Title: OUT OF ISOLATION 
Author: Jean Robinson
Disclaimer: Characters from the X-Files are the property 
of Ten Thirteen Productions and the Fox Television 
Network. No infringement is intended. 
Rating: PG
Classification: S
Archive: Please ask permission.
Spoilers: Through "One Breath."
Summary: Alone but undaunted. Birthday challenge fic.
Feedback: Cherished at jeanrobinson@yahoo.com.
Author's notes at the end 
*****************************

OUT OF ISOLATION 
By Jean Robinson


The woman in the bed next to mine is crying again.

She weeps almost constantly, a steady, monotonous 
keening that seems to come from the bottom of her soul. 
It's a hopeless, helpless sound. While I can't hate her, I 
detest the depression she inflicts upon me with the depth 
of her sorrow.

I'm trying to remain strong. We're allowed so few lucid 
moments I refuse to waste them and my energy on 
unproductive pursuits. Despair is a luxury I cannot 
afford. Not if I want to live, and I do want to live.

I want to see my mother again, and my sister and 
brothers. I want to finish cleaning my apartment and 
reading the last issue of "The New England Journal of 
Medicine" and I want to call my friend Kathy and 
reschedule our lunch date.

I want to hear familiar voices again. I'd give anything to 
have Mulder walk in with that crooked smile and that 
mischievous glint in his eyes and hear him say, "So, 
Scully, I got this phone call about some dead cows in 
Iowa. The ranchers saw lights in the sky and the next 
day, bam. Fifty-five previously healthy Holsteins bought 
the farm. You know what I think?"

I'd love to be able to snap right back at him, "That we 
should swear out an arrest warrant on Colonel Sanders 
for vandalism and industrial espionage?"

Sometimes at night my dreams are so vivid when I wake 
up I'm completely convinced I've had this conversation 
with him.

At least, I think it's at night. There are no windows here 
and the drugs make a mockery of my ability to track 
time.

The clear plastic bag attached to the intravenous line 
dripping into my left arm bears no identifying symbols, 
but I can hazard a guess as to what it contains.

Nutritional supplements. Fluids. Sedatives.

That's just for starters. There are other chemicals mixed 
in as well, I'm certain of it. I'm also certain I'll never learn 
what they are. I can only pray that the 'doctors' here 
aren't doling out a slow-acting poison in this colorless 
cocktail.

I have to believe that at some point they will release me, 
that part of this odious and unholy experiment is to 
document how the test subjects function outside the 
carefully controlled laboratory environment.

Otherwise I have nothing to do but listen to my 
roommate's disconsolate sobs and wait for them to take 
me for the next procedure.

The routine, if you could call it that, varies. Some days 
are empty, with only the appearance of the occasional 
attendant to change the IV bags and catheter collection 
pouches to break the monotony.

Boring as they are, I prefer the times of solitude to the 
procedure days. First the door to our room opens, and 
there is the brief flare of terror as we realize what is 
about to happen. Then a moment of panic while we wait 
to see who they have come for this time.

It is not my imagination that I have been selected more 
frequently than she has been. I've kept careful count. 
Twenty-two times they've approached my bed, kicked off 
the brakes, and wheeled me away to places unknown.

My roommate has been the object of their desires on only 
six occasions.

What happens beyond these four walls is yet another 
mystery. Before they remove me, one of them always 
injects something into the IV line. My body, already 
stodgy and slow from whatever potent concoction flows 
into my veins on a constant basis, reacts immediately to 
the new agent. I'm falling into blackness long before I'm 
through the door.

There are fragmented impressions, vague and 
unsubstantiated. People bending over me. Silver and 
white, the cold, sterile colors associated with operating 
theaters. Another presence, holding my hand and 
speaking words I can't comprehend.

My only real clue to the procedures is the residual pain 
when I wake up, back in my room. My roommate often 
bursts into fresh tears when she sees me come around; 
that's how I know I'm awake again and "safe," if such a 
state of being is possible in a place like this.

Like the routine, the pain varies, in location and in 
intensity. My head. My neck. My abdomen.

My pelvis.

The first time I awoke after that procedure, it was to the 
sound of my roommate screaming. Her shrieks sounded 
like breaking glass. The timbre of them grated on my 
sensitive eardrums, and I winced. The movement caused 
pain, fierce, terrible pain, stripping away the last of the 
anesthetics and dumping me into reality.

She was screaming because I was hemorrhaging. My 
blood, seeping through the thin sheet covering me, made 
a garish red stain in our otherwise pristine white room. I 
tried to tell her to be quiet, that I was fine, but I couldn't 
speak through the pain and I've never been a very good 
liar.

The staff here is accustomed to yelling, frenzied patients. 
It's in their cold eyes and their indifferent movements, 
the subtle way they behave around us. It took a very long 
time before someone responded to her wails, finally 
understanding that perhaps something was truly wrong 
and they'd best investigate, if only to quell an outbreak of 
mass hysteria.

Consciousness was slipping away along with my blood 
when help arrived. Everything after that was a 
disorienting mishmash of color, light and sound, overlaid 
with pain.

My head, pounding in sympathetic resonance with the 
throb in my womb.

Agitated male voices, shouting questions at me. Asking if 
I was all right.

Monitor alarms squealing, adding a discordant harmony 
to the general din.

Blinding white lights directed at my eyes, making me 
squint and twist away.

It would be fair to say that they treated me a bit more 
gently after that incident. Apparently I'm important to 
them somehow. I can be used, but I'm not to be 
irreparably damaged. 

Small comfort, but it's better than no comfort at all. It's 
the only indication that they do mean to turn loose me 
when all is said and done.

Back to my job, if I still have one. To my family, if they 
haven't given me up for dead.

Back to my partner, if he hasn't killed himself in an 
overwhelming onslaught of guilt and grief.

He might just do something that drastic over this. He 
wasn't home when I called with my terrifying revelation 
about Barry's implant. He wasn't there to hear me cry 
out for him when the man broke into my house. During 
other times of distress, Mulder's received some clue, 
some inkling that I was in danger and in need of 
assistance. He was there when Eugene Tooms lunged out 
of my heating duct and attacked me. When the Kindred 
nearly violated me. When Warren Dupre kidnapped me. 
When the Teena Simmons and Cindy Reardon sought to 
poison me. When John Barnett tried to exact revenge by 
targeting me for execution. 

I might have survived these varied assaults without 
Mulder's intervention, but I doubt it. Although I'm well-
trained in hand-to-hand combat, such traditional 
preparation hasn't done me much good in my current 
assignment. After a year on the X-Files, I'd like to go 
back to my Quantico personal defense instructor and 
inquire what, if anything, in his repertoire of nasty tricks 
would he recommend to an undersized female agent 
whose assailant is a building powered by a crazed 
computer with a lethal sense of self-preservation. 

I flipped though my old training manuals once and 
realized that there was no swing kick, no body block, no 
vulnerability listed to exploit against prehistoric 
swarming tree mites or subterranean Arctic ice worms. 
There was no chapter devoted to avoiding mutant-
induced, near-death experiences.

I knew then that Mulder and I were alone. No one in the 
Bureau could help us, no matter what we might like to 
believe.

Mulder was accustomed to the plight of the lone wolf. 
Since his sister vanished, he'd been on his own, both 
physically and emotionally. I'd always been part of a 
team, be it siding with my siblings, participating in study 
groups throughout my career as a student, or 
cooperating on teaching projects at Quantico.

Then they sent me down to work with Mulder. My ties to 
my former life were severed, and in their place I formed a 
new link to him.

We were alone, but we were together in our isolation.

It made all the difference in the world.

Now we're both alone, and we're not together. I don't 
know where I am, and he doesn't know, either. He might 
be moving heaven and earth to find me, but deep down I 
understand that I'm beyond his reach until my captors 
decide otherwise.

Mulder might not be capable of surviving his own 
company anymore. Not if he thinks there was something 
he could have done, should have done, to prevent them 
from taking me in the first place.

He harbors protective feelings toward me. I've witnessed 
them. There are many examples I could draw upon to 
prove my point, but the one that stands out in my mind 
most clearly is that time I was held hostage by the body 
of my former boyfriend and what Mulder insists was the 
resuscitated consciousness of a criminal. Distraught over 
Jack's death as I was, I didn't miss the expressions on 
my partner's face when they finally broke into that house 
and freed me.

Outright panic. Staggering relief.

While I yanked at the handcuffs securing me to the 
radiator and called out to Jack, as if the desperation in 
my voice could infuse his lifeless body with new vitality, 
Mulder crouched beside me and touched my cheek, my 
hair and my arms to ascertain that I was merely 
emotionally upset and not physically injured.

I recognized the act for what it was only later, a ritual of 
reassurance. When they'd heard the gunshots, he'd been 
certain I'd been killed. Finding me alive and relatively 
unscathed left him stunned and speechless.

The believer in extreme possibilities could wrap his mind 
around all things weird and wonderful with nary a 
twinge, but my death was simply not acceptable. Not 
after he'd already failed at guarding another young 
female left in his keeping.

On a conscious level, Mulder is well aware that I'm far 
more capable of looking after myself than Samantha ever 
was. Unconsciously, he's still determined to make up for 
his past mistakes by shielding me from harm.

Knowing he was as unsuccessful at this role as an 
armed, trained adult as he was as a frightened, 
unprepared boy must be destroying him. It's why I have 
to make it through this, to show him that I'm alive and 
fully functional.

Before he does commit the ultimate act of self-loathing 
and take his own life as penance for failing to preserve 
mine and Samantha's.



While a steady diet of Valium – or whatever soporific 
they're using – has dulled my investigative skills along 
with my motor coordination, I have studied the situation 
to the best of my now limited abilities. And I've come to 
an unwelcome conclusion.

I cannot escape. I will remain a prisoner until I am of no 
further use to these people. Then I will be released or 
eliminated.

Ropes or restraints do not hinder my movements, but the 
door leading out of this room is locked from the outside. 
Without any tools to poke and prod into the crack of the 
doorjamb, it is a futile waste of energy to wrestle with the 
handle.

My roommate tried to do just that not long after I first 
became cognizant of my predicament. It cost her dearly. 
At the time I didn't know we were both tranquilized; I 
thought my own sludgy brain processes were the result 
of some head trauma incurred in my capture.

She crawled out of her bed, trailing IV lines and catheter 
tubes like transparent snakes, oozing blood and urine 
instead of venom. Staggering across the room, weaving 
and shuffling like an inebriated New Year's Eve reveler, 
she lunged for the door, sobbing that she had to get out, 
she had to go home, she couldn't take it anymore.

Her bed partially blocked my view of her actions, so I 
didn't see how she fell after her initial fruitless tugs at 
the door handle. I heard the thump, heard the crack, and 
knew she'd broken her leg in the single heartbeat of 
silence before she screamed in agony.

When I tried to help her, I discovered I was too weak to 
sit up, let alone stand and assist a seriously injured 
person.

Eventually, an attendant came in response to her cries 
and mine. They took her away and returned her with her 
left leg encased in plaster from her toes to her thigh.

She was confined to her bed by the cast. I was confined 
to mine by fear. Back then I still thought escape might be 
a viable option, and any activity that could jeopardize my 
chances was not worth the risk. So I waited and 
observed, searching for a chink in the deceptively simple 
armor that kept us boxed in this room.

Except there were no cracks in their defenses. Aside from 
our beds the room had no fixtures or furniture at all. The 
lighting was recessed in the ceiling, the controlling 
switch located on the other side of the door. The 
bedframe was held together by smooth-headed rivets; 
even if I'd had a piece of metal to use as an impromptu 
screwdriver, there was nothing to unscrew.

My cross was gone, torn off during my struggles with 
Barry or removed after I arrived here. There was nothing 
else of any substance to improvise an effective arsenal. 

Removing the IV shunt in my arm only served to 
summon an attendant to replace it; presumably we were 
being monitored in some way.

The drugs made it difficult to concentrate on elaborate 
offensive schemes, anyway.

Despite all the obstacles in my path, I managed to 
fashion a weapon. Whether or not I had the strength or 
the opportunity to wield it was debatable. But knowing 
I'd finally accomplished something, taken a measurable 
step to protect myself, comforted me.

My roommate's cast came off today. That meant I'd been 
held here and subjected to these experiments for at least 
six weeks, probably more, with no end in sight. The 
knowledge made me unbearably angry.

I welcomed the fury even though it exhausted me; it was 
a sign that I had not completely lost touch with the most 
basic emotions.

I was about to drift off when I noticed something under 
my roommate's bed. I levered myself up on an elbow and 
squinted, trying to determine what it was.

A piece of cloth.

An inexplicable yet burning desire to have that scrap of 
fabric seized me with such force I started to shake. 
Perhaps it was because that object represented not only 
the first break in the routine, but also the first thing I'd 
seen that could be possessed in this place. The sheets 
and blankets on the bed and the hospital gown could 
hardly be considered belongings, as the staff removed 
and replaced them on a regular basis.

But they'd never left anything in our room before. Not a 
cotton swab, not a tissue, not so much as a dust bunny.

I decided that ownership of that bit of cloth was worth 
the risk of getting out of bed. My movements were careful 
and calculated as I put my feet on the floor and stood up 
for the first time since my arrival. Gripping the mattress 
with one hand, I slid my foot over to stamp on the 
material and draw it toward me across the floor. Leaning 
over would have been hazardous to my precarious sense 
of balance; instead I bent my knees and groped for the 
cloth without looking down.

My roommate watched me curiously, but didn't say 
anything as I eased myself back into bed clutching my 
hard-won treasure.

As prizes go, it wasn't very impressive. Nothing but a 
thin, square piece of light blue cotton, about the same 
size as a standard camp bandanna. The staff had been 
using the cloths to wipe down my roommate's leg, 
removing the last bits of plaster and dead skin. Someone 
must have dropped this one unnoticed.

Rolled up along the diagonal, the innocuous fabric 
became a garrote.

Choking the breath out of someone may or may not have 
been possible in my weakened condition. It may or may 
not have gained me my freedom. But at least now I had a 
way to fight back.

Securing my asset was only half the battle. If I wanted to 
keep it, I'll have to hide it. If I tucked it between the 
mattress and the bedframe I'd probably be able to 
conceal it longer, but I'd never be able to reach it in time 
should an opportunity to use it present itself. If I stuffed 
it down the back of my gown and laid on it the staff 
would find it during my next procedure or clothing 
change, whichever came first. But it would be closer to 
hand should I need it, and I opted for that choice.

I folded the cotton into a flat square to wedge beneath my 
shoulder blades. 

My roommate was crying again.

"What's the matter?" I asked.

She started; we didn't usually talk. It was almost 
impossible to carry on a coherent conversation when you 
spent your days stoned to your eyeballs, barely able to 
turn over in bed. I didn't know her name and she'd never 
asked for mine. But the potential power of my new 
weapon made me feel stronger, less helpless, and I acted 
on the impulse.

She gathered her thoughts and turned to look at me, a 
young woman about my age with wet brown eyes and 
curly brown hair, fair skin and freckles. "I miss my 
children," she said softly. "I'm afraid I'll never see them 
again."

"How many do you have?"

"Two. Twins. Amy and Nicole." She paused, gulped in air, 
and then continued. "Four years of fertility treatments, 
and we finally got lucky. Now. . . " she trailed off, 
gesturing feebly with one hand. "They'll never let us go, 
will they?"

I answered her truthfully. "I don't know."

She rolled back to look at the ceiling and continued to 
weep, letting the tears slide down over her ears and 
through her hair to wet the pillowcase.

Her sobs ripped at something deep inside me, and I 
suddenly realized that if I didn't make her stop crying I 
would start screaming.

And once I began, I wouldn't be able to stop, weapon or 
no weapon.

My fingers trembled on the folded cloth in my lap; the 
blue color shivered in and out of focus as my own tears 
threatened. Savagely, I blinked them back and out of 
nowhere a stray memory came to my rescue.

Melissa. Me. The back porch of our house in San Diego. 
A bandanna, not blue but red, scrounged from our 
brother's camping equipment.

"Fold it this way, now over again. . . good, Dana. Now, 
turn it over, roll it like this. . ."

I watched, fascinated, as the cloth changed shape under 
my fingers, guided by my older sister's patient directions. 
I don't remember where she learned this incredible trick. 
It's not important.

"Now, hold it here, and look! Twins in a cradle!"

Like magic, the bandanna was transformed. I held the 
edges of the cloth cradle and set it rocking, delighted. 
The two little rolls of fabric nestled so cleverly inside 
=did= look like twins. Melissa had performed a miracle, 
and I loved her for sharing it with me.

Now if I could only remember how she did it.

I closed my eyes and let muscle memory take over. Fold, 
roll, twist. . . no, that's not it. Fold, fold, flip. . . no.

By the fifth try I'd nearly despaired of recalling the knack 
of my sister's long-ago sleight-of-hand. My fingers were 
clumsy and slow from the medication. My head throbbed. 
And my roommate's endless sobs punctuated the 
oppressive silence.

I would not let this defeat me.

On the eighth attempt, it came out right. Two rolls of 
fabric tucked into a cloth cradle, ready to be held and 
rocked. Yank on the ends, and the whole thing would 
unravel.

"Hey," I called quietly to the next bed.

"What?" she sniffled.

"Here." I tossed her the crimped and tucked cloth. She 
batted at the soft projectile, knocking it down onto her 
blankets.

"What's this?"

"Hold it by the ends. No, the other way." She finally 
adjusted her grip so the tiny cloth hammock hung 
properly, swinging gently between her hands.

I smiled slightly. It had been such a long time it was a 
wonder my facial muscles even responded to the 
command. "Twins in a cradle. Until you see your twins 
again."

My roommate stared at me for a long minute, awestruck. 
I couldn't have surprised her more if I'd produced my 
gun from under my gown and announced I was going to 
shoot the next person through our door. Then her whole 
face crumpled and she started bawling anew. 

But these were loud, braying cries, healthy, healing 
sounds. Her heart might still ache, but I'd managed to 
patch over the worst of the wound.

I fell asleep, worn out from my efforts and her emotions.

When I woke up, she was gone. I never saw her again.

From that time onward I was alone in the room and all 
the procedure days were mine to endure in solitude.

**************

When I told Mulder I didn't remember anything that 
happened to me after Duane Barry forced his way into 
my apartment, he shushed me and said it didn't matter.

Perhaps he's right. But for three months I was 
somewhere, subjected to massive trauma, and no one 
can uncover the mystery behind my whereabouts or my 
condition. I was one step from death when my family and 
Mulder found me in this hospital. Life support kept me 
from expiring initially and according to my mother, my 
sister and Mulder, my soul recognized that it was not my 
time to die when the mechanical means of sustaining my 
life had been removed.

I want to know what they did to me. Why my muscle tone 
is all but gone, why I've gained twenty-five pounds and 
why my arms, legs and stomach now bear a multitude of 
small, pale scars, fading evidence of everything and 
nothing at the same time.

Why my partner was paired with an agent who betrayed 
him and abetted others in my capture. Why it was 
necessary to drive Mulder to the point of resignation, 
after which he almost certainly would have become a 
statistic, yet another overstressed slave to public safety 
who ate his gun.

But most of all, I want to know why I reacted as I did 
when Mulder brought me a get-well gift from the Lone 
Gunmen.

I'd been "awake" for two days. I'd regained a good deal of 
strength and was progressing rapidly through gelatin and 
applesauce toward food that required more serious 
manibular and digestive involvement. Dr. Daley said if all 
went well I would be home in my apartment by the end of 
the week.

Mulder handed me the small, flat box. I smiled at the 
silver wrapping paper; trust the Gunmen to find 
packaging embossed with holographic alien heads. I tore 
off the paper, opened the lid and pulled away the layers 
of tissue.

And I started to cry when I saw the beautiful blue silk 
scarf they'd purchased for me, concerned that I should 
have something attractive yet functional to wear home on 
a dreary November day. My tears made permanent blots 
on the delicate fabric and scared my partner witless. 
Correctly pinpointing the present as the source of my 
sudden distress, he tried to take it away from me and I 
frightened him further by snatching it back in a move so 
unexpectedly aggressive I ripped the box.

Mulder did the only thing he could think of at that point. 
He put his arms around me and held me for fifteen 
minutes without saying anything, while I continued to 
cry, scrunching the scarf into a wrinkled ball in my fists.

When I finally sniffled to a stop, he let me go, handed me 
a tissue, and calmly continued the conversation we'd 
been having before my uncharacteristic outburst. He 
never asked me about it again.

I don't understand why I broke down like that. But 
someday I will.

I'm not isolated anymore.


End


Author's notes: Happy belated birthday, Jill. <g> You told 
us to include a dead cow, a character in a leg cast, Scully 
faced with the dilemma of concealing a weapon in her 
outfit, and a homemade gift. This is what came out. My 
grandmother taught me how to make both "twins in a 
cradle" and a little mouse out of my dinner napkin when 
I was small, which inevitably led to my cousins and I 
wreaking havoc in restaurants. My eternal thanks to 
Shari and Dasha, who came to my rescue at the eleventh 
hour with prompt beta-reads.

Feedback cherished at jeanrobinson@yahoo.com