"Another Kind of Miracle" Part 3
Disclaimed, summarized, etc. in part 1

***

The next morning, Scully headed over to the clinic for
a medical evaluation.

"I can ask a nurse to come in or you can have your
husband present for the examination; whichever you're
more comfortable with."

"I'd rather have my husband stay."

Mulder thought briefly that it was a weird position to
be in: standing by and watching while another man
touched his wife's genitals. Scully's obstetrician for
her pregnancy with Melissa had been a woman, so even
though he'd been present for the birth, this
particular aspect of medical care was new to him.

After the examination, the doctor smiled and said,
"Things seem to be progressing quite well. Prior to
last night, when was the last time the two of you had
intercourse?"

"Let's see, last night was Saturday. Um, Thursday
evening," Mulder replied.

"Were we supposed to have abstained for longer than
that?" Scully asked.

"Normally we suggest a three-day waiting period, but I
don't see that any harm was done. Your ejaculate seems
more than sufficient in terms of both quantity and
sperm mobility, Mr. Mulder."

"Uh, thanks. I mean, er, that's good, right?"

The doctor nodded and said, "The two of you are
welcome to head home or to spend another few hours
here. Come back in three weeks and we'll see whether
or not the treatment was a success. While we do have a
remarkable record of success here at WellSprings, not
everyone conceives with their first treatment. Some
couples have to return for several months before they
conceive. And, being as we're only human despite doing
what we feel is God's work, we do have some failures."

***

Mulder and Scully spent the following week continuting
to work on the case. Writing the report for Skinner
had proved to be somewhat difficult. As agents, they
knew that it was important to document their
activities as thoroughly as possible. As a married
couple, however, there were certain events that had
happened at WellSprings that they didn't particularly
want to become part of the permanent record of their
case. They finally agreed on including a single
sentence about their activities in the grotto,
referring to it as "marital relations".

They also arranged to interview several of the widows
whose husbands had died within a couple of years of
receiving treatment at WellSprings. Early one
afternoon they talked to a young woman named Susan
while her daughter, a few months younger than Melissa,
napped upstairs.

"This is a picture of Jim," Susan said, holding out a
framed photograph of her husband with their newborn
daughter in his arms. He was an attractive man,
despite being almost completely bald. 

Scully happened to glance around the room and her eyes
settled on another picture, this one obviously of
Susan and Jim's wedding day. In this one, the groom
had a full head of hair.

"Were you married for quite a long time before you
sought help for your fertility problems at
WellSprings?" Scully inquired.

"Not really. We both knew we wanted children and I was
already over 30 when we married, so we never used any
kind of birth control. Shortly after our first
anniversary, I made an appointment with my doctor to
discuss the fact that I wasn't pregnant. My doctor is
also a member of the church we attend and she
recommended we visit WellSprings. We conceived Darcy
on our first visit there."

After a few more questions, Mulder and Scully left.

"Was there a point to being so specific about how long
a time elapsed between when they married and when they
sought help for their fertility problems?" Mulder
asked.

"I was just curious as to how long it took him to go
from a full head of hair to nearly bald. That's
usually a gradual process, but it apparently took
place for him in less than two years."

"Is that signficant?"

"I don't know, Mulder. It's an anomoly and that's
always worth looking into."

The same pattern played out in virtually every other
case they investigated, now that they knew what to
look for. Although the men had died from a variety of
causes, they had all experienced significant hair loss
during the time between conception of their child and
their own deaths. 

***

A few days later, they were lying on their bed playing
with Melissa. Mulder was gently head-butting the
toddler in the tummy, while she squealed and grabbed
her father's hair. Melissa giggled and sat up
triumphantly, clutching fistfuls of her father's hair.

"Good grief, Melissa. You're a strong little girl,"
Scully said. "You pulled out a bunch of Daddy's hair.
And Daddy, you must be tough to let her yank your hair
out without even a murmur of protest."

"It didn't hurt," Mulder said with a shrug.

Scully was seized by a horrible forboding. She ran her
hand through Mulder's hair. Not pulling, just playing
with it the way she often did. When she was done there
were a dozen or more strands of his hair clinging to
her fingertips.

"Fox, I think you're going bald," she said quietly.

"Happens to the best of us, I suppose," he replied. "I
can't say that I'm crazy about losing my hair, but I'd
rather experience that than a certain *other* problem
common to middle-aged men; you know, the one that
requires viagra to fix."

"I don't think this is part of the normal aging
process. I think it's connected with our visit to
WellSprings."

"Shit!" Mulder said, collapsing on the bed.

***

"You want exhumantion orders to run autopsies and tox
screens on *all* the men who were clients of
WellSprings who have died in the past four years?"
Skinner said, staring at Scully.

Scully outlined it for him in step-by-step detail. The
discovery that all the men who had died -- seemingly
of a variety of causes -- had experience significant
hair loss in the year before their death. And the fact
that Mulder was now experiencing the same symptoms.
"There's *got* to be some sort of biochemical catalyst
for these deaths; something that's mimicing the
symptoms of a variety of fatal ailments. I need to
know what it is. . .before I lose my husband."

Skinner was quiet for a moment, then nodded. "I'll get
on the phone to the various county officials where the
victims are buried. You get Mulder into a hospital and
start running some blood work on him."

Mulder refused to enter a hospital, on the grounds
that he didn't feel sick and that he'd spent enough
time in hospitals during his years on the X-Files,
anyway. He did consent to going to Scully's lab and
letting her draw some of his blood, then running a tox
screen on it.

"Nothing?" he asked after a few minutes.

"Nothing obvious," she said quietly. "But, Mulder,
there are literally hundreds of substances that can
prove fatal if taken in high enough doses or when
combined with other substances or with a person's
individual body chemistry."

"Maybe we could cross-reference it with drugs designed
to enhance fertility?" Mulder suggested. "I mean, that
is our working hypothesis, right? That there was some
sort of substance at WellSprings that was increasing
fertilty but also resulting in death among at least
ten percent of the patients it was succesful with?"

Scully nodded and began working again.

Finally, when it was nearly five, Scully said. "Do we
head over to Mom's to pick up Melissa or call and say
we need to stay here later?"

"Let's go get her," Mulder replied. "We're not going
to accomplish much here until we have those bodies to
autopsy and that won't be 'til tomorrow at the
earliest. And if I am about to. . .get sick. . . .I'd
like to spend as much time at home with you and
Melissa as possible."

Scully nodded. They were quiet on the drive over to
Maggie's house, although they reached out to clasp
hands and lock gazes more than once.

When they arrived, and as soon as Melissa had calmed
down a bit from greeting her parents, Maggie said,
"What's wrong? You two both have these looks of utter
despair on your faces. Dana. . .you're not having a
recurrence of your cancer, are you?"

"It's not me, Mom. I'm fine. But Fox. . . .we think he
ingested some sort of substance on one of our cases
that may be slowly poisoning him. The only thing is,
we have no idea what it is."

"Sit down and tell me *exactly* what's going on here,"
Maggie said in a tone of voice that had helped her
raise four teenagers during a time when their father
spent six months a year at sea. 

So Dana explained everything to her mother, starting
with when Skinner first asked them to look into the
case. When she finished, Maggie said, "I think it's
thallium poisining."

"What?" Dana demanded. She'd expected sympathy from
her mother, not a possible solution to the case.

"I've never heard of thallium," Mulder volunteered.
"What is it?"

"You two have to promise to take this seriously, even
though my source may be a little. . .unorthodox,"
Maggie said.

"Maggie, you should know me well enough by now to know
that I never reject any theory outright, no matter how
implausible it may sound to begin with," Mulder
pointed out. "And, while Dana might rule out something
in the course of a normal case, she'll leave no stone
unturned when it comes to saving me."

"You know how I'm a big fan of Agatha Christie
mysteries?" Maggie asked.

They both nodded. 

"Well, in one of her most famous novels, the death is
due to thallium poisoning. It apparently produces a
wide variety of symptoms, and the deaths were
attributed to a bewildering array of causes, but one
symptom was a constant: the victim's hair *always*
fell out."

"Is there a cure?" Dana asked.

"If it's caught in the early stages, yes," Maggie
replied.

"I think we should head back up to the lab," Scully
said. "Mom, can you give me a copy of the book that
deals with this?"

"We just got here," Mulder said. "Melissa will cry if
we turn right around and leave. She expects us to take
her home now."

"Mulder, as much as I love Melissa, saving your life
takes precedence over keeping her from crying!"

"Why don't you both stay here for an hour or so,"
Maggie suggested. "I'll whip up something quick to
eat, because you need to have dinner anyway. And, with
Beltway traffic the way it is, you'd probably get to
the lab at about the same time regardless of whether
you left now or an hour from now."

Mulder and Scully glanced at each other, then nodded.
"Mom, have I mentioned recently how much I love you?"
Dana said.

***

As soon as dinner was over, Mulder and Scully raced
back to the labs. Melissa would just spend the night
at her grandmother's house; she kept a spare nightgown
and change of clothes there for just such
contingencies as this.

Now that they knew what they were looking for, the
thallium in Mulder's blood was fairly easy to isolate.
Scully was on the phone to Skinner and the local
poison control center as soon as had made the
diagnosis.
By midnight, she had her husband in a hospital room
with an IV antidote dripping into his bloodstream.

Skinner came by with a couple of the other agents from
Mulder's task force to coordinate with them. "We've
got a subpeona to serve on WellSprings first thing in
the morning. We'll get a complete list of their
clients, so we can contact all the couples who have
undergone fertility treatments there and see if any of
the other men are experiencing hair loss or any other
possible symptoms of thallium poisoning. I'm still
unclear as to whether we're dealing with a crime or
simply a public health threat, though."

"I'm not quite sure of that myself, sir," Scully said
quietly. "But, absent proof of any intentional
wrongdoing or knowledge of the possible toxic side
effects of their treatment on the part of the staff of
the clinic, I think we have to treat it simply as an
accident. I'm sure they'll be a number of civil
malpractice suits brought by the widows of the men who
died, but I can't see that there's any basis for
criminal charges unless we find more information
proving the doctors knew about the thallium."

"We're still kind of taking a shot in the dark here,"
Skinner said. "We can reach the men who may be
suffering from thallium poisoning and save their lives
if their cases aren't too far advanced. And the
resulting bad publicity and malpractice lawsuits
should be more than enough to shut down WellSprings.
But we still don't know exactly what substance at the
clinic was responsible for the poisoning, why it
effected only men and not women or why it only
effected about ten percent of the men who were
patients there."

"I think I know," Mulder said weakly. "It's in the
grotto itself. There's a kind of. . .small geyeser
that shoots up. I think the thallium is probably in
that."

"Okay, we'll give that area special attention,"
Skinner agreed.

***

A few days later, Mulder and Scully were once again
relaxing on their bed with Melissa. He was still a
little weak, but was well on the road to making a
complete recovery. The investigation had uncovered
three more men -- two with new babies and one with a
pregnant wife -- who were infected with thallium
poisoning. WellSprings had been shut down.

"Mulder, how did you know those geysers in the grotto
were linked to a vein of thallium?" Scully asked.

"Lucky guess; it was the only thing during the course
of the entire weekend that I ingested but you didn't.
Also, given the layout of the grotto and the
instructions to have intercourse within it, that
shallow space was the most logical place for most
couples to choose. Except in rare cases involving some
sort of deformity of the woman's womb, the missionary
position is always going to be the one most likely to
lead to conception, so that would mean that every
couple was lying as we were. . .the wife on her back
and the husband above her, where he would catch the
geyser in his face every time the erupted."

"We still don't know -- may never know -- whether the
thallium was responsible for enhancing the fertility
of the couples who visited WellSprings or whether
there was some other, totally different, reason for
the clinic's astoundingly high success rate," Scully
said.

"Maybe some things are meant to remain a mystery,"
Mulder replied.

"Fox, there's something else. . .I didn't want to
mention it while you were still in the hospital but,
of course, you'll have to know sometime. The treatment
didn't work. I'm not pregnant. My period started
yesterday."

Mulder was quiet for a long moment, staring deeply
into his wife's eyes, tracing his fingertips down her
face, tucking as strand of bright hair behind one ear,
then leaning down to kiss her, very gently, on the
lips. "I'm sorry, Dana," he finally said, softly.

"It's okay. Really. I can't deny that another baby
would be a nice bonus but. . .I almost lost you last
week, Fox. I meant what I said when we were first
discussing whether or not to take this case. I love
you. If I have a choice between having you live to a
ripe old age with Melissa as our only child or
becoming a young widow with two children, it's no
contest. When I think of all the long, lonely years I
thought I'd never have a chance to become a wife *or*
a mother, it seems foolish of me to be upset at this
juncture of my life. I've got you and Melissa; it
seems almost selfish to ask for more."

"I understand why you thought you might never be a
mother; I mean, I was there throughout the whole
infertilty/cancer ordeal. But what led you to believe
you might never get married?"

"We've been through this before, Mulder. For so long,
even as our professional partnership flourished and
our friendship grew,  we were operating at cross
purposes when it came to our personal life. Whenever
one of us wanted to get romantic, the other one backed
away; I'm not blaming you, I was as much -- maybe more
-- responsible for that than you were."

"Okay, Dana, maybe the medication I'm on is dulling my
thought processes, but I still don't see why you
thought marriage was out of the question for you."

Scully picked up a pillow and playfully bopped her
husband on the head with it. "Dingbat.  If I couldn't
have you, I wasn't going to get married at all. It
wouldn't have been fair; any other man would have
paled in comparison to my smart, sexy, sensitive
partner who'd risked his life for me on more than one
occasion."

"Dingbat is right, Dana," Mulder said. He pulled her
down for another kiss, the bestowed one on Melissa, as
well. "Only an idiot would have spent so much time
obsessing over aliens, conspiracies and vampires
instead of cooperating with his beautiful partner in
achieving a normal life."

"Shh, Fox! No more regrets."

"There's something else I want to tell you," Mulder
said, reaching out to finger the cross she wore around
her neck. "You know how I spent so much time searching
for 'the truth'?"

"Sure," Scully agreed with a nod.

"And you remember how the doctor at the clinic told us
that the miracle we ask for isn't always the one we
receive?'

Scully nodded again, hoping her husband was heading
where she thought he was.

"I think I'm ready to stop thinking of God in
amorphous terms and think of Him as a human being. One
who died for our sins and wants a personal
relationship with each of us. You know those inquiry
classes up at the church that you're always suggesting
we take, just so I can learn more about Christianity
in general and Catholicism in particular; when they
start a new session, let's go ahead and sign up."

Scully smiled and nodded, then snuggled down between
her husband and daughter, sending up a silent prayer
of thanksgiving.


Author's e-mail addy: tapw63@yahoo.com