Title: LEARNING CURVE Author: Jean Robinson (jeanrobinson@yahoo.com) Disclaimer: Characters from the X-Files are the property of Ten Thirteen Productions and the Fox Television Network. All others are property of the author. No infringement is intended. Rating: PG-13 Classification: Doggett/Scully friendship Archive: Please ask permission. Spoilers: Up through "Roadrunners." Summary: He was bound to find out sooner or later. Feedback: Adored at jeanrobinson@yahoo.com Author's notes at the end ***************************** LEARNING CURVE by Jean Robinson John Doggett said, "I don't know" more times in the first ten minutes following his arrival at BYU Medical Center than he'd ever said it before, including his years as a surly teenager muttering non-answers to a questioning parent. He repeated the phrase so many times that by the time the doctors had relegated him to the waiting room while they tended to Agent Scully that he wondered if he knew anything at all aside from the fact that he apparently didn't know anything. At least, not anything relevant to his partner and the bloody, gaping holes in her back. He could explain one of those wounds. The one at the base of her neck where he'd used his pocketknife to slice Scully open like a gutted fish, and yank that. . . that whatever-it-was, the Holy Slug of Christ, the Parasite of Our Lord, the Giant Jumpin' Jesus Worm. . . that =thing= out of her body. Nothing he'd read in the X-Files or heard around the water cooler about Dana Scully had prepared him for hearing her scream, "Cut it out of me NOW!" She was the forensic pathologist, the one accustomed to using sharp objects on human flesh. He was the cop, the one who was supposed to use his wits and his service weapon to save the victim. The terrifying speed with which this role reversal had happened, along with the gruesome results, still had him shaking. Opening a four-inch gash along Scully's spine for an impromptu larval extraction didn't seem to be the most helpful thing to do for her, but he couldn't refuse her agonized demands. She lost consciousness shortly after he'd carried her from the bus, past all the mourning cult members. Sheriff Ciolino and Juab County's finest came roaring in as his arms were giving out, but they'd come without medical backup. Doggett had been forced to accept the offer of their fastest car and driver and subject Scully to a bone-jarring back-country race to Provo and proper care. His biggest concern was that she might bleed to death before they could get her to the hospital. The circular wound below her waist was ominous but only oozing slightly; his cut, however, had been made with far less surgical precision and was still gushing an alarming amount of blood. He'd cradled her on his lap in the back seat, using his hands not only to support her but also to apply pressure to the lacerations, which had been hastily covered with sterile pads from the first aid kit in the Sheriff's cruiser. Then it was off to the races as Deputy Rawlins stepped on the gas and roared out to the main road, leaving a rooster-tail of dust pluming straight up behind him. Scully had never really come around during the trip despite all the jouncing, although she had mumbled loudly enough once or twice to be heard above the road and engine noise. Head tucked under his chin, she'd said, "Mulder," clearly enough for Doggett to understand and answer. "No, Agent Scully, it's Agent Doggett. Just try and relax; we're almost at the hospital." He hadn't expected a response and didn't get one. Wherever Scully was now, he hoped Mulder was somehow with her; Doggett certainly didn't have any soothing words of comfort to offer her at the moment. Ten minutes later, she moaned an unidentifiable syllable and shifted restlessly against him. Thinking he might be hurting her more, he eased his grip, but Scully just went limp again, pressed against his chest with her arms tucked around her stomach. When he finally saw the lights of Provo twinkling in the distance, the relief hit him like a physical blow, making him light-headed and nauseated at the same time. His partner had bled all over his shirt, but she was still breathing. His career had dodged another bullet. Rawlins had radioed ahead, and a trauma team was waiting outside the emergency room exit when he screeched to a stop in a haze of burned rubber. Half of Doggett wanted to rip the man a new one for the kidney-rupturing drive, while the other half wanted to kiss him for covering the distance so quickly. He squelched both desires as one of the ER staff yanked open the car door and reached for Scully. "This the FBI agent?" "Yeah. Dana Scully." Doggett followed as they pulled her away from him. After that, his ability to supply important information - or any information - became severely limited. "What happened to her?" "I don't know." "What caused this hole in her back?" "I don't know." "How long ago did the injury occur?" "I don't know." "Is she allergic to anything?" "I don't know." "Is she on any medications?" "I don't know." "Are you her emergency contact?" "I don't know." That particular question gave him pause. He'd never thought to check whose name Scully had filled out on the little card; despite his review of the X-Files and his up close and personal experience with Batman on their previous case, he never dreamed he'd be in the position to minister to an unresponsive Scully so soon in their partnership. Hell, he still had a hard enough time finding the right elevator to the basement, everything was so new. One of the nurses patted down Scully's clothes. Miraculously, her Bureau ID was still jammed deep in her right hand pants pocket, the tiny scrap bearing all the pearls of wisdom the doctors were looking for tucked snugly behind it. Scully's emergency contact was one Walter S. Skinner. Surprise, surprise. Doggett's first guess would have been her mother. But maybe Mom didn't want to hear about aliens and abductions and green goo anymore. Doggett could sympathize. He was already tired of it, and this was only his second case outside of the formal search for Mulder. Someone was dispatched to a phone to call Skinner, but the doctors hadn't given up on pumping Doggett. Skinner was two time zones away; Doggett, despite his uselessness so far, was on hand. "Is she pregnant?" "I. . . ." the rest of the sentence, which had started to come out on autopilot, faltered and died. The doctor didn't seem to notice anything but the lack of a complete answer. "Sir? Is she pregnant?" "I don't know." The words were the same, but the delivery was slower, much more thoughtful. The wheels were turning inside John Doggett's head. Again, the doctor either didn't notice or didn't care. The team had rolled Scully onto her side to examine her, and now they began to hustle Doggett out of the trauma area to begin their treatment in earnest. "Agent Doggett, if you're not her emergency contact or next of kin, you're going to have to wait outside. . . ." He'd allowed himself to be led back to the rows of squashy but uncomfortable armchairs, answered the belated questions about whether he was also injured by confirming that the blood decorating his white dress shirt belonged solely to the woman already under their care. There was nothing to do but take their suggestion about washing up while he waited for further news about her. Truthfully he was just as glad not to be present while a surgical team went about the grisly task of suturing Dana Scully back together like some kind of modern-day Humpty Dumpty. Wash up and think about his partner, who'd had any inherent tendencies towards trustfulness thoroughly beaten out of her by seven years of conspiracies and double-crosses from within and without. From what he'd heard, Scully had kept things pretty close to the vest even before she'd hooked up with Mulder; now she measured every word prior to uttering it aloud, leery of sharing anything that might come back to haunt her. To coin a phrase. It was obvious to anyone, even Kersh, that Scully knew more about Mulder's disappearance than she'd let on. Doggett hadn't expected her to be completely forthcoming with him, especially after it became unpleasantly clear that he wasn't as in charge of the task force as he'd been led to believe. But. . . pregnancy? Would she really conceal that, knowing the dangers of her job? According to what he'd read in the files, she was incapable of conceiving a child. Of course, according to what he'd read in the files, there were sewage-dwelling flukemen, fat-sucking ghouls, trash monsters, robotic roaches and wish-granting genies running amok across the country, too. Whether or not he believed the whole abduction/stolen ova scenario laid out in the folder, the medical data had been easy enough to swallow. No ova, no baby. Except that the X-Files seemed to exist for the sole purpose of defying absolutes. He'd read of lot of wacky stuff while perusing the contents of those file cabinets in the basement, but the words "no" "not" and "never" appeared only sparingly. So maybe Scully's infertility wasn't as cut and dried as everyone thought it was. Doggett wouldn't have given it a second thought, really, except for the nagging memory of his very first hospital visit to his new partner. He'd flown back out to Arizona specially to see her, thinking the polite - not to mention prudent - thing to do would be to inform her of their new professional relationship in person. A snippet of that awkward conversation drifted back to him. *What I can't believe is how long they're keeping you here.* *Oh, it's just some things they have to check out. . . make sure of.* She'd cut her gaze away from his face while speaking, focusing instead on the hospital blanket as she neatly deflected his innocent inquiry. It was an avoidance mechanism that should have set his cop radar on full alert, but he hadn't recognized its potential significance until now. That, plus the memory of Scully when he'd first found her crumpled on the floor of that same hospital, battered and bloody, Gibson Praise standing nearby in shock. Doggett had yelled for help, gathered Scully in his arms. She had done two things, one of which he hadn't noticed at the time because the agents behind him hadn't jumped fast enough to satisfy him and he'd barked at them a second time. She'd put one hand over her eyes to hide the tears, and she'd clutched her belly in a protective fashion with the other arm. Was it possible? =Was= she really pregnant? Doggett knew general hospital policy; if he wasn't Scully's designated emergency contact, they'd only tell him the bare bones of her condition. Whether or not she would recover, but not much else. Certainly not details involving her uterus. He still wasn't sure. Nothing connected with the X-Files ever made him sure about anything, but this went way beyond spaceships and little green men. Doggett could think of only one way to be sure, and it wasn't a pretty picture. But he had to know, if only to try and protect her from dashing headlong into more trouble until they found Mulder. Scully spent a week at BYU Medical Center, the first two days of it unconscious and trussed by her wrists to the bedframe to keep her positioned on her side and off the healing wounds. By day three she was awake, by day four alert, and on day five out wandering the halls accompanied by a nurse and an IV stand on wheels. By day six she was demanding her release with increasing irritation, and on day seven she secured it. Doggett, who had divided his time between bedside visits and assisting Juab County's prosecution case against the slug worshippers, picked her up. From the hospital they would go directly to the airport and home to DC. It was now or never. Doggett wasn't certain what answer he hoped to glean from this. He had an opening gambit planned, but before he got to show his first card, Scully threw him a deuce. Eyes downcast, she said, "Look, I, uh. . . I wanted to apologize. I. . . I left you out of this case, and that was a mistake on my part. It was almost a fatal mistake." Doggett considered, wondering if he'd given away any inkling of his suspicions, or if this was just another Dana Scully version of a thank you. Like that weird remark about making sure he had a desk. Doggett didn't quite understand that one; in his experience, if you needed a desk, you filled out the necessary requisition forms, sent them off to Equipment and Supply, and held the door for the moving men when they arrived. Scully seemed to think the desk was significant, a badge of acceptance. But she'd given him the perfect opening to bait her, so he did. "It was," he agreed firmly. "You screwed up." He waited, watching carefully. Scully accepted the brusque reprimand with uncharacteristic but telling meekness. "And I won't do it again," she said, still not meeting his eyes. His mouth said, "I appreciate it," but his brain was busy screaming other things at him. Jesus. She =was= pregnant. She was =pregnant=. And keeping it a secret from him. From everyone, probably, with the possible exception of Skinner. Kersh sure as hell didn't know, didn't even suspect. Of course it had to be Mulder's kid; there was no one else and no other reason for her to keep mum about what should be a joyous event in her life. If the people - he still couldn't think of Mulder's abductors as things, despite all he'd seen in Arizona - who'd taken Mulder got wind of this, Scully and the baby were toast. There was only one thing to do. Play along. Play along with her every evasive move, swallow every lie she told him, turn a blind eye to any clues she might inadvertently leave that revealed her condition before she was ready to disclose it to him herself. And try as best he could to shield her from harm without giving away his forbidden knowledge, to her or to their enemies. Starting now. As Scully picked up her bag, Doggett grabbed it from her, hoping a reputation for male chivalry would allow him to get away with the abrupt move. Scully blinked, but didn't protest. Thank goodness for small victories. Because John Doggett had a sinking feeling that finding Mulder was going to be easier than pretending to be ignorant of Dana Scully's secret. End Author's notes: Many fans thought "Roadrunners" was a terrible episode. I looked at it and wondered how, with Scully incapacitated and Doggett the only one around to deal with the hospital, he could not find out - or figure out - she was pregnant. Once I had that, that whole troublesome ending scene made a lot more sense to me. I hope it does to you, too. And did I mention that my beta reader Jill Selby has the greatest kung fu? :-) Feedback me at jeanrobinson@yahoo.com.