All Eyes Lead to the Truth | Three Words (8x16)
“...Just a few hours for observation, but it appears you’re cleared to go home,” comes the voice of Dr. Lim as the psychiatrist enters the hospital room. The patient, Fox Mulder, glances up at her cautiously, while the doctor and Agent Scully welcome her arrival.
“Hi,” she says, extending her hand to the agent. “I’m Dr. Novick.”
He looks at it for a second, then shakes it. “Bet you never shook hands with the undead before.”
A joke. Well, that’s a good sign.
“Nope. You’re the first.” She smiles at him. “I’m here to check up on you, ask a few questions.”
Agent Scully raises a wary brow at him. “That all right with you, Mulder?”
He nods vacantly, but his eyes are locked onto his partner. “Sure.”
She responds with a tight smile, briefly glances at Dr. Lim. Then they both leave the room. Agent Mulder turns his body a bit, not rudely, just facing the direction his chair wants him to. He stares into space, as if the doctor is already sitting in front of him. As if he’s ready for this inquisition, however reluctantly.
Novick grabs a chair and drags it in front of him. She sits.
“So,” Agent Mulder says. “The FBI sent you down here to kick the tires, make sure I’m running on all four cylinders?” He holds his arms out as if to say well, look at me. “You’re in luck, because they just told me I’m completely healthy.”
“Yes, well. Physically.” Novick adjusts her glasses on the bridge of her nose. “But trauma can extend beyond the physical.”
“Doc, if the FBI sent you down here to make sure I’m not crazy, I could've saved you the trip.”
Dr. Novick gives him a gentle smile. “You often use humor to deflect your emotions, don’t you?”
She isn’t sure if it’s because he’s uncomfortable at being seen so clearly, or if it’s sheer annoyance, but the levity leaves his eyes.
“I’m not here at the Bureau’s request, Agent Mulder.”
He takes a deep breath, then exhales. “Scully. I should’ve guessed.”
“And for the record, I don’t think you’re crazy.”
“But you’re also not gonna write down in that little notepad what I tell you, are you? What actually happened to me?” Agent Mulder asks, a bit defensively. “Nothing that’ll support a tale about alien abductions, or experimentations, or torture?”
The agent looks down at the floor. “I’d rather not, actually.” He says nothing more.
There’s an extended silence, and she watches his face. He blinks a few times, and he stares down at his hand as it opens, then closes. She doesn’t want to mention it, but she does know a thing or two about his past. The FBI rumor mill is notoriously fond of Spooky Mulder.
“I’m just here to listen, not to judge. If you want to talk about what you’ve been through. If you need someone to hear you.”
“What I’ve been through…” he says, staring past her, out the window at the sky. “What I’ve been through cannot be programmed, categorized, or easily referenced. And even if it could, apparently in a matter of hours, every shred of evidence on my body, every indication it ever happened will be gone.” He smiles to himself sardonically. “Classic coverup. The irony’s hilarious, actually.”
Dr. Novick waits for him to continue, to elaborate on his experience, but he abruptly changes the subject.
“She looks at me like everything will just… be normal again,” he then says. “Like things will just be the same as they were before.”
He’s talking about Agent Scully , she thinks. That rumor mill is good for other things, too.
“Are you saying it won’t be?”
He looks at the door where his partner exited. “I told her I wouldn’t want it to come between us. I mean, one second she’s all I’m thinking about, and the next…”
She doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but he seems to catch himself, and looks at her. “You know those stories you hear about people in comas who wake up and have no idea how much time has passed? Or astronauts who go so far out into space that time has accelerated for them when they return to Earth?”
He nods. “That’s how I feel. And as strange as I always thought it’d be, nothing prepares you for actually experiencing it.”
“You’re incredibly lucky to be alive,” she says.
But this is not the right thing to say.
“Try for just one second to put yourself in my place, Doc,” he says; he seems angry. “Poked and prodded for God knows how long. Wanting nothing but to come home, until there’s nothing else to wish for but death.”
Dr. Novick is silent, letting him speak.
“I’ve been wishing for death for so long that… to be alive again…” he shakes his head. “It’s like… I feel guilty.”
She nods slowly. “Guilty about what?”
Agent Mulder looks at the door again. “She’s moved on, clearly. She’s lived her life without me. And she should, she deserves that. I just feel like I’ve thrust myself back into her world and there’s no place for me.”
From the relief she’d seen in Agent Scully’s eyes, the doctor knows Mulder is obviously far off-base in this regard. She isn’t really sure how to make him believe that, though. For the first time, Dr. Novick wonders if his defensiveness is less about the trauma of his experience, and more about the trauma of his return.
“I don’t think you’re giving her enough credit,” she says. “And quite frankly, I don’t think you’re giving yourself enough, either. She cares for you deeply, Agent Mulder. And that care doesn’t disappear simply because you did.”
He takes this in. Maybe something she’s said has clicked, maybe not. But one thing is certain: if anyone is going to get through to Fox Mulder, it’s going to have to be his partner.
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