The Ties That Bind

The Ties That Bind
5/9

Scully watched from the porch as Paige help out a hand of feed for the colt. Sam and Jon hovered around her watchfully, as they had since arriving here in Kentucky.

Mrs. Guthrie sat on the deck swing across from Scully, placing a pair of tall lemonades on the short table between them. “Thanks,” Scully said, taking the one nearest to her. They watched the children in silence.

“It’s hard on us,” the older woman finally said. “Not that it shouldn’t be, you know.”

The only sound was the clinking of the ice cubes inside the glasses.

“They both took the loss of their father so hard. With him, it was an abrupt thing, though. One second he was here, then we got a call from the mine and everything changed. I wonder if that was better, for us anyway. We didn’t get the time to say goodbye, but we didn’t have to watch him deteriorate in front of our eyes, knowing that there was nothing that we could do, knowing that he’d never even get a chance at his dreams. At least then, we had each other for comfort, and when we started the farm, it was a constant struggle to just survive. There wasn’t time for pity. We can’t talk about what’s happening now, because then we’d start to break down, and we need to be strong, for her. It’s just been the three of us, since Joelle decided that she was better than us. I know that I started to loose them when they went off to those schools, but it never sunk in, because it was for their own good that I sent them. Besides, they were just a phone call away, even if Paige was in Snow Valley, and Sam in New Salem.

“Now, it’s almost like even though she’s standing right in front of me, I can’t touch her. All I can do is watch as her body turns against her.”

Scully curled her feet underneath of her, watching the woman watch the children. “I really don’t know what to say. I never was the one who did the comforting, who tried to make things right. All I can tell you is that cancer patients often feel alone, that people seem to think that it’s catching. I know what it’s like to be eaten up from the inside, and I know that having someone there whom you know will be there tomorrow can make the day fly by so much faster. I won’t lie to you, but I can tell you that in the three weeks since we got here, her attitudes improved drastically, and often that’s what gets you through. She’s surrounded by people who love her, and that’s all the difference. She doesn’t need you to be so strong that you can’t cry, she just needs you to be there.”

Mrs. Guthrie stared into her lemonade, watching the swirls of cold water coming off of the ice, slowly merging with the liquid around it. “When’d you get so smart, Dana?”

“You should meet my partners.” They lapsed into silence again. Scully felt her face pull a little bit. They weren’t her partners. Not really. Not any more.

“You know, you must be really bright, to have completed your doctoral all ready,” Mrs. Guthrie said abruptly, trying to distract both of them.

“Well,” Scully said, pausing. “I’m older than I look. Plus the circumstances were a little unusual.”

“Oh,” the other woman said, raising a hand to her mouth. “I didn’t realize. I thought that you were just a doctor that Frost or Xavier sent.”

“Didn’t realize what?” Scully said, genuinely confused.

“That you were a mutant.”

Scully studied the group out in the horse pen. “I think that your daughter is starting to look a bit tired out there. It’s about time that they got back inside.”

Leaving the porch without a glance behind her, she walked over to the corral where the small group was gathered. “I think that that’s just about enough for today, guys.”

Paige turned to face her. “But ah feel just fine, Dr. Scully.”

“You want to stay feeling fine, hayseed?” Jubilee asked, swinging down from the top of the log fence, where she had been perched, landing easily. Paige just pursed her lips. “That’s what I thought. ‘Sides, aren’t you tired of the smell of horse crap yet?”

Paige reluctantly let herself be led back into the house, grumbling all the way, until Jon threatened to tie her to the bed.

Then they had to put up with Jubilee’s snickering for the rest of the evening.

*

Scully let go of Paige’s wrist. “Your pulse, as well, is normal. Nothing wrong with you tonight.”

“Nothing that wasn’t ahl ready wrong, ya mean.”

Scully paused. “Yes.”

“Can I ask you something, Doctor Scully? If ah’m out of line, just let me know, but I’m curious.”

Scully sat in the chair by the girl’s bed, where Paige lay with the blankets tucked in about her, her eyes threatening to fall closed. “Shoot.”

“Why do you still take mah pulse that way? And check my heart beat with a stethoscope and all?”

“Paige, just because you have cancer doesn’t mean that we can’t make sure that anything else that goes wrong...”

“Ah guess I didn’t make myself clear. Why do you do it like that? I really don’t mean to pry, but something that happened awhile back’s been bugging me. You knew when the new mare was sick, just by looking at her. Why don’t you try it like that on me? Just reach out and feel, instead ah using all those instruments.”

Scully sat silently.

She searched for a response, but Paige was already drifting into sleep. She started to leave the room when the girl called out to her.

“Doctor Scully?”

“Yes?”

“Could ya open my window a crack, please? I forgot to before.”

“Sure.” Scully walked over and cranked the window handle so that it was open an inch, letting the night air drift in, still warm from the heat of the day. She’d just turned out the lights and was slowly closing the door when Paige’s stopped her once again.

“Doctor Scully?”

“Yes?”

“Why do you still go by Dana Scully?” the girl asked, her voice full of sleep. “Ah mean, there’s got to be so many records of Dana Scully in the government data banks, seeing as how you were a federal agent, and a known mutant and abductee, and you worked on the X-Files? It’s just that if I were you, I really wouldn’t want ta trip any of those records systems.”

Scully stood silently in the doorway, searching for something, anything.

Luckily for her, the steady rise and fall of the girl’s chest stopped the conversation.

*

The house was still when she left her room again. Silently cracking Paige’s door open, she slid over to the girl’s bedside. Standing there, she placed one hand on the girl’s stomach, and the other on her forehead. Reaching for her core, she let the energy flow down her arms until she was shaking with fatigue. Paige barely stirred, but her colour seemed to improve, coming back up to what it had been that morning. Scully quickly left the room, socked feet silent on the wooden floor, and softly closing the door behind her. She didn’t fancy having to come up with a reason for the room call.

Scully leaned back against the hall wall, waiting for the rushing in her head to subside. She felt her reserves start to replenish, and bent over, picking up her wind breaker and sneakers from where they lay on the floor by the door. The summer may have been stretching out, but by the time it got this late, the nights were still cool. Paige’s words echoed in her mind.

She paused on the porch stairs, pulling her shoes on, then hopped down them, taking care to avoid the third one, which squeaked. Wrapping her arms around herself until she adjusted to the temperature, she headed over to the old barn, keeping to the shadows cast by the yard lights. She slipped inside the barn doors. The weather-beaten wood actually much sturdier than it looked.

Waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dark, she felt the frantic energy start to sweep through her. She moved to the small space that she’d cleared in the middle of the barn, and started to run through the exercises that Remy had taught her back at the Mansion. She knew in an abstracted sort of way that she was getting better, but that she that she still wasn’t as good as she should have been. She put it out of her mind, finished the warm up set, and moved into the faster ones, dancing with some unseen enemy.

When the worst of the rush had passed, and she felt a little more normal, she started the cool down. Finally growing still, she closed her eyes, and drew in the scents around her, horse, dust, wood, sweat, and oil mixing into one tapestry of scent.

She pulled the new oil rings out of the pocket of the coat she had dropped on the ground, and walked to where the decrepit motorcycle sat in pieces. The rings in it had been shot to hell. There was no way that they would’ve sealed properly.

She’d found the cycle when she was clearing a space for her work out. It had been allowed to fall into disrepair, but it was a vintage Harley.

Scully hadn’t known anything about bikes, but Hank had been a motorcycle enthusiast when he was young. The spark had kind of gone out of it for him when in his first year as a medical temp, he had treated three young men for injuries resulting from bike crashes. His knowledge of cycles had been one of the pieces that he’d passed to Scully.

She worked on the bike for awhile, lost in the components. When weariness started to numb her fingers once more, she stood and brushed herself off. Walking out the door of the barn, she stopped dead in her tracks. Sam stood just inside the corral, petting a horse which nuzzled his shoulder affectionately. She shifted silently to the side, back into the shadows, but he raised his head and looked right at her. “Hey Scully,” he said softly. She raised a finger to her lips, jerking her head towards the house. “Naw,” he said with a smile. “Momma doesn’t wake up till the sun’s up, and mah sister always sleeps soundly after you visit her.”

Scully walked over to the coral. “How do you...”

“The blind on the window’s open. I can see from here. You’re not the only one who gets insomnia, you know. Plus, I figured something was up when Paige’s condition didn’t start to deteriorate at all. Our Ma wants to think that it’s the signs of remission, and ah don’t have the heart to tell her otherwise.”

“But you weren’t here when I came out.”

“I went up to the north pasture to check on Gina’s rear leg before you were done. I knew you weren’t hurting her.”

“How long have you known?”

“Since Thursday night, the one before last. Round the time when Jubilee and Jon had to go back to Massachusetts.”

Scully walked over to the house, heading for the tap on the side. Sam scaled the coral fence, landing softly. He fell into step beside, his feet rasping over the grass. She turned the red tap on half, waiting for the water to warm. She took the small bottle of Gojo from the ground and squeezed the pump, distributing the white grainy soap onto her palm.

“It’s not workin, is it?” Sam asked.

“No,” she said, staring down at the soap, pale against the darkness of dirt and grease which covered her hand. “I’ll do everything that I can, put all of my energy into it, and what’ll happen is that the cancer won’t progress any farther. I put as much as I can into her, short of draining myself completely, and it’s not enough. I guess that the best way to explain it is that it’s like having this battery inside of you. I don’t know what’ll happen if I let it run completely down, but just the thought of it makes me cringe a bit. When my reserves are charging up again, I’m like a live wire. There’s all this energy flowing into me that I can’t contain, and it makes me feel like I’m on the hugest sugar high ever. But her cancer isn’t getting worse, and that’s the important thing.”

She ran the water over her hands, the cold numbing the feeling from her skin as it rinsed the soap away.

“You’re doing your best, Dana. That’s all anyone could expect of you. That’s all we expect of you.”

“That’s the important thing, right? She’s not getting worse.”

“Dana...”

She fingered the pump on the bottle of soap. Soap was supposed to make you clean, keep you from getting sick.

“Dana...” He said again.

You look after yourself, you’re supposed to be all right.

She threw the bottle against the side of the house, her vision blacking. She felt Sam drop a hand to her shoulder and spun away from him. “Damnit. Damnit, damnit, *damnit*.”

The bottle was lying on the ground, cracked and broken. Soap was leaking onto the foundations of the house, staining it dark. She rubbed her forehead, her hands in her eyes. Sam placed a hand on her shoulder again, hesitantly this time, and she didn’t shake it off.

“This is not me,” she said. “Sam, it isn’t. This is not me. I... I’m not... I am not this weak. I have been through too much. I can deal with things. I have been abducted by aliens, and kidnapped, and I have been stalked, and I have been experimented on, and I know how to adjust. I can adjust. I’ve got to... I’ve got to pull it together. I’ve got to get it all back together.”

He just kept on looking at her with those stead, honest eyes, boring into her, showing not one hint of blame. “I am a doctor,” she said. “I have been blessed, and I can’t help her, Sam. I can’t. I can’t help her, but I can take people out with a thought, because the same things that I can use to heal I can use to hurt. How am I supposed to know where the line is any more?”

She slid out from underneath his hand again, gently this time, and smiled down at the ground, just a little. The expression was bitter and so fleeting that he almost missed it.

“I healed my cancer, Sam. Why can’t I heal hers?”

The night wasn’t quiet.

Scully could hear the crickets, and the horses breathing, and the night life, but between the two of them no sound passed. She looked at him, and he caught her eyes with his, holding them.

“Why can’t I cure her?” She asked. Sam didn’t drop her gaze, didn’t smile, didn’t say anything, just waited. “I have to go,” she said. “We have an early morning tomorrow. Or today, depending on how you look at it.” She brushed past him and into the house, almost expecting him to try to stop her.

He stood there until she was gone, his eyes taking in the grass and sky and wood and horses and stars and everything behind.

“Only you can answer that one, Dana.”

«Previous Next»