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It’s one of her earliest memories, riding in her Dad’s old Chevy on the way home from elementary school, buckled into a car seat, small feet kicking and tears falling down her face. Bill telling her to “stop being such a baby” and for the life of her now she can’t remember what made her so sad.
She remembers her dad kneeling down and helping her out of the carseat when they got home as she desperately wiped at her eyes, because William Scully’s daughter didn’t cry, especially not when her older brother was watching.
Bill kicked at the car door and mumbled something about his dumb little sister, and her dad gave him a look before turning back to his daughter.
“It’s okay to cry,” he told her. “It’s okay.”
She still sniffed. And so he picked her up and put her on his shoulder, began singing.
“Jeremiah was a bullfrog, was a good friend of mine…”
Her father did not have a good voice. It was raspy and out of tune, but when he bulged out his cheeks like a frog and she laughed, none of that mattered. What mattered was her father was singing to her and the world was righted again.
It’s been in her head since, a tune she keeps tucked in her back pocket like a worry stone, as familiar and comforting to her as the cross around her neck. She’s sung it to herself as a sort of lullaby over the years when her father wasn’t around to—at prom when her date stood her up, in college when she failed her first exam.
And now she finds herself singing it again, but this time the comfort isn’t for her. It’s for the girl lying in the hospital bed, hooked up to tubes and fighting for her life, the little girl with Scully’s cross around her neck.
It’s for her daughter.
Her daughter, her daughter, her daughter. The phrase runs through her head like a train speeding off-course.
What would her father say if he could see her, fingers absentmindedly running over her rosary and that blasted tune stuck in her throat?
What would he say if he knew she couldn’t save her own daughter?
She stands and looks through the glass and feels powerless, because she’s a mother and she should be able to save her daughter, and singing a song to herself isn’t going to cure what they did to her child.
As a mother she hopes. As a doctor she knows it’s futile.
Joy to the world…
All the boys and girls…
Her voice breaks.
“Scully?”
She turns and he’s there, and she’s shaking her head telling him she’s not going to make it, Mulder, and then she’s sobbing into his chest and he’s stroking her hair telling her it’s okay, it’s okay.
But her daughter is dying.
The world is upside down.
He always wants to argue with her. And normally he does.
But this time he doesn’t say anything.
The drive back to the airport is quiet, sober, no sound until they hit the highway. She finds herself humming that song again and he doesn’t correct her on the title like he normally does. Did.
“Mulder, it’s called ‘Joy to the World,’” she says when they’re standing in the basement, hands on hips.
“You’re thinking of the Christmas song.”
“I am not,” she replies, but there’s laughter at the edge of her voice.
He fiddles with the radio as they turn onto the highway, preparing themselves for the trip back to Washington.
“Jeremiah was a bullfrog…”
Mulder laughs. “Would you look at that.”
And he sings along, and from the backseat Emily’s quiet voice joins in, and Scully smiles to herself.
The world has righted again.