideation and attempts)
Pairing: Sort of pre-MSR, if you want to look at it that way
Spoilers: Though "Wetwired"
Authors notes: Thanks to my parents for expert advice, and especially to my father for an inside look at the mental health system. shanith beta-read this last Christmas Eve, which was above and beyond the call of duty. dr_biscuit gave me some medical advice too, but I think I ignored most of it. Needless to say, all errors remaining are purely my own and are probably there for dramatic effect.
"Much madness is divinest sense
To a discerning eye;
Much sense the starkest madness.
It is the majority
In this, as all, prevails.
Assent, and you are sane;
Demur, you’re straightaway dangerous,
And handled with a chain."
--Emily Dickinson
"You've got to help me, Scully," he says, reaching towards me across the dull metal table. He says the same thing every time. His hand is shaking, a side effect of the medications that they've dosed him with. "You're the only one who knows. You know what they did. If you can get to the Lone Gunmen..."
I understand what happened as soon as I see him in the visiting room at the mental hospital, as soon as I see the bandages at the back of his neck. He tried, by himself in a dirty bathroom, without anesthesia or sterile instruments, to cut out the alien implant that he was sure lay just beneath the skin at the base of his skull. Somehow he got hold of a razor blade, found it in the bedding of the shrubs during one of his walks on the grounds. The psychiatrists tell me that it was a suicide attempt, but I know better. Mulder would have known better. He's just lucky that the angle meant he wasn't able to cut very deeply. There's nothing there, of course, nothing but stitches and the beginnings of a network of scar tissue.
"The people here are helping you," I say patiently. I reach out, gently curling his outstretched hand closed and guiding it down towards the tabletop. "More than I can. Mulder, you've got to let them. They helped me."
"No, don't you see?" His hand hardens into a fist and he jerks it away from my touch. "That's what they *want* you to believe, Scully. They've brainwashed you, made you think exactly what they want you to think. And now they want to do it to me."
He jumps to his feet, the chair clattering loudly against the floor, and begins to pace. Through the frosted glass pane of the door, I can see the orderly pausing outside. They still consider him a danger to himself and to others. I've heard the litany of reports: escape attempts, attacks on staff and other patients, incidents of self-harm. Mulder is not supposed to get agitated, but his mind runs to only one thing when he is with me. I'm not allowed to stay very long.
When I speak, it's in my most calming and most reasonable tones. "Mulder, don't be afraid. It's going to be all right. They'll take care of you."
"You bet they will," he says fiercely, still pacing, unable to stand still now that he's been catalyzed into motion. "I won't let them."
"I have to go now," I say, rising from my seat. "I'll be back next week. Same as always."
"Do you know what they do to me when you're not here?" he shouts after me as I leave. "Do they tell you that? Did you realize that they still practice electroshock therapy?"
This is, of course, a part of his disordered thinking. They have never treated Mulder with electroconvulsive therapy. It can't be delivered without consent unless under extreme circumstances, and even then it has to be approved by a judicial order. There isn't even a machine at the hospital.
But I can hear him shouting even through the closed door. "Scully! Scully, don't leave me here!"
***
It all began when I pulled a gun on my partner. If there is a sin more heinous, more mortal, in the FBI's long catalog, then I don't know what it is. In my mother's home in Baltimore, I leveled a gun at Fox Mulder, unrolling a string of wild and baseless accusations that included his complicity in the government conspiracy that we had spent the past three years attempting to combat. With my mother listening wide-eyed by my side, and almost unable to hold my gun steady, I accused him of having killed my sister Melissa, of having conspired against me from the start, of having come to the house in order to kill me. If it hadn't been for my mother's intervention, I would have shot him dead and considered it a narrow escape.
We concluded that the cause of my paranoia was a mind-control experiment secretly being conducted by a government agency. Transmitter devices had been planted in telephone exchanges across the greater D.C. area, sending coded messages to television sets, and via them into the minds of their viewers. At the time this seemed to be a perfectly reasonable conclusion, even supported by the evidence. Needless to say, it was actually a sign of the psychosis into which we both were falling.
If I had gotten help then, it would have been better for both of us. Instead, they covered up for me, Mulder and my mother. I still don't know whether she believed the stories he spun, or whether she just wanted to save me from institutionalization. Whatever the reason, I ended up with no treatment other than a week of bed rest, and with an ambiguous diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder in my file. The doctors said that they could find nothing physically wrong with me. No one told them about the gun.
Even so, there was still the issue of the four shots that I had fired at Mulder while fleeing my motel room. And the resulting manhunt, with an APB put out for an armed and dangerous FBI agent on the run. Everything ended well, or at least as well as could be expected, and no criminal charges were brought against me. Still, it wasn't the sort of thing that could be swept under the carpet. Skinner hadn't forgotten Mulder's statement that I was suffering from some form of paranoid psychosis. Other, more shadowy figures within the government quickly realized what a convenient explanation this could provide for the events of the past few months. As a result, as soon as I recovered from the immediate effects of my ordeal, I found myself before an FBI disciplinary board which had the power to bring my career to a premature end.
Mulder went to the wall for me. He really did. Unfortunately, under the circumstances it would have been much better for both of us if he'd stayed silent. The disciplinary board heard about the government conspiracy, they heard about the shadowy figures who were trying to discredit us, and they heard that I might still be suffering the aftereffects of the paranoia brought on by a secret government mind-control experiment. None of them could have forgotten that they were hearing this from the man who, a few months earlier, had punched Assistant Director Skinner in a public hallway at the FBI and claimed afterwards that he was under the influence of a mysterious psychotropic drug which had been administered by figures unknown via his drinking water. This didn't look like the usual eccentricity of "Spooky" Mulder and his increasingly gullible partner. This looked like insanity, pure and simple.
We were both suspended without pay, indefinitely, told to go downstairs to clean out our desks and then to report for a full psychiatric evaluation. It was the last time that we saw our office. We sat there in the obscure half-illumination of a cloudy day filtering down through the light wells. We sat there and looked at each other, and did nothing whatsoever to clean out our desks. I didn't even have one. As for Mulder, if he'd had to clean out all the crap that he'd "temporarily" stashed in the disused utility room next door, it would have taken a couple of days and a U-Haul.
"They're going to get us out of the way permanently," he said, perching on the edge of his desk. "They're going to send us to the funny farm, Scully."
"They're going to--?" I stopped and stared at him. "Now Mulder, that *is* crazy."
"We know too much. The digital tape, the black oil, the hybrid experiments, the mind-control machine. We know that the FBI is compromised. And they know that we know." He ran a hand through his already disheveled hair. "What better way to discredit us for good, to punish us, to put us in a position where we can't do anything to stop them? They've been waiting for this chance for a long time. Think about it."
"Psychiatric treatment doesn't work that way anymore, Mulder. They don't just lock the door and throw away the key. And besides..."
"You tell the psychiatrist what we just told the board. Do you think she'll believe you? For years you didn't even believe *me*."
"And besides," I continued firmly, "even if we are removed permanently, we can still pursue our investigations through other channels..."
At the thought of being forced to leave the FBI, where I'd spent my entire adult life, my spirit quailed. But I was determined to put on a brave face for Mulder.
"You don't think that they're going to just let us walk free, do you, Scully? Are you really that naive?" His voice was bitter, haunted. "Haven't you noticed that we're both being followed? Don't you know that they're tapping your phone, searching your house when you're out, talking to your relatives? Haven't you noticed? You're not the only one in danger."
In that moment, it all crystallized for me. The odd static on the line that I'd put down to the effects of telecom deregulation; the distracted voice of my mother on the phone; the way that nothing at home ever seemed to be where I'd left it. As much as I hated to admit it, he was right. It all fit together.
"What do you suggest we do?"
"We have to get out of the country, now. Go somewhere they can't trace us."
"South America?"
"I was thinking England."
I shrugged and made no comment. Mulder grabbed his desk chair and rolled it over to one of the skylights. "They'll be watching the exits. We have to get out by the back way."
"I didn't know there *was* a back way."
"I've been preparing for this day, Scully."
Mulder got up onto the chair and started trying to lever the skylight open with a pen knife. I began to throw things into my shoulder bag--Mulder's packet of sunflower seeds; my bag of muesli; the fake passports that we got when helping out with an INS sting, the ones that Mulder somehow "forgot" to hand in. The two thousand dollars in used bills that he keeps for cases where he doesn't want to be traced.
The door swung open. No warning, no chance to take cover, and for a moment I didn't recognize the dark figure backlit by the hall lights. I would have gone for my gun, but they'd already taken it away. Not that we could have hoped to shoot our way out.
Skinner stepped into the office and looked around in confusion. "What the hell is going on here?"
"I could ask you the same question," said Mulder, only reluctantly turning away from the window. "Assistant Director," he added, his voice thick with disdain.
"I'm here to make sure that you get to your psychiatric evaluation. And it looks like I didn't arrive a moment too soon."
I dropped the fake passports into my bag and went quietly. I can't say the same for Mulder.
***
Our diagnosis is the same. DSM 295.30, Schizophrenia, Paranoid Type. The secondary diagnosis is DSM 297.3, Shared psychotic disorder, formerly known as Folie a deux. Even in insanity, we're still partners.
I spend most of my time at home now--my mother's home, that is. I lost my own home, along with my job, my medical license, my best friend, the respect of my colleagues, and a few other things along the way. Still, it could be much worse. I spent only three days in the mental hospital after my psychiatric evaluation, having been assessed as cooperative and responsive to drug treatment. Mulder, on the other hand, is still institutionalized and it's likely that he'll remain so for some time. That's quite a feat in these days of HMOs and out-patient treatment.
I'm lucky that they allow me to see him at all. The line between sanity and madness is a tenuous one, easily blurred, and despite the complex pharmacopeia that keeps me anchored to reality, I still find myself too readily drawn back into his patterns of thinking. Sometimes, when I make the trip home from the hospital, the paranoia starts to return and I think I see things, a shadow in the parking garage where I get on the shuttle bus or an extra pair of headlights on the highway. I wonder why the orderly happened to stop outside the room just at that moment in the conversation, why the bus driver looks at me so strangely, and where I have seen them both before. I lean my forehead against the cold glass of the bus window, hoping to calm my racing thoughts, but it never works. They're following you, warns Mulder.
At West Falls Church I transfer to the Metro. I take a seat, pull my trenchcoat closer around me, and close my eyes against the fluorescent glare of the lighting, listening intently to the rhythm of the tracks passing under the wheels of the train. I wonder whether I could decipher it if I tried, if it was the only way for my allies to contact me. For allies in this world I must have, beyond one gaunt man in a Virginia mental hospital whose sanity hangs by a thread.
When I get to Union Station it is well after dark. I wait on the platform, watching my breath in the frosty air, pacing back and forth to keep warm. That's what I tell myself, anyway. In fact I'm too agitated to stand still. I start at every shadow, every bystander in the slowly emptying station seeming to be a potential enemy.
"Calm down, Dana," I say to myself under my breath. "It's all right. You're fine, everything's fine, just get ahold of yourself."
But Mulder feels differently. Watch out, Scully, says the voice in my head. Watchoutwatchoutwatchout.
By the time the train arrives, I am wound so tightly that my nerves are strung to snapping point. The roar of the diesel engines drowns out my panicked thoughts, but sometimes even that isn't enough, until I am willing to do almost anything to calm the voices in my head. Maybe even something that I might regret.
I arrive back in Baltimore late at night, almost dead on my feet, mind clouded by fatigue even more than by any mental instability. Yet as soon as I turn my key in the lock and step inside, normality returns to me with a strength that is almost palpable. Around me are the ordinary things of domestic life, the overstuffed sofa, the cup of tea on the coffee table, the sound of the television in the background. I know now that there are no hidden messages, and there is nothing speaking to me. Mom is always waiting for me when I get back. She gets to her feet as soon I come into the room, putting down her tea.
"Dana," she says. "How is he? How was the trip?"
"The same," I say. "The psychiatrists are thinking of trying a new regimen, but they can't predict how he'll react. His psychosis is very deep-seated..."
"Dinner is in the oven," she interrupts, more concerned with my own well being than that of my partner. "It'll be ready in twenty minutes. And I've put out your--"
"Yes, mom," I say, and instantly regret my sharpness, the dismissive way that I turn away as she gestures towards the dining room table. Short-term memory loss *is* one of the side effects, and having forgotten my evening round of pills once or twice, I'm in no hurry to repeat the experience. Sitting down at the table, I pour myself a glass of water from the pitcher and carefully line up the brightly colored capsules on my napkin. The best that medical science can offer.
Don't do it, says Mulder's voice faintly in my head. I drown it with a sip of water, and a hard swallow. And another. And another.
***
I see a psychiatrist twice a week. It was one of the conditions of my release from the ward, but it only gets more difficult as time goes by, not easier. It's difficult to let down my guard, to reveal myself to be anything other than the faultlessly rational person that I imagine myself to be. But I know that I have to do this if I want to get well.
"Have you suffered from paranoia or hallucinations in the past three days?" he asks, steepling his fingers.
"Yesterday," I say sheepishly. It seems so ridiculous in the cold and clinical light of day. "I went to visit Mulder. And while I was there, I... wondered whether the orderly might be employed by an organization other than the hospital."
He writes down something in pencil on my chart. Briefly, I wonder who reads it, who he reports to, but that isn't my business and I don't say anything about it to him.
"And I did wonder," I continue, "on the way home, I did wonder whether anyone was following me..."
Another mark on my chart. This one, viewed from upside down, seems more malevolent somehow. It could mean something bad for Mulder. I might have said too much.
I quickly backtrack. "But that's not so odd, really. I mean, I was trained to ask myself that. I've been doing it for the past eight years. And I didn't actually see anyone."
"Good," he says. He always says "good" at this stage, in such a way as to leave it unclear whether he approves of my delusions, the fact that I'm reporting them to him, or the fact that my pursuers have managed to stay out of sight. He taps his pencil on the chart. "Any problems with the meds?"
"No," I say, failing to mention the weight gain and the extreme fatigue, merely the inevitable byproducts of the massive doses of anti-psychotics that they've poured into me. There is a pause. "Is there anything else?"
He sighs. "I think it would be best for the time being if you discontinued your visits to Mr. Mulder."
"Why?"
"On the whole, Dana, you're responding well to treatment. You've been cooperative, and you're starting to respond to the medication. You're learning to guide your thoughts along different lines. But whenever you see Mr. Mulder, you find yourself relapsing into the old patterns."
"But," I begin, helplessly, "but he doesn't have anyone else to visit him. His father is dead; his sister is gone; his mother is elderly and lives up on Martha's Vineyard. I'm all he's got."
"Dana," says my psychiatrist, putting on his most fatherly, caring tone, "Fox Mulder isn't my patient. You are. And I have to tell you that your contact with him is jeopardizing your recovery."
***
"This is the Hour of Lead -
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow-
First - Chill - then Stupor - then the letting go -"
--Emily Dickinson
On the morning that I should be preparing to make the trip to Falls Church, I can't even bring myself to get out of bed. I lie there, watching the sun trace its way across the ceiling and listening to my voice echoing emptily in my head. I'm fine, I'm fine.
If I were going to see him, I would have left by now. The long round trip from Baltimore takes most of the day by public transport, three hours each way. I would have left, and I would be on the train to D.C., reading a magazine and looking to the casual observer just like the professional woman that I once was. My visit to Mulder is the one event of my week, the one task that keeps me going. Without it I have no particular reason to get out of bed.
He will await me steadfastly, believing none of the glib assurances that are given to him by the staff, accepting no apology that is offered by another voice or by another hand. The hours will stretch past him, transmuted into minutes by the alchemical power of his belief in me. Yet even Mulder's faith will fail eventually. He will pace, and as he paces he will wonder, small doubts forming a tracery in his mind that eventually becomes solid, blocking out the light. Have I returned to work, reopened the X-Files and continued my work without him? Have I been admitted to another hospital, confined somewhere beyond his reach? Have I gone underground, escaping and abandoning him to a ceaseless regimen that is, in his mind, just short of legalized torture? Am I dead? Or have I simply forgotten him?
Either way, he will realize the truth--that I have finally abandoned him, as he always knew I would. I can hear him as clearly as if he is here in the room with me. You were the only one I ever trusted, Scully. And now you've betrayed me. How can you live with yourself?
I am not well, I know I am not well. My eyes prickle with hot, shamed tears and I press my face against my crumpled pillow. I can't face the pretense any longer, can't keep telling my mother--telling myself--that I'm fine. I can't keep living the lie that one day I will be normal again, that one day everything will turn out all right. It will not, not for Mulder and not for me.
I have lost his trust. He has lost my loyalty. Our project has failed. What else is there for either of us? I'm no use to anyone anymore, a burden even to my own mother. I even failed my dog.
Calmly, I get out of bed and walk into the hall, the carpet soft under my bare feet. My mother is downstairs, making lunch and singing to herself as she does. The soft sound of her voice filters up the stairs, echoed by the birdsong outside. For a moment I pause on the landing and listen, leaning against the top of the banister. Then I turn and go into the bathroom, locking the door behind me.
I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror as I open the medicine cabinet. My face is puffy, the skin around my eyes dusky and shadowed. My lips are chapped and colorless, and even the unruly halo of my hair seems dulled. Despite my twelve hours of sleep last night, I look exhausted, both soul and body utterly spent, the discarded shell that a living, breathing woman once called home.
The razor blades are on the second shelf, half hidden behind a package of cotton wool. I put them to one side. The bottle of aspirin is nearly full. I find myself fumbling hopelessly with the childproof cap, the lid uselessly turning as it slides past the catch again and again. In the silence of the bathroom, the rattling of the pills inside sounds loud. Finally, I put the bottle on the countertop so that I can press down with my whole weight; the raised letters on the plastic cap bite almost painfully into my hand, leaving themselves embossed in reverse into the soft flesh of my palm.
Into that palm I shake the tablets, and swallow them down with a steady, dull efficiency born of the weeks that I have spent compliantly taking my medication morning and night. While the aspirin may not be necessary, I am determined to leave nothing to chance. I will do a better job of it than Mulder did, clutching hold of my dignity in the small things that are left to me. They didn't think to put me on suicide watch.
The bathtub is filling now, steam spiralling upwards and clouding the mirror. Out of habit, I tip a capful of bubble bath into the slowly rising water before slipping out of my nightgown and climbing in. The water is hot against my skin, but I can hardly feel it.
As I reach for the razor blade, lying on the side of the bathtub by the soap, my hand is trembling. Tardive diskinesia from the anti-psychotics, or so I tell myself. I steady my right hand with my left, grasping the blade as carefully as I once held my gun. But my mind wanders--all I can think of is the whiteness of the bathmat, new last year, and the bloody aftermath of all the suicides that I saw while training as a pathologist.
I hear my mother's steps on the stairs. "Dana? Dana, are you all right up there?"
You have to do it quickly, says Mulder's voice in my head. She'll try to stop you.
So I slide down in the bath until the water is up to my chin, high enough to stop the blood from spraying. And I position the blade against the carotid artery, and make the incision. It's like the first stage in an autopsy, only the body is still alive, and it's my own.
***
"You kicked in the door," I say weakly, accusingly. The green of a hospital curtain hangs in the corner of my vision.
"I didn't have an FBI agent for a daughter without learning a thing or two," replies my mother, her voice steady but edged with tears.
"How did you know?"
"I just knew," she says firmly.
I try to lift my head off the pillow, but even an inch makes me feel dizzy, still weak from blood loss despite all the transfusions. I can feel the sharp pull of the stitches across my throat, and my esophagus feels raw. They must have pumped my stomach.
"I'm going back to the state hospital, aren't I?"
"It's for the best, Dana," she says, and squeezes my hand.
***
To be continued...