From: linda@maas.net

Date: Fri, 16 May 1997

Title: On Call (1/1)
Author: J. Darlene Samniak
Category: S,A
Rating: R, for language
Spoilers: First season only
Summary: Takes place during "Beyond the Sea" - a third party
point of view.

On Call
by J. Darlene Samniak

Hmmm...here's something that's been kicking around on my hard
drive for a while now, so I may as well go ahead and post the
sucker...
Disclaimer stuff: This is a work of fiction. The X-Files and its
characters belong to Chris Carter, Ten Thirteen and Fox, no
copyright infringement intended, etc. This story copyright 1996 by
the author, and may be archived but not reprinted or distributed
without permission.
No MSR or spoilers, rated R-ish for language. This is yet another
"Beyond the Sea" story, written at the request of my good friend
Amperage. Thanks to all who gave me feedback and
encouragement, Amp, Goo, Rodent, Vickie Mosely. University
Hospital and its employees are fictitious, but are based upon real
people at a real facility. Feedback to me, linda@maas.net.

January, 1994
Raleigh, NC

The phone rang sometime around 11, yanking me away from a
warm French beach and back into my cold, cramped bedroom. Dan
had the cordless already, stuck it in my face. "For you," he
grumbled, then dropped back against his pillow. I took the damn
thing, praying for an obscene caller. In a way, it was.

"Denise? It's Stella, the night supervisor...we need you to come in
right away. Dr. Patterson needs the vascular team for a trauma
case, gunshot wound."

Fuck. Where were the heavy breathers when you needed them? I
crawled out from under the warm sheets and the delicious weight of
the comforter, hissed at the coldness of the hardwood floor and
started rummaging for clothes. "Fine," I grumbled. "Make sure he's
got blood ordered, and go ahead and call in the regular call-one
crew if they're not already working; I'll probably need the help. You
got a name for me?"

Static, paper rustling. "Right now he's John Doe. He's in Trauma
2."

I was already pulling on my support hose and looking for a clean
T-shirt. "No problem; I'll be there in twenty."

"Who was that?" Dan didn't even roll over to face me. Such a prize.

"My pimp. He's got a Japanese businessman who likes threesomes.
I gotta go, hon; sounds like the gang-bangers are having a busy
night. This one may take a while, so make sure you set the alarm."

I made pretty good time on the freeway tonight, not too many
people out, too early for the drunks. The problem was finding a
parking space at the hospital; the entire on-call lot was filled, as was
the ER lot. Cop cars *everywhere*. Raleigh, Durham, even state
troopers plus some unmarked Fords with state-exempt plates and
no hubcaps. I gave myself an honorary medical degree and parked
next to the other chief residents.

University Hospital
11:28 PM

As soon as the automatic doors whooshed open the familiar stink of
unwashed bodies, urine and cheap whiskey hit me like a wall. The
ER waiting area was teeming with the usual wildlife: screaming,
congested toddlers, surly teens clutching red or blue bandannas to
their war wounds, a couple of winos stretched out on the hard
plastic benches, a man sitting facing the corner, mumbling to
himself as he rocked to an unheard rhythm. Walking through the
department, I passed a couple of Raleigh paramedics wheeling a
stretcher into one of the exam bays. Girl, looked about eighteen or
nineteen, difficult to tell past all the swelling and bruising. Poor kid
looked like she'd had the living crap beaten out of her. Cops
swarming all over the damn place, glaring at everyone in general
but nobody in particular, blocking the hallways; people yelling
barking orders, flashbulbs popping. The ER security man, Dave, cut
a path for me through the zoo and got me over to the service
elevator before I was
crushed.

"Another day in paradise," I muttered as the doors slid open.
"Gang-banger in 2?"

"Huh-uh," said Dave, eyeballing the mayhem. "Those kids that were
kidnapped a few days ago? They just found the girl - that's her there
in 6, and the guy in 2's a cop that got shot trying to find the other
one."

I craned my neck, tried to see through the crowd, gave up. "You
sure? I thought the paper said they'd been found."

"One of the state cops said the whole article was bogus. Apparently
there's a guy on death row who's running the show, and they tried
to force his hand."

Suddenly all those rubberneckers in blue made sense. "A kidnap
victim and a wounded cop."

"Yeah. Fed, I heard. Looks pretty bad, too. You'd better get
upstairs."

"Sure," I said, punching '2'. "I'll be back down to get him as soon as
we're ready."

It took less than two minutes to clock in and change; Jane, the
scrub tech, was already there, opening up the sterile supplies; Paul,
the fourth-year anesthesiology resident, was drawing up drugs,
laying the syringes down on a blue towel. The EKG monitor,
hungry for a patient, beeped impatiently until Paul punched the
'alarms off' button, scowling.

I grabbed a prep kit, set it up, turned on the warming blanket.
"Have you taken a look at him yet?"

Paul was unraveling cables, taping them in place at the head of the
bed. "Yeah. Thirties, pretty healthy apart from the big-ass hole in
his femoral artery. They've already slammed two units into him, and
he looks like dogshit. Are you about ready to go get him?
Patterson's already here and interested."

I looked over at Jane, who nodded. In the hallway, I could hear
Jerry's trademark laugh. "Looks like the call-one crew's here; I'll let
Lisa help you set up. I'm going down to get him."

My rubber clogs squeaked on the bright linoleum as I grabbed a
rolling oxygen tank and made for the elevator. Jerry already had a
stack of paperwork under his arm.

"Another fun night at the Gun and Knife Club?" he asked, as he
tried to adjust the blue surgical cap into the least nerdy
configuration.

"Yeah," I said, feeling the elevator lurch downwards. "This one's a
cop, though. ER's crawling with them."

It took a little while for Jerry to plow a path for us through all the
people downstairs gathered outside the trauma room. Still mostly
blue uniforms, a few black jackets with "FBI" in big white letters
across the back.

The room was a bloody mess and just as crowded as the hallway,
except that green scrubs and white lab jackets outnumbered the
blue uniforms. On the floor, the remains of a pair of dark,
blood-soaked pants wrapped around the wheels of the gurney. The
trash can with the red liner was already full to overflowing;
red-stained gauze, wrappers, packages. There were 2 empty blood
bags laying on the counter; a third bag of O-neg swung on the IV
pole. All I could see of the patient was a pair of slack feet sticking
out from under the gray wool blanket, one bare and smeared with
crimson, the other still wearing a black sock, dripping red.

"Got any paperwork?" I yelled over the racket.

Liz, the graveyard charge nurse, handed me a slim stack of papers.
"That's all we have on him right now, labs should be on the
computer in just a few. His ID says his name's Fox Mulder,
thirty-three years old. You guys ready for him?" I nodded, glancing
down at the floor; a mosaic of red footprints. Jerry was already
hooking up the transport monitor; the double-beeps cutting through
the din.

Liz pointed to a woman in one of those black jackets next to the
gurney. "See her? That's his partner. She can tell you what
happened, maybe give you a history."

She was tiny, maybe five-two. Shock-pale skin accentuated by
flame-red hair. She held the side rails in a death grip as she looked
down at the man gasping for breath beside her.

"Ma'am?" No response.
"Ma'am?" A light tough on her sleeve made her jump like she'd
been bitten. Her eyes were red, puffy.

"Yes?" Her voice was deeper than I expected it to be. She was
already looking back down at the dark-haired man.

"I'm Denise McKenzie, a registered nurse with the surgery
department; this is Jerry Miller. We're going to be taking care of
your partner tonight while Dr. Patterson-"

"-repairs his left femoral artery. Yes, I know. I'm a doctor."

An FBI doctor? I looked over at Jerry, who raised his eyebrows
and shrugged.

"Oh-kay. Do you know if Officer -"

"Mulder. Special Agent Fox Mulder." She said the words
forcefully, enunciating every syllable.

"-Agent Mulder is allergic to anything?"

"I don't believe so."

"Does he wear contact lenses, bridge work, anything like that?"

"No."

"When was the last time he had anything to eat or drink?"

She looked up at the clock. "Four, four-thirty; right before we went
to the prison to talk to...Burger and fries, a soda, nothing after
that."

Jerry had switched over to the portable oxygen tank, nodded to me.
"We need to get him upstairs now, Agent-"

"Scully. Dana Scully. Where can I wait?"

"He'll go to ICU afterwards, so the best place would be the ICU
waiting room. You can ride up with us if you'd like." I kicked the
brake pedal free, took the IV bags down from the pole and laid
them alongside the wounded man's head. His eyes were closed, but
he grimaced as the stretcher lurched forward, slammed into the
door jamb. Agent Scully glared at us, muttering, and grabbed one
of the side rails herself. Ordinarily I would have said something,
asked her nicely to let us do the driving, but I wasn't about to tangle
with a pissed-off Fed.

"Sorry, sir," Jerry called out in the best tradition of nursing
euphemisms from the foot of the stretcher. "Couple of bumps here."

In the hallway the cops were suddenly quiet, the Blue Sea parting
for us as we moved quickly towards the elevator. No flashbulbs,
just an eerie calm as we wheeled by. Two of the men in black FBI
jackets gave Agent Scully a nervous thumbs-up. She just stared
right through them.

The doors slid open on 2, just outside the OR double doors. "This
is as far as you can go, ma'am," Jerry said to Agent Scully. "ICU
waiting room is down that way, on the left, can't miss it. Plenty of
coffee and semi-comfortable couches. We'll keep you posted, OK?"
The redhead said nothing, just stood there, holding her partner's
jacket, staring down at the floor and the red footprints we had left.

11:45 PM

OR 5 was, as we like to describe it, "a tad nippy" at the usual 65
degrees. The federal agent was already shivering on the elevator but
really started shaking once the frigid air hit him. We tried to move
him over as gently as we could, but that didn't prevent him from
yelping as we rolled him onto the hard surgical bed. Mark
Aberdeen, the staff anesthesiologist, muttered "Sorry" into his ear
as he undid the buttons on the bloodstained shirt, cursing softly as
he realized that there was no way he could slide the damn thing off
over the paramedics' IV lines. The shirt was a nice one, probably
from one of those fancy DC department stores, and it surrendered
without protest to my cheap bandage scissors. Undershirt, boxers,
they all came off in less than a minute and went into the red trash
bag. Hell of a waste, but there wasn't enough bleach in the world to
get rid of all that blood. The tie was salvageable, only a couple of
spots; it went into my back pocket.
Jerry spread a couple of warm blankets over the shivering man as
Mark and Paul placed EKG pads on his chest, and I got my first
good look at him. Dark brown hair, damp but silky against the
sage-green sheets. Full lips, nose long but somehow proportionate
in that face. Slowly, he opened shocky hazel eyes and looked right
at me.

"Scully?" he whispered.

I leaned in close, took his hand. "She's waiting outside for you,
Agent Mulder," I said. "I'm Denise, your nurse; you're in surgery
now, and we're going to take very good care of you. Try to relax
and take some deep breaths for me-"

His hand tightened around mine as he tried to lift his head off the
bed. "Don't," he rasped, "Don't let her listen to Boggs-" his eyes
went glassy, vacant as Paul pulled an empty syringe out of the IV
port.

"Good stuff, huh?" he asked, tipping the man's head back and
placing a mask over his face, gently squeezing oxygen into his
lungs. "Pick a nice dream and go to sleep."

I stood there at his right shoulder and held his hand until it was
completely limp, then tucked his arm against his side, pulled the
blankets back. The sheets underneath were already soaked with
blood, the bulky pressure dressing on his thigh all but useless
against the huge wound. His left leg was already mottled and cool
from lack of circulation; someone in the ER had been able to find a
pulse in the foot at one time and had identified it with a big
magic-marker X, but I sure as hell couldn't feel one now.

Patterson came into the OR from the scrub sink, arms dripping.
Jane handed him a sterile towel and he ambled over, frowning.

"Damn," he muttered, "Bleeding like stink. Don't worry about a full
prep; just bless it with betadine and let's go."

Jerry had already inserted a bladder catheter into our patient and
tied up the back of Patterson's gown while I applied dark, oily
povidone-iodine solution to the soupy red mess with a sterile
sponge.

Pale blue drape sheets folded over the bed, covering the man, and
Special Agent Fox Mulder became yet another piece of body repair.

1:15 am

After a while Jerry relieved me for a break, told me to go and talk
to his partner. I felt the bundle in my back pocket and pulled out the
silk tie, now warm. My clogs were spotted with blood so I pulled
on some clean shoe covers over them, pulled off the silly blue hat,
grabbed a white lab jacket from the rack inside the double doors.
On auto-pilot, legs screaming with fatigue despite the support hose,
I walked down the hall, into the ICU waiting room. There were
several families there, mostly sleeping, a few sentries watching
CNN. I noticed Agent Scully alone in the back corner, curled up
asleep in a recliner, her partner's jacket draped over her like a
comforter. Beside her, a Styrofoam cup of coffee congealed,
untouched. I almost went over and woke her - almost. I couldn't.
For some reason, I just couldn't. I snarfed a small Styrofoam cup of
coffee - they brewed some semi-decent stuff for the civilians - and
went back down the hall. The tie in my pocket would keep for a
few ho
urs.

1:38 am

Well, Jane messed herself up real good; she reached back onto her
instrument table without looking and buried a good portion of a
#10 blade into the ball of her thumb. I winced when she did it; been
there, done that, bought the T-shirt and bled on it. The blades are
so damn sharp that you don't realize how badly you're cut until the
blood's running into your shoes. I sent her down to the ER for
stitches and had Paul draw up more lab work on our FBI man; all
of us have had our hepatitis B shots and I'm sure that the
government does drug screening on all their people, but I could
only hope that the guy practiced safe sex. Lisa was busy holding
retractors so Patterson could see where he was working, so I
scrubbed in and stuck Jerry with the rest of the paperwork.

The FBI guy's leg was a mess. Patterson had cut him from groin to
mid-thigh, exploring, finding all the holes. I hadn't the foggiest idea
what size round he caught, but I hadn't seen damage like that in a
long time. The entry wound was a little off to the side, only the size
of a fat pencil eraser, but the X-ray showed what the bullet had
done on its journey; it had clipped the side of the femur, dug a
wedge out of it, changed trajectory and blown a hole the size of a
tangerine on the way out. I'd seen pictures of retained bullets
before; they contort, flatten like a razor-sharp amoeba, tearing and
ripping and shredding anything in its path before it comes to rest.
Once I'd taken a "foreign body" - we weren't allowed to call a bullet
a bullet - out to the double doors for the cops to take as evidence.
The metal jacket - brass, I guess - had peeled back in deadly
segments, like petals on a daisy.

What should have been healthy, pink, vital tissue was raw, oozing
hamburger.

I leaned in and tried to get a better look; something warm and thick
spattered my neck, ran down the inside if my gown. Fuck.

"Damn." Patterson had found another one; I could hear Lisa
suctioning away, trying to get rid of all the blood that had welled up
suddenly. I shoved a vascular clamp into his outstretched hand,
heard the snick-snick of steel closing around flesh.
"Got it. 5-0 Prolene, please."
The dark blue suture was barely visible against the blood-soaked
drapes; the instruments a bright contrast against the scarlet and
crimson.
Patterson finished the repair and tied his knots; I trimmed the
needle off and peered in.

"How's the nerve?" The blood was cooling off as a thin trickle ran
between my breasts. Jerry stood behind me with a damp towel,
sponged my neck clean.

"Looks OK to me. Missed by about a centimeter. Lucky guy, if you
want to call this shit 'lucky'. Give me the Doppler back."

I handed him the small silver probe, squirted a dollop of sterile gel
onto the end before he placed it in the popliteal notch behind the
knee, listening for the reassuring whoosh-whoosh of a pulse...

<wa-whup...wa-whup...wa-whup...>

"Fuck. There's still clot and junk down in there. Give me a number
5 Fogarty catheter."

Jerry already had the package open at one end, slid the slim plastic
tube into my hands. Quickly I filled a small syringe with 2 cc's of
sterile saline, test-filled the balloon on the end of the catheter,
handed it over to the doc. More blood gushed onto the drapes, onto
the floor as Patterson snaked it down the vessel, past the clot that
was interrupting blood flow to the lower leg. Up went the little
water balloon and Patterson pulled back gently, pulling the ugly
purple booger out with the catheter.

"Doppler."

<woo-woosh..woo-woosh..woo-woosh..>

"Good. Now let's look over here...suction..."

5:20 am

The instruments clattered in the big steel basin as Lisa gathered up
the tools of the trade, wiping off the silver and red clamps and
retractors before hauling them off to the decontam room to be
washed. Jerry and I peeled back the drapes and washed away all the
blood and iodine with warm, damp cloths before carefully lifting
Agent Mulder onto the clean stretcher and covering him with fluffy
cotton blankets fresh from the warmer. He was still completely out
of it and had a horrible, pasty gray cast to his complexion, but his
leg was pink and although swollen, it was a lot warmer than it had
been in hours. The recovery room didn't open up until 7, so we
wheeled him directly over to ICU and stayed with him until he was
all wired up and tucked in. I peeked in on Agent Scully; Patterson
was sitting next to her, nodding reassurance. Jerry was waiting for
me, so I didn't hang around; we had a room to clean.

It took two red bags, two soiled linen bags plus a white 'clean trash'
bag to contain the mess from room 5, and a good 10 minutes with
the wet-vac to get all the blood up from the floor. I shoved the
filthy bed into the utility room nicknamed the 'car wash' and left it
for the OR assistants to hose down when they came on duty at
6:30. Lazy, I know, but I was too damn tired to care by that point.
I looked at my watch: 5:48. Maybe enough time for a quick nap
before day shift started; I had three cases to do that day, and a day
off after working all night on call was not guaranteed.

Fuckit. Jerry worked 10:00 - 6:30 and the lucky bastard actually
got to go home. I wished him good night, left a note at the front
desk for the charge nurse to wake me, dragged my butt into the
recovery room, grabbed a warm blanket and collapsed onto one of
the beds. I think I was asleep before my body could sense the
hardness of the mattress.

12:26 PM

The powers that be took pity on me and let me go at lunchtime,
providing I did my post-op visits before I left. Oh goody. I've
always loved asking people in pain about their surgical experience,
if they're in any shape to talk. Most of them don't even remember
me, just wince, glare and tell me to leave them the hell alone.
There were three people on today's list; a lifelong smoker in his 70's
who'd had part of his lung removed, he didn't remember me at all
but had no complaints about his surgery. Both he and his wife were
too busy arguing with the hospital chaplain about why God had
allowed cancer to strike him.
Then a frail lady in her 80's who'd had her aortic aneurysm resected;
she was still up in the ICU on a ventilator, so that was that. No
conversations there. And then there was Fox Mulder, FBI agent
from the nation's capital, status post femoral artery repair with
patch angioplasty and multiple thrombectomies.

He was awake, sort of, probably zoned on morphine, still looking
gray as hell. His partner was sitting next to him; she'd changed into
an expensive-looking blue suit and her hair was combed, but she
looked as short on sleep as I was.

"Remember me?" I asked hopefully. The woman, Scully, nodded,
Mulder just shrugged.

"I don't think so. Sorry." His voice was soft, barely above a
whisper.

"No matter, I really didn't expect you to. I took care of you in
surgery last night, and I'm doing my usual postop rounds. Any
unpleasant recollections or complaints about your surgical
experience?"

He tried to clear his throat, winced. "No, I don't remember anything
about it at all."

"Anything we can do to make your hospital stay any better?" I
hated that question; made me sound like a goddamn cruise director,
but Consumer Affairs made us ask it.

"Yeah. Send me home." That brought a slight smile to Agent
Scully's face, but her hands remained clenched in her lap, her eyes
distant. Something was up here. I tapped her lightly on the shoulder
and motioned her outside.

"What's wrong?" I asked, noticing how her fingers gripped the hem
of her jacket. "Looks like your partner's going to be all right, but
something's obviously bothering the hell out of you."

She glanced back inside at the dozing figure in the bed, tried to peer
at the numbers blinking on the monitor screens. Her fingers fiddled
with something at her neck.

"I...lost my dad just last week," she said, not looking away from the
window. "Massive heart attack."

Bingo. "I'm sorry," I said, reaching out a hand, trying to offer
support, a shoulder, something, but she jumped back, shaking her
head. Jeez. Sorry. Her neck was red where she'd been fingering her
necklace - no, not a necklace. A cross. A small gold cross.

I stretched my back, stifled a yawn. Time to go. I handed her the tie
that had been burning a hole in my pocket all morning and took my
leave. "Ummm, Agent Scully, I'll let you and your partner get some
rest. Is there anything I can do for you?"

She shook her head, coiling the patterned silk in her hands like a
rosary. "I don't think so. Thanks for taking care of him last
night...Donna."

"You're welcome," I said, turning towards the elevators. She'd
forgotten my name already.

I heard on the news the next day that they executed that killer,
Boggs. Gassed the son of a bitch right into hell. They said he'd
murdered his entire family over Thanksgiving dinner, of all
things...Dave had talked to one of the other FBI guys yesterday,
had said that he heard that Agent Scully had tried to work out a
deal, had tried to stop his execution.

I don't get it.

I saw the two federal agents leaving three days later, on my way
back from the cafeteria. Seemed like he'd need to be on bed rest
longer than that, but then, insurance companies and HMO's only
paid for what the government's DRGs would allow. She was
pushing his wheelchair, looking a lot more relaxed, laughing at him
as he tried to hold on to all the balloons he'd received. Strange
balloons, too; most of them had flying saucers or Marvin the
Martian on them. Someone had even sent the poor guy a Venus
flytrap, of all things. He looked pale but 500% better, even cute in a
nerdy sort of way. I gave them a quick wave as I passed; I think
they were both too busy talking to notice. Two more cases to go
that day, and I was on call again that night.

Just another day in paradise.

finis