(Headers and Disclaimers in Chapter One)
Chapter 7 of 20

"Your son?" Scully's finger wiped a trace of lint off the photograph.

"Taken last month.  His, ah, his foster mother brings him
once in a while." Zelda grinned.  "My smile, don't you think?
Smart too.  Intuitive beyond his years."

Scully handed the photo to Zelda, but she pushed it back. "Take him.  
Make him yours.  That's all I ask.  You're honorable - I'm counting on
that.  Take him - it's all I want in exchange."

"Exchange?  For what?" Scully hurled herself off the bunk, a flying 
bundle of raw energy, and placed the photo on Zelda's bed.

"Two things I'd give anything for: a safe home for my son
and-and to talk to my mother again."

"I don't understand, Zelda.  Is your son--?"

"You'll know everything when you need to know it." Zelda's face glowed 
with happiness from something Scully could not see.  "When you are ready 
I will be your teacher - and you will be free."

"Ready?"

"When your spirit is empty enough to fill." Zelda settled
into her bed.

Scully looked at the photo of the little boy on Zelda's
bed and reached to take it.  Scully held the photo lightly
between two fingers, but all her other fingers curled into  fists.

Zelda covered the fists with her hand. "Surely you know this isn't 
the work of I AM," said Zelda.  "A more profitable avenue of thought
might be why you have to isolate yourself.  What it is inside you
that you feel you must protect at all costs.  You have to answer that or
you'll miss what's right in front of you - yours for the asking.  And 
you won't be able to do what you came to do." 

Zelda pulled a black sleeping mask into place, and settled between 
her sheets.  "I'm bushed. Let's go to bed." Zelda liked the mask 
because, as she had explained to Scully, she slept with her eyes open.

Scully eased back onto her bunk.  "What am I supposed to
do?" She realized no one but I AM listened.  "Zelda?"
Her cell mate slept.  Scully envied her the ability to fall
asleep so quickly and deeply.  Sometimes Scully could scarcely
detect her breathing.
**************************
The papers on Henry Donaldson's desk blurred.   He couldn't
stop thinking about Dana Scully and Zelda Deschamps, wondering
how they got along, how close they had become.  Perhaps Scully
would be able to read to Zelda by now.  When she sat at the
defense table in court Agent Scully had seemed uncertain when
she looked at the papers her lawyer handed her.

Donaldson had worked very hard on his plan to stop the
ghost bandits.  He alone of all those in Justice could deal with
this phenomenon because he alone knew how they could work it -- 
how it was possible.  He meant for no one else in the world to learn
about it.

Thus he'd considered every detail, countered every avenue of
escape, and tried to imagine every possible scenario, everything
that could go wrong.  It was what he did best.

He would use Agent Scully to uncover their next robbery target and 
meet them at the scene. He would learn who was behind it all and deal
with them appropriately.  It would be done quickly.  And quietly.  The 
FBI agent would never be a threat.  The web he and Skinner had woven 
for Agent Scully was airtight. Who would believe an admitted felon's 
ghost story?  There was no proof -- none -- that Agent Scully was 
anything more than a dishonest agent.  Donaldson had seen to that 
personally.

His one miscalculation was not seeing that Dana Scully could be so
strong and holding on until Fox Mulder returned.  Then she was
even stronger.  Not good for Donaldson's plan, but not fatal.  After all, 
he chuckled to himself, she had to bend, but not break.  Not yet, anyway.

She and her partner were separated now.  She would weaken, shrivel,
and eventually he could discard her.  Donaldson felt much better.
Nothing was really wrong; everything was merely behind schedule.

It was amazing good luck to discover Dana Scully amid the
unimaginative idiots at the FBI in the first place.  He had
almost despaired.

He thought it essential that the next woman he sent to 
flush out the robbers should be open to the paranormal;
that's where he thought he failed earlier.  Her association 
with the X-Files was such a plus that he'd been willing to deal
with Walter Skinner again.  

Now he wondered if it was a mistake.  His feminine side had liked 
Miss Scully - that should have been a point against her.  But her 
attitude and bearing at their first meeting goaded Donaldson into 
acting irrationally.  She was so smug, self-contained, and superior 
he wanted to beat it out of her.  He enjoyed watching women like 
her fall.

Now he frowned and worried his pen.  Perhaps he should have chosen 
someone not as open to the paranormal.  Yet when he asked outright about 
her beliefs she gave him some equivocal speech about proof and "seeing things 
I can't explain".  All in all she'd seemed perfect for his purposes.

Donaldson thought she might be easily manipulated too. That was
a plus.  Hadn't she transformed from pure scientist to space cadet.  
The rumor mill called her "Mrs.  Spooky".  The implications were
clear: she only tagged along to be with Mulder.  And who could
blame her?

Donaldson shoved the papers away.  His face colored just
recalling the way Mulder's suit jacket fell over his ass.
Donaldson had to control these breakthroughs better.  The young
man on the third floor was bad enough, but an FBI agent?  Dana
Scully's partner?  Women had no shame.  He began to feel the
cramps in his abdomen again.  

Christ, either he doubled his mental exercises or he might 
as well go to Sweden for a sex change operation.  His heart leapt.

"Sir? Mr.  Britton from Senate Appropriations is on his way
over."

"Thank you, Mary." Donaldson said.  He could feel moisture
on his forehead.

And he wondered again how Dana Scully was faring in
prison.
***********************
Mulder knew Scully wouldn't do well in prison.  He'd
gotten permission to visit her a week earlier than most new
prisoners were allowed to have visitors.  Moreover, he received
special treatment the first time he came.  The prison guards,
privately contracted, seemed impressed with him.  He was law
enforcement, the FBI, one of them in spades.  They must not know
he and Scully were - are - partners.  They all acted as if he
were there to interrogate her.

He waited outside a door with metal bars to be admitted to
a hallway inside the prison.  At the direction of a guard at the
door, he walked down a wide corridor.  He passed a dozen people -
guards, trustee inmates, office staff - before he found a room
marked "Conference Rooms." He pushed the button next to the
door, smiled into the camera, and pushed open the door when it
buzzed.  A guard met him, frisked him, and directed him to a
door.  He used a key to open it.

Mulder stepped inside, feeling
the walls dangerously close for the first time in his life.
Hardly larger than a study cubicle at the Quantico library, the
room was split in half by a plexiglass wall.  His and hers side
of life connected by an intercom.  Mulder dropped into an
uncomfortable molded plastic chair and waited again.

After a few minutes a noisy clang announced Scully's
arrival.  The door opened and she stepped into the prisoner's
side of the cubicle wearing blue jeans that were too big for her
and a work shirt with the collar flipped up in the back.  The
shirt had a black set of numbers on the pocket.  

Mulder rose and squashed down the panic he felt as she stood 
in the doorway.  Washed out, small and uncertain at first, her eyes swept the
area before fixing on him - habit, an alert agent's way of
feeling out a room.  He hoped for a smile, a wink - something to
show him it was still Scully inside.  As she walked toward the
chair he continued to hope it was only the harsh white light
necessitated by the video cameras that made her skin appear
translucent.

She sat down, punched the intercom and inclined her ear.
"I don't see you waving a piece of paper in your hand or humming
excerpts from 'Midnight Special'.  Am I to infer from this that
you have not come to affect my release?"

Mulder clucked and patted his pockets.  "Must have left
those papers in my other suit."

"So this would be a fashion consultation," she said,
staring at his tie.

"It was on the rack all alone-it called to me." He
stroked the fabric of the riotous red and blue tie as gently as
a woman's skin.  Not any woman's skin, hers.

She caught him.  "Hm-hm-m."

Mulder dropped the tie self-consciously and cleared his throat.

"My mother says you've been very kind, Mulder."

"I'm taking her to the cardiologist myself tomorrow." He
noticed the mark on her cheek.

She put her hand over it.

"Industrial accident?" he said.  His voice sounded
perfectly calm, but she heard the rumble underneath.

"Cut myself shaving." She rolled her eyes to the cameras
in warning.  Her eyebrow lifted in a question.

"Ah, Skinner's pushing the bank thing," Mulder said,
glancing up at the cameras.  "I see a connection, but I ran a
check of similar crimes and guess what-."

"I can imagine."

"Scattered around the country over the last two years.   A
couple of convictions.  Same MO, same everything --.  I'm taking a
field trip tomorrow, but it all comes back to you."

"Not necessarily.  I continue to maintain you are trying
for connections where there aren't any.  What about the attorney
in the Jackson case who swore I demanded $5,000 to--"

Mulder shook his head.  "That's not the way."

"You can't ignore the obvious facts given you."

"I'm following the facts given me.  Just not all of them
given about you-directly."

Scully took a deep breath and exhaled.  When she raised her
eyes again she seemed calm.  An artificial calm.  Not the kind
that promised whirlwinds and thunder just over the horizon as
was so often the case with Scully, Mulder decided.  Instead it
was a calm like the quiet acceptance of the natural order of
things, the way winter follows spring and death follows life.  He
had seen flashes of this Scully during her cancer.  His spirits
plummeted.

Scully regarded Mulder with a sense of melancholy.  He was
tired.  Perhaps a little scared at being alone.  She understood
that.  He brushed a hand through his hair and it alarmed her to
see it shook.

"Back on the couch?"

"Hey, I like my couch."

"Mulder..."

He floundered.  "You?"

She gave him a quick smile and looked away.  "At least my
cell mate sleeps like the dead."

"Snores, huh?"

"You've dropped some weight," she said.  "Working out?"
"The beer and pizza diet."   At her scowl he added, "Veggie
pizza." He didn't add that she had also lost weight.  

She folded her arms in front of her.  "The best of the major food 
groups.  Personally, I miss my evening champagne and caviar."

"Who's your cell mate?"

It was a rhetorical question. Scully knew Mulder would already have 
chapter and verse on everyone in her pod from the FBI database.

Scully's arms loosened.  "Zelda Deschamps."

"What a coincidence," Mulder said.  "I remember that name
from interviewing a former security guard.  How many Zeldas can
there be outside a Scott Fitzgerald novel?"

She scoffed.  "The Zelda I live with can't read.  She said
she used to, but can't anymore.  She likes pictures in National
Geographic.  She's into spiritualism --thinks she can teach me to
fly.  She looks and acts 16."

"A 43-year-old woman who looks 16 - maybe she's found the
fountain of youth.  She know you're a white-knuckle flyer?"
Mulder suddenly shifted on his chair.  "Can't read? Are there no
literacy programs in this prison?"

Scully remembered that was one of the apparent side effects of
the drugs, but she didn't see how it connected to Zelda.

Mulder took a handkerchief out of his pocket and, in the
guise of blowing his nose, covered his mouth and muffled his
words.  "Graduated magna cum laude from Virginia.  Doctorate in
religious studies from Yale."

Scully moved up to the edge of her chair, her lips parted
slightly.

Mulder rubbed his chin.  He seemed excited.  "This all fits
into something I read a long time ago on - " He appeared taken
by another sneezing fit.  "-Mind Meld."

"A comic book?" Scully turned sideways in her chair and
her fingertips rubbed her forehead.

"Have you read it?"

"I'm sure I can requisition it.  Should receive it in three
or four weeks," she said.

"I don't recall that it had pictures, but if I can find a
copy, can you think of anyone else who might be interested in
it?"

Charlie Duncan had talked about a black woman taking over
Andy Paige's body.  Scully's eyes widened and she placed her
hands flat on the ledge in front of her.  "This place has a very
eclectic clientele.  My neighbor, Bernice Johnson, for example."

"Ah, but can she read?"

Scully thought a minute.  "Couldn't say."

"Maybe she would like my comic book."

"Perhaps."

"I know you must be more excited than that," he said.  "Got
a theory?"

"I'm developing one."

"Feel like sharing?"

"Be careful who you trust."

"Always," he said slowly.

"I mean, I don't think you should talk to anyone, ah,
important," she said.  "I don't think he - anyone, that is --
should know what's-" She glanced at the spot where the cameras
whirred.  " -what you're doing."

"Have to say something," Mulder said.  "Something so
I'll have leeway to pursue this."

This.  Her freedom.

"He'd like to help, but can't.  I think the war isn't over
for him," Scully said, just as amazed at her words as Mulder
seemed.  She attempted to backtrack.  "You can't stay on one case
exclusively," she said.  "Let me work it."

"Not alone." Mulder knew immediately where she was going.

"This is a long term commitment.  You have to- to do other
things.  Skinner expects it."

"I told him to back off."

"You can't do that for much longer."

"I've got enough vacation time to..."

She licked her lips and Mulder knew he wasn't going to 
like what she said next.  The lip thing -
that was a guarantee.  "You can't make this your whole life."

He tossed it off as unimportant.

"This can't be your whole life or it's your sister all over
again," she said.  "Pursuing shadows just out of reach, ignoring
everything around you." Scully's eyes softened.  "Don't do that.
Don't disappear again.  I need you.  Here.  Now.  Where you are." 

He could feel her caress as surely as if she'd reached out and
touched his face.  Her lower lip quivered; she caught it in her
teeth.

He swallowed his outrage and willed her not to say
anything else, not to tell him what she thought she had to.  "I
have to go."  

He pressed his palm against the plastic wall
between them. "Scully."

"Let me go." Her gaze remained soft but firm.  She
hesitated, and then touched his palm through the glass with one
fingertip.  He finally dropped his hand off the wall.  Her slight
smile showed her approval.

Scully walked toward the door as though she were going
into the hallway to find a report -- too preoccupied to talk to him
right then.  Except she had to have permission to leave, someone
had to open the door and allow her to go.  She pushed the button
next to the door once, then, with a touch of impatience, twice.

She looked straight at the door until a clanging at the metal
lock signaled that the guard disengaged the lock.  She waited to
hear a loud clack at the door before she reached for the handle.
Her square shoulders, her apparent indifference brought the
opposite reaction from him.

"I've never known you to quit," he shouted loud enough to
be heard through concrete, plexiglass and stubbornness.  Her
hesitation was almost imperceptible; the break in her posture
nearly invisible.  She didn't look back.

Suddenly Mulder wanted to kick somebody.  He sat still a
moment staring at the empty seat gathering his fury around him
like a tornado.  Angry with Skinner, with himself, and mostly
with Scully, he thought he'd damn sure start with Skinner.

He stalked out of the room and into the corridor so fast
he ran into a prison trustee busily sweeping the hallway.  She
was a tall black woman with arresting brown eyes.  He felt
himself drawn into them.  And suddenly she was holding him up by
the elbow and around the waist.

"Whoa," said the woman.  "You okay? You nearly went down."
Mulder didn't remember slipping, but he could have.  He
checked the floor for banana peels.  "Yeah, fine.  Thanks."
"No problem.  Have a nice day."

Mulder strode out of the prison hallway full of purpose -
he just couldn't exactly remember what that purpose was.  And his
car keys?  He patted his pockets before recalling he had to leave
them at the guard station.  The visit had addled him - and upset
his stomach.
*************************
The recreation area for Scully's pod - or the rec as the inmates
called it - covered an area roughly four times that of her
mother's living room with none of the comforts or style.  As with
the cells, the rec was plain cinder block on three sides and a
steel-reinforced plexiglass front so guards in the corridors and
the floor below could easily see what happened inside.  

The inmates had no hammer or nails and they were forbidden to use
tape to hold posters or photos on the walls since it might mar
the paint job.  Consequently the rec lacked color or warmth or a
hint of personality.

Four security cameras swept the area.  A large television hung from
the left center column in the room and a radio/CD player sat on a 
shelf on the far right column.  Both had been screwed to boards and 
covered with wire so only the controls and screen could be touched 
or seen.  

A series of pinging, panging pinball machines and video games sat 
bolted to the sidewalls.  Books, magazines, and a stack of board and 
card games lay scattered on tables screwed to the floor.  More than 
two dozen chairs, settees and couches completed the room's furnishings.  
It was all new, already fading.

Here women from two pods could watch television, play games, talk, or 
read.  Cell doors were left open.  For three glorious hours a day and
five on Sunday, the nearly 50 women enjoyed unstructured time to wander
in and out of their cells and the recreation room.  No one called it 
free time.  Nothing was free.

Scully found it bland, institutionally depressing and, if she'd been 
honest, a little intimidating.  The fact that she had once been law 
enforcement also caused her no small concern in the rec room.  While it
was under constant surveillance no guards roamed inside.  Still, she 
couldn't put off going in forever.  It turned out to be a non-event.

She was invisible.  She walked along the edges of the room, sat on the 
fringes of conversations and worked puzzles - most of them missing 
pieces just like her life.  The first week she got some curious looks 
and hostile gestures, which she ignored.  The second week one or two 
women nodded to her.  Then women began speaking.  

Wary at first, Scully found she was relieved, even pleased.  Zelda 
reported that she made her bones with the guard incident.  That guard's 
hands were always too quick and Scully had slammed him.  The others 
were impressed; Bernice herself had grunted a half-hearted approval.  
Still, no one made an effort to approach her and most turned away when 
she walked close.  

She remained invisible and told herself she was content that way.  
It was safer.  It was easier.  It was familiar.

Mulder's visit somehow changed things.  Zelda was right: in prison 
everybody knew everybody else's business.  Most conversation died away 
when Scully walked into the rec.  Bureau coffee rooms, offices and rest 
rooms often fell silent when she came in.  It never bothered her.  

For some reason it irritated her that these women gossiped about her.  
She felt a dozen pair of eyes follow her as she crossed to a chair, a 
green armchair with holes in the vinyl that offered little comfort but 
a good reading light.

"Mail!" Bernice came in waving letters in her hand.  The women gathered 
around and she handed them to an inmate who offered her a big toothy 
grin. "Read 'em out, Mary," Bernice said.  She dropped an 
official-looking envelope from the FBI in Scully's lap. "Somebody tell
me this special delivery for you." 

Prison officials had already opened it for inspection.  Scully pulled
out the letter, but she already knew what it contained: her dismissal.  
Termination for cause, cessation of benefits, loss of pension.  Formal 
black and white proof that the FBI was through with her.  Scully licked 
her lips and carefully folded the paper back into the envelope.  Only 
procedure, she told herself, a form letter.  

"Zelda! Trot your buns over here," Bernice shouted.  "Mary say you got 
a postcard." She waved it in the air.  Zelda, who had been watching a 
soap opera, turned in her chair and stared.  "Come on, girl.  Come get
it. I got one too.  Mary say we on a list of pr-eeeferred customers."

Zelda shook her head.  Without waiting anymore Bernice dropped it in 
Zelda's lap.

"I can't read it.  You know that," Zelda said.

"Then have the new girl to read it for ya.  She reads all the time."  
Bernice and her cell mate Angela wandered over to take up positions 
on either side of Scully's chair.

"And look here where she be readin' today," Bernice said.

"This is Bernice's place," Angela said.

Scully checked something on a previous page and returned to the place 
she was reading.

"I said-"

"Leave off," Bernice said.  "This child still new.  She ain't really 
family.  Still things she don't know.  Now she knows this."

Scully merely cocked an eyebrow.

"Girl," Bernice said in a loud, but confidential tone.  "You did not 
need to tell that stud-ly piece of ass he had your approval to do what 
he been doing since you got here! But you did the right cuttin' him out.  
Time is hard enough without him weighin' on your mind."

Scully continued to read.

"Hey! I'm trying to be nice, here."

"As you see I'm trying to read."

Someone in the rec room snickered; another woman chucked.
Bernice's head jerked up.  All the women appeared occupied in
playing games, watching television, dealing cards.  Someone
cranked up the music and the drums beat behind Scully's eyes.

Bernice leaned down close to Scully.  "I'm talking to you!"
One or two of the women in the rec room edged closer,
anxious to see what would happen.  Someone made a nervous giggle.  

Scully took the marker out of her book and laid it in her lap.  
She moved her fingertip under sentences to give the appearance of
reading.

Bernice pushed off the chair, shaking it slightly, and
said to two women lounging nearby.  "So I'm standin' near the
door and she come from this big talk with her man-and she the
whitest white girl I ever seen.  Come out and she got such big,
bad crocodile tears in her eyes she can't even see where she's
goin'.  Pitiful." Some more women snickered and giggled.

"You're in my light," Scully said.

"On the other side, he's shouting," Bernice said to her
growing audience, "then he sat there looking hang dog, like he
was so tore up.  I ran into him in the hall - oh-h, it so-o nice
to be a trustee.  I thank you.  He got such big muscles in his
thigh.  And he was pacccking!" 

She laughed and the women in earshot did too.  When several more w
omen joined the semi-circle around the chair, Bernice grinned.  
cully gave her tormenter a blank look, then adjusted the book.  

"Don't you want to know what he was thinking, girlfriend?" Bernice 
put her hand across the pages.  "He was thinking how he gonna track 
down his boss, and beat him into the ground for what he done to you.  
What did he do to you? Anything you wanna share with the class?"

Scully enunciated every word, "Please move your hand."

The two women stared at each other.  Bernice's eyes, large
and brown, pulled at her.  Scully felt dizzy.  Slightly daunted,
she turned in the chair and put the book between them.

"You a fool.  If I had a man like that I'd still be under
him." Bernice tapped the book gently.  "I hope you got laid good
before you came in, 'cause you ain't gonna find nothing as
pretty as that around here."  

Scully's eyes kept on moving across the page.  

"And when you come out, he ain't gonna be there," Bernice continued.
"He forgot you before he got in front of the wall.  When I 
looked into those eyes I saw me lots of store-bought women, naked 
women doing things their mamas wouldn't like, doing 'em over and
over." A couple of women high five-d and laughed.

When she got no reaction from Scully, Bernice swore and walked away 
before firing her last shot.  "Know what else? I saw you in his bed 
wearing nothing but his shirt.  He had his hands all over you - helping 
himself while you wuz dog sick."  She shook her head in mock disgust.

The sound of the women's laughter echoed in Scully's mind
along a hot wavy line from her head to her heart.  It rippled
over Scully in increasingly powerful surges.  Her mouth dried up.

She couldn't imagine how Bernice knew about Mulder's tapes, or about 
Skinner or what Mulder wanted to do to him.  His hands on her while she 
slept? She was vulnerable in his bed.  She had come to him for help and 
safety.  If she allowed it, Bernice's scenario would explain a lot 
about the way she felt when she awoke and the strange tension between 
them the next day.  She gripped her book so tightly her fingers became 
sweaty; she wiped her palm across her jeans.

Scully turned the page.  She couldn't remember what she'd just read.  From
over the top of the book she could see Bernice's
feet moving away.  She released a long ragged breath and tried to
think.  It was easy to determine who Mulder's supervisor was.  As
trustee and pod leader perhaps Bernice had access to certain
prison records about Scully.  She appeared to be intelligent as
well as street smart -- so she made a lucky guess, a couple of
lucky guesses.  

Scully wondered if Zelda said something.  Had she
mentioned the night she was so sick to Zelda? Of course not,
she'd told no one; she tried not to think of it herself.  And
when she did, she never thought Mulder broke faith.  She never
thought that was the source of the strange undercurrent between
them.  Whatever happened - Mulder said nothing happened.  What had
she missed? What was true, what was just in her head?

Scully felt guilt about her doubts.  Yet she couldn't seem
to banish them completely.  It flashed through her that as the
current dragged her further from shore the rock she needed to
stand on might be only sand.  Her face still buried in the book,
she unconsciously rubbed her forehead and chewed on her lower
lip.

"I can't let you do that, Bernice," Zelda said over the hubbub.  
Scully's head snapped up.  The entire room fell into an eerie buzz 
broken only by dialogue from the television and the music from the 
corner of the room.  The black woman stopped abruptly.   "You can't 
take him from her or she'll freak like the others."

Bernice wagged a finger and grinned, but there was no
mirth in it.  "Have you been peeking inside this girl's head?"

"Don't be insulting.  That isn't polite," Zelda said.  "You
have to be a fool not to see how they are bound together." She
looked at Scully, who was staring in wide-eyed astonishment, and
shrugged.  "Then again, she hardly sees it herself."

Bernice's mouth set in a cruel smile.  "I ain't happy.  No-
ooo." Someone in the back of the rec room said, "oooo-o" and
followed it with a nervous laugh.

"And when mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy," Angela said.

Zelda's shoulders sagged and she flicked her tongue over 
her lips. The tension became a sweaty smell over the rec room. 
Scully's gaze followed Zelda and Bernice into a corner of the 
pod rec room. For a few minutes Bernice and Angela spoke angrily 
to Zelda then Angela turned her back and while she was shielded 
from the view of the surveillance camera Bernice acted. 

To Scully's horror Bernice slapped Zelda's face and delivered 
one blow to the stomach. Zelda turned sideways into the wall 
while Angela and Bernice obstructed her from the camera. 
Scully jumped out of the chair and found her way blocked by
an obese woman from the pod.

"Just a little family business.  Finished here? 'Cause if you are, 
Bernice would 'preciate her seat back," said Mary, the inmate Bernice 
used as a reader.

Scully clutched the book under her arm but by the time she got to Zelda 
her cellmate had regained her breath.  Zelda stood as straight as she 
could against the wall.  Scully dropped the book on the floor and would 
have followed Bernice, but Zelda grabbed her elbow.

"She wasn't always like this," Zelda managed to gasp." Please.  This is on 
me.  All of it."

"I'm going to report it," Scully said.

Zelda merely shook her head and gripped Scully's arm even tighter.