“Memento Mori” is episode fourteen of season four of The X-Files.
The episode opens with Scully narrating about how for the first time, time has become like a heartbeat, knowing that he will share her burden, that she trusts him like no other. A comfort, when her prospects darken. Scully is in a hospital gown, looking at an X-ray of her head. There’s a solid white blob in the X-ray; not a good place for a white blob to be. Scully wants Mulder to forgive her for not making the rest of the journey with him.
Mulder arrives at Holy Cross Memorial Hospital in Washington with a bunch of flowers, looking for oncology. He finds Scully looking at her X-rays. He claims he stole the flowers. Scully says she feels fine. But she has a tumour. In her head. It’s not operable and even treatment, given the type and placement, is difficult to the extreme. Mulder refuses to believe that but she’s as certain of this as he has been all the times she’s said the same to him. She has cancer and if it pushes into her brain, it’s bad. Mulder doesn’t accept there is no treatment. There are treatments.
In the original running order, this would have followed on from “Leonard Betts”. Betts had the ability to detect cancer and knew Scully had it. However, that episode and “Never Again” were switched around.
Skinner is informed and Scully tells him she won’t be taking a leave of absence. She and Mulder want to exhaust a possible avenue of investigation. Last year, in “Nisei”, Scully met women, purported abductees, who had similar symptoms after having implants removed from their necks. Scully wants to pursue this through the Justice Department.
In Allentown, Mulder and Scully arrive at Betsy Hagopian’s house as someone is removing the ‘MUFON’ sticker from the window. Betsy is dead, two and a half weeks ago, according to the realtor. They take a look around and Mulder discovers the house has two lines. On one of them, someone is downloading data from Betsy’s computer.
This is traced to an address belonging to a Kurt Crawford. Crawford tries fleeing when they arrive but Mulder and Scully corner him. Crawford tells Mulder he’s part of Betsy’s network and was downloading the files for safekeeping as she instructed him too. He thinks his life is in danger from a government conspiracy to suppress the information in the files. Scully wants to check with the other MUFON members. They can’t. All but one of the women Scully met last year have died since, and the last one, Penny Northern, is in hospital. It doesn’t look good. Scully doesn’t think the abductions are abductions. Mulder thinks Scully should go talk to Penny. Not about dying of cancer. Scully is an investigator; she has one witness remaining.
At the Allentown-Bethlehem Medical Centre, Penny greets Scully by name. She comforted her in the place after the tests. Scully doesn’t share the memories. Penny is being treated by a Dr Scanlan, as was Betsy. Scanlan might have isolated the cause and, if he’d caught it earlier, might have been able to do more.
Mulder is at Betsy’s going through her files when Scully calls. He has found something; a link to an infertility clinic. Scully needs him to bring her overnight bag and call her mother to bring some things to the hospital. She says that, whatever Mulder might have found, they both know the truth is in Scully, and that’s where she needs to pursue it. As Mulder leaves, a car pulls up to the house. The driver enters and approaches Crawford with a weapon used by the alien bounty hunter to kill aliens. Because Crawford is one.
Scully’s mother isn’t happy that her daughter didn’t tell her immediately. But that’s worry. There’s more narrating from Scully, as she’s writing down her thoughts in a journal, presumably in case she dies. Mulder suggests reaching out to CSM to Skinner; Skinner tells Mulder that’s not a good idea. Mulder also seeks out help from the Lone Gunmen in investigating links from the infertility clinic.