I'm Thinking As Loud As I Can

Chapter Three - Trick

by Mik

He didn't need to say a word to let me know he was angry with me the day I drove him to Anbury. His body was absolutely rigid. His hands balled up as close to fists as the plaster casting would allow. He avoided eye contact completely. Throughout the drive, he sat, staring out the window, refusing to acknowledge any efforts on my part to begin a conversation or make a simple observation. He didn't respond to the music on the radio. It was as if he wasn't even there. As darkness began to fall, I could see his reflection in the passenger side window, and his expression bewildered me. He looked utterly lost.

Dr. Corey, the speech pathologist, and Dr. Freeman, the facility director, met us at the front door. Anbury sat on a massive ante bellum estate, surrounded by trees, on a lake, a huge brick structure with wide white columns and a balcony that went around the entire building. On the whole, it looked far too inviting to be a medical facility. I wondered how much Scully was contributing to his care, because I was certain the FBI's major medical plan was not covering all of this.

I had already warned Dr. Freeman that Mulder was easily agitated and unnerved by strange men around him, so it was left up to me to somehow get him out of the car and into the waiting wheelchair. It agitated and unnerved me to feel him shake when I gathered him up and settled him into the chair. It merely embarrassed him. He looked away, and only barely managed to lift his head and nod when we rolled up to the door and he was introduced to the two women who would be working with him.

Dr. Freeman took us on a very thorough tour of the facility, from the reception area to the children's playroom. The guest rooms (Dr. Freeman discouraged the use of the word patient) were large and airy and cheerful. Somehow I couldn't imagine Mulder being comfortable in them. Neither could he, evidently. He shifted and squirmed in the chair from the moment I rolled him into what would be his room. The room he was assigned was on the first floor, in deference to his limited ability to move. Although there was an elevator for the higher floors, Dr. Freeman pointed out that they liked to provide as much independence as possible and felt the confined space of an elevator might prove too challenging for him at first.

The room was about as far from Mulder's usual quarters as a room could get. It had a large bed, a table with two comfortable looking chairs and a big vase of purple flowers, a clothes cabinet, cheery pictures, bright tile floors, an impressive view of the lake, and a large, visible and secure lock on the window. This was not to keep him in, we were assured, but to let him know that strangers could be kept out. I was a little annoyed at Dr. Freeman's observations and explanations, feeling that she was feeding into Mulder's heightened sense of paranoia, but I couldn't help noticing that he seemed to relax a little after seeing the efforts made to assure him of safety and security.

There was a very large and well-planned physical therapy room, with equipment that would make my own health club envious. There was also an Olympic sized swimming pool outside and a lap pool inside. There was a cozy dining room with an almost restaurant atmosphere. There was a library, a small theatre for videos, a large, open community room complete with coffee bar. I was almost jealous, and I told him so, in an overly hearty voice. He did not afford me any sort of reply. His rigid body and complete silence spoke volumes. There was nothing to be jealous about.

Scully had been to Mulder's apartment and come down ahead of us with some of his clothing and personal effects, so he was already well established by the time I was ready to leave. He had more of his own clothing, the picture of he and his sister as children, a few of his books, and just as I was bidding him goodbye, Dr. Freeman came in with a battered leather portfolio. "Here you are. I've had this locked in my office until you could arrive. There are dedicated Internet lines in the community room, and I'll give you the schedule for their availability." She held out his notebook computer.

The expression on his face was fleeting, there and gone in a moment, but to me it was extremely telling. He didn't want his computer with him.

Impulsively I reached for it. "I know you," I said, trying to adopt a teasing tone. "If you have your precious computer with you, you'll spend all your time on it and never do any of your therapies. Maybe I'd better keep this a few days, until you get into the swing of things." It was the first time since we left the hospital that his eyes met mine, and his expression said it all. His assailant was somewhere on that computer.

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

Agent Scully brought me yet another cup of coffee. "Any luck?" she asked for about the eighth time.

"Not really," I complained, rubbing my burning eyes. "I finally figured out his password but he doesn't leave much on his hard drive." I pointed to a stack in the middle of the table. "Are you sure these are all his diskettes?"

"They were the only ones I found, Sir." She picked up the handful of neon plastic storage disks and looked them over. They were all labeled TLG with dates. "Have you tried his internet account yet?"

"No." I began searching for some indication of who he had as his carrier because there was no shortcut icon on his desktop. "I can't find any indication of a provider. Are you sure he used this for the Internet?"

She looked over my shoulder. "He used Outlook to handle his email, Sir. Did you try there?" She tapped the screen with a fingernail. "I'll go get my phone and we'll see if we can get out on line."

A moment later she was snapping her phone cord into the port. "Any luck?" she repeated, for about the ninth time.

I was scanning through more than a hundred suggestive subject lines. "Not really. A lot of messages from lists he was a member of … mostly sending pornographic stories," I added tightly.

Scully blushed for him in absentia. "Wait!" she cried as I scrolled downward. "Born2run … I know that name. Oh, never mind. That's the man he was running with to prepare for the marathon. I met him once."

There were three or four. I clicked on the most recent one, sent about two weeks before the assault. It read: I'm waiting for an answer, Mulder.

Scully and I looked at each other. I know I felt a small chill go up my back. "Did you say never mind?"

She looked down at me. "Never mind that I said never mind, Sir."

I checked another one. It read: Why did you bail on me like that? It's not right.

Another read: You're being unfair. You'll force me to be unfair. I felt my mouth going dry. "You say you met him?" I prompted her. "What's this guy's name? There has to be more to him than born2run."

"I think his name was Dave or Dan or something like that. I only met him once." Scully was reaching for her notepad. "I'll call the ISP and see if we can get a profile on him. Try that button there. It should take you on line."

As soon as we managed to make the connection another batch of mail filled up the inbox on his Outlook. "Look, Sir. Another one from born2run. This one is the morning of the day that it happened. I remember now. Mulder was running late that day. Evidently he never got his mail."

I opened it. It said: Don't you know you're mine? If I can't have you, no one will.

"Oh, my God, Sir." Scully's fingers dug into my shoulder. "That's the one."

I stared at the screen, my mouth going dry. Mulder had been warned that he was in danger and he didn't even know it.

Scully was staring as well. "By the way," she managed in a choked voice, "what was his password?"

"Paranoid," I said grimly.

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

I strode into his room with purpose, and sat down in front of him, blocking his view of the lake. "Dan Hartley."

Mulder's reaction was to vomit all over my shoes.

We had our assailant.

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

Dr. Corey was smiling at me regretfully. "I don't know what to tell you. I don't think it's affected. I've watched his face. He struggles too hard for words that just aren't coming. It reminds me of a backward form of aphasia, where he knows what he wants to say but can't remember how to make his mouth say the word."

"Is there such a condition?" I asked. We had to get Mulder to talk. We had to find out where Dan Hartley was.

She nodded. "There can be, but in Dr. Mulder's case, there is absolutely no physical cause for that, nothing to support a TIA or brain damage. And," she paused. "There's more to it than the simple failure to express himself. When his inability to communicate gets too frustrating for him, he just phases out, goes somewhere else." She shook her head. "As hard as it is to support, it really does look like selective muteness. Is there any way to find out if he went through this as a child?"

"I can try talking to his mother," I offered reluctantly. No conversation with Teena Mulder was ever pleasant, this one would be impossible.

"If he did experience this as a child, more than likely there was some trauma attached to it," she told me. "He obviously isn't autistic, and the only other SM kids I've ever treated were also diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder."

I knew it was unlikely Mrs. Mulder would admit to any trauma beyond the documented facts of her daughter's abduction, and she insisted that Mulder had had no speech loss or any other manifestations of trauma at that time. "I spoke to her once on the phone about it, but she was adamant there was no previous history. His sister was abducted when he was twelve, under fairly traumatizing conditions, but there was no record of any selective muteness then." I looked at my watch. "Can I see him?"

"His sister was abducted...how sad." She looked at her watch. "I have another guest. You know the way?"

He was sitting in his wheelchair near his window, one foot on the floor, pushing himself back and forth slowly. He shuddered slightly as I crossed the sill, and I realized he could see me in the reflection of the window. "Agent Mulder," I said, trying to greet him with respect. "How are you this morning?"

Evidently my mere presence was too frustrating for him because he had gone right into a phase. He was looking right through me. I was invisible.

I sat on the edge of his bed. "I'm going up to see your mother. Is there anything you'd like me to tell her?"

His foot shifted restlessly on the floor, his chair began to roll backward again.

"I spoke to her a couple of weeks ago. She's very concerned about you. Would you like to see her?"

He pushed off hard with his foot and the chair slammed back into the wall.

I'll take that as a no, I decided, and got up to leave.

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

She brought the coffee tray to the table and motioned for me to sit. I nodded my thanks, trying not to study her too overtly. This was the first time in our many unfortunate meetings that I had really looked at her. There was only a mild resemblance to her son. Having seen pictures of his father, I wondered where his distinctive features had come from, because they didn't seem to belong to either of his parents.

She took her coffee and sat, shaking her head in response to the question I had posed several minutes before. "No, Fox never had any speech problems as a child." Something flickered across her face. She was remembering something.

"Yes?" I prompted.

It took her a few moments to decide, and I think she decided against. But I can be persistent, and I was fixing on her a very persistent stare. Finally she lost the battle. "Well, he went through a brief period when he was about two where he didn't speak. But I can't say it was related to any..." she hesitated.

I reached for one of the lemon cookies on the tray. They looked home baked. "Mrs. Mulder," I said as patiently as I could, "we are trying to determine the cause of your son's inability to speak so we can correct it, and to do so we need to confirm or rule out any previous episodes. If you can think of any childhood trauma that might have affected his speech for even a brief period, please, help us."

Her face tightened as if she had been severely chastised. "Well, there was an incident, but I don't think that had anything to do with it." She looked down into her coffee. "I certainly wouldn't call it trauma." She thought about it for a while, and I could see she still wasn't willing to discuss it.

"Anything that would help, Mrs. Mulder," I said, using my most diplomatic tone.

"Well …" She sipped coffee and I could see her hand tremble slightly. "When Fox was about two, we were driving up to Pennsylvania to see some of Bill's family. We had been driving most of the day and it was now late at night. Fox had been sleeping in the backseat. He woke up and was looking out the window at the passing scenery and the stars and things. He was full of all of the energy and enthusiasm that a two year old will have after a long nap." She smiled at me to see if I understood.

I nodded even though I've been lucky enough to avoid two year olds, with or without naps.

"Well, there was a falling star, a comet. Fox was fascinated." For a moment her expression was one of fond memory. "Fox was always fascinated by stars and things. He was leaning over the back of the seat, asking questions and trying to get Bill's attention by tapping his shoulder and cheek. Bill was tired, he'd been driving all day …" she repeated and looked at me again, in an appeal for compassion. "He jerked around and said something to the effect that if Fox didn't shut up he'd make Bill crash the car and kill us all." Her eyes seemed to well with tears for only a moment.

She drew a breath and continued. "Only a few moments later, we had a blowout. The car spun around and we landed in a ditch. No one was hurt," she added quickly. "The car wasn't even damaged, but it was frightening and Bill was furious, yelling and cursing." She stopped, realizing how she must have sounded, and said, "He was very tired, you see."

I had the feeling something was expected of me so I nodded again and made A.D. noises. "Of course."

She smiled wanly. "Well, Fox had fallen off the seat and onto the floor during the blowout. I tried to get to him right away because I knew he would cry and upset Bill even more, but he didn't cry. " She stopped. She swallowed hard, and drank coffee.

"And then?"

Just for a moment she reminded me of her son. Her eyes were looking beyond me, far back in time, and just for a moment, seeing something she hadn't seen before. "He was very quiet for a long time after that. Even Bill's family commented on how quiet he was for his age." Her gaze focused on me again. "Bill's mother tried to suggest there might be something wrong with him, but we knew that wasn't true. He'd already begun to read," she finished in a conspiratorial whisper.

"How long was he quiet?" I asked, reaching for another cookie.

"About three years," she confessed.

The cookie broke in my fingers. "Three? Years?" That's a brief period?

She flinched a little at my response and immediately tried to soften her statement. "Well, the neighbors had a dog, and he'd talk to the dog sometimes. And when S-Samantha was born..." Again her voice trailed off. "And after a year or so he would talk to me. It used to frustrate Bill so much because he'd hear him talk to the baby or to me, and he wouldn't say a word to Bill. Bill used to try everything … even spanked him once or twice, but you know …" Her face changed, became thoughtful as if she was only just realizing something else she had known for a long time. "Fox wasn't just being stubborn with Bill. I saw his face. He was struggling to get words out. They just wouldn't come."

Three years, I thought sadly. "What made him start talking again?'

She gave it some consideration. "School, I think. He loved his kindergarten teacher and she was moving up to the primary school the next year. Yes, I remember now. She told us that she would love to move Fox into her class but if he wasn't talking he wasn't ready to be in primary school."

"And he suddenly started to talk?"

She smiled. "Oh, there was nothing 'sudden' about it. But he started whispering to her. And she could get him to read aloud from a book as long as no one else was looking at him. And finally, he could recite the Pledge of Allegiance with the class, so she let him come up to the primary class with her."

"And you never took him to a doctor in those three years?" I didn't mean it to come out quite as accusatory as it did.

She missed the accusation. "Well, we took him to our family physician and he said Fox was just very shy. But I never thought of him as shy," she added pensively. "Before...before the accident, he was almost bossy, even with other children. And he turned out to be very outgoing in high school, I mean, for someone so much younger than the other students, and such a studious boy. "

Bossy. Well that didn't surprise me. I emptied my cup and stood. "Thank you for your time, Mrs. Mulder."

"How is he doing? Should I come and see him?"

I thought back to that wheelchair crashing into the wall. "Let's get him out of the hospital and home," I suggested.

"Will you …" She stopped and for a moment I saw the girl in her that must have captivated many a heart when she was young. She reached for the tray. "Fox always liked these cookies. Would you take him some?"

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

I sat in the lobby, fidgeting. For the first time in over a month, I was actually excited. We had leads. Dan Hartley was being tracked down via his ISP information, but to no one's surprise, much of what he had put down in his profile turned out to be untrue. And the marathon organization he claimed to work for had never heard of him, of course. But on that afternoon, it didn't matter. I had found a clue, something even more important. We had a link to Mulder's past that could explain his speechless state.

Dr. Corey came out to meet me, but without her usual ebullient smile. If anything, she looked bemused. I missed it. I couldn't wait to tell her about my visit to Mulder's mother. "Agent Mulder had an episode of selective muteness when he was two," I burst out, as she offered her hand.

She looked up at me and nodded, distractedly. "Would you come with me, please, Mr. Skinner?"

I followed her down the corridor, away from her office, away from his room, concern welling, wanting to probe, to demand to know what was going on, but she was holding up a hand. "I was on my way to meet you at the lobby when I passed the playroom," she whispered. In a few more steps she held a finger to her lips, and pointed with her other hand.

Mulder had a small boy, seven or eight, in his lap and he was reading to him from a Dr. Seuss book. The words were coming out in the same cadence and passion that I was so familiar with. He was smiling as he read, and showing approval when the boy was able to anticipate a word or know when to turn the page. His laughter was gentle and he peppered his recitation with 'very good!' or 'smart boy!'.

I stared. Had he been faking it all along?

Dr. Corey pulled me away from the door. "That child, Trevor, is a recently diagnosed Asbergers...similar to a very highly functional autistic. But he has many of the same communication patterns I've seen in Dr. Mulder. This is the first time I've seen Trevor speak, since he came to us four months ago."

"It's amazing," I said frankly. I'd never seen Mulder around children but I had heard somewhere that he was remarkably effective with them.

She nodded. "But not uncommon. I believe I told you once before, Mr. Skinner. Selective muteness is overcome by a reduction of anxiety or fear, and that can only be accomplished with patience and trust. I believer that your Dr. Mulder and our Trevor have decided they can trust one another."

"And he doesn't talk to me because he doesn't feel he can trust me," I concluded. Why did that disturb me so much?

"Well, he doesn't trust us, either, Mr. Skinner," she said with her chipper little smile. "Don't take it so personally. Only the individual can choose whom he trusts and cannot trust," She put a hand on my arm. "Let's go back to my office. I have some tea and coffee cake."

I sighed and surrendered. If nothing else, I was going to end up gaining twenty pounds before Mulder spoke again.

"So … you said you confirmed the SM?" she prompted as she poured a cup of tea for me.

"He was not diagnosed with it, no," I admitted, pushing my fork into a very tempting piece of cake. "But all indications point to it."

"Well, it wasn't a very common diagnosis when he was a child." She handed me a cup and saucer. "Did you find out what the trauma was that brought it on?"

I nodded. "A car accident. Very minor but frightening enough, and then being blamed for it by his father."

She filled another cup as she absorbed the information. "How old was he?"

"Two." This cake was dangerously good. If this woman wasn't almost twenty years younger than me …

"And how long did it last?"

"Three years." I put the empty plate down. "He wasn't completely silent. He talked to a neighbor's dog, to his infant sister, sometimes to his mother -"

"But not to his father?"

"His father was an alcohol abuser and fairly volatile." Just like Dan Hartley, I realized. "Will this help him?"

"Well, it could," she agreed. "The previous incident of muteness does suggest that we can try typically successful treatments for him, but I think what he needs most is to be able to trust someone. After all, he's been betrayed again."

"And again and again. He even considers being brought...Dr. Corey, how would it affect him to be taken out of here?" I asked impetuously.

She looked slightly taken aback. "Are you dissatisfied with his care here?"

"Not at all," I denied quickly. "I'm just wondering if I could regain his trust if he had to depend on me for care."

She shook her head tolerantly. "Mr. Skinner, what you're suggesting is very generous, however -"

"I know it would be a full-time job," I interrupted, unwilling to listen to obstacles. "But God knows I've got plenty of leave available, and if it gets one of my best agents back in the field, it will be worth it."

She made a slightly disapproving face. "Getting him back in the field is a lofty goal, Mr. Skinner, but I think a more important one is getting him back in the world."

"You're right. I don't mean to make it sound so...so selfish. Dr. Mulder is a unique individual whose main thrust in life was work related. Getting him back to work will be a large part of getting him back into the world. And I think I can help bring that about."

"Well, I'd have to discuss it with Dr. Freeman, and the other therapists working with him, but …" she lowered her voice. "Between you and me and the teapot, he has not made great progress with us here."

Naturally, Dr. Freeman was not supportive of my idea. She put up a dozen fences but I cleared them all; time, money, space, medical care, all of them easily overcome. One by one, even her therapists turned, citing his lack of cooperation, agitation, and apathy. Finally, she gave her consent, but with a case file full of provisos.

I decided I had it perfectly planned as I marched back down the corridor toward the playroom. I had a first floor bedroom I could clear out and make into his private space with the main bathroom right next door. I could be there for him to provide hands and feet while his were incapacitated. And as soon as the casts came off, he could get himself around easily enough, and all I'd need to do was get him back and forth to therapy sessions. But maybe in the meantime, I could establish a little trust.

He was still reading to that boy when I came into the play area. He looked over the top of the book as I strode up to him, looking very pleased with myself. The last word of the story faded away and he said, "Sk-Sk-Skinnnn-" I could almost see the hand that curled around his throat and choked my name away.

Trevor dropped the book and bolted.

I bent to collect it before Mulder toppled out of his chair trying to catch it. "Agent Mulder, how would you like to go home?"

He didn't look at me, but I thought I saw him nod slightly.

- END chapter 03 -
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