From: shirlock Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2000 16:36:43 GMT Subject: The Chiropractor (1/1) by Shirlock Title: The Chiropractor (1/1) Author: Shirlock Rating: General Category: If it's successful, there should be sporadic chuckling. I'll humour you if you'll humour me with feedback. Timeline: After Millennium Summary: Two agents; one chiropractor. Trouble. Chiropractor's POV Disclaimer: To be mine, or not to be mine. If only this question weren't quite so rhetorical, I'd answer it myself. Belongs to Mr. Chris Carter, Mr. David Duchovny and Miss Gillian Anderson. Distribution: OK Gossy, OK Spookys. Dedication: To all those who sent me feedback for the first series of first person POV "Shooting Dana", this one's for you. And for Scullyists all over the world. ***** Saturday morning Corner of L and 13th Street. 10:29am Youch! I've got a crink in my neck. I blame it on the last patient. 210 lbs of fat and muscle. Eighty percent of that was globules of fat and he'd be lucky if the remaining twenty went into his muscles. I must be getting old. Thirty three years old and still a bachelor. I don't know which is more damning. Maybe it's both. I should've been married by now. I should've listened to my big brother and dated that skinny girl from twelfth grade. Or I should've asked that nice doctor I met three weeks ago for a date. Life is full of should haves. Me? I'm a 'would not' in a life full of should haves. Why? Because I'm decent. Because there's more to life than getting the gal. There's consideration for whether she has somebody in her life already. Consideration that we may not possibly be the best match. That there may be someone better for her. Mother insists I have wonderful hands. In her mind, I could have been a neurologist, or a cardiologist. Maybe a pulmonologist, or an opthalmologist or the whole string of -ologists I wasn't impressed by. After those loftier than thou-ologists, you reach the -tioners and the -actors. General Practitioners, and finally what I am--a Chiropractor. 10:32 am. I look at the appointment book.Technically, one more patient to go. I pick up the folder and note the name on the cover. Fox Mulder, FBI Agent. Oh yes, he called me a month ago after an accident chasing a suspect on the I-90. A very icy I-90.There had been reports of nine separate accidents that day. Finally he called again last week wanting to know if I could help him with a new injury. A sprained shoulder. I buzz Jeannie to let him in. "Hello?" His face is more pleasant than I had imagined over the phone. He has an intelligent face and a grimace that tells me his sprained shoulder is still giving him trouble. "Agent Fox Mulder?" I ask. "Just, Mulder." "Right. I hate my first name too. You can call me Doc.I'm one of the partners here. Not the main one though." I shake his hand and wave him over to the examination table. He scoots up onto it, wincing as he got on. I ask him about the history of his injuries and he recounts every one of them in a chronological and physiological order. I start scribbling it all down in a physician's manic scrawl trying to keep up until I decide to just ask for injuries from the last month or so. Laceration from scuffle on hard floor in basement three weeks ago, bruised neck and ego, but the last one that broke the camel's back (or nearly this agent's) happened when he was reaching for a surveillance camera in his office when he fell hard onto the concrete floor. He couldn't have told me he sprained it while playing golf or speed ball. Nooo, he had to tell me that our goverment is spending tax payers money surveilling their own in their own offices. "Does this hurt?" I apply pressure to his second cervical vertebrae. His muscles in the splenius of his neck feels taut. He pushes his shoulders back, bracing the pain he's probably expecting. "A bit. It was worse before." He says flatly. I motion him to lie on his front as I examine his lower back. I touch his spinal column carefully. I can hear his breathing be- coming laboured when I press into the spine closest to the dia- phram. I reach the twenty-third lumbar when he suddenly grunts in pain. "Does this hurt?" I apply pressure while his body wriggles to get away from my finger. "The same way a fractured pinkie does." he says, screwing up his eyes. I'm sure it's from personal experience the way one of his eyes close at that bristling memory. "That started bothering me a few days after the car accident." "Your pinkie?" I ask. "No, my lower back." "Were you driving when you had the accident?" "Which accident?" His humour is not lost though. "The one you suffered on the I-90 a month ago." "Yes." Then sheepishly, he adds, "I'm the main partner." I smile. "Was your partner hurt bad?" I press his shoulder blades hoping to distract him when he yells blue murder. "Sorry, that was a good pain, Agent Mulder. Good pain." I say soothingly. The man seems to have a high tolerance for pain yet he squeals like I've grabbed his family jewels with nothing more than a slight touch. "She wasn't hurt as bad as I was. She did, however, complain about the neck brace she had to wear to work everyday." "Well," I cock my head to one side, feeling for tightness in his last two vertebraes, "I had a patient who had to wear one of those and she said it was hell. Then again, doctors do make horrible patients." "Ain't that the truth." he mumbles. "I think this needs a bit of massaging and time to heal. How about your arms and legs?" I had noticed a long cut on his right arm when he pushed himself up the table. "They're fine. Battered, bruised, cut, but my partner thinks I'll live." "Does your partner think she can live without you for a week or so?" He tries to turn back but it seems my question had raised an alarm. His back is one huge knot as he struggles to get himself to relax. Finally he tells me that's what she had wanted him to do. Take a week off. So he did, until his shoulder started giving him problems. It was his partner's mother who insisted he come and see me. "Sounds like your partner's mom cares a lot about you." He grins and mumbles, "she cares a lot about the both of us." After a while, I decide to start on his lower back and work my way up. I knead the flesh just at the loins. I push with my thumb and press into the small of his back with my palms. It's a trick I've learnt since being in this business in 1992. It's not just how much pressure, it's what you apply it with. The flat of the palm is great for rotational movements on a big area. My lanky patient keeps very quiet and very still while I do my magic. Thirty minutes later, I know he's going to be grateful. All my patients are. Even my own mother, after a free back rub. "Do you have many patients who are federal officers?" He asks quietly. "Five out of ten are. You have no idea the what the furniture our government purchases in bulk do to the lower back. I've not seen a less torturous instrument." "I do know. I sit in one every day. Maybe it wasn't the accident which put me in such a sorry state. Maybe the chair did it." I snicker silently at that one. "You must be one of the lucky ones to have a female partner. There aren't many working in the FBI, are there?" He seems to have fallen asleep under my gentle ministrations until his thoughtful words filter through. "No, luck had nothing to do with it. It was one giant conspiracy to get her to work with me. We've been partners for nearly seven years, oh, that feels good... and she's smarter than I give her credit for." "Smart is sexy, but =is= she beautiful?" I ask. He cranes his neck to look at me again, and I berate, "We're men. We can talk about women this way. Of course, unless you're --" "No, I'm not, but I don't think of my partner that way." "Oh." I say, understandingly. "A real hag, huh?" He snaps defensively "no, no. She's actually quite prett...well, beau-...okay, she's very polished in a low-key, inconspicuous, unassuming kind of way." Touched a nerve and I don't mean a physical one. "Which is the same as," and I'm processing this even as I'm forming it in my speech centre, "she's ugly in a high-key, conspicuous and assuming kind of way." He has the modesty to retract his earlier, albeit left-handed, compliment to amend, "she never used to strike me as beautiful. Let's just say that all I saw in the beginning was how smart she was. Her intelligence simply blinded me to her physical appearance." "And now?" I ask. "Now? " he pauses, wanting to go on, but doesn't. His faraway smile is all he's revealing. "Partners are always close aren't they?" I apply a bit of oil as I delve a bit more into his flesh and his psyche. "We're close. We have to be, but we're not involved the way most people think partners ah..ahh...ahhhhh..." I knead a big slab of meat like I'm tenderising it for dinner and he grunts encouragingly. "Yeah," I mimick his grunt from the effort, "it's like us doctors and patients. We're not allowed to fall in love with our patients, no matter how gorgeous they are, how smooth their skin is, how perfect the swells of their ass --" He snorts appreciatively at my comments. "Why is that, Doc?" "Take for example, this patient who came to see me a fortnight ago. Beat up, bruised and limping ever so slightly. But she was stunning. I didn't know how smart she was till after the session. Because all I saw was how beautiful she was. Even though she was black and blue, it never made her body any less beautiful. And what a body! Don't get me wrong, that wasn't all to her that made my heart pound like a runaway pneumatic hammer. " "Oh?" I've never heard that much cynicism crammed in that short a word before. "It was what she had said. Marking the moment of rebellion to hurt the person she loved best. She had this haunted look about her like she had wanted to confess it to the person she had hurt. I really felt her emotional dilemma. I think she was more physically wounded inside than on the outside. She had heart. "I pause, thinking aloud, "but I would never in a million years figure her the type for tatt--." The intercom buzzed. "Excuse me, Doc. Your last patient is here." "Give us another ten minutes, Jeannie." "It must be hard to be able to touch them and not fall in love with them." Mulder says offhandedly. "And it must be hard to fall in love with someone you've known for so long and not touch her." I say to his situation. He doesn't correct me. Instead he says, "ask her out." "What do you mean, ask her out?" "Hello, Miss so-and-so-with the sprained ankle, would you like to have a drink with me?" His eyes shifts slightly, "you're not bad looking, tall, broad-shouldered, and she's bound to appreciate the massages you give everyday. The worst she can do is say no." "I'd rather not ask than to hear her say no. I mean, she could have a jealous boyfriend or is in a serious relationship. Would you dare ask your partner out if she's in a steady relationship?" "I wouldn't dare ask her out and I know for a fact she's not in a steady relationship. Ow, ow!" A floating ligament and I continue to rub it. Gentler this time. "Sorry, about that. What's the harm? I mean, you see her everyday, right? You're very comfortable with her. You must be after seven years. And you know her. That's about a hundred times better than my situation." "Know her in every way except in the physical way." Mulder says wistfully. "She might say yes." "I know. But that, Doc, is exactly my problem." I slow down my massaging, trying to figure this man out. I synopsize all that I've heard. "She's beautiful. She's smart. She's sexy. Turns on your libido?" "Like a faucet." "Kissed her?" "Not the way I would have, had I really wanted to show her exactly how I wanted to do it." I try again. "Kissed her?" "Yes, but it wasn't a kiss." Did this man fall on his head in his office because I'm having a hard time understanding him. I stop all movements and ask him to elaborate. This time, in English. He explains in simpler terms that he's thought of kissing her many times, but the only time he kissed her was on New Year's fatal striking of the midnight hour. Oh I get it now. It was a New Year's kiss when it should've been one of those toe-curling, lip-rearranging honeymoon- type kiss. He took my quiet as vigorous contemplation and asked why I'd never dared ask my patient out. "I don't know you, right, Agent Mulder? Yet I feel like we share something in common. Have you ever met a woman whose physical body makes you... you know?" "Howl at the moon?" Not a metaphor I was looking for, but close enough. I explain in the same way I'm rubbing small circles on the tendons and capsule around his shoulder joint. She's every man's wet dream come true. She's got heart as well as brains. "So she's perfect?" "Closest I've gotten to a 10, I guess. But then again, I've always been partial to redheads. When she came in last week, I worked over her middle back, just above this snake tattoo, and she moaned. I'd do anything to hear that sound again." "So if you ask her to go out with you and she does, you'd be over the moon." "And howling. I'm a normal man, Agent Mulder. If you asked your partner out and she said no, how could you possibly be okay with that?" He laughs morosely. "As strange as that may sound, it means I get to keep the status quo. Which is, pretty damn fine without embarrass- ment and awkwardness throwing a spanner in our professional relationship. What's a roll in the hay if I don't get to keep what we have intact?" "How can you be sure that the relationship won't improve? She can't hate you if she's stayed with you for 7 years. What if, just what if, she starts seeing another man? Some guy like me, asking her out for a drink, a date, a movie? Would you stop her from saying yes?" Agent Mulder stays very still for a long moment. "Redhead with a snake tattoo. Plenty of heart and brains." He says flatly. "But it's different for me --what's a roll in the hay if she doesn't want to spend the rest of her life with me? I figure she probably has somebody special. Nobody with that kind of a body should stay alone by herself. She's just very different from the others I've worked on." I give him one final rub in the shoulder before reaching for the hand towel. The tall agent slowly gets up as if in a trance. "What kind of snake?" "It wasn't a tattoo I thought a woman like her would get. It was a snake eating its own tail. I didn't like it at first, but I grew to love it. Right above the globe of her gorgeous ass." "You know," his eyes are glazed over and his face is scrunched up like he's rewinding our conversation from the beginning so fast I could almost hear the mechanism whirr, "the FBI recently did a study on all prostitutes. We found out that about 93% of all women in this profession had tattoos." "So?" "So," he declares, "women with tattoos usually have a history of sexual abuse, or alcoholism, substance abuse. Usually trouble. How do you know this patient of yours doesn't have a sordid past?" "Well, she's a doctor. A pathologist in the FBI. She really doesn't strike me as one who has a sordid history of any kind." I counter. "Oh, Doc, believe you me, I =know= the type. I'm a profiler and from what I've gathered, she falls right smack into the type C personality." "Type C personality?" How can a man change horses in mid-stream so fast I wonder. "Crazed. One second, she's cool, calm and collected. Next second, she could be yanking your balls out. I don't think it's wise of you to ask her out without me checking her first. You know, do a little background check-sort-of thing. Make sure she's okay. Not going to knife you if you weren't interesting enough, you know what I mean?" "Well, better safe than sorry. Maybe you can introduce me to your partner instead." I say, trying to rub the excess oil out of my hands. "Just let me look over your patient first." He says. Well, isn't that a frightful coincidence? "Actually, she's outside now. She's here for her last treatment. The least I could do is introduce you to her. I'll ask her out if you think she doesn't look anything like a serial killer." I go over to the intercom and press the button. "Jeannie? Can you please ask Dr. Scully in?" I turn toward Mulder and he's gone completely slack. "Mr. Mulder?" I ask, wondering if he's going to faint. "Dr. Scully is here? Now?!" "Yes, Dr. Dana Scully." I confirm. "Why? Do you know her?" The door opens and there she is. She looks at me, then at Mulder. The bewilderment is obvious in her eyes, so I introduce quickly, "Hello, Dana. This is Agent Fox Mulder." I look over at my erstwhile patient as several emotions play on his face. I would never have known "demon possessed" if I hadn't glanced at him. Her blue eyes widen fractionally and instead of extending her hand, she says without any superfluous movement, "yes, I know. He's my par--" "-SON'S NEIGHBOUR! Parson's neighbour." Mulder says, eyes wide,nostrils flaring. "Yes, I remember you, Dr. Scully. What an incredible coincidence. " "Mulder!" "Yes! You remember me! Yes, I live next to your parson, yes, well, I've got to be going. I've work to do. So glad to have met you today. And thank you Doc. I feel much better." Mulder launches himself past Dana into the foyer. When her back is turned away from him, he draws circles near his temple to tell me he thinks she's potentially nutso. He flees the office in five seconds flat. I look down to see Dana's indignant face looking right at me, studying me. "Chuckieeeee?" She drags my first name threateningly knowing exactly how much I hate my first name. "Before you say anything, let me just say it was mom's idea. And man, has he's got it bad for you, sis." End Thanks for reading! -- The only thing achieved in life without effort is failure.