Mulder is listening to music in the office. Scully comes in and turns it off. He wants them to go to England to investigate crop circles. She has little interest. He decides to go by himself.

Scully goes to a hospital to look at some X-rays.

In slow motion, she discovers that the X-rays in the envelope are the wrong ones -- coincidentally, the interior they illuminate is that of a man from her past, a Dr. Daniel Waterston. She goes to his hospital room, only to find him sleeping, a balding, middle-aged man with a mustache and oxygen tube.

His doctor shows up and tersely asks her to step into the hallway, but warms up when he learns she's Scully. To her surprise, Waterston -- who was her teacher years ago -- still speaks of his former student.

He grabs her hand as she sits by her bed. They discuss the career choice she made -- the FBI rather than medicine. It seems also to have been a choice not to stay with him. He caresses her face.

Scully is driving when Mulder calls. He wants her to pick up something from an "American Taoist." She brakes suddenly to avoid a young female pedestrian who walks in slow motion. Scully looks puzzled.

Night. Scully drives up to the Taoist's house. She buzzes and is greeted by a blonde woman named Colleen, who by coincidence she had seen at the hospital. Scully mentions she'd almost had a car accident. Colleen knowingly says "there is a greater intelligence in all things," and an accident often means one should "slow down."

She also seeks what Scully thinks of what she does, and Scully replies with vague disdain that she doesn’t even know what Colleen does.

Another visit to the hospital. Scully gets caught up in a dispute between Waterston and his doctor about his drug treatment. Maggie walks off after telling Scully: "You come off so rational. But maybe you know less than you think."

Waterston tells Scully that Maggie is angry, because she's been through tough times, and there are things he's not proud of. "I screwed up, Dana," he says.

They discuss the fact that he'd gotten a divorce and then moved to Washington. "Daniel, you didn’t move here for me?" says Scully, shedding a tear.

They touch hands and he strokes her hair. She lies her head on his arm. The hospital monitors beeps, then buzzes. Scully looks up. Waterston is flatlining. She calls for help, then starts pressing his chest. Soon, she's zapping him with those electrical paddles and shouting "Clear!" His pulse returns.

Daytime. Scully revisits Colleen, is let in by the Taoist healer's young female lover, and then apologizes for her earlier hyper-rational disdain. Colleen expostulates that holistic healers and Eastern mystics know that our physical selves are just one level, and we have auras, and so on.

There are moments when time seems to expand, says Colleen, with preternatural accuracy.

The healer also explains she used to be physicist until breast cancer got her attention regarding her feelings of shame about her love life. When she got rid of that shame, her cancer went into remission.

The hospital. Scully arrives with flowers, but Waterston does not emerge from his coma. "Are you happy?" snarls the unhappy Maggie, noting that he'd declined shortly after Scully's last visit.

Scully walks the streets, the flowers pointing downward. She walks through what looks like Chinatown as rhythmic music plays. She sees the young woman pedestrian she almost ran over and, trying to follow, finds herself walking into a shrine with a big statue. It's Buddha. There are candles, shafts of light, mementos.

Scully appears to be in a trance. Her eyes are closed, her head nods toward Buddha in a worshipful way. There is a brilliant flash of light. She sees Waterston's body -- translucent, with a beating heart. His eyes open. She starts awake. Buddha looks at her placidly.

The hospital. Scully is at Waterston's bedside, but now she's brought a male New Age healer with her. He expostulates about the need to clear out chakras. Waterston's doctor enters and expresses contempt, but then Maggie says it's worth a try. But the New Age says it may be hopeless because this soul is ready to move on.

Music. Scully. A room. The pedestrian. Scully is awakened by a phone call from Maggie, who rudely summons her to the hospital. She goes. Waterston is sitting up in bed, awake and apparently well. Nonetheless, he expresses some contempt for the "voodoo" Scully used while he was in a coma. She says it may have just saved his life.

He wants to resume their relationship, but she wants him to direct his attention to making things right with the family. Maggie enters as Scully leaves.

A suburban street. Scully's on a park bench. She sees the female pedestrian, follows, and grabs her sweatshirt. To her surprise, it's Mulder who turns around. He's back from England, having failed to make headway into the crop circle mystery. It was a "waste of time," he says. But Scully, imbued with the wisdom of Colleen, says that sometimes "nothing" happens for "a reason."

She has tea with Mulder, who expresses mild surprise that her entire life and world-view have changed over the past two days, and that it included a conversation with God at a Buddhist temple. She mildly corrects him by saying it was a "vision" of some kind.

She also notes she once considered spending her whole life with Waterston, and she talks about that choice and how life has lots of choices, and they lead to places, and so on.

Then she falls asleep next to Mulder, who takes the liberty of caressing her hair and then puts a blanket over her. A nearby fish tank has what looks like a plastic UFO in it. And on a table a few feet away is a tiny Buddha that looks exactly like the big one she had seen.