Summary: The quarantine that was imposed following the outbreak
 of F. Emasculata and what happened to our favorite FBI agents.
 Rating: G, despite the questionable title <VEG>
 Category: X A UST
 Spoiler: F. Emasculata
 Disclaimer: How do I love thee? Let me count the ways: 10 - 13. 
 They own 'em. I wish I did. But I always put them back nicely,
 and I never take any money for this, so let's all enjoy the sandbox
 together, shall we?
 Archive: Yes, please. Post to all archives and the newsgroup.
 I finished this on October 31, 1997.
 Comments to me: vickiemoseley1978@yahoo.com 

Emasculated
 by Vickie Moseley


An Army Installation Somewhere In 
 Virginia 

11:45 pm 

"QUARANTINE! Scully, you can't be serious! Why are they
 putting _me_ in quarantine?" Fox Mulder demanded from his little
 white glass enclosed cubicle. "Now you, I can see their point. You
 were exposed to all those men, and the bodies. But I wasn't close
 enough to this guy to get the disease. I don't need to be
 quarantined!" 

His partner, Dana Scully, regarded him closely for a moment. He
 was a mess. Sure, his suit was intact--for a change. A little dirty,
 but not ripped anywhere. No blood that she could decern, no
 bruises on any exposed body parts. If someone didn't know him,
 they might think he was perfectly healthy--fine in every way. "Very
 fine," Scully muttered to herself appreciatively. 

But that would be to discount the 36 plus hours of stubble on his
 jutting chin or the deep, dark circles that spoke of far too little sleep
 and far too many cups of coffee. And the leaning way he stood, his
 weight conveniently off his left leg, which still tended to bother him
 when he was very tired. Dana Scully knew her partner, and at that
 very moment, he was on the verge of collapse. 

That said, she could see his point. It really was unnecessary to
 quarantine him. He had not been near the infected convict long
 enough to contract the disease, nor had he been present when one
 of the diseased man's pustules had erupted. She thanked her lucky
 stars a hundred times that in truth, Fox Mulder had come out of this
 manhunt unscathed. But there was more to consider here than just
 luck. Before her was an opportunity. An opportunity to force her
 partner to take it easy for a while. 

Scully knew the stats. To date, her partner had taken exactly three
 vacation days in the last three years. And that was not to mention
 the forty days of compensatory time that the Bureau owed him for
 Saturdays and Sundays that he worked while on various cases. In
 short--if he didn't get some time off, he was gonna go postal on her
 and she simply could not let that happen. 

He'd had time off, that wasn't the problem. But medical leave was
 not what it was cracked up to be, especially when it was time spent
 in intensive care or a coma. So the quarantine being enforced by
 the United States Army Research Institute of Infectious Diseases
 was just the ticket to give Fox Mulder a well deserved rest. Or so
 his partner had decided. 

And besides--if she was going to be stuck in a 10 by 12 foot
 hospital room with no TV and nothing to read--well, she sure as
 hell wasn't going to go through that alone. He could just sit it out
 in an identical room next to her. 

"Mulder, look. This one isn't up to me. CDC and USAMRIID
 both are requiring a quarantine of all the passengers of that bus, and
 since you were the lone 'cowboy' to enter the interior without
 benefit of protective clothing--" she said with a pointed glare, "you
 have won yourself two weeks all expenses paid at the resort of their
 choice. Let's just pretend it's a vacation." 

"Scully, you have to get me out of this! C'mon, make 'em take
 some blood, poke me in the butt a couple of times, and we'll call it
 even--just get me out of here!" he pleaded. 

"Mulder, don't you think that if I could get _anyone_ out of this,
 I'd be getting myself out? And contrary to your most cherished
 beliefs, I don't enjoy watching them hook you up to heart monitors
 and IV pumps--anymore than I enjoy when it happens to me,"
 Scully retorted acidly. "And if I could get us out of this, I would. 
 But it's not up to me. It's up to them--" she jerked a thumb in the
 direction of two doctors, both in blue biohazard suits, currently
 preparing syringes and attaching air hoses to their gear. "And from
 the looks of it, I won't have to ask them to stick you, they already
 thought of that." 

Mulder sighed heavily. "I suppose they want me to change," he
 muttered. 

She almost laughed at his change of tone. Then she looked down
 at the pale green hospital gown she was currently sporting and all
 humor left the situation--almost. 

"That is why they gave you the gown. Look, it's got little airplanes
 on it," Scully said brightly. The look he shot her would have turned
 a lesser heart to stone, but not Scully. Her smile grew a hundred
 fold. "Go on, Mulder, I can't wait for you to model it for me." 

"You should get so lucky," he growled and ripped off his jacket and
 tie, unfastened the cuff buttons on his shirt before flashing her a
 'not in this life time' smile and retreating into the small bathroom of
 the quarantine cubicle. When he returned, some five minutes later,
 he had a second gown covering him as a robe and he grinned
 happily as he slid between the sheets of the bed. "Bring on the
 Inquisition," he intoned and she couldn't resist the giggle that
 welled up in her throat. 

The USAMRIID doctors were efficient, but conscious of their
 patients mental well being, so the curtain between the two
 quarantine cubicles was closed. At first, that upset her, but she
 quickly changed her mind. Not that she didn't appreciate seeing
 blue suited beings swarming over her partner's not quite completely
 covered body, but she knew that he'd be watching her watching
 him and that was something she wanted to avoid. When Mulder
 was unconscious, she stared at him a lot. She stared at him all the
 times the ER doctors determined if he'd caused himself permanent
 brain damage with the latest blow to the head, or if nerve or heart
 damage would result from his most recent dance with death. But
 never when he was awake, and aware that she was looking. Never
 then. 

She made herself as comfortable as she could on the narrow
 hospital bed and decided to catch a few winks. 

1:00 am 

"Agent Scully, if I could have a word with you?" the blue suited
 gentleman at her bedside said evenly. Scully woke slowly and
 looked around, rubbing her eyes. Then she looked up and
 remembered his name as Coughlin, he was a Major and the head of
 the medical team assigned to the quarantine patients. 

"Don't tell me he's causing you trouble already?" Scully said with a
 sigh. "Usually, it takes him at least half a day to make a
 monumental pain of himself." 

Major Coughlin nodded, but didn't return Scully's smile. "We
 found something a little troubling. But it wasn't your partner's
 attitude, I'm afraid." 

Scully's blood turned to ice in her veins. Oh God, could he have
 become infected? There had been that risk, the risk that the disease
 that they'd found running rampant in a small Virginia prison could
 have become airborne. Previous victims had to come into contact
 with the larvae from the species F. Emasculata to become infected,
 but once infected, the fatality rate rivaled that of the Ebola virus. 
 All the infected men at the prison were dead within 36 hours. That
 included one of the doctors who had been treating the men. And
 Mulder had been there--and exposed-- as the convict named Paul
 had died at 10:13 pm. 

"What's wrong," Scully asked, when she finally trusted herself to
 speak. 

Dr. Coughlin consulted his chart. "His white count is elevated. 
 And his temp is up. Only 99.4 at this point, but enough to cause
 concern. Then, there is the presence of an antigen in his
 bloodwork--frankly, I've never seen anything like it before." 

Scully breathed deeply. She should have expected the doctors to be
 confused by Mulder's bloodwork. The evidence of his exposure to
 the still undetermined retrovirus was there for the world to find. 
 But the rest of the report, while unsettling, wasn't that bad. 

"Dr. Coughlin, his medical chart should explain the antigen. He
 was exposed to a retrovirus about 6 months ago. And for the other
 symptoms, he's just coming off a 36 hour manhunt. He's had no
 sleep during that time and we hadn't really had time to catch up
 from our last case. Naturally, he's dead on his feet. Knowing
 Mulder, when his brain shuts down enough for him to fall asleep,
 he'll be out like a light and won't rouse for a full day--maybe a day
 and a half. I've never bothered to take his temp, but I'm certain his
 exhaustion could cause the elevation." 

"And the white count, Agent Scully?" Coughlin asked, still
 suspicious of the results of his tests. "In any case, you are right on
 one account. He is exhausted. But I decided to order a mild
 sedative to help him get to sleep. He said he was too wired and
 wanted us to bring in a television for him to 'fall asleep to'. I tried
 to explain that the quarantine cubicles aren't set up for Direct TV,
 but he seemed to think that was a problem that could be solved
 rather easily, and to his satisfaction. If you wouldn't mind letting
 him know that this is a medical installation and not a home
 entertainment center, when you speak to him." 

"I thought he was asleep," Scully said, ignoring the biting
 comments for the moment. 

"Not yet. He wants to talk to you, before he drops off." She
 looked over at the glass wall dividing them and saw that the curtain
 had been opened. She saw Mulder playing with the blankets, heart
 monitor beeping quietly next to his bed. At least Dr. Coughlin had
 decided to forego the IV for the time being. Mulder probably
 talked him out of it. Her partner was leaning back against the
 pillow, a slightly unfocused gaze to his eyes. She got up and
 tapped on the glass and he smiled in her direction. After a couple
 of tries, he hit a call button laying on his bed to activate the
 intercom. 

"You're back," he grinned and his voice sounded tinny through the
 overhead speaker. 

"You're drunk," she smiled back and almost laughed as he nodded
 happily. 

"Close as I'm likely to get for two weeks. I wanted to talk to you. 
 We can't talk to Skinner about the report yet. I want to go over
 some things--get more of a line of Pinck if I could. If they'd let me
 have a stupid phone--" 

"Mulder, you just worry about resting. You're dead on your feet. 
 It's got your temp up and Coughlin is about to blow a gasket." 

"I told him he'd find funny stuff in my blood, Scully. It's his fault if
 he didn't believe me," Mulder yawned. 

"The 'funny stuff' as you call it wouldn't account for the increase in
 temp or white blood cells, Dr. Watson," she said with a teasing
 tone. "You are probably catching the cold from hell and it's just
 now showing up. I told you that your resistance would be low for
 sometime, and you needed to make sure you got enough rest." 

"I told them that, Scully, really I did. I said, hey, you, US Marshall
 What's-your-ass--my partner wants me tucked in every night by 10
 o'clock. But he just kept driving," he waved a hand weakly at
 some distant point. "Couldn't exactly walk home, now could I?" 

Scully was working hard to retain her composure. "No, Mulder I
 guess not. But you don't have an excuse now. So go to sleep." 
 She turned and started to close the curtain on her side of the
 window. 

"Scully?" he said and the tone of his voice stopped her movements. 
 "Don't close it--OK? And if I promise not to snore, could we leave
 the speakers on?" His eyes held a worried look and she suddenly
 realized that he really didn't want to be cut off from her like that. 

"Sure, Mulder. I'll just turn off my light. Good night," she said
 softly. 

"G'night," he shot back, and by the time she'd crawled back into
 her own bed, she could hear his even breathing over the intercom. 
 It lulled her to sleep. 

5:45 am 

At first, Scully thought the screams were coming from her own
 nightmare. She could see Dr. Osborne, his face pressed against the
 glass in the door of the blazing incinerator, screaming at her to let
 him out. Then, when she opened her eyes and willed her breathing
 to slow down, she realized the sound was coming from the room
 next door, over the intercom. Mulder was having a doozy of a
 nightmare himself. 

Two blue suits were already in the room, but she pressed her own
 face against the glass separating her from her partner and tried to
 talk to him. "Mulder. Mulder, it's OK. Hey, look at me, partner,"
 she pleaded. "Come on, Mulder--it's just a dream." 

"Temp's 101," said one of the suits, a woman whose voice Scully
 couldn't recognize and whose face was obscured by the mask on
 the bio suit. 

"Respiration and heart are rapid," chimed in the other--a male
 voice. 

"He's having a nightmare," Scully said tersely. "If you'd just let me
 talk to him--" 

"Dr. Scully, please! We're handling this. Try to go back to sleep,"
 the male voice directed and promptly the curtain between the two
 rooms was closed. Scully stood there, too shocked to move. They
 had shut her off, they wouldn't listen. 

"Eyes dilated," said the female voice. 

They had forgotten to turn off the intercom. 

"Mr. Mulder? Mr. Mulder, can you hear me?" asked the male. 
 There was no response in a familiar voice. Scully almost called out
 again, but was afraid to alert the doctor and nurse of her ability to
 hear what was going on next door. She kept her silence and sat
 trembling on her bed. 

"Not responsive. When was the last blood drawn?" 

There was the snap of a clip board. "12:45. Do you think it would
 show up this soon?" 

"According to the records we received from the prison, the
 infestation should show in the blood work once symptoms have
 developed. Oh God, look at this!" 

"That purple rash. We better start an IV. How long till the others
 crashed and bled out?" 

Scully wasn't even breathing anymore. They'd found the purple
 rash on Mulder. She remembered Dr. Osborne nervously opening
 the collar of his shirt to reveal the same purple nodules that
 indicated the presence of the disease. How long had it been
 between that moment and the moment when she found his body in
 the makeshift morgue in the basement of the prison? Oh God, how
 long did Mulder have? 

"Anywhere from 12 to 24 hours, depending on the patient. But
 they did have some success with aggressive antibiotics. Bought a
 little time." 

"How much?" 

"No more than 24 hours, but we might be able to get a better
 handle on it here. Face it, they had no facilities and they were flying
 blind." 

The male voice chuckled. "And we're not?" he said sarcastically. 
 "Start with Keflex. Push it, we want as much in his system as he
 can tolerate. His breathing appears labored--we better start O2
 while we're at it." 

"What about his partner? She's gonna want to know what's going
 on." 

"She'll figure it out soon enough." 

Scully closed her eyes and felt the tears fall down her cheeks. 

She awoke to coughing, but not her own. It was coming over the
 intercom. She cringed, and stared at the curtain shutting her off
 from her partner. She listened closely, trying to determine if he was
 alone in the room. After a few moments, she decided it was safe to
 try and talk to him. 

"Mulder? Mulder, can you hear me?" She had a mixture of relief
 and dread flood her when she didn't receive a response. Obviously,
 he was alone or the medical personnel would have turned off the
 intercom. She could hear her own voice echo off his glass cubicle
 walls from where she sat. But if he was alone, his lack of response
 meant he couldn't hear her. More coughing prompted her to try
 again. 

"Mulder?" she said, a little louder. "Mulder, it's me. Scully. Can
 you hear me? Answer me, Mulder, please?" 

There was silence, then more coughing. Finally, she heard it. 
 "Scully," he said weakly. 

"Yes, it's me, Mulder. Are you all right?" she asked anxiously. 

"Don't think so, Scully," he said and punctuated the sentence with
 a coughing fit. "Feel like a piece of shit . . ." 

She smiled sadly at that. "I'm sure you do. Look, Mulder, it's
 going to be all right. I promise, OK. You just have to hang in
 there." 

" . . . it's so cold here, Scully . . ." 

"I know, I know. It's cold because you have a fever. You have the
 chills. But it's all right. I'll call the nurse, have her bring in another
 blanket. That should warm you up. Just hang on, Mulder. Will
 you promise me that? Will you hang on?" 

Only silence met her request. She pressed the nurses call button
 and waited for the response. The answering yes sounded muffled
 to her ears. "Could you please bring a blanket into Agent Mulder. 
 He's got the chills." 

Scully waited for the nurse to say something. After what seemed
 like a long time, she replied with a hesitant "I guess we could." 
 Scully laid there in the dark, and sure enough, in a few minutes she
 heard someone moving around in the room next to her. Since she
 couldn't hear anyone talking and because she was exhausted
 herself, she soon fell back to sleep. 

"Scully?" 

The voice, coming from the ceiling, startled her awake, even
 though it was barely a whisper. 

"Yes, Mulder," she said, wiping sleep from her eyes. 

"I'm so thirsty, Scully," came the gritty voice of her partner. 

"Didn't they leave you any water?" she asked, pulling on her own
 bedside light and noticing the full pitcher of water on her own
 bedtray. 

"I can't reach it," came the plaintive reply. 

Scully bit her lip. He was probably too sick to reach over and get
 the water cup. If she were allowed in the room, she would have
 gotten it for him, but as it was, she felt helpless and frustrated. She
 pushed the call button for the nurse again. 

"Could you please help Agent Mulder get a drink of water. He's
 very thirsty," she said tersely into the speaker on the rail of her bed. 

Again, her request was met with a prolonged pause. "Agent Scully,
 if you're having trouble sleeping--" 

"I'm not having any trouble sleeping! My partner is sick and he
 can't reach the water. Please, it's bad enough that he's dying, don't
 do this to him," she pleaded. "Would you please just get him the
 water?" She was choking back tears as she spoke. 

"Certainly, Agent Scully. We'll take care of him. Just go back to
 sleep. It will be better in the morning." 

At that, the tears really did begin to fall. In the morning, at the rate
 this disease progressed, in all likelihood, Fox Mulder would be
 dead. 

The next sound she heard confused the hell out of her. It was a
 chiming sound, almost like a bell, but electronic. It was familiar,
 but in her sleep heavy state, she couldn't place it. Finally, when she
 remembered where she was, she recognized it. It was the IV pump
 in Mulder's room. It was chiming over the intercom. He was out
 of either IV fluid or antibiotics. 

She waited, expecting the nurse to come in and turn off the chime,
 change the bags and check on her partner. But after several
 moments, she realized that maybe no one was coming. 

"They've given up on him," she growled to the silent room around
 her. She sat up in bed and this time when she hit the call button,
 she all but knocked it off the bed rail. 

"Yes, Agent Scully," came a voice that sounded just a slight bit
 impatient. 

"Can't you hear that damned pump?! It's been sounding for 10
 minutes. He needs more keflex or saline or both. What the hell are
 you doing out there? Break up the bridge game and take care of
 that patient!" Scully hadn't spoken to a nurse like that in her life,
 but this was an entirely different matter. This was Mulder and if
 she couldn't be with him, she was still going to make sure he was
 taken care of in his last hours. 

"Agent Scully," a voice growled through the speaker. "Ah, what
 the hell. OK, we'll get him an IV. But please, _Ms._ Scully, go to
 sleep and let us do our jobs?" 

"If you would do your job, I wouldn't keep having to call you,"
 Scully shot back, but she'd figured that the nurse had already
 turned off the intercom. 

Her dreams left her little rest. The next few hours were spent
 tossing and turning, caught in webs of images that she couldn't
 escape. Mulder, laying in one of the plastic bags at the prison. His
 face as his body was thrown into the makeshift crematorium. His
 screams as his body started to burn. She couldn't do that do him. 
 She couldn't let them burn his body. Even knowing as she did that
 he would be long dead by that time, she couldn't stomach the
 thought when she knew his fear of fire. 

She had no idea what time it was when the dreams released her and
 she finally fell into a deep sleep. 

12:05 pm 

She felt like someone was staring at her. Her eyes were closed and
 she was still so tired. All she wanted to do was fall back asleep. 
 But the creepy feeling of being watched--under close scrutiny,
 would not leave her. 

A flash of dread hit her like a brick. Mulder was dead, and one of
 the 'fine young doctors' at the installation was probably waiting for
 her to wake up on her own before telling her. If that was the case,
 she'd just as soon sleep forever. Resolutely, she clamped shut her
 eyes and refused to open them to the horror she knew she would be
 facing. 

"Scully. I hope you didn't try that with your mom. She'd probably
 tan your hide for pretending to sleep. Bet you tried it a lot on
 Sunday mornings." 

The voice--her partner's voice. Oh, God, how cruel! She could
 almost hear him talking to her. What if? Oh, no, it couldn't be
 true? Could Mulder have stayed around, in spirit, to haunt her the
 rest of her life? She started to cry at the thought that her partner
 would be trapped on the earth forever. 

"Hey, Scully, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to tease you!" came the
 quick reply to her tears. "Come on, I'm sorry. Open up your eyes. 
 Hey, if you open your eyes, I'll get the nurse to bring your lunch
 tray back. You gotta wake up for this, Scully. I've never had
 better chicken salad! And I don't even LIKE chicken salad! This
 stuff is fabulous. They should open a restaurant. Uncle Sam's Cafe
 and Infectious Disease Quarantine. It rings, doesn't it?" 

At that, her eyes flew open and she stared into the eyes of her
 partner. Her very much alive and very healthy looking partner. 

"Mulder! You're alive!" she croaked, the tears still swelling her
 throat. 

"Wasn't I supposed to be?" he asked, a little taken aback. "Good
 grief, Scully, what a way to say 'Good Morning'!" he added with a
 lop sided grin. 

"I thought--I m-mean, I must have d-dreamed--" she stammered. 
 "Mulder, I was sure I heard the doctors say that they were putting
 you on keflex. That you had 24 hours before you crashed and bled
 out." She was still amazed that he was sitting up on the hospital
 bed, talking to her. "You were unresponsive. You're eyes were
 dilated. You needed oxygen--" 

"My nose was stuffed up," he offered apologetically. "I asked the
 nurse if they had any Vick's vaporub. That stuff always works on
 my head colds. But they said they don't stock it, so I had to settle
 for Dimetapp. Stuff dried me up all right, I'm so thirsty I could
 drink a lake." 

"You were thirsty in my dream. And you had the chills. And your
 IV needed to be changed--" she continued, absently cataloguing her
 dream. 

"That might explain why the nurses kept waking me up. They
 brought me an extra blanket, brought me two pitchers of water and
 then woke me up and said that you wanted me to have an IV. I
 nixed that one real fast!" he said triumphantly. "Told them you talk
 alot in your sleep and to just start ignoring you--especially if it
 meant waking me up again. I was dead tired, Scully. All I wanted
 to do was sleep and once I could breath through my nose, I was out
 for the count." 

"The dream seemed so real--" she kept repeating. 

"Well, I was kinda cold. So thanks for the blanket and the water. 
 But when they tried to stick me with that IV, I was ready to come
 over to your cubicle and give you a piece of my mind. You
 shouldn't be allowed to practice medicine in your sleep, Scully. 
 Even if you were right two times out of three," he grinned at her. 

"You're OK. You don't have the disease?" she asked, finally
 realizing that she was no longer in a dream, but was experiencing
 reality. 

"I'm fine. No sign of symptoms. And so are you. Fine, that is. I
 talked to Coughlin and he said that he might see if we could get one
 of the larger rooms--a semi-private. They can move a TV/VCR in
 one of those. And the nurses thought that having us both in the
 same room might give them a hand. They seem to think that I
 might be able to keep you from driving them crazy," he said with a
 truly evil twinkle to his eyes. 

"You keep ME from driving them crazy?" Scully exclaimed loudly. 
 "Mulder, its ME that has to keep YOU from getting killed by the
 nurses!" 

"Not this time, apparently," he grinned back. "This time, _I'm_ the
 'good patient' and you're the 'difficult' one. And I think that's just
 peachy." 

"You would," she said sourly. 

"Ah, forget it, Scully. Two more days and the nurses will have it
 figured out. But for now, you gotta try this chicken salad--" 

"Uh, Mulder," she replied a bit sheepishly. "Maybe you could call
 the nurse and ask her to bring my tray back. If want you're telling
 me is the truth, I think they might respond faster if you requested
 it." 

"Sure thing," he laughed. "And you were right, Scully. This is
 almost like a vacation. But you really need to learn how to relax. 
 Your dreamscape is a mess!" 

"Mulder, you have NO idea." 

the end
 Feedback to:vickiemoseley1978@yahoo.com


"Poems, prays and promises,
 Things that we believe in.
 How sweet it is to love someone.
 How right it is to care.
 How long it's been since yesterday, 
 And what about tomorrow,
 And what about our dreams and 
 All the memories we share." 

Goodbye John. 

John Denver, 1944-1997
 Singer, songwriter, poet